It could be your greatest opportunity or an absolute nightmare, someone who you’ve been dying to make contact with comes into your sphere. You don’t even have a conversation opener, let alone an elevator pitch. And this is the time when you most need to talk about yourself and your business.

You don’t want to be brash, and you definitely don’t want to skite. It’s that fine line between bragging and presenting a good case, says Mark Robotham.

I spend a lot of time working with business owners to help them get greater clarity around their pitch and their business. For me having a succinct story for your business will not only get you business, but will help you make smarter decisions in your business.

Core to all of this is your ‘value proposition’ i.e. what problem or desire do you solve for your customers and what keeps them coming back. Above all else you need to make sure that most of your time (working in your business) is spent ‘adding value’ to your customers. Note often in the arts world the value is not monetary.

At the top of the list – what can you say that catches your audience’s attention (WOW) and helps you stand out from the crowd?

Don’t forget in many cases you are playing with discretional spend, so your competition may be unrelated expenses and activities… holidays, travel or even other suppliers, makers and doers.

• 10 Tips for Creating and Delivering a Great Pitch

1. What is your headline story? 

Imagine you have just won a big industry award – what would the newspaper headline be (one short sentence) and the first paragraph (your short form pitch).

2. Don’t sell the competition

Make sure your pitch doesn’t just sell your craft or profession. Do a check that your pitch is more than 70 percent about what is unique to you.

3. Use your audience’s language not yours

Work out what outcome (value measure) they are looking for with their purchase– their measure of success or pleasure.

4. Be Succinct

Use 10 – 30 second sound bites. Create a list of your hot points – then shorten them down to short pithy statements. Write your pitch out and keep deleting words, 80 percent of a typical first script is not adding value.

5. Focus on delivering a short form pitch first

Mark Twain once said “sorry for the long letter I do not have time for a short one”. Spend time working on a 60 second and 3 minute pitch first. Short pitches can always be expanded out to longer one. It’s very difficult to shrink a pitch. So spend time crafting the short one.

6. Stories Sell

Tell us a story about one of your best customers and why they love what you do. Use contrast (with and without) to illustrate the power of your work. People remember stories and often they provide the WOW factor you need to get attention and be remembered.

7. Brag

YES it’s all about you! Too many Kiwi’s are too self-conscious to give us a reason to think that you are credible and that you are the person/company they should be dealing with.

8. Talk about stuff that excites you

Make sure your passion shines through with the tone and body language you use. Only 8 percent of your message impact comes from the words you use – the rest is body language and tone.

9. Stand for something

The biggest failure of so many businesses is that they are just ‘one of the pack’. Work out what is it that you stand for? What are your soap box topics? The topics that you can express some thought leadership on. Have a string of these – they are great openers or engagement tools in networking situations.

10. Practice, practice, practice

Pitch everywhere, if it’s short and powerful it will not come across as bragging or boring. Call it viral marketing or whatever, but if people do not know about you or your project how can they engage? I personally find best places for getting business – plane rides, bike rides and social events.

Mark Robotham – works with business people to gain clarity and refine their pitches and business plans. He is an active blogger (www.succinct.co.nz) and runs both public workshops on pitching as well as one on one coaching and business advisory work.