This week’s reading and listening materials all talked about some good pitch skills.

The Entrepreneur’s article shared 13 tips about how to do a better pitch. But there is one thing brought my attention a lot is “If you say, “One last thing” or something similar, then make sure it’s truly the one last thing.” I believe that we all had similar experience: the speaker said “one last thing” but this guy may talk 20 mins more about three more points. The audiences are losing their interests and patient to this guy. And if this is a business pitch, I believe some people might started to reconsidering about their corporation because they might think this guy is losing his credibility.

The article from Venture Beat mentioned “keep it simple” and Ted Talk video said “limit your talk to just one major idea”. I think this is something really important in a good pitch. Sometimes we might have too many ideas and too many different focus and try to share them in one time. This might cause the listeners confuse and lose their attention. Even worth, since the speaker is nervous, she or he might even lose their mind and might be very unclear to their points. Thus, only find the most essential point and explain it clearly is the best thing you can do. Just like what we learned about how to create our MVP in class, keep it simple and only target at the most important point. Do not try to cover too much at one time.

The Ted Talk video also mentioned one trick which is build your idea with familiar concepts. This will help your listeners to understand your idea and build their own thoughts. I remember we went to the Hatching Pitch at Lansing last time. Some speakers talked about high-technique products which should be benefit and interesting, however, the way they presented it is like a science report. This cause the audiences lost their interests and get bored. But the video showed us an easy but important way to solve such problem— use something everyone is familiar to explain something complicated. Maybe you could use an interesting story, maybe you could use a great example. This helps the speaker build relationship to the audience. In such way, everyone could easily understand what your product is and how great it is.

There is one more thing which every material pointed out: make your idea worth sharing. I believe this is the most crucial part. Without that, there is no need to pitch. Be honest to yourself and your audience, find something really matters to everyone to share. Respect listener’s time and your time.