4 Types of Sales Pitches to Replace Your Elevator Pitch

Pitching has become enormously important. We’re pitching all the time and we tend to rely on the elevator pitch – which is not necessarily wrong, it’s just a little bit dated. If you look at the social science you can find some more intriguing ways to pitch that is to invite people into the conversation about whatever it is that you’re offering. 

There’s the One Word Pitch, based on something that Maurice Saatchi, the famous British adman, talks about, is “one word equity” – when people say that word they think of you, when people think of you they think of that word. One Word pitches.

Rhyming Pitches. There’s amazing evidence at Lafayette College showing that propositions that rhyme are actually deemed more truthful, they are more believable, and that’s because they increase something that’s called processing fluency. 

We don’t pitch enough with questions; we should be pitching with questions. There’s some interesting evidence that shows when you pitch with questions, under particular circumstances, particularly when the facts are clearly on your side, it’s extraordinarily persuasive. 

There’s another pitch I really like called the Pixar Pitch which is where you pitch your proposition, your idea, your company, whatever it is you’re trying to move people to do, and you do it in the form of the narrative structure of a Pixar movie. Pixar movies have a 6 sentence structure: once upon a time…, every day…, one day…, because of that…, because of that…, until finally…. And I think configuring a pitch in that sort of way is really effective.