From Harvard Business Review, Tricia Brouk provides excellent advice on how to give a great presentation including how to pitch a presentation by distilling your message to 15 words. She writes:
Know how to pitch. When you understand and master the pitch, you’ll get onto more stages, which in turn will give you the confidence to become fearless each time you pitch. Start with the idea and why you are the right person to take the stage and deliver this big idea. While it must be a big idea, you need to be able to communicate it in 15 words or less. Organizers are busy, and they don’t have time to read through lengthy pitches. Share what the audience will take away, as well as the global impact of the talk. Don’t save the most important part of your pitch for the end; people may stop reading before they ever get to it, landing you in the “no” pile. And don’t try to sell your book or business in a pitch for a speaking gig. If you want to sell from the stage, that conversation happens after you book the gig. Seventy-five percent of the potential speakers who apply to my events, including TEDxLincolnSquare, The Speaker Salon, and currently Speakers Who Dare, end up pitching their business. That’s a lot of people who do not understand the art of a pitch, and who subsequently end up in the no pile.
Source: To Give a Great Presentation, Distill Your Message to Just 15 Words
This reminds me of the The Eight-Word Mission Statement blog with a similar theme — make sure you can explain your mission, or your pitch, in a sentence or two.
