How Many People Should Pitch?

How many people should be involved in a pitch? Often asked question if there are ten of you and you’re all going into a mega pitch and the client has equally a number of people on the other side of the table who should stand and pitch? You have ten people should all of them pitch?

I would suggest no that’s not a great idea why because every time we switch from one person to another the audience need to attune themselves to a different person, a different tone, a different pace, a different style which jolts our narrative.

Remember in a pitch we are trying to get across a story or narrative and it’s not often that you see storytellers invite questions
halfway through the story. A story is all around taking our audience and transporting them into a different world to do that having lots of people being involved in a pitch is not a great idea unless of course it is something like theatre, with professional actors playing different roles.

There is something to be said for having more than one person involved in a pitch if
it suits their particular a role – I’ll give you an example – recently I helped three people give a pitch on a solution for babies two of the people in the team were female and of an age to be able to have a baby and one was a male. I suggested that the two females lend themselves to the narrative because they are also more emotionally attuned to a subject matter but I also said the male
could come in on the hard fast numbers parts – the prudence – this is playing up to
stereotypes I know but this would work much better in a pitch.

So don’t overdo it, don’t have too many people involved in your pitch remember if you have ten
people and only three of you pitch you have the other seven people involved in the Q&A.

Last thing to say is if you do have lots of people pitch you should always make sure that one of the people that stands and gives the pitch is the head honcho, the grand pooh-bah, the Big Cheese, the managing director, CEO, founder or visionary – that person should be involved in the pitch always because if they’re a leader they should be able to stand and communicate to the audience otherwise it looks a little bit peculiar to the audience that the person that should be leading is not standing and looking like a leader.

Interested in speaking about speaking?

Mobile & WhatsApp: 07984 884404

Instagram: #Andrewtollinton

Email: andrew@andrewtollinton.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/andrewtollinton