How to pitch to anyone
Original sent as a March 2023 email newsletter.
I’d like to tell you a love story about the relationship between an anti-sexual violence prevention publication and your next business pitch.
Setting the scene
As a Sexual Assault Prevention Educator, I spent three years on this amazing public health grant project where my goal was to reduce dating violence and sexual assault at two specific high schools by fostering a healthier campus climate. In the early days, I facilitated a 5-module series in health classes each semester about consent, relationships, rape culture, and bystander intervention. As the project progressed, we were meant to champion activities that would expand this culture shift beyond the classroom.
A particularly popular activity amongst my colleagues throughout the state was the Campus Safety Assessment. In theory, the Educator would give as many students as possible a map of their campus, then ask them to anonymously indicate which areas felt safe, uncomfortable, or unsafe.
One school let me facilitate the activity with no issues, and it ended up being wildly successful. The other school… was hesitant, to say the least. Faculty and staff didn’t want to open themselves up to liability by admitting that ANY area of campus could be unsafe. And as it was the new High School Principal’s first year at this school, he was especially cautious and difficult to reach.
But I had an in — see, this Principal had just transferred over from MY high school. He’d been MY Principal only six years earlier. Did he actually know who I was? No. Did I like the restrictive policies he implemented during my time in high school? Of course not. Did I play up my school spirit to get a meeting with him? Absolutely!
I was so excited I’d figured out a way to get my boss and myself on his calendar. I strolled up to school that day in my favorite Nordstrom dress, armed with all of the health class evaluations I’d conducted over the last year, as well as printed copies in cute little folders of the results of our successful Campus Safety Assessment at my other school.
As soon as we sat down, I launched into my impassioned spiel about the power of violence prevention. I was convinced there was no WAY he would refuse my color-coded assessment activity with all of this data and doe-eyed enthusiasm coming his way.
The meeting ended up being (maybe!) 20 minutes. He barely made eye contact and checked his watch at regular intervals. He was out the door the moment he deemed it socially acceptable.
I blew it. I mean, he was being rude as hell. But also, I totally blew it.
Why?
I approached the meeting from the perspective of “look at this thing that matters SO much to me! It should matter to you too!!” when I should have approached it from: “we both value creating an environment where students are able to effectively learn; let me tell you about how this thing fits into YOUR vision for this school.”
Making the case
This lightbulb didn’t go off until a year later when the geniuses at Berkeley Media Studies Group came to our grant project cohort training and unpacked their recently-published guide Where we’re going and where we’ve been: Making the case for preventing sexual violence. It is a brilliant how-to about storytelling, accessible language, and positioning yourself as the messenger.
AKA, how to write an effective pitch.
This publication came to mind often for me this month, as I have been helping a client find and pitch to podcasts. We’ve been pondering the question: How do we make a convincing case to folks who aren’t familiar with her work or role as a coach?
As the Berkeley Media Studies Group (who I’ll just call BMSG) lays out in their prevention publication:
“For a messenger to be persuasive, the audience has to identify with them. That is, your audience needs to see them as someone they share experiences or values with. If your audience does not identify with the messenger — which is to say, if your audience doesn’t feel that the messenger is ‘like them’ in some important way — even the most powerful story will fall flat.”
Let’s use the example of a somatic healing practitioner pitching to a magazine they hope to write for.
Experience can feel very straightforward: We’ve found a magazine about somatic healing. They have experience as a somatic healer. While it’ll still be important to craft a pitch that helps this client make an impression, it is very obvious from the jump how the pitcher is similar to the entity being pitched to.
Values can serve as an entry point when the connection doesn’t seem as straightforward: We’ve found a magazine about the broad subject of “happiness,” and they haven’t featured a somatic practitioner before. Maybe they even seem a little hesitant to acknowledge a “heavier” topic like trauma. Perhaps we approach the conversation from the shared values of personal empowerment and creating pathways for all people to access happiness.
While it's generally wise to keep an initial pitch short & sweet, you KNOW I love an opportunity for a good story to facilitate connection and memory. The BMSG publication, too, asks us to situate our message in the framework of a "journey."
Perhaps in your initial pitch, you include a sentence that teases your values-based story ("While navigating PTSD in post-grad, I began learning somatic healing practices as a path towards discovering my own happiness again"). Then, if you and the entity you've pitched to connect on a 30-minute call to discuss the opportunity further, you might choose to integrate the full story as a way of supporting your interest in this collaboration!
Applying the concept
If this feels like something you’re interested in exploring, I invite you to read through some of the story examples provided in the BMSG publication and try out this simple exercise for yourself: Simply draw out a T-chart like the image below, or utilize this Notion brainstorming template I made.
T-chart split into three sections. The headers read (from left to right): “Name of podcast, publication, etc.” / “Values we share” / “Personal story that illustrates shared values”
Here is a list of common values that might help to get the wheels turning. If you’re feeling stuck, you might start with the question, “WHY do I want to pitch to this group in the first place?”
For my first-ever newsletter, I just really wanted to gush about the anti-sexual violence publication that served as my first entry point into the world of intentional communications! In the future, I'd love to share more with you about what events I'm attending, what playlists I'm listening to, what practices I'm engaging with to keep myself resourced during the chaos of entrepreneurship, etc. Let me know if there's anything specific you'd like to see!
