How to pitch a brilliant idea
MANAGING YOURSELF
How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea
Before you even know it, the stranger across the desk has decided what kind of person you are. Knowing how you'll be stereotyped allows you to play to and control-the other guy's expectations.
by Kimberly D. Elsbach
C
OMING UP WITH creative ideas is easy; selling them to strangers is hard. All too often, entrepreneurs, sales executives, and marketing managers go to great lengths to show how their new business plans or creative concepts are practical and high marginonly to be rejected by corporate decision makers who don't seem to understand the real value of the ideas. Why does this happen?
It turns out that the problem has as much to do with the seller's traits as with an idea's inherent quality. The person on the receiving end tends to gauge the pitcher's creativity as well as the proposal itself. And judgments about the pitcher's ability to come up with workable ideas can quickly and permanently overshadow perceptions of the idea's worth. We all like to think that people
SEPTEMBER 2003
judge us carefully and objectively on our merits. But the fact is, they rush to place us into neat little categories - they stereotype us. So the first thing to realize when you're preparing to make a pitch to strangers is that your audience is going to put you into a box. And they're going to do it really fast. Research suggests that humans can categorize others in less than 150 milliseconds. Within
30 minutes, they've made lasting judgments about your character.
These insights emerged from my lengthy study of the $50 billion U.S. film and television industry. Specifically, I worked with 50 Hollywood executives involved in assessing pitches from screenwriters. Over the course of six years, I observed dozens of 3ominute pitches in which the screenwriters encountered the "catchers" for the first
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M A N A G I N G Y O U R S E L F • How to Pitch a B r i l l i a n t Idea
How to Pitch a Brilliant Idea
Before you even know it, the stranger across the desk has decided what kind of person you are. Knowing how you'll be stereotyped allows you to play to and control-the other guy's expectations.
by Kimberly D. Elsbach
C
OMING UP WITH creative ideas is easy; selling them to strangers is hard. All too often, entrepreneurs, sales executives, and marketing managers go to great lengths to show how their new business plans or creative concepts are practical and high marginonly to be rejected by corporate decision makers who don't seem to understand the real value of the ideas. Why does this happen?
It turns out that the problem has as much to do with the seller's traits as with an idea's inherent quality. The person on the receiving end tends to gauge the pitcher's creativity as well as the proposal itself. And judgments about the pitcher's ability to come up with workable ideas can quickly and permanently overshadow perceptions of the idea's worth. We all like to think that people
SEPTEMBER 2003
judge us carefully and objectively on our merits. But the fact is, they rush to place us into neat little categories - they stereotype us. So the first thing to realize when you're preparing to make a pitch to strangers is that your audience is going to put you into a box. And they're going to do it really fast. Research suggests that humans can categorize others in less than 150 milliseconds. Within
30 minutes, they've made lasting judgments about your character.
These insights emerged from my lengthy study of the $50 billion U.S. film and television industry. Specifically, I worked with 50 Hollywood executives involved in assessing pitches from screenwriters. Over the course of six years, I observed dozens of 3ominute pitches in which the screenwriters encountered the "catchers" for the first
117
M A N A G I N G Y O U R S E L F • How to Pitch a B r i l l i a n t Idea