Pitching and Watering Hole. Months become Days.

Innovation and Creativity takes time. Here’s a way to be a lot faster – but it takes discipline! A lot of it.

The classic “Elevator Pitch” scene

Anonymous little mouse, accidentally enters the same elevator as the big CEO. He (the mouse!) heroically seizes the opportunity to pitch his breath-taking, business-changing idea, that he’s been working on in his tiny cubicle over the last years, during just that elevator ride to the top floor.

The CEO is blown away, promises funding and support of any kind and shortly after “mouse” moves in on the top floor – next to the CEO; … etc.

Two observations
1. The higher the building the longer the pitch.
2. That’s Hollywood!

Let’s apply this to real life.

We have.

Hundreds of times. I’ve coached project teams that admitted that they have been able to get to the same point in 3 days where they had used 4 to 5 months in a prior attempt.

Key Ingredients
1) a champion (or even better a small team of champions) with an idea
2) focus on the essentials,
3) a robust storyline,
4) an audience that listens,
5) the same audience that then gives good feedback, and
6) a champion (the team) that is willing to iterate the idea based on the feedback.

Now, do the following:

1. Prepare your Pitch

Stand up – and draw a cross on a flipchart. Label the quadrants N, A, B, C.

Make sure you have a good understanding of the customer you envisage (If unsure why see my post on “Experience the Customer. Lions don’t learn to hunt in the Zoo.“).

Try to be as specific as possible, give her a first name. Think about whether she skis, smokes, walks a dog, wears glasses.

It’s always easier to generalize later, if needed. But if you don’t have a good understanding of that human being, you won’t have any understanding of her needs. No human = no needs!

N stands for Needs. Write down what her needs are.

Once your pretty comfortable with this, move on to A for your Approach. How do you plan to fulfill these needs? What is the offer? What is the overall experience? How will it be staged; how will the promises delivered? What is the price, the availability, the bundle, the guarantees, etc.?

Now ask yourself how will your customer B(enefit) from this? How will you, or (if you are working for a company) how will your company benefit from this?

Finally, C stands for Competition and is often at first mis-understood as your competitors. Look at it as a Choice your customer has? How could she fulfill her needs with another, or someone else’s approach?

You have now come full circle, and instead of primarily focussing on your Approach, you’ve covered your idea from the most important perspectives. While doing so, you might have moved a Need down to the Approach, or you have moved a Need over to the Benefits, etc. In a very brief time (30 to 60 mins.) you’ve mapped out your idea with your team.

Here’s our instruction video, where I explain “doing an NABC” for a tooth brush – and as a customer we’ve picked Katja, an attractive 31 year-old doctorate of economics.

(In Swiss German with French subtitles…)

I made a little transcript of the clip and put it together as a quick guide. Now, this one is in ENGLISH!

Download “NABC – the Guide” (1 page in English)

All you need to complete your Pitch is a Hook to attract your listeners’ attention right from the start and a punchy Close. The Close could be as simple as “Please, give me feedback on my idea, so that I can decide whether to go on or not.”

2. Give your Pitch and collect the Feedback

You want to be able to get good feedback that will help you develop and sharpen your idea.

We have been very successful with a setup that we call “Watering Hole”.

Watering Hole?

So, from Disney movies we know that all different kinds of animals come to the same water hole …

It’s important to make a conscious choice who you invite to your Watering Hole. Not just your friends, not just controllers, not just colleagues, not just customers, not just management, … You get my point! You will get feedback from a diverse, heterogenous group of people.

Now the structure is simple.

1) The champion (or the team) gets 5 minutes to pitch the idea. He is not interrupted, the audience listens, takes notes. No comments, no questions. Use an hour glass, to emphasize that time is limited andrunning.

2) The audience takes turns in giving feedback (we refer to “green” and “red” feedback, more to that in another post). No justifications, no commentaries from the champion (or team).

That’s it!

I mentioned discipline way up there, right?
The most difficult thing to do is TO SHUT UP when it isn’t your turn to talk (that applies to both sides in a Watering Hole).
Another difficult thing is to not justify or add extra explanations. This is a point where I am often in disagreement with many of my coaching/training peers that allow a round of clarifying questions right after the pitch (before giving feedback). I don’t. It’s tough, but we get better results. The team learns what they didn’t bring across in their pitch. It’s like in real life, if you walk past a billboard – and you don’t get the message, the billboard won’t come run after you and ask you whether you had any clarification questions it could answer …
And maybe a third thing: as the champion (and the team) take notes!! Write it up to be able to relive exactly how a certain person said or meant it. Often you think you’ll remember it. You won’t! At best 2 or 3 things. And, you can get 20, 30, 40 good observations and relevant inputs from this 10-15 minute interaction.

3. Rework your Pitch

Now, as the champion you want to first thank your audience for their feedback. It’s their gift to you!

Then you want to remind everyone – and a clever facilitator will have done so prior to your pitch – that this isn’t a decision meeting. You wanted feedback. You got it and it is up to you what you do with it.

Learn to (at least in your head) turn on your heel, and walk away confidently. You will decide what to do with this input. It will also be you that will very soon (ideally, in the afternoon or the next day) pitch again in the next Watering Hole, to find out how much you were able to sharpen your idea and how much better it was understood by your audience.

Repeat this until you’re ready to launch. Adapt the details of your pitch to where you need clarification. Correct your course, re-shuffle your approach as often as you find it necessary – or until you decide to stop. It’s your call!

OK.
I’ve opened a whole, hands-on chapter of innovation craftmanship. It will take some other posts to additionally flank, drill deeper and comment these practices.

Start today!

Sketch an NABC for your next holiday, a pair of hiking boots, a wedding band, a piece of art, a mobile phone for your 11 year old daughter. It’s fun to get started with these, before you start with your business-related topics.

You can even do this tonight when you have some friends over for dinner.

Have fun and let me know what you would like to know more!

Note on the side: I am especially proud of the depiction of the alligator in the water. See more on how to visualize with focus on essentials in my post on “Visualization and Storytelling. A Pig does the Trick .“

Green and Red Feedback. I hate String Beans.

15 Meanings. Who are You?