By Dave Reddy
Practice Leader, Media & Influencers | Host, Pressing Matters podcast
There are four essential parts to any well told story: grab attention, paint a picture, humanize, resolve a problem. Even when spinning a yarn about yourself, that isn’t easy.
Now do it all in 60 seconds. It’s not for the faint of heart.
During SF Tech Work in early October, Big Valley hosted Make Me Care: The 60-Second Story Slam, a live pitching contest in which we gave participants a mere minute to make their case in front of our judges: reporters Don Clark and Chris Velazco, analyst Dave Smith, and investor Katie Eggers. A few dozen folks with some serious brass showed up to give their best very short shot. The best of the competition can be heard here in our special fifth-season premiere episode of Pressing Matters.
Even for those of us who have made it a career, telling a good story is difficult. Telling a tight story in a minute is nigh on impossible. But our winner, Benjamin Rizkin, CEO of Rizkin Labs, nailed it using the four essential parts:
- Grab attention: In his pitch, Benjamin, who has built a platform that ties together all aspects of regulated manufacturing for pharmaceuticals, told us off the top that 28 percent of therapeutics fail their pre-licensed inspections from the FDA. That’s more than a quarter. You have my attention.
- Humanize: He explains that because of that failure rate, millions of people “don’t get drugs that work.” Suddenly, instead of a bland pharma story, we’ve got a decidedly human story: millions of people NOT getting well.
- Paint a picture: Benjamin tells us that all can seem fine until “the inspector walks in the room,” realizes the mistakes you’ve made and fails you. When he says that, you imagine yourself walking into the room with the inspector … or, worse, being the poor guy who failed the inspection. Why does this work? In media coaching and presentation coaching seminars, we suggest ‘putting a person in the room with you.’ For example, start a story by saying ‘I was at a customer’s factory the other day and …’ Firing your audience’s imagination with word pictures like those helps them do the work of filling in what you haven’t said in their heads – like what your mind does when you read a good book.
- Resolve the problem: Benjamin doesn’t merely tell us he solved this problem half a dozen times, he explains that he has a new platform designed to help others solve it, too.
Some other participants, especially those who finished in the Top 5, did nearly as well. But most fell into one or more of the traditional pitfalls of storytelling:
- Failing to grab attention: Mind-blowing numbers or brief personal anecdotes pull your audience in. If instead you launch into a product description, you become …
- Too dry and clinical: Tech on its face is exciting to technologists. It needs a human angle to be exciting for the rest of us. Don’t lose your story in bits and bytes. Or you risk …
- Losing your audience: Dry and clinical may well work for other technical people. It does not for reporters, influencers and investors.
- Problem clear, solution unclear: In a world in which there a dozen mousetraps for every breed of mouse, you have to explain why yours works better. Do not rely on the problem itself to sell your story. We all know, for instance, that gas prices are a problem. I’m still waiting for a solution.
- Solution clear, problem unclear: This is a Valley classic. You’ve built a widget, but for what? For whom? And, most important, why? A solution in search of a problem is useless. And if you don’t explain the problem, you are presuming I know what it is. Don’t take that risk.
- Time issues: Given the time factor, speaking too fast – often a problem (nerves = speed and speed kills) – and running out of time were other common mistakes. There were at least three occasions when someone was absolutely rolling but ran out of clock before they finished.
Avoiding those pitfalls comes down to one key: practice. I didn’t ask Benjamin if he practiced, but either he did – a lot – or he’s got a rare natural gift of telling a strong, tight. Practice in a mirror. Practice to a small audience. Practice at a Tech Week Pitch Slam. And then practice some more.
If you’re interested in Big Valley Marketing’s media coaching or presentation coaching seminars, please email me at dreddy@bigvalley.co
