by Jun Marfori
The Pitch Perfect public workshop of POWERinU on August 22, 2024 was an experience in impromptu presentations, animated and intimate self-introduction through creative metaphors, and empowering practice sessions of how to effectively promote and brand their companies and respective solutions, through brief but catchy elevator pitches and strong value proposition statements.
Drawing from the principles of the Value proposition map of Strategyzer, and effective storytelling techniques, tips and pointers, the workshop was fun, engaging, and animated.
It began immediately with each participant having to role play a Travel Agent while promoting a travel destination. This kicked off the day with impromptu sales pitches, while given only 2 minutes to prepare. It was fun, and certainly disclosed latent and innate talent they each possessed already, and just needing harnessing and practice.
As the day wore on, it was evident that the participants were increasingly incorporating the content and principles of each lecturette in their presentations, typically capping each module. Their materials included showing of relevant videos, which included a product launch presentation during of the iPhone by APPLE’s Steve Jobs, the description of an Elevator Pitch, and excerpts of a webinar interview of an Executive Coach / leader / learning facilitator / journalist / broadcaster.
The final storytelling experience saw the participants take to the floor and effectively utilizing numerous “hooks” to capture and hold interest, using witty remarks, controversial statements, statistics, questions, and metaphors to tug at emotions, and build curiosity, and in the process draw attention and interest, persuade, inspire and motivate, the audience towards their communication objective.
A good summary of how the day flowed may have been captured by the de-brief comment of one of the participants when she shared that throughout the day she saw the progression of the presentations to become more organized, structured, and effective, from the viewpoint of a listener.
What they say about PITCH PERFECT
” The training was well-planned and on time, the venue was comfortable and the activities were relevant and enjoyable. The training was more geared towards sales representatives, but I appreciated how you related to me and Marvin even though we have a technical background. I would like the entire SOC team to experience the training. One thing that stood out to me was when you mentioned that younger generations are not as interested in training as past generations. This is something I hope my team will realize.”
~ Julie Pearl Matira, Manager at CyberQ Group Inc.
“I liked that the workshop was very interactive with on-stage activities for the participants. Since the topic is about making pitches, the activities were really helpful. It was also evident how each participant improved by the end of the day although not exactly with the content of the pitches yet but most definitely with the confidence of the participants to stand in front of people and be able to speak their mind which is a very good start and a huge improvement within a short span of time. I think the program is well-thought of. I suppose there would be a different approach if the workshop was for a single company and probably the activities would be focused on the use case of that company, but for last Thursday where there were 3 different companies and it was still easily relatable and engaging even if we are from different fields and industries. Thank you Sir Jun and Ms. Trina!”
~ Mary Clare Sandoval, Sales Manager at e-Science Corporation
