Public speaking lessons from Portugal
Last month, I traveled with Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management to Lisbon, Portugal. Kellogg is currently ranked as the #1 executive MBA program in the United States.
At the end of the trip, we were assigned to teams of six and asked to pitch a way for a prominent coffee company to bring a patented product to the United States.
We had one hour to learn about the company.
We had a second hour to put together the pitch.
We had three minutes to perform in front of an audience of 50+ students and executives.
At the end of our team’s presentation, the company’s executives shared three thoughts:
“That was amazing.”
“That’s going to be tough for any other team to live up to.”
“We’d like to hire your team!”
What did we do?
First, we knew our audience.
We considered our peers. They were exhausted after a week of intensive projects. This meant we had to make things fun, energetic, and dynamic.
We also thought about the executives. They needed one good idea about selling coffee machines to Americans from each presentation. They did NOT need in-depth financial projections or technicalities—they just wanted to get intuitively correct ideas about which market to target, given a limited budget.
Our target market: business professionals who frequently travel.
These professionals could encounter promotional deals at airport lounges.
It would cost the company very little to get their new product in select lounges with these professionals.
Second, we kept it simple.
The structure for most pitches is fairly straightforward. We saw no reason to reinvent the wheel.
Articulate a customer need. These business professionals appreciate new technology and want to bring back innovative ideas to their teams.
Provide a proposal. We proposed airport lounge partnerships to expose the customer to the product.
Give proof that the proposal will succeed. Given the limited time, we didn’t have market research data. We thought walking through the psychological spending profile of a hypothetical customer would demonstrate if this felt intuitively correct.
Pre-empt questions and concerns. We considered more ambitious proposals, including partnerships with hotels, but focused on the low cost and corporate commitment involved with this value-adding strategy.
Third, we thought about standing out.
This pitch was not a competition. But the principles of competitions apply to every performance. Following these principles, we answered two key questions.
What were the unique talents of our team? One of our cohort members excelled at visual art, so we wrote our pitch’s tagline (“Infusing inspiration”) in bold, beautiful letters. Another was an expert at using Suno to create AI music, so he made a theme song for the product to play us out. A third was highly critical of the company’s plan, so we used his valid concerns within the pitch during a scripted “innovation/brainstorming session.” I have a background in theater and presentation, so I took the lead on structuring the pitch as a story.
How could we leverage those talents to stand out? We began the pitch by introducing a team member as the hypothetical customer.
They began in their ‘office’ with their ‘team’—uninspired, bored, and hitting a brick wall.
They traveled to a lounge, where they noticed the company’s product. (We placed the product physically very close to the executives to set the scene.)
They tested the product in the lounge, liked it, and brought the idea back to their team.
The team was inspired by the product’s innovation and threw out ideas (including improvements for the product itself).
We ended with the new theme song.
For more, reach out to Dr. Iain Lampert for a free consultation.
