Perfecting Your Pitch

Whether you’re asking for a raise, selling but holding your price, ending a relationship, or talking to children about divorce, success is predicated on planned, effective communication. Yet, most people fail to properly prepare their message. A veteran corporate attorney, sports agent, and expert consultant, Ronald M. Shapiro has spent years developing and honing his negotiation techniques. Now, Shapiro shares the bulletproof system of scripting he calls the Three D’s: Draft, Devil’s Advocate, Deliver. Illustrating his methods with fascinating real-life stories and helpful scripts, he walks readers through the process of creating an effective message, preparing for counterarguments, and delivering the results with confidence and grace. Applicable across a broad range of situations, Perfecting Your Pitch empowers us to get the results we want.

A professional “pitching coach” for one of the world’s largest marketing conglomerates, Jon Steel shares his secrets and explains how you can create presentations and pitches that win hearts, minds, and new business. He identifies the dos and don’ts and uses real-world examples to prove his points. If you make pitches for new business, this is the perfect book for you.

“Anyone who comes to pitch on Shark Tank should read this book first!” —Barbara Corcoran, ABC's Shark Tank “I have seen literally thousands of companies trying to raise capital and know that a great pitch deck is critical. This book gives you the playbook for creating yours.” —Naval Ravikant, cofounder and CEO, AngelList “I raised twice the amount of money I set out to in a mere five weeks. I’m naming my firstborn child after the Evans.” —Slava Menn, cofounder and CEO, Fortified Bicycle HOW DO YOU LAUNCH THE VENTURE OF YOUR DREAMS? Get Backed isn’t just about startup fundraising. It’s a handbook for anyone who has an idea and needs to build relationships to get it off the ground. Over the last 3 years, entrepreneurs Evan Loomis and Evan Baehr have raised $45 million for their own ventures, including the second largest round on the fundraising platform AngelList. In Get Backed, they show you exactly what they and dozens of others did to raise money—even the mistakes they made—while sharing the secrets of the world’s best storytellers, fundraisers, and startup accelerators. They’ll also teach you how to use “the friendship loop”, a step-by-step process that can be used to initiate and build relationships with anyone, from investors to potential cofounders. And, most of all, they’ll help you create a pitch deck, building on the real-life examples of 15 ventures that have raised over $150 million. What’s in the book? • The original pitch decks and fundraising strategies of 15 ventures that raised over $150 million • Email scripts that will get you a meeting with angel investors, venture capitalists, and potential board members • Pitching exercises developed by startup talent beds like Stanford University’s d.school and Techstars • A breakdown of the 10 essential pitch deck slides, how to create them, and what questions you should answer with each • An overview of the 5 main funding sources for startups, the pros and cons of each, and who the big players are • A crash-course in visual and presentation design that will make any deck beautiful • Templates for 4 stories every entrepreneur should know how to tell • The story of one entrepreneur who showed up in Silicon Valley with no network and six months later had investments from Fred Anderson, Bono, and Peter Thiel Get Backed will show you exactly what it takes to get funded and will give you the tools to make any idea a reality.

What’s YOUR story? In the hypercompetitive world of Silicon Valley, this question has replaced “What’s your pitch?” It’s another way of asking, “Who are you?” The art of the pitch is nothing short of a survival skill. If an entrepreneur can’t convince an investor in 10 minutes that a business idea has potential, that is often the end of it. If a project manager in a large enterprise can’t win support from other stakeholders, his or her project is at risk. You always need to be selling yourself, pitching your partners or your clients to work with you, or pitching what makes your new business an exciting and worthwhile investment. You may not realize it right now, but you do have a one-of-a-kind story to tell, one that makes you stand out from everyone else—a unique tale that makes you, your product, or your business unforgettable. In One Perfect Pitch, Marie Perruchet will help you discover it, hone it, and present it, so that you get buy-in from colleagues and potential investors. Learn: • How to mine the worst experiences of your life for your pitch • How to tell me, show me, and sign me up in one minute • How to make a good impression through any medium • The dos and don’ts of pitching etiquette—and how to correct common mistakes • The unspoken rules in Silicon Valley A former mentor at 500 Startups, where she was a pitching coach to world-changing companies at one of the largest incubators in the U.S., Perruchet shares her proven methodology, insider advice, and hands-on exercises. She provides a step-by-step framework that ensures you are pitch perfect whenever you need to sell an idea, a product, a business—or yourself. Marie Perruchet is the founder of One Perfect Pitch, a San Francisco-based consulting firm. Drawing on her experience as a BBC journalist and news correspondent, she works with business executives to shape their stories and deliver effective pitches. As a former mentor at 500 Startups, the largest accelerator program in the U.S., she helped prepare startup founders and entrepreneurs for Demo Day, when they pitch venture capital funds and angel investors. Her clients include multinationals, tech incubators and accelerators, startup founders and entrepreneurs, and portfolio companies. Perruchet also coaches C-level executives from around the world and has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Marie Claire, and Le Monde.

Learn the overlooked skill that is essential to Wall Street success Pitch the Perfect Investment combines investment analysis with persuasion and sales to teach you the "soft skill" so crucial to success in the financial markets. Written by the leading authorities in investment pitching, this book shows you how to develop and exploit the essential, career-advancing skill of pitching value-creating ideas to win over clients and investors. You'll gain world-class insight into search strategy, data collection and research, securities analysis, and risk assessment and management to help you uncover the perfect opportunity; you'll then strengthen your critical thinking skills and draw on psychology, argumentation, and informal logic to craft the perfect pitch to showcase your perfect idea. The ability to effectively pitch an investment is essential to securing a job on Wall Street, where it immediately becomes a fundamental part of day-to-day business. This book gives you in-depth training along with access to complete online ancillaries and case studies so you can master the little skill that makes a big difference. It doesn't matter how great your investment ideas are if you can't convince anyone to actually invest. Ideas must come to fruition to be truly great, and this book gives you the tools and understanding you need to get it done. Persuade potential investors, clients, executives, and employers Source, analyze, value, and pitch your ideas for stocks and acquisitions Get hired, make money, expand your company, and win business Craft the perfect investment into the perfect pitch Money managers, analysts, bankers, executives, salespeople, students, and individual investors alike stand to gain massively by employing the techniques discussed here. If you're serious about success and ready to start moving up, Pitch the Perfect Investment shows you how to make it happen.

Media guru and Emmy Award-winning correspondent Bill McGowan—coach to some of the biggest names in business and entertainment, including Eli Manning, Kelly Clarkson, Jack Welch, Thomas Keller and Kenneth Cole teaches you how to get your message across and get what you want with pitch perfect communication. He is also a trusted advisor in the C-suites of tech companies like, Facebook, Spotify, AirBnB, Dropbox and Salesforce.com. Saying the right thing the right way can make the difference between sealing the deal or losing the account, getting a promotion, or getting a pink slip. It’s essential to be pitch perfect—to get the right message across to the right person at the right time. In Pitch Perfect, Bill McGowan shows you how to craft the right message and deliver it using the right language—both verbal and nonverbal. Pitch Perfect teaches you how to overcome common communication pitfalls using McGowan’s simple Principles of Persuasion, which are highly effective and easy to learn, implement, and master. With Pitch Perfect you can harness the power of persuasion and have people not only listening closely to your every word but also remembering you long after you’ve left the room.

A musical tale of collegiate a cappella filled of high notes, high drama, and high jinks that inspired the hit films Pitch Perfect and Pitch Perfect 2. Get ready to be pitch slapped. The roots of unaccompanied vocal music stretch all the way back to Gregorian chants of the Middle Ages, and collegiate a cappella is over a century old. But what was once largely an Ivy League phenomenon has, in the past twenty years, exploded. And it’s not what you think. Though the blue blazers and khakis may remain, a cappella groups at colleges across the country have become downright funky. In Pitch Perfect, journalist Mickey Rapkin follows a season in a cappella through all its twists and turns, covering the breathtaking displays of vocal talent, the groupies (yes, there are a cappella groupies), the rock-star partying, and all the bitter rivalries. Rapkin brings you into the world of collegiate a cappella characters—from movie-star looks and celebrity-size egos to a troubled new singer with the megawatt voice. Including encounters with a cappella alums like John Legend and Diane Sawyer and fans from Prince to presidents, Rapkin shows that a cappella isn’t for the faint of heart—or lungs. Sure to strike a chord with fans of Glee and The Sing-Off, this raucous story of a cappella rock stars shows that sometimes, to get that perfect harmony, you have to embrace a little discord.

Want to deliver a pitch or presentation that grabs your audience’s ever-shrinking attention span? Ditch the colorful slides and catchy language. And follow one simple rule: Convey only what needs to be said, clearly and concisely, in three minutes or less. That’s the 3-Minute Rule. Hollywood producer and pitch master Brant Pinvidic has sold more than three hundred TV shows and movies, run a TV network, and helmed one of the largest production companies in the world with smash hits like The Biggest Loser and Bar Rescue. In his nearly twenty years of experience, he’s developed a simple, straightforward system that’shelped hundreds—from Fortune 100 CEOs to PTA presidents—use top-level Hollywood storytelling techniques to simplify their messages and say less to get more. Pinvidic proves that anyone can deliver a great pitch, for any idea, in any situation, so your audience not only remembers your message but can pass it on to their friends and colleagues. You’ll see how his methods work in a wide range of situations—from presenting investment opportunities in a biotech startup to pitching sponsorship deals for major sports stadiums, and more. Now it’s your turn. The 3-Minute Rule will equip you with an easy, foolproof method to boil down any idea to its essential elements and structure it for maximum impact. Simplify. Say less. Get More.