Following are best practices on effective delivery while doing a virtual pitch, covered in a Zoom training session, led by Michael Chad Hoeppner of GK Communications and hosted by NYU Tandon School’s Data Future Lab, on how to communicate effectively while pitching remotely.
- State and restate. You are not in the same room as the person you’re pitching to so you do not know what small distractions are occurring in their world, during your conference call. To combat this, make sure you are repeating the few main points you want your audience to take away.
- Communicate as naturally as possible. It may be tempting to read off of or recite a memorized script, but that will not come across as compelling. To deliver your content as dynamically as possible, practice with extreme movement (like doing squats or waving your arms around or walking). Movement forces you to break up the way you talk.
- All communication during the same call, should sound integrated. The voice and tone you deliver your presentation in should be the same that you respond to questions in.
- When presenting as a team, the hand off is most important. Think of yourself in a relay race - the team who has the best hand off wins. Hand offs should be as clear as possible. For example, “Julia, our Head of Product, is going to be presenting the next section on our product roadmap. Julia, please, take it away.” Don’t stop to ask if Julia is ready, have this planned in advance, so that can keep the presentation moving and flowing.
Carly Chase, Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management; Managing Director, New York City Startup Studio, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
This article builds on content developed by the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship for MIT's Orbit Knowledgebase and is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.