Stepping out of the comfort zone…

Karen Wilson is the IT Wonderwoman for ITS Sheffield. She is a prolific tweeter and networker and we are lucky enough that she will be sharing some of her knowledge with us on our blog.

Take a look at her first post …

Last week I spent a day learning the art of the “60 Second elevator pitch”

For those networkers amongst you,  you’ll know exactly what it is. For those who have not yet had the pleasure of networking it is in short “how you’d describe your business if you were in an elevator with someone for 60 seconds”.

Sounds really simple when you put it like that however trust me when I say it is far from simple. The idea is you’ve got between 40 and 60 seconds to pitch your business. Try doing it without waffling, going off on a tangent or without having palpitations, spitting your breakfast everywhere or blushing like a plump English strawberry.

So in steps the lovely Nick Hill AKA Mr Presenter. When you see this guy in action he is truly amazing, calm, specific, professional but still down to earth and so approachable. I needed to know how to be like that so I signed up for a day of training with him.

Now I knew I was going to pushed out of my comfort zone but boy oh boy I didn’t realise I would be pushed out dragged back in and kicked back out again (all done in a very positive and constructive manor may I add). The day involved lots of standing up in front of the group trying out several tested methods of pitching. Each time we used snippets of old pitches, mixed with brilliant new material, positive words and NLP techniques to try and nail our pitch.

We also learnt how to use different voice tones when presenting. It’s amazing how when a pro like Nick shows you how tone can get different messages over how conscious you suddenly become of your “tone of voice”. Using NLP techniques we did some work on retraining the mind and looked at where our fear (if we had one and I think I’m safe in saying we all did) came from. I actually had no idea where mine came from until he asked us to visualise what “presenting” meant to us……wooooshhh the image came flooding back to me from as far back as about 9 years ago!

As the day neared the end my brain was completely frazzled and I wasn’t sure if I was actually able to put any of it into practice, would I actually be able to make sense of everything I’d learnt?

Well the next morning at 7.15am driving to 4Networking Wakefield, I ran through my pitch out loud to myself in the car and BANG.. I’d got it in an instant. Even better my 40 second pitch at the networking event was seamless, professional, specific and controlled..Hoorrahhh!

I’ve now gone on to compose three more variations of my pitch and have a few more bubbling in my head. So if you’re struggling with explaining to people what it is exactly that you do I’d definitely recommend a day with Mr Presenter >>