Making a first impression? Make it in person

COVID has certainly changed the way we all meet to discuss—and pitch—our thinking.

In the past 12 months, I’ve pitched to toddlers tugging at trousers, cats jumping across screens, people eating last night’s leftovers, the odd teenage son munching on toast and countless turned-off screens.

I’ve been drowned out by whipper-snippers, chainsaws, blowers and renovations. “Sorry, I just have to close my window, the neighbour’s getting a new bathroom.”

So much for controlling your environment.

And, like the frog that doesn’t know it’s being cooked in a pot of increasingly warmer water, we continue to let it happen.

Pitching our ideas online might be convenient, but it has more downsides than upsides. And our increasing familiarity with the process is making us too comfortable in the hot water. 

Two big downsides have been the removal of our ability to effectively “read the room” and our reduced capacity to make a good first impression.

Now, with Zoom and Teams, we have to read the rooms, and often they are the size of postage stamps. And we have unknowingly said farewell to the powerful non-verbal cues that often won us a room.

Non-verbal cues like body language and facial expressions are big parts of the pitcher’s armoury, especially when we are pitching new thinking. 

They tell us who’s getting our idea and who’s not.

A positive head nod and knowing smile or some furrowed brows, crossed arms or fidgeting in seats are all cues that can be missed online as we stare into our pitcher’s camera. And our failure to react appropriately can easily lead to a ‘thanks for coming’.

Similarly, our body language tells our audience a lot about us. Especially, how much we want to be there with them selling our ideas.

How we stand, sit, use our arms, hands and feet are all powerful cues. And they go out the door when we go online.

The solution?

When pitching to an audience you don’t know, or that is unfamiliar with you—which is very common in a pitch—do everything you can to physically get in a room with them, or at least with their decision makers.

Former FBI negotiator Chris Voss, in his excellent Never Split the Difference, tells how he regularly flies across the country to get in a room with someone he could easily talk to on the phone.

He cites the 7-38-55 percent rule as his key reason for doing so. Created by UCLA psychology professor Albert Mehrabian, the 7-38-55 rule identifies the key influences for the likeability of someone in situations where we are forming a first impression.

Mehrabian’s research found that only 7 percent of our impression is based on our words, while 38 percent comes from our tone of voice and 55 percent from our body language and face.

Body language and tone of voice—not words—are our audiences’ most powerful assessment tools. 

When you consider body language is a whopping 55% of the equation, it’s not just what we as pitchers miss by not seeing our audience, it’s what our audiences miss when they can’t see us properly.

More than half our opportunity to make a great first impression is taken away when we are hidden behind a PowerPoint slide or they are shooing the cat away.

To give yourself your best chance of success, go offline, and get in a room with the people who matter. Even if it takes a little more organising.

Remember, you’ve worked too hard to have your great thinking undermined by a neighbour’s brand-new bathroom.

Thanks for reading.

Happy Pitching,