The pitch review is a chance to compare the first 2 minute pitch I did with the second longer (5 minute) pitch we did later on. By doing this I have got a good understanding of what my strengths and weaknesses were in terms of confidence, speaking skills, audience engagement, content of pitch and impact. By comparing the two pitches I hope to improve my pitching skills in the future.
The points of each pitch I would like to cover and compare are:
- Timing – Did it last the full length? Cover everything? Go over? Too short? Why? – Not enough time spent rehearsing, better to throw away the script,
- Comprehensiveness – Did I include everything? Was anything left out?
- Impression – Did the product come across as worthwhile? Was I confident? Could the audience relate to the product? Did I give right impression?
- Body language – Did I engage the audience well? Eye contact, positioning. Hand movements.
- Q&A – Was there much feedback? If so, how well did I deal with unexpected questioning about the product and was I able to explain well enough to satisfy the audience.
I will start with the first 2 minute pitch.
2 Minute pitch
I feel my first pitch went well in general, but could have been a lot better.
Timing
My timing was ok. The pitch lasted for roughly 1 minute 25 seconds so I did not make full use of the 2 minutes I had. I did not have any visual aids so I ended up forgetting a lot of what I intended to say due to nerves! I feel I got the basics across fairly well but as you can see from the video there is around 7 minutes of Q&A with the audience.
In the future I think I would do better with some kind of visual aid so I don’t forget anything and can make full use of the 2 minutes.
Comprehensiveness
I feel my pitch was quite concise, provided a background story and solution to a problem and a bit of detail about how it would work. I feel people understood the product at a basic level and that is what I had hoped to achieve.
Impression
I feel I gave a good impression and people were impressed by my business. I was not very confident in speaking but due to the strength of the product and idea luckily I do not think it had any negative effect on my pitch.
I think my strengths in this presentation are more in the quality and content of the idea rather than my skills in explaining it, although I did a decent job of explaining everything. This is something I hope improves in the next pitch.
Body Language
In terms of my engagement and interaction, I do not feel I am a natural speaker when it comes to large groups so I could improve on this by making a bit more eye contact with the group.
My body language I felt was quite static but not unnatural. I had nerves as you would expect and noticed that I fiddle with my hands quite a bit! I don’t think this had a negative effect though and I still used my body well to explain things.
One thing I would like to avoid doing next time though is putting my hands in my pockets afterwards as this doesn’t look very professional.
Questions and Answers
I had around 7 minutes of questions and answers from the audience. While this seems a long time I don’t think this was because the audience did not understand the product but more that they were interested and wanted to know more in depth information about how the system worked.
This could be seen as a sign that I did not cover all my points well enough but I see this as a good sign rather than bad due to the fact people were asking mostly about fine details of the system and giving me suggestions on how to improve it.
Overall strengths:
I feel I kept the audience quite engaged and explained the business fairly well considering the amount of time we had. I was pleased my body language and interaction with the group and felt it was a decent start.
Weaknesses:
Because my business idea is quite complex and I only had 2minutes, it left a lot of questions about how the system worked and people were asking more in depth questions about how the site operates. There was a question about the credits which I believed I touched on but this was obviously not in depth enough, so to improve this I should have spent more time writing short, concise statements about every area of the business, rather than explaining one area in good detail and skimping on others.
This could be improved by spending more time refining my statements.
In conclusion
My idea was quite complex so I had a lot of questions after the pitch so in future I need to make sure that more of the technical aspects of the business are covered.
I think my pitch was a bit on the short side and I did not use the time allocated to its full potential.
My pitch was generally well received and I look forward to improving on these points in the next one.
5 Minute Pitch
Timing
I was disappointed with my timing as my pitch overran by roughly 1 minute 35 seconds.
In comparison to the 2 minute pitch where I ran under the allocated time and had 30 seconds to spare, I made sure to rehearse more the second time around and felt I should take longer to explain things.
However when nerves took over I found myself over explaining certain things and forgetting about others. I feel I tried to include perhaps too much information costs and feel I could have dropped a bit about the income projections and left that to the Q&A if anybody asked.
Comprehensiveness
I feel the content of my presentation was the main strength of my 5 minute pitch and a lot better than the first. I spent a lot of time on my slideshow visuals and was sure to include as much information as I could plausibly fit into a 5 minute talk. There were no questions after my presentation which is a good indication that my business was well understood and I had covered everything.
Impression
I feel that thanks to my in depth presentation, I gave a good impression that I had confidence and knowledge about the product, its competitors and how it will work.
I feel I gave a positive feeling which then gave the audience confidence in the business.
Body Language
Surprisingly, I fail to make as much eye contact and am less engaged with the audience in the 2nd pitch. I feel this is because I had a lot to think about and explain whilst feeling the pressure of keeping within the time limit.
Looking back at the video I also seem to be looking at the slideshow a lot. I tried in vain to prevent this but I ended up using the slideshow as my prompts when instead I really should of known it all off by heart.
This is the one area I am disappointed I did not improve upon during the two pitches.
Questions and Answers
I did not have any questions about the business at the end of my pitch, so I am not sure whether this is a good or a bad thing!
I would say this is good because everyone was satisfied that I had covered all possible areas of the business and they understood everything fully.
Overall strengths:
My presentation was good and the visuals carried me through the pitch. I covered everything well and feel I gave a good impression that my business is to be taken seriously.
Weaknesses:
I felt my 5 minute pitch was a little rushed, as I felt that 5 minutes was not really enough time to comprehensively explain all the aspects of the business, the product, how it works, the audience, the setup, the costs, revenue, methods of distribution etc.
This reflects in my speech as I talk quickly and don’t really the audience time to think over what has just been said.
In conclusion
From the two pitches I have learnt that I should spend more time rehearsing my speech the 2 minute pitch ran under and the 5 minute went a bit over, so this shows I am not great at keeping in time when speaking in front of people.
In trying to cover everything in my presentation I think I ended up trying to cram too much information into to short of a space and it was a little rushed.
If I were to do it again I would not go so in depth and try to spend only a few sentences on each aspect of the business.
I think that by using prompt cards in future it would help me present with more structure I don’t forget anything.
I think another one of my weaknesses in presenting is confidence so I am pleased I spent time on my visual presentation to help me improve the overall presentation to make up for those shortcomings from the first pitch.
My main strength was content and quality of the business and I am happy that this seems to of come across well in both pitches.
Today we had a workshop in Roland Levinsky with a group of Architecture students, looking at ‘Inhabiting the Inbetween’ which is looking at the material and more importantly the ‘immaterial’ of an area or space. We were given a brief and it should be an interesting project crossing the thinking patterns of Dat and Architecture students.
