Effective Pitches And Word-of-Mouth Core Promotional Values

This weblog often looks to Entrepreneurial Mind for basic insights on free enterprise. Not that I agree with everything written, but it is very good resource into the pragmatic philosophy of small business capitalism. It often provides insights into "why" you should do something and connects those whys to larger concerns in life. The fact that Professor Cornwall recognizes that there are larger concerns in life is to be respected.

Lately this weblog has been considering some of the ongoing musings regarding online social media including comparing its advantages and disadvantages to person-to-person communications. The Entrepreneurial Mind back in June wrote on how to Develop an Effective Pitch. This, the most basic component of business communication, minimal time, maximum information, optimal impact, has traditionally been face-to-face. The ability to deliver a good pitch is recognized as essential to being good at business, not any particular aspect of business, but leading the business. This apparently is still be true at Belmont University.

We teach our students about the art of the pitch. Most entrepreneurs will have only moments to grab the attention of an investor or a customer, so they need to learn how to explain what they do and how it creates value in a very short few moments.

However, as with so much in communication today, it is no longer only face-to-face or limited by geography as the Entrepreneurial Mind also informs us.

TechCrunch has an on-line site for elevator pitches. Visitors can vote "up" or "down" on the product ideas and offer their comments.

If a pitch is in your future go to this site and watch some of the pitches. It helps to see which pitches work and why. It really helps you to see what makes a pitch effective.

Even if you don't pitch for money, you will pitch to gain customers, attract employees, talk your spouse into your crazy idea, etc., etc. Learn how to pitch!

One of the goals of this weblog is to combine ideas together and one that seemed to be in the same vein comes from Zane Safrit writing for Small Business Trends Why's Word-of-Mouth So Important? back in May.

The pitch is recognized as a one chance at bat attempt. It seems that it would be rather beneficial if your pitch was good enough that others would be willing to continue to deliver it for you. As with the pitch, word-of-mouth no longer needs to have two mouths in the same room or area code. If the word-of-mouth community-created script is as tight as the sucessful pitch then branding should be all the more assured.

With effective, positive, powerful, self-sustaining, word-of-mouth you have the core mission statement, a fundamental mission statement that gets visceral, emotional, physiological, borderline irrational buy-in from your customers and your employees.

Zane Safrit argues that this directly helps the bottom line by improving CASH-FLOW.

The most important financial result for a small business is its cash-flow. Here's how cash-flows grow with a word-of-mouth marketing as core to your strategy:

1. Reduced advertising expense.
2. Shorter Sales Cycle.
3. Increase in Repeat Purchases.

Word-of-Mouth Arises from a Profound Connection. Word-of-mouth results from a profound connection and engagement both with and between your customers AND your employees. The experience they share, they create together, INSPIRES communication.

So who is most likely to take part in this effort? Those who are already friends, use the tools of web 2.0 and will find common ground in your product or service, in other words your customer base. Even when they don't use the same systems, they still find ways to communicate with each other as the following news article from the New York Times demonstrates.

TECHNOLOGY May 4, 2008 Essay: Friends May Be the Best Guide Through the Noise New companies are trying to solve a problem that the Internet itself created gathering the dense jungle of user-generated content across several platforms into one stream.