Latest / Success Story with Scott Clary / Lessons - How to Stop Losing Deals With Bad Pitches | Rajiv Nathan - Startup Hypeman (Helped 100+ Companies Perfect Their Pitch)

Transcript

Lessons - How to Stop Losing Deals With Bad Pitches | Rajiv Nathan - Startup Hypeman (Helped 100+ Companies Perfect Their Pitch) · Success Story with Scott Clary

• 0:00
  In this lessons episode, discover why effective communication starts with thinking,
• 0:04
  like an entertainer, not an executive. Explore how emotion-driven messaging builds stronger
• 0:09
  audience connection, understand how the K-PASA framework turns bland pitches into story-driven
• 0:13
  experiences, and uncover why leading with problems before solutions builds credibility and engagement.
• 0:26
  You gave me some good points to run with that I wanted to bring up.
• 0:29
  So one of your points was don't think like an entrepreneur or executive think like an entertainer.
• 0:35
  Explain what that means for people that don't understand the value of storytelling or even
• 0:40
  just just break that down. Yeah, of course, and that's really like the startup hype man like
• 0:44
  guiding mantra is think like an entertainer. The idea behind that is the entertainer
• 0:52
  is solely concerned with their audience, right? They they have one goal in mind,
• 0:57
  elicit an emotional reaction from the crowd, get them to feel something, get them to leave the
• 1:02
  arena buzzing about something, and it's that that's actually why when you know, so Scott, who's
• 1:10
  like your favorite music artist? Favorite music artist. Oh, that's a good one. Which genre? Oh,
• 1:18
  I'll go with I'll go with somebody who who can't be controversial anymore. I like a Vichy.
• 1:25
  Vichy is a great artist. Sure. Rest in peace, right? Rest in peace, exactly. Yeah, I'm not going to name
• 1:30
  any people that are still around because I might I might I might start some feelings, whatever,
• 1:34
  but a Vichy, everybody loved a Vichy. Okay, so levels of Vichy, right? So when a Vichy hits the stage
• 1:45
  or when he he did hit the stage, here's what would happen, right? He come out and be like,
• 1:52
  how's everyone doing tonight? Everyone's like, yeah, we're doing great. It's like, all right,
• 1:57
  let's do this. Okay. What did not happen with a Vichy or any artist for that matter? They do not
• 2:04
  hit the stage and go, how's everyone doing tonight? Yeah, we're great. Okay, great. So check it out.
• 2:09
  Here's what's going to happen. I'm going to play every song in my catalog that I've ever come out with.
• 2:15
  It's like, you know, nine albums deep, but I'm not just going to play those songs you've heard. I'm
• 2:19
  also going to go through the B sides and the draft versions and some things that I've just been
• 2:23
  working on in the garage recently, because I don't really care that you you don't care about all
• 2:28
  those, but I they really mean a lot to me and it's important to me. And it's going to take about
• 2:32
  like 12 hours to get through it all. Who's with me? You know, even like the biggest of Vichy fan is
• 2:38
  going to be like, all right, we got to get home at some point, right? They think about like, what's
• 2:44
  their set list? And they say, we're going to compose this set list based on a take home feeling
• 2:51
  that we want them to have and we want them buzzing with something and that set list is constructed
• 2:56
  very carefully. Now, it doesn't mean you don't get the guitar solo or the rapper doesn't go into
• 3:04
  like that, you know, that off script freestyle, but the the idea is that they're working within a
• 3:12
  construct within a set list, which allows them the ability to go off script momentarily,
• 3:19
  but then come back to something. They they you know, they didn't just like go in blind and be like,
• 3:23
  well, it's a it's a three hour long freestyle. I don't know what I'm doing today. Yeah, right?
• 3:28
  So they have that set list and again, you know, the actor will go off script if the scene demands it,
• 3:34
  but it's because the scene demands it. Not because the actor demands it.
• 3:37
  That's a that's a really great analogy. That's a really, really good analogy. It really,
• 3:43
  it really frames up what's wrong with demos, but when you put it like that, it's almost ridiculous.
• 3:48
  Why would you just like vomit verbally vomit on somebody, everything you know,
• 3:55
  if they don't need it or they don't care about it, right? How how like, first of all,
• 4:00
  there's different, you know, of course, the ideal is to walk away from a demo with a positive
• 4:05
  impression of the person is pitching, but you know, maybe, maybe you're looking at other vendors,
• 4:10
  you have a neutral impression because they, you know, hit all the nails on the head and you just
• 4:13
  want to shop around, but if you're going to start pitching things, then I've seen this before.
• 4:18
  They open up like the feature brochure now virtually feature brochure and it's like,
• 4:24
  like, like, just like go like, ta ta ta ta ta ta ta ta, like through everything. And the person's like,
• 4:28
  man, I need like, like a tenth of what you just showed me, like chill out, like, let's, let's,
• 4:33
  let's, like, we didn't shelve that for later, but if you do that, like, and you're taking up
• 4:38
  somebody's hour, hour and a half, that's a negative, they walk away with a negative impression.
• 4:43
  So not only could you not sell, but you could like jeopardize like your reputation as a sales rep
• 4:47
  as a company and and really, really hurt chances of even, you know, selling in the future to that
• 4:52
  person or that organization. So that's that's very important. So entertain tailor the pitch,
• 4:58
  tailor the stuff that you're giving over and and like hyper personalized so that it's like
• 5:03
  specific for them and that's it. But you know, well, and even within that, I think what's important,
• 5:08
  they're the operator of word you use there is tailor it, right? I think there are, like, there's
• 5:15
  almost the other extreme that people fall into where they're like, well, every person is different.
• 5:21
  So I'm going to have nothing baseline to work off of and and I'm just going to, you know,
• 5:25
  go with the flow. But that's not like tailoring means you had a suit that you adjusted for the
• 5:31
  situation like for the event you're going to or because you gained a couple pounds, you know,
• 5:34
  you brought out the sides a little bit or vice versa. It doesn't mean you don't even have a suit
• 5:39
  or are addressed to begin with. It means you had some base base clothing that you adjusted
• 5:45
  to the situation. And that's, I think the other extremist people fall into is they don't even know
• 5:49
  what the starter clothing is. The starter material is, yeah, and then they're just doing everything
• 5:54
  on the fly. Yeah, very smart. Okay. So let's talk about elevator pitching. What is, what is,
• 6:05
  I pronounce it, the key pasta. Is that it? Keep pasta. You clearly don't know any Spanish.
• 6:15
  I don't know any Spanish. I don't know any Spanish. And that's a, oh, that's a, that's a,
• 6:19
  anyways, that's embarrassing. The key pasta elevator pitch framework. Yeah. So let me,
• 6:26
  let me just give some context to that. So in my process, we always start with what's your elevator
• 6:33
  pitch. And the reason for that is everyone at the company, you know, not even just sales and marketing,
• 6:39
  everyone at the company should know what to say to the answer to the answer the question,
• 6:45
  what does your company do? All right. Most companies, everyone says something different.
• 6:50
  That should be a pretty unified front there. Like that top line message about your company should
• 6:55
  be pretty unified. Yes, you know, one rep may have a slight personality tweak to it versus another,
• 7:02
  but generally the message should be the same. And it's not just that the elevator pitch represents
• 7:08
  what do you answer for what do you do? But it's actually like the foundation for all of your brand
• 7:13
  communication, right? Like that is the movie trailer where and the movie is the deeper interaction
• 7:20
  with your company, with your product, with your brand. So while it may just be, well,
• 7:26
  well, it is the answer to what is your company do. It's also, the elevator pitch is also what you
• 7:31
  deliver when you're on your demo call and you need to give that introduction to your company.
• 7:36
  Hmm. Your elevator pitch is also what you build your pitch deck around, right? Like it is the
• 7:42
  core and the deck is an extension on the value delivered in the elevator pitch. The elevator pitch is
• 7:49
  also what you, what your marketing team leverages for the materials they create. And that's why I'm
• 7:58
  very intentionally that formula I created the k-pasta pitch method. It's like all of these things
• 8:03
  funnel back to k-pasta and I'll get into what that means in a second. And the idea is that
• 8:10
  you become a better storyteller by consistently speak not only like having that hard line message
• 8:17
  in that formula, but then also knowing throughout a sales process throughout a demo call,
• 8:23
  speaking in like subversions of k-pasta specific to the, you know, the nuanced situation.
• 8:29
  So what k-pasta means in Spanish, which I think we've just identified. I need to get
• 8:34
  meaning. Absolutely. Some losses on Babel or something. Yeah. Yeah.
• 8:38
  So k-pasta in Spanish just means it's like a colloquial way of saying like, what's up or what's
• 8:44
  happening? So like, k-pasta, you go, it's what you'd say if someone like comes to hang out with you,
• 8:48
  right? Oh, what's up, man? And this is something that I came up with several years ago when I was
• 8:56
  looking at like, where is there a gap in how people are talking about their companies and how
• 9:01
  they're pitching and presenting what they do. And so what k-pasta represents is an acronym, the
• 9:07
  second half, P-A-S-A. Pasta, which stands for problem, approach, solution, action, problem,
• 9:19
  approach, solution, action. Okay. That mode of communicating is inherently
• 9:28
  buyer focused. It is inherently audience driven because what you're doing when you lead with the
• 9:37
  problem first, you're creating context and frame of reference for why you should be, why you should
• 9:44
  exist, why you're talking about this in the first place. But most importantly, you generate
• 9:49
  and you lead with empathy. Because you're leading with empathy, then it makes sense why you have a
• 9:55
  solution for this thing. What I see most companies do, and honestly, it's oftentimes driven by the
• 10:03
  CEO accidentally. They will talk, they'll jump immediately to solution. We have a, you know,
• 10:12
  we have a SAS AI platform that gives you the ROI on all of your digital spend. They lead with
• 10:24
  solution first. We have a dashboard that does x, y, and z. And that cuts empathy out of the
• 10:33
  equation altogether. But with K-Pasta, again, problem, approach, solution, action, you start with
• 10:42
  empathy. So you make it about them out of the game. Again, customer focus, customer centric.
• 10:48
  That's exactly the framework for everything that you're teaching over. So I love that.
• 10:51
  Yeah. And again, while it's your hard elevator pitch,
• 10:55
  that idea of communicating K-Pasta, right, it's also how you can demo every aspect of your product
• 11:03
  when you do get to that component. When you get to that part of your process, right? So what you'll
• 11:08
  see on a lot of demos, which are just like horrible, is the person will say, we'll just be like,
• 11:17
  okay, here's this feature. Here's what it does. This widget down here does this thing.
• 11:25
  And it creates this like overwhelming amount of information in a snooze file, versus if within
• 11:31
  the product level itself, if you're like, okay, so let's start here. Usually when you're working,
• 11:39
  you encounter this type of a challenge, right? Okay, yeah, that's what we hear often.
• 11:46
  Great. Well, our way of addressing that is this. And here is what this widget does for you to
• 11:52
  address that. What are your thoughts there? Could that work for you, right? So you're just kind
• 11:59
  of like weaving this tapestry by talking and then continuing to communicate in that way.
• 12:15
  See you in the next one.