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

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