97% of Pitches Fail – Here’s How to Make Yours Stand Out

by | Nov 8, 2024 | Blog, Business Guidance

Have you ever poured your heart into a pitch, only to be met with blank stares and awkward silence?

It’s not just you. Research shows that 97% of pitches *fail* because traditional elevator pitches only appeal to a slim 3% of people who are ready to buy right now.

Most of your prospects fall into categories that aren’t even thinking about you—unless you know how to strategically move them up the buyer’s pyramid.

So how do you make your pitch unforgettable?

In the latest episode of The CEO Mastery Show, I walk you through an experience from the Business of Biohacking Summit with Dave Asprey.

We trained attendees to transform their “me-focused” elevator pitches into powerful Stadium Pitches that engage and educate an entire room of potential investors or clients.

You’ll also hear from Meagan Hardie, whose relentless practice and sheer determination earned her a spot in the finals.

Plus, get exclusive, live feedback from the best in the business: Dave Asprey and Joe Polish. Their insights are pure gold for anyone serious about making their pitch stand out.

Tune in to the episode now!

P.S. Want to bring the Stadium Pitch Contest to your team or community? Visit chet holmes.com/speaking to see how we can collaborate and turn your team into Stadium Pitch pros.

 

Continued Learning: Live Pitch Contest Highlights from the BOB Summit

TAKING ACTION:

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  • If you’d like to have a profound breakthrough in your business, schedule your breakthrough call with a LIVE expert here: Chetholmes.com/Breakthrough
  • Claim your FREE chapter 4 from the top 10 most recommended marketing and sales books of all time! Visit: Ultimatesalesmachine.com to find out how you Create 9X More Impact from every move you’re already making to win clients!

TRANSCRIPT:

*this transcript was mostly generated by AI, please excuse any mistakes smile

[00:00:00] Amanda Holmes: Welcome to the CEO Mastery show. Another week. Last week, you heard the first version of. Business of biohacking summit with Dave Asprey. What we did is in front of a room, we trained on day one on how to craft a pitch. Now, 97 percent of the time a elevator pitch will fail you. Why is that? Because if you were in an elevator with that person only according to the buyer’s pyramid, only 3 percent are in the buying now category.

So if you just pitch yourself. 97 percent of the time it will fail. Another 7 percent there may be open to it. The next 30 percent are not thinking about you. The following 30 percent think that they’re not interested. And the last 30 percent are definitely not interested. So if you actually want that person to say yes, you need a stadium pitch, not.

An elevator pitch, because an elevator pitch educates the entire buyer’s pyramid from somebody that’s completely cold and brings them up into the buy in now. This is why we fail at so much of our marketing and sales because we’re wasting our time just talking about me. Me, me, me, my product is great, we’re different from the rest, my service is wonderful, we’re better than our competitors.

And yet we don’t take the time to be strategic about education. So the first day we trained everyone in the room on how to craft their stadium pitch. They had all night to work on their stadium pitches. First thing the next morning, they then competed per table giving their stadium pitches. Each person would give 60 seconds of a stadium pitch.

Then each table would have to give feedback. So everyone got to play a role. And then they would vote at the table who would be number one. That’s how we created our top 10. And then from the top 10, they had to then pitch me. And then I had to decide from the 10 down to the top five. It was one of the hardest decisions because they were all fantastic.

I only wish I could have shown you what the pitches were like before they got all of this practice because the exponential growth was. Unreal. At the beginning, I asked the room on a scale from one to 10, how confident do you feel you could take a cold prospect and turn them into taking action within less than 60 seconds?

We were averaging at about, I think a four. And by the end we were averaging at an eight. So the confidence doubled for those in the room working on their pitches, which was wonderful. So you’re seeing yet another one of the finalists and this finalist. Worked at this more than any other contestant in the room.

I mean, she was just relentless about her pigheaded discipline and determination. And that’s what got her on stage. Here you go.

[00:03:00] Meagan Hardie: My stadium is full of investors. All right. I grew up athletic. I have my black belt in Jiu Jitsu. I also have fat on the inside of my knees and cellulite up to my ass. My mission is to wear shorts comfortably.

77 percent of women and many men are dissatisfied with their bodies. Globally spending 61 billion with body sculpting, leading the growth yet. Our competitors are focusing on faces with one to three body options, introducing body positive, the first luxury med spot of its kind. I’m raising 1. 1 million for equity for our launch in Vancouver.

Cool. Sculpting is an eighth of our model effective, but not the complete solution. We’re marrying cool sculpting with biohacking tech for unparalleled body transformation. I’m a registered artist with a decade of experience, 11, 000 cycles, propelling my, my employer to top cool sculpting sales in Canada, driving 400 percent growth and 1.

45 million ARR 2018 to 2022. Together, we can empower individuals. Forge corporate wellness partnerships and strengthen community impact. We pledge allegiance to our bodies with clothes on or off. Don’t you think it’s time to get your body positive on? Thank you.

[00:04:19] Joe Polish: Woo!

Yeah. No, I mean, if you keep saying it, there’s, I, I, I remember dirty jokes and quotes and there’s this caption I saw years ago. I always loved it. I, I think about it all the time. It was it was like at a little rest stop that I was driving on, you know, like how it was, but it was like when you go to town and it, it’s, it was a sugar packet.

And it said, advertised in the caption, he who has something to sell that whispers in a well is not as apt to make the shiny dollar as the guy that climbs a tree and hollers. And I was like, and I, I just remembered it was like, wow, that’s so if you keep saying what you were saying, it’s powerful. It’s really good.

The opening was fantastic. The 61 billion, the body positive, the cool sculpting is only one. percentage of it, so you didn’t throw it out, but you wanted to, you know, grab that for credibility coupled with biohacking tech. It’d be nice to, if you could say what the hemp does that actually mean, because that may You know, what is that?

Right. But yeah, I, I just 11, 000 cycles. I think you could say more about making you sound more credible because the way you said the employer, you know, you’ve been a nurse, you sound credible, but I think you can, you can make yourself sound more powerful and why you’re qualified because you’re explaining the opportunity.

You’re wanting to raise money. Part of it is really savvy investors. It’s never about the thing. It’s about the person. I mean, you take a driven, talented, skilled person that will do anything to make something successful. I have literally wasted, truly wasted at least 6 million in startups on 25, 000 and 50, 000 on ideas that I loved, but it’s always the person, you’re betting on the, you know, the jockey, not necessarily the horse, although it can’t be a dilapidated bad horse.

It needs to, they both need to be there. But I think you can make yourself more powerful there. But other than that, I thought it was true. Fantastic.

[00:06:09] Amanda Holmes: Thank you. So Megan came to me for feedback more than any other person in this room times 10 She was determined. It didn’t matter what would happen. She would get to that spot and because of that I respect her The feedback i’m not going to give you on your stadium pitch I’m going to give you feedback on how you show up you showed up like a queen But the way in which you show up is insecure that you don’t know if what you’re saying is okay and you don’t know if what you’re doing is okay and please do you mind give me a moment and I appreciate that you asked me for a moment every every time and that’s why you’re up here but I would like to see you stay with that communism that jiu jitsu badass and do that with everything you do because you have earned that You have shown time and time again a black belt a million dollars a year.

92% of people do not make it to a million dollars, and of that 5% are female. So that’s 8% of the entire population and a very, so you are a percentage of a percentage now just fucking own. Thank you so much.

[00:07:21] Dave Asprey: I would love to see go to 40 years Zen for that specific thing. Like, like there’s almost a sense of anxiety. Partly because you’re on stage, but also when you’re pitching investors, they have to see how much you believe in it, right? And if, and what I saw there was an amazing pitch, a really good idea, but there wasn’t contiguity between the way you were holding your energy, holding yourself and your pitch, which made me, does she really believe this?

Right? And when you’re dealing with investors who are experienced, like Joe said, like they’re going to be betting on the person. And that’s something you can work on. There’s lots of different ways, lots of different paths, and it doesn’t take a lot of time. Just, once you’re aware of it, it’s something you can easily handle.

Love the vulnerability in the opening. Being a little bit self effacing is, is great. There’s people like Joe who are just so self effacing, but it’s true.

[00:08:14] Joe Polish: At

[00:08:20] Dave Asprey: the very beginning, you said, I say this four times. Before I knew why you were telling me that. Is there a way you can make one I statement? Cause these are legit.

I feel like I did, like I worry about my ass. Okay. That that’s real. Right. But I worry about this. I, I, I, you can say the same things and say I less and it’ll land better. And people don’t know why it has better. It just does. So, but the vulnerability there, like, so like, so I deal with this stuff. Right.

And that’s your, that’s why you do this. And like, it was a problem I had to solve. I love that. You mentioned your competition in the pitch to investors, like, why would you want me to think about your competitors? Is it just like, fuck those guys? You many competitors, you’re special and if they want ask, they can ask.

Okay. Right. And if you’re going through a full pitch deck, there’s always a slide on competitors. There’s always like, we’re open to the right and they’re all in the bottle up. That’s later. Not in your, your edge that I know Voling is, but most people don’t. So if you talk about CoolSculpting and no one knows what the eff it is, you made a field dom.

Right? And so what you want to do there is, CoolSculpting is this incredible way to actually make fat cells permanently die. You don’t have to say with cold and all the other stuff, it’s innovative technology. You don’t have to say it’s 1 percent of whatever, right? You can say we have an innovative tech, right?

All that other stuff, who cares? That’s later. Like, shine more. Does that make sense? And at the end, I heard some kind of word salad about empower community impact. Man, I didn’t even know what the fuck that was there for. What are we trying to get me to believe?

[00:10:03] Meagan Hardie: That we can strengthen community impact by partnering with corporate corporations to help create wellness packages, improving their customer attention through their employee retention.

[00:10:15] Dave Asprey: Okay. We’ll look at your audience. Your audience is investors. Okay. Are you going to make me money? Okay. We’re going to make you a lot of money and we’re going to help it. Cool. But I are empower community. If I like, there was a lot of stuff in there that isn’t my goal as an investor. If I’m looking at this as like, I got to write a check, like, what am I going to do here?

They care about those 10 percent as much as they care about making money. And you closed on those instead of closing on, this is a great business opportunity with more conviction. Okay. Make sense. Okay. Great job.

[00:10:54] Amanda Holmes: If you liked this episode and you’d like to have the stadium pitch contest come to your community or your company, go ahead and visit chet holmes.

com forward slash speaking and maybe I could come to you again. That’s chet holmes. com forward slash speaking.

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