innovative pitching

Filed in archive Global Economy on April 18, 2004

In case you are preparing a pitch for a well-known customer Fast Company has a new art of pitching for you:

"The Fitch fastball pitch is actually a high, hard one. It's all about speed, intuition, and guts. Instead of asking potential customers for their business, Fitch designers use their pitches to fire off their point of view and challenge potential clients to love it or hate it -- with nothing in between. In fact, Fitch's pitches feature one all-important idea: to have an opinion -- even if it comes out of left field. And Fitch's pitches have one target: to nail "the big 'aha' that will make a client's knees wiggle," says Ron Vandenberg, chief creative officer of Fitch Americas. Such knee wiggling is caused by anxiety over an idea so radical -- something like changing the company's brand name -- that the potential client is profoundly uncomfortable. "You'll either completely disconnect with them or they'll clear their calendar for the rest of the day to talk to you," says Bill Faust, former CEO of Fitch Americas. "But at the very least, you'll have shown that you have some imagination."