The Elegant Pitch by Mike Figliuolo

Author:Mike Figliuolo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Wheel Weiser
Published: 2016-03-12T16:00:00+00:00

8

Create a Story

Congratulations! You’ve completed the most challenging step of the structured thought process. Building your architecture will take time and effort. If you’ve invested in it properly, your architecture will make the rest of the process easy. Once you’ve built your architecture, the next step is to create your story. Your story will be derived from your architecture. You spent time building a logical architecture designed to meet your audience’s information needs. This is where that time investment pays off.

Your story is a longhand draft of your recommendation. It should be a simple narrative designed to get your audience from wherever they are to a place where they understand and approve your recommendation. When you write your story, I encourage you to write it in your preferred word-processing program, the most common of which are Microsoft Word and Google Docs. Some people prefer writing their story in an email. I prefer Word or Google Docs because it’s easier to edit my story as I refine it in future steps.

Your story will look more like an outline than it will resemble a block of prose like you’re reading in this book. The story will have major points supported by subpoints supported by other subpoints. I’ll share several example stories in this chapter to give you a feel for what a good story looks like.

When you write your story, use complete sentences. Your goal is to leave nothing open to interpretation because many times that’s where misunderstandings begin. A complete sentence reduces uncertainty about what you’re saying. A bullet point can mean different things to different people because it leaves out important context for interpreting the information. In your first draft of your story, focus on creating a narrative that flows. I emphasize the word “draft” as I describe the story. Your story will change as you move through the process. You’ll have conversations, conduct analyses, and learn new information that will lead to changes in your story. Some changes will be small while others might completely alter the story you’re going to tell. What’s important at this stage is getting a draft narrative written down so you have a clear understanding of your pitch’s flow.

Don’t worry about word choice. You shouldn’t be wordsmithing at this stage. If you’re struggling with whether to write “significantly” or “dramatically” in one of your points, write “a lot” and move on. Why? Because you might conduct one analysis in future steps and find out a graph goes down when you expected it to go up. That analysis then nullifies your “significantly” or your “dramatically.” Wordsmithing at this stage often ends up being wasted effort. You’ll have plenty of time to choose the perfect words when you craft your final communication. For now, focus on getting the story’s logical flow correct.

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