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An introduction to this course and why any creative individual or team should spend any time trying to improve their ability to sell their ideas. This lesson also covers two requirements to help this material be most valuable for you.
The perspective shared in Sell the Idea is a product of a 20-year career in industries where creativity is an outsized driver of success. This is a short background of why this course was created, where the material originated and where it has been used.
Sell the Idea was created for simplicity and to combat the overcomplicated literature on ‘selling’ that often doesn’t speak directly to ideas. This lesson looks at specifically what this course is and isn’t and provides a summary of the three principles: Inciting Incident, Context and The Surgeon.
This lesson looks at the foundational reason why selling an idea is needed, regardless of the strength or potential of an idea, and the role of the Inciting Incident in overcoming an idea's first great challenge: obscurity.
Using three beloved feature films, this lesson covers the definitions of the Inciting Incident. What is it, and why does this single element of narrative structure play such an important role in selling an idea? We’ll cover all of that in this lesson.
Here we avoid the common impracticality and vague direction of “use storytelling” by being much more disciplined. Focus on the Inciting Incident and it forces four elements out of us, these elements form the foundation for a compelling and memorable selling of an idea.
Irrespective of your planning and diligence when preparing to sell an idea, you will still, at some point, encounter unintended conflict. This has the potential to derail the selling of any idea. This lesson covers what it is and one simple exercise to solve it.
A short word on passion and how it can lead you to being figuratively (or literally) shown the door when selling an idea. This lesson is a quick reminder to escape the trappings of Silicon Valley parody and make sure your audience doesn’t incorrectly classify you as something you aren’t.
Recapping Principle 1: Inciting Incident — what it is, why it matters, what it helps us overcome and how to structure the selling of your idea around it. Finally, we’ll cover one final characteristic of the inciting incident.
What role does context play in selling an idea, and what are the dangers we face when trying to sell an idea when context is misunderstood or miscommunicated? This lesson explains the gap between the worlds and what’s at stake.
People with prolific creative output, perhaps more than anything else, are masters at reading and creating context so their audience sees what they see. This lesson covers the three ways context can be established: before, during and after the sell.
A simple exercise that every individual and team should conduct before they get anywhere near the selling of their idea: ‘reasons not to buy’. This short lesson explains why this exercise is valuable and how to conduct it.
Recapping Principle 2: Context — the role and importance of context setting, how to create it and a reminder we need to do everything we can to volunteer the three distractions of missing context: friction, detachment and poor judgement.
Selling an idea is heavy with caricatures and performances. Should my voice rise above others? Should I be enthusiastic…not too much? How confident should I seem? Should I be funny? Entertaining? Forget all of that. Follow the conceptual exercise of The Surgeon.
The first three traits of The Surgeon that will help you deliver your sell in a way that’s based on trust rather than transaction or subterfuge. Follow these traits to have a masterfully delivered sell that is more like a conversation than a performance.
The second three traits of The Surgeon that will help you deliver your sell in a way that’s based on trust rather than transaction or subterfuge. Follow these traits to have a masterfully delivered sell that is more like a conversation than a performance.
Recapping Principle 3: The Surgeon — a reminder of what we would want to feel like if we sat on the other side of the table. The audience is heard, feels unique and like the challenge is in hand. Most importantly, this is a two-way conversation based on trust.
This example demonstrates one way that the three principles can be brought to life. Here I will take you through a real-world (de-branded) pitch to an automotive client, which was produced in 24 hours and presented the following day.
Joined by four of the top creative graduates from the previous four years: Joanna Nicoll, Lara Mortimer, Rianne Jones and Steve Garnett. In two teams, these creatives were given two briefs and asked to produce a pitch using the three principles.
Team one, Joanna Nicoll and Lara Mortimer, deliver the pitch as if they were from the brand Impossible Foods. Here they are pitching the idea of their company to a room full of restaurant owners, followed by a group discussion.
Team two, Rianne Jones and Steve Garnett, deliver their pitch as if they were from the brand Peloton. Here they are pitching the idea of their company to a room full of investors to help secure international expansion, followed by a group discussion and summary.
First and foremost, thank you for spending the past two hours with me. I wrote this course to help me codify what has and hasn’t worked for me over the past 20 years. I want to feel ‘idea loss’ as little as possible, and I sincerely hope this course will be a useful tool for you.
Refer Sell the Idea to your manager, department head or L&D team. If an in-person training session is booked for your team, you’ll get a full refund. Download the info PDF to pass on and email courses@ianwharton.com to let me know you’ve made a referral.
A library of the best and most-common questions on pitching from over 100 hours of live training sessions for teams and Maven cohorts. These are short, sharp videos that will be added to over time. You can also submit your own question.
