Rainmakers and other corporate heavyweights tend not to rehearse their pitch.  They know their role very well:  they are the show, the reason you were invited to pitch.  And any time they are not being the show invites a valuation of that decision.  Is rehearsing really worth their time?  Given everything they have going on – running their companies, tending to current clients, mentoring key employees, writing books, giving speeches – can you blame them for wanting to delegate a pitch rehearsal?  After all it’s not really for them; it’s for everyone else with a supporting role, right?  I mean, how much is it costing the company for the show to be sitting in a conference room rehearsing what they mastered long ago – their pitch – when they could be out keeping clients or running the company?

This is not wrong.  It is just outdated.  Today, a pitch audience is more likely to be under-informed about the star-power before them – such as it is in the gig economy.  With so many of the old rules of business being rewritten, an audience today may include a new mix of people;  maybe an irreverent manager or subject matter expert, or a top executive who defers to younger employees before making the final decision. 

Because it’s hard to talk about pitches inside corporate boardrooms, theater offers some good parallel illustrations  Think of a Broadway show as a public and dramatic pitch:  the producers are selling an idea, a narrative, a production meant to make their audience dream.

 For example, the Shed is a big new performance space in NYC.  Gets a lot of attention, deservedly so; it is an architectural and cultural wonder. A recent show there just got panned by the New Yorker.  That happens, but it was the language in the review that is the cautionary tale for those who pitch on less glamorous stages:

Creative leaders called-out for not spending enough time together to make their own show great – and the result is a joke; they lost the pitch. How’d you like to be the talented men and women who rehearsed for months to put that show together – or the investors? It matters quite a bit to have those few top people with the power and experience to take responsibility for the quality and success of the collective endeavor, to invest the time and attention to make it great.  

Audiences notice when a pitch is not tight, not well organized or not seamless. That is why it is so important today, more than ever, for the top people in a pitch to spend time together with their team, casting, strategizing and rehearsing.