The Situation
You have three minutes with the leadership team, a funding committee or a potential investor. They are intelligent, busy and sceptical. They have heard many pitches and they are listening for one thing: Should I say yes to this? At C2, you don't need more vocabulary — you need control: of structure, emphasis, pace and tone.
The Pitch Structure
| Stage | Purpose | Approx. time |
|---|---|---|
| Hook | Make them care in one sentence | 10–15 s |
| Problem | A specific, costly problem they recognize | 20–30 s |
| Solution | What you propose — concretely | 30–40 s |
| Proof | Why it will work: data, pilot, precedent | 30–40 s |
| The ask | Exactly what you need, and by when | 10–15 s |
Hooks that work with senior audiences
- A striking number: "Every week, we lose about 40 hours of senior engineering time to one manual report."
- A contrast: "Our competitors onboard a client in three days. We take three weeks."
- A question they already worry about: "What happens to our margins if the new tariffs go through?"
Avoid clichés ("Imagine a world where...") unless the audience expects a startup-style pitch.
Framing in Their Terms
The same proposal lands differently depending on who's listening:
| Audience | Frame |
|---|---|
| CFO | cost, return, payback period, risk |
| CEO | strategy, competitive position, growth |
| COO | efficiency, reliability, scalability |
| HR / People | retention, morale, capability |
"For finance, the headline is a 14-month payback. Strategically, it closes the gap with our two largest competitors."
Rhetorical Devices — Used with Restraint
| Device | Example |
|---|---|
| Rule of three | "It's faster, it's cheaper, and it's already been tested." |
| Contrast | "This isn't about spending more. It's about spending less, sooner." |
| Rhetorical question | "So why haven't we done this already? Because until last year, the technology wasn't ready." |
| Tricolon with numbers | "Three weeks to pilot. Three months to roll out. Three million saved a year." |
| Signposting the ask | "So here's what I'm asking for today." |
Warning: one or two devices per pitch. Senior listeners quickly detect "performance".
Delivery
- Pause after the hook and before the ask. Silence signals confidence.
- Slow down on numbers. Say the key figure once, then repeat it in the summary.
- Stress the contrast words: We don't need more people — we need fewer handoffs.
- Finish on the ask, not on "Any questions?"
Handling Scepticism
| Challenge | Response pattern |
|---|---|
| "We tried something like this in 2021." | "You're right, and it's a fair concern. What's different now is... " |
| "Your numbers look optimistic." | "They're based on the pilot. Even at half that, payback is under two years." |
| "What's the risk?" | "The main risk is X. We'd limit it by Y, and we'd know within six weeks." |
| "Why now?" | "Because the cost of waiting is roughly Z per quarter." |
| A question you can't answer | "I don't want to guess at that. I'll come back to you with the figure by Thursday." |
Concede the true part of a challenge before responding — it increases your credibility.
Model Pitch (about 2 minutes)
"Every week, our client team spends about 40 hours rebuilding the same onboarding documents by hand. That's the equivalent of one full-time senior analyst — doing copy-paste.
The problem isn't just cost. It's speed. Our competitors onboard a new client in three days; we take three weeks. In the last two quarters, we lost at least two deals where the client told us, explicitly, that speed was the deciding factor.
What I'm proposing is a standard onboarding platform — built on tools we already license — that generates those documents automatically.
We tested it with the Calgary team in May and June. Onboarding time fell from 19 days to 6, and client satisfaction on the onboarding survey went up 22 points.
So why haven't we done this before? Because until our licence upgrade last year, the integration wasn't possible. Now it is.
So here's what I'm asking for today: approval for a three-month rollout to the remaining four regions, a budget of $180,000, and one developer from the platform team. On our estimates, it pays for itself within 14 months."
Dialogue: The Questions
CFO: Your pilot was one region with an unusually strong team. Aren't those numbers optimistic? Presenter: That's a fair point — Calgary is one of our best teams. Even if the other regions get half the improvement, payback is still under two years. CEO: What happens if we don't do this? Presenter: Realistically, we keep losing the speed-sensitive deals — we estimate two to three a year — and the gap with competitors widens. COO: And the risk? Presenter: The main risk is adoption: teams reverting to their old templates. We'd manage that by switching off the old templates in each region after a four-week transition.
Common Mistakes
- Long background before the problem — executives lose interest in 30 seconds.
- No explicit ask — the meeting ends with "interesting, let's discuss later".
- Over-selling: revolutionary, game-changing — undermines credibility.
- Defending every point instead of conceding what's fair.
Your Turn: Practise Speaking
- Write a one-sentence hook for an idea from your own work, using a number or a contrast.
- Deliver a 90-second version of the pitch structure. Record it and check: Is the ask explicit?
- Ask someone to challenge you with the five sceptical questions in the table.