I am thankful for the invitation from Career Press to review Mile Figliuolo’s new book The Elegant Pitch.

One key element of a successful career is the ability to convince others. Often called “The Pitch” how we sell our ideas, skills, products and services determines the level of our success. Learning to effectively pitch our work products and ourselves is one of the most important career skills we can develop. Trouble is most of us learn these skills by trial and error, and the errors can be very costly to our careers. Now there is a book, The Elegant Pitch, that will guide you step-by-step through the process. From beginning to final presentation and approval. The Elegant Pitch by Mike Figliuolo gives you the information you need to develop winning presentations. One of the attributes that made Steve Jobs so famous (and successful) was his ability to pitch his ideas and visions. Wouldn’t it be great to have those skills in your toolbox?

Now you can learn to develop winning presentations with laser accuracy to hit all the targets that are important to your stakeholders. I am personally guilty of spending valuable hours analyzing data and looking for an idea, instead of developing an idea that meets the needs of your stakeholders and then performing the analysis to support it. The difference is a presentation that is on target to your audience. Once you define your audience and what is important to them, the analysis is straightforward. Even if your idea is not the perfect solution your analysis will point you in the right direction much more quickly than a shotgun approach.

The Elegant Pitch is a blueprint to build a successful presentation and contains many helpful hints on what is important and how to get by early on in the process. We all have our nemesis, the one who comes to the meetings with a goal of sabotaging our presentation? Learn how to use the negativity to perfect your presentation before hand and defuse those embarrassing questions and awkward situations when they occur. There is nothing like presenting in front of the top brass and being blindsided by questions you should be able to answer. How great would it feel to have the answer at your fingertips with a slide in the appendix that addresses the question? How do you do that?

This book is really a godsend to those of us who struggle with presentations. By following the blueprint laid out in The Elegant Pitch not only do you end up with a winning presentation, you also learn how to be prepared during the process to defend your idea, and how to get preliminary buy-in from your stakeholders. Makes it nice to see a friendly face at the presentation.

The PracticaL Mentor – www.practicalmentor.com

Title: THE ELEGANT PICH

Author: Mike Figliuolo

Place Published: Pompton Plains, NJ

Publisher: CAREER PRESSPages: 234

ISBN: 978-1- 63265 – 045 – 0

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