By Liz Radzick of Manifest Consulting

Ahhh…cottage life: lake, sand, lemonade, and… pitch writing? Well yes -my friend Collette had joined me on vacation when the chance to pitch her services by email to a prospective client arose. This required a trip into town to access Wi-Fi for her and Kawartha Dairy ice cream for me. Yum! So I was motivated to help her.

Where do I start with a pitch? In her book “Words That Change Minds” by Shelle Rose Charvet , Shelle asks

“What will trigger a person into action? Do they move toward an objective or away from problems to be solved or prevented?”

This distinction can make a huge difference in how your message is received. People with a Toward pattern in a given context (and these patterns are very context-specific: you can be one, the other or a bit of both depending on the situation) are goal-focused. If you are a Toward pattern you will be stimulated by words like:

            have, get, achieve, attain, include, maximize

If you are an Away From pattern you are probably good at troubleshooting and words like

            avoid, prevent, eliminate, solve, get rid of, minimize

will resonate with you.

The prospective client had mentioned she wanted to

1. Attract more clients

2. Add on to their existing offerings

3. Increase cash flow through product sales

My verdict: this was a Toward pattern we were dealing with. The problem is that sometimes you can’t be certain whether someone is a Toward or Away From pattern. According to Shelle,

            40% of people are mainly Away From

            20% are equally Toward & Away from

            40% are mainly Toward

So it’s best to hedge your bets and use both kinds of language.

And what was my motivation in wanting to assist in this pitch-writing scenario? One was that I wanted to avoid spending the whole day watching my friend stress about writing the pitch while on vacation (Away From). I also mentioned earlier that it was necessary to go into town in order to email it and that meant a trip to the ice cream store which I definitely wanted (Towards). So the next time you’re asking your Significant Other to do something for you or you are trying to persuade your boss on a course of action try these patterns out. Depending on your motivation pattern you’ll get more success or reduce the chance of failure!