Refining Your Pitch with “Types of Wins”

Successful pitches work best when you get decision-makers on your side for many elements, before you even ask them to expand their mental models.

Many communication frameworks can apply here, but our recommended framework is “Types of Wins”. (It’s also how I worked to refine this initiative!)

Using Types of Wins or a similar framework is a solid step in the direction of Product Development practices. In this case, we’re applying them at the Pitch level.

So what are the Types?

Here are descriptions of what each grouping of Wins can mean. They are somewhat of a progression, but feel free to skip around.

For each group, the first bullet describes the Win we’re thinking about, with a very narrow focus.

The second bullet in parentheses is the thought process you want to trigger in your audience, which can be particularly powerful within pitches.

Insight Wins

• Experience and expertise to be gained by all collaborators, or quick-turn explorations than can guide your next steps
• (things that decision-makers should immediately understand and buy into, e.g., “yes, and…”)

Process Wins

• New resources to request and try or pilot; see if they fit and what insights they can provide¹
• (adopting tools & tactics that could accelerate this or many projects)

Capability Wins

• How existing resources & workflows can be brought to bear, and what iteration is needed; skill-building that helps with staff development & engagement
• (building habits that help us deliver sustainable, high-quality work)

Outcome Wins

• Advantages and gains “secured”, lessons learned and things that help provide a measurable result
• (real examples & lessons that can shape the next project, or failures that provide constructive examples)

Impact Wins (an addition for journalistic projects)

• Audience response, internal response, growth in the ambition with which we pick projects
• (the expected response to publishing, separated from the Outcome Wins for project execution)

Where to Start?

Here are some suggested steps:

1. Start with the Win you think will be easiest to address
   • Try for a few bullets or while looking possible re-ordering – it’s common to start with a bullet under one Win, then realize it better fits another
   • No rules about having entries for each Win
   • No rules about having a lot for one and few for another
   • This may also reveal a lot abou your own focus and places you aren’t yet comfortable strategizing – that’s good to see
2. For Wins with one or more bullets, try to focus on what else could be in that group
   • Pretend you have been tasked with just that Win
   • The parenthetical bullet may help you see things from a decision-maker’s perspective – what pushback might you encounter?
   • Can you pre-load your reasons in a clear and concise way?
   • How can you build on a past project’s success/challenges, e.g., “with [Past Project], we tried [X] but later thought we might make changes like [Y]. We should try [Y] with this one.”
3. In your pitch, you might not want to list your “Types of Wins” work directly
   • Particularly if your colleagues have a strong eye-roll reflex to “jargon”
   • It may work best as a way for you to organize what you’d like to say, as if you had uninterrupted time (ha)
4. Insight Wins may be the toughest to make clear, without really seeing things through boss-level eyes.
   • It may be fine to leave that one unexplored, for this specific pitch/project.

All bosses are different, so we want to try to tailor for their habitual questions if you happen to know them. If not, this is a good mechanism to start seeing those patterns. Perhaps their questions are all about Outcomes rather than Capabilities. Or about Process but not Insights – that’s helpful to know, too, if you’re a Product or bridge role person.

An (Absurd) Sample Pitch

TK sample pitch with Wins underpinning its flow.

So Maybe That Didn’t Work

What to do when none of this is successful? (It’s a Process Win, albeit a “constructive failure” one.)

Perhaps your news organization’s current pattern for pitches have their own patterns, and this deviates too much. Even if Types of Wins doesn’t work for your sitation, perhaps another one does. There are many similar frameworks, so we encourage exploration.

TK other options:

• link 1 (pitch book)
• link 2 (ted stuff?)
• link 3 (???)

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Mini-Site Pages:

• Main Checklist
• Refining with “Types of Wins”
• Roadmap

1. many things on our main Checklists may be Process Wins, if adopting some of those MOUs or Joint Agreements or Planning Documents are new to your organization ↩