5 Pitching Lessons from Politics

Being interviewed live on radio or TV is as scary as pitching for big bucks.

And whether you’re a politician selling a manifesto policy or a startup pitching for venture capital cash – the potential impact on your life can be equally seismic – shifting the earth under your feet in either a good or a bad way.

At least when a VC laughs at your unprepared pitch and your unfocused pitch deck, it is usually in a discreet sleek board room in the Bay area. When a politician screws up it is caught on camera, loved by the mainstream media and magnified by social media.

I believe the three scariest political interviewers, anywhere – not just in the UK, and in no particular order, are Andrew Neil, Nick Ferrari and Jeremy Paxman.

Note: Venture Capitalist partners are even tougher – they are experts in their field, seldom invest out of their area of expertise, plus it’s their money and their reputation on the line. An investment pitch is also much longer than a political media interview.

I’ve been interviewed by Andrew Neil on the Daily Politics show and Nick Ferrari on LBC and ‘survived’ unscathed – boring perhaps but no mistake. Mind you, in some interviews, that in itself is a win!

But, I was the “light” interviewee, the person who was adding some colour, some background, some expert witness status rather than being the defendant or the politician being grilled.

Despite having the “easy” gig, going live with these people is still terrifying, your stomach still churns, your heartbeat goes up, you’re terrified about sounding like a blithering idiot, your mind going blank, not knowing what the answers are, or even saying something stupid that could end up being endlessly parodied.

The same is true for regular guests. But for guests representing or pushing a political position, the pressure is much higher – because the job of the interviewer is to be knowledgeable and focused and tough on you on behalf of the listeners. That’s their job. Now let’s talk about yours.

You should be going live because you know what you’re talking about. Which means that when you do go onto things like this, you prepare. If you have staff, you get a briefing, and you make sure you read it!

All of these things, Diane Abbott didn’t do. So, here are five pitching lessons we can all learn from Diane Abbott’s recent calamitous, epic and probably “unique” train crash of an interview with Nick Ferrari on LBC radio.

5 Easy lessons we can all learn from Diane Abbott’s train crash interview

Nick Ferrari has a great style and the friendly warm voice that is perfect for a morning show. With guests, he is friendly, he’s warm, he encourages you into conversation – but he’s also sharp as a knife and lethal. And it can, especially for people who have been interviewed more than once or people who have been on TV or radio before, a lot, like Diane Abbott – be easy to become complacent.

1. 1. Complacency kills you so do the work. You have to know what you’re talking about, you have to prepare, you have to think about what likely questions will be posed to you, and you have to know the answers. You have to do your research, or get your team to do it for you. Don’t just book in the interview – book in prep time.
   2. Review and reread the research before you go live. Do not think you can just wing it! the poor staffer tasked with prepping her for this now infamous interview must have been pulling their hair out and screaming in despair. I can imagine some poor adviser giving her a list of questions and details on the way to LBC studios (after all it was NOT a short-notice reactive scramble – it was a scheduled, “in-the-grid” event FFS!) and her waving them away. How did that work out for you Diane?
   3. Identify and prepare for the questions. Identify and prepare for all the likely questions, anything the interviewer could ask you about the topic. And if your message is you are going to spend taxpayer’s money on something it’s HIGHLY likely questions 1, 2 + 3 will be “How much total?” and “How much per year?” and “Where is the money come from?”. Prepare for those tricky (sic) questions and answer them with facts and positions based on homework.
   4. Focus on your message(s) and make sure it gets heard. you’re trying to get over. identifying them, and seeing how you can introduce those into the narrative or into any of the questions that are put before you.
   5. Prepare for the second question, and the third question, and the fourth. When I’ve been interviewed, even in just a five minute “easy” session, there’s always the first question, the follow-up/expand your answer/different angle question, then someone else on the panel is asked what they think of my what I have said, then they may come back to me for a summing up and that’s it. But, if you’re being grilled because you are the Shadow Home Secretary, or the Shadow Chancellor, or the Home Secretary or the Chancellor, be prepared and drill down, because that’s what the interviewer will be doing. Drilling for answers to the second, third, fourth, fifth question. It is supposed to be your speciality area – it’s not a potluck quiz show!!!!! 

How to handle it when you have screwed up?

And how to stop digging? That deserves a whole post – coming up on this site soon!

Jeremy Paxman said that his question is based on the premise that people are lying to him. Interviewers like Andrew Neil want to find discrepancies, he’s a fact-based, extraordinarily knowledgeable person who famously does his own research and answers his own email. Andrew Neil knows what he’s talking about, so if you go up against him and you don’t know what you’re talking about, and he knows your brief better than you do, well, you’ve got a problem.

The same goes for Nick Ferrari, charming and friendly and wonderful though he is, he’s just as sharp as everyone else and he will smell and probe for inconsistencies and weaknesses with a question and a follow-up and when he finds one he will ask the 3rd question, the 4th and the 5th until you are ruined.

And chances are, he’s going to be as sharp, if not brighter than you. He will do the maths on your numbers as you say them and see if there is a weakness or a flaw to push.

Another thing that he did brilliantly was not reacting to her first mistake. His face didn’t warn her, his tone didn’t trigger any alarms. He just asked questions 2, 3, 4 and 5. She did the rest and she owned the news cycle for the rest of the day – that night the 10:00 BBC news was still running the story including the interview clip – 4 minutes of bad news repeated every hour for a day!!

Need pitch coaching or interview preparation help?

Need some help preparing for your next interview, TV or radio appearance? Or helping you bulletproof your pitch deck and polish your presentation before you pitch to a VC? Give me a call +44 777 550 4299 or drop me an email [email protected] to discuss how to avoid a train crash interview yourself.

—

Picture credit: By Rwendland (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons