Amélie Richard: Naming her successes

A rare woman at the head of a 2D and 3D video and animation design and production studio, Amélie Richard describes herself as a humble and reserved person. The CEO of Eltoro Studio (they notably created the animated credits for the shows Passe-Partout and Les enfants de la télé ) had to learn to tame her discomfort with speaking in front of an audience to become an ace at pitching.

“In one-on-one discussions, I was able to sell my business without any problems,” she explains. “Thanks to my sales experience, I had good powers of persuasion and negotiation, but pitching in front of a group, on a stage when I didn’t know the person I was talking to? Let’s just say I was starting from a long way back.”

His embarrassment went further: “I’ve always felt uncomfortable boasting about my accomplishments or talking about how good my business was. It didn’t come naturally to me. I then realized that my relatives knew nothing about my professional life. How come I pitch to foreign companies, but my mother doesn’t even know what I do for a living!”

The entrepreneur began perfecting her business presentation as a participant in the Parcours Innovation PME Montréal in 2017. “Making a pitch in front of people from the City of Montreal was very destabilizing for me, but I gave it everything I had. All the moments where I surpassed myself that year are the ones that paid off the most in the long term.”

This work of valorization becomes a powerful lever to change the culture of his company which has 22 employees: "The members of my team are proud of what we accomplish, but do not have the reflex to put it forward. We have therefore made sure to change the paradigm by modifying our ways of doing things in terms of sales, communications on social networks, in particular."

Focusing on your own strengths and those of your team in life and at work is certainly a learning experience that everyone could benefit from, says the business leader. “I’ve done my part and it’s changed my perception of the pitch, which is above all an exchange on what we can bring to each other.”

Alexandre Gauthier: Telling his story

"We've reworked our pitch around the story a lot so that it becomes eminently more personal. Talking about our successes, but especially our failures."

Did you say “failures”? In a business pitch? Alexandre Gauthier, CEO of Amilia, a company with 105 employees that offers online management and registration software for sports and community organizations, persists and insists: “People learn a lot from counter-examples. Success stories that are too smooth are not interesting. We identify much more with those who dare to talk about their obstacles, their challenges and what they see for the future.”

Trials and errors, the one who began his career as the owner of a painting company, has made several. "I went door to door to sell my services," he says. At first, it wasn't easy, I would go down the wrong path and then I would change my pitch. I realized that it could be useful to talk about the homes of the clients I visited. A business pitch is a bit like that. Observing your audience, seeing their reactions and being able to understand what works and what doesn't."

Alexandre and his team are used to sales pitches. “For our ten annual conferences, we had 10 different pitches. Following my year at Parcours Innovation PME Montréal (in 2017), we decided to develop a single pitch with maximum impact. We organized this one better and made sure it had value.”

Having a single pitch doesn't mean it's stagnant, quite the contrary. "We're continually improving it. We know it so well that we're able to adjust our aim as soon as we see that a passage isn't working as well, that we're repeating ourselves in a certain place or that a slide isn't having the desired effect. We never aim for the perfect pitch. We practice it, we improve it along the way and we leave a part of creativity in the story."

In addition to the sales and financing pitches he is used to, Alexandre Gauthier adds another essential presentation: the alignment presentation, internally, every Monday. “For me, it is the most important, because it allows the company’s vision to evolve for both old and new employees. We ensure that they remain motivated and are moving in the same direction. This eliminates silos between departments. When we “pitch” a new project to a client, it is because we have already presented it internally for six months…” Follow us! Next week, we will discuss how to use the design thinking process to support your pitch.

Read if you liked: Hide this pitch that I can't hear