When you’re pitching to investors or meeting with new clients, it is important to impress. But when the stakes are so high, you may find that you struggle to stay on top of your nerves.
Taking the time to learn strategies commonly used during cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) can help you to overcome any apprehension you feel. Typically used to support people with anxiety, these techniques can help you to recognise how your negative thoughts cause you to feel nervous and behave as such. You can also learn how to overpower these destructive thoughts so that you can leave your nerves behind, and go into business pitches with more confidence.
Analyse and adapt your negative thoughts
Reframing is a common technique that is taught in CBT. It shows you how to pause and move past negative thoughts that would typically cause you to feel worried and act anxiously.
This technique needs to be practised in order to be mastered, so take the time to run through it every evening. By doing so, you can learn how to instantly reframe any negative thoughts you have the moment that they appear. To help as you practise, try doing the following every evening:
- Start by writing down any times that you become anxious during the day – was it when you were planning your PowerPoint presentation for the pitch, or when you had a fleeting thought about the upcoming meeting?
- Jot down what your initial thoughts were before you became anxious – did you think that your PowerPoint was terrible and that the people you were meeting with wouldn’t be impressed?
- Think about the future and how these destructive thought patterns could influence you going forward – if you continue to think like this, will it impact your future business pitches and potentially your career?
- Think realistically about how you could alter the initial thought you had – have you impressed with your pitches before, so know you are perfectly capable of performing well?
- Revisit the initial thought and swap it for something more motivating and realistic – try thinking: “I know it’ll be a high-pressure scenario, but I am well experienced in pitching, know the audience well, and know exactly what message I want to get across”.
Once you have learnt how to reframe your negative thoughts, practise altering them the moment destructive ones appear. Then, if they pop up in the hours before your pitch, or even during the meeting, you are fully prepared to switch them for ones that are more positive and motivating.
Imagine pitch success rather than failure
Do you find that you imagine everything that could possibly go wrong in the run up to a pitch? When you envisage an upcoming meeting, do you see yourself tripping up, stumbling over your words or receiving an icy silence from those within the room? If so, these negative visualisations will be doing nothing to lessen your nerves and help your performance.
Your brain constantly uses visualisation to simulate future experiences. Rather than letting yourself spend hours imagining your pitch going terribly, plan out time in your week so that you can focus on picturing the meeting going well. By doing so, you can teach your brain to start visualising positively as opposed to negatively.
To help you get to grips with positive visualisation, find a quiet spot where you can close your eyes for 10 or 15 minutes. Once you feel comfortable, picture what you will see, hear, feel and even smell in your pitch. What will the room be like, what will you be wearing and who will you be meeting with?
When you are fully immersed in the scene, run through aspects of the pitch that you usually imagine going badly. If it’s a specific PowerPoint slide, visualise going through it confidently and answering any questions coherently. If you tend to imagine the entire pitch negatively, run through it from start to finish, visualising yourself being professional, poised and enthusiastic throughout.
This positive visualisation can help you to mentally rehearse your pitch, which in turn can help you to increase your confidence and motivation as you can start to recognise that the meeting can actually go well.
Silence your inner critic
Your inner bully may constantly put you down and assassinate your character in the run up to high pressure scenarios such as business pitches. If you believe this inner voice, it can dramatically affect your self-assurance and your performance in meetings.
Identifying and overthrowing your inner critic can prevent it from having such an influence on you. Think about the typical criticisms that it gives you during the pitching process. Does it tell you that you’re going to do terribly or that people will think you’re inexperienced at your job?
If so, write these down and put together some positive statements that you can repeat in the moments the inner critic would usually appear. Have statements like: “I’m going to pull out all the stops” and “I believe in myself and I trust my abilities” ready for the hours before your pitch. If you find that your inner critic gets louder during meetings, silence it with instructional mantras, like: “keep going, you’re doing well” and “keep them engaged”.
After your pitch, don’t let the inner bully take over. Tell yourself: “that went well” and “I’m proud of what I achieved.” If you did make one or two mistakes, tell yourself: “I always learn from the errors I make” so that you are motivated to achieve even more in the future.
When your anxiety becomes too much…
If you have found that your feelings of anxiety have become more persistent and are getting worse, it is recommended that you go and visit your doctor. Talk to them about your symptoms and the impact that they have been having on your life. They will be able to determine whether you have the signs of anxiety, and provide you with access to support if it is needed.
