How to pitch an idea in sixty seconds
The situation
You've been given sixty seconds in front of a room to pitch an idea — yours, real or invented. Problem, why it matters, what you'd do, what you need. Out loud, no notes. This is the rep that makes every meeting easier. Go.
Why it's hard: A minute feels like nothing, so the fear is being taken for someone who hasn't done the work — which is exactly what makes people front-load the background nobody asked for.
Two things you could say
“Right now every support agent spends the first ten minutes of a call just finding the account. That's a day a week, each, gone before anyone's been helped. I want the lookup on one screen — six weeks, one engineer, and that's the whole ask.”
Opening on the problem the room already feels earns their attention before you've asked for anything, and problem-cost-fix-ask is the shortest complete shape a decision can be taken from.
“I want six weeks and one engineer, and here's what you get for it: the checkout stops leaking about four hundred pounds a day. If that's not worth it, say so now and I'll sit down.”
Putting the ask in the first sentence lets a busy room decide immediately whether to keep listening, and offering to stop signals you value their time more than your slides.
What to avoid
"So let me give you a bit of background on how we got here..." — spending your best fifteen seconds on backstory buries the point; a busy room decides in the first two sentences whether to listen, and "background" signals you haven't got to the thing yet.
The principle
Open on the problem as the room feels it, not as you'd describe it in a document. One number, one story, one ask. If it doesn't fit in sixty seconds, it isn't clear enough yet.
The skill underneath it
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