Pitching & Structured Communication
Applied Market & Business Strategy (the “Strategy & Management Game”) - NIT / TUHH, Hamburg · part of my Technology Management MBA · study notes for revision.
Everything up to now was about deciding a strategy - analysing the market, choosing a position, setting a price. This chapter is the hinge. Before you can go and deliver a strategy, you have to get someone to say yes to it: an investor, a board, a boss holding the budget. That “yes” almost never comes from a fat report nobody reads. It comes from a good pitch.
So this is the bridge chapter. It’s less about what CERMEDES should do and more about how you sell the answer - how you compress a term’s worth of analysis into fifteen minutes that actually land.
1 · What a pitch actually is
Section titled “1 · What a pitch actually is”A pitch is a short, compelling presentation of an idea, product or business, told so that any listener grasps the concept quickly. Not a demo, not a full report - a tight case for one idea.
Three things define it:
- It’s short. The whole point is brevity. If it takes an hour, it isn’t a pitch.
- It has a target. You’re trying to win someone over - an investor to fund you, an executive to greenlight your project. There is a specific decision you want.
- The challenge is excitement, not completeness. The hard part isn’t fitting everything in; it’s conveying the overall concept in a way that makes someone lean forward. You are choosing what to leave out.
1.1 The 15-minute rule
Section titled “1.1 The 15-minute rule”In this course every pitch has to happen in 15 minutes or less. That constraint is the lesson, not an inconvenience.
A time box forces prioritisation. When you can’t say everything, you’re pushed to decide what’s genuinely most interesting - and that decision is exactly the thinking a good pitch needs. It also sends a quiet message of respect: the audience’s time is valuable, and a tight pitch treats it that way.
2 · What the audience wants to learn from you
Section titled “2 · What the audience wants to learn from you”Before you build anything, know what questions are running through the listener’s head. They differ depending on who you are pitching as. A start-up founder is asking for investment in a new venture; a consultant is recommending a fix for an existing business. Same skill, different checklist.
| # | Start-up pitch (winning an investor) | Consulting pitch (winning an executive) |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Who are you, and why are you here? | - |
| 2 | What problem are you solving? | What problem are you solving? |
| 3 | What’s your product / how do you solve it? | What’s your solution to the business problem? |
| 4 | What makes it special and superior? | - |
| 5 | What’s your track record - the data? | What analysis results support your case - the data? |
| 6 | How big is the market potential? | What’s the implementation plan for the project? |
| 7 | How will you make a profit? | What’s the business case behind the proposal? |
| 8 | Who’s on the team, and their roles? | - |
| 9 | How much capital do you need? | What resources do you need? |
| 10 | Why is this the best idea, and why now? | What’s the cost of doing nothing? |
The two columns rhyme, but the emphasis shifts. A founder has to prove the team and the upside are real (who you are, why now, market size, profit). A consultant is talking to people who already run the business, so the burden moves to rigour and consequence: what does the analysis show, how will we actually execute it, and - the killer closing question - what does it cost us if we do nothing? That last one flips the risk. Instead of “why is my idea worth the risk,” you make inaction the risky choice.
For the CERMEDES game, we’re firmly in the consulting column: we’re not inventing a start-up, we’re recommending what an existing power-tool maker should do next.
3 · The storyline - a script for the listener
Section titled “3 · The storyline - a script for the listener”Here’s the core mechanic of the whole chapter. A storyline is a script book that guides a listener closely through complex material. It’s the sequential backbone of the presentation - the order of ideas plus the supporting arguments, data and examples that hang off each one.
Its real job is subtle: a good storyline gets the listener to adopt your way of seeing the problem. If they take on your structure and your way of rating what matters, then your argument almost carries itself, because they’re now reasoning along the same rails you laid down.
3.1 The basic arc: Interest → Desire → Action
Section titled “3.1 The basic arc: Interest → Desire → Action”Underneath every storyline is a three-beat emotional arc borrowed from classic persuasion:
The two templates that follow are just two concrete ways to run that arc - one built for consulting, one for storytelling.
3.2 Variant (a): Situation → Complication → Resolution (consulting)
Section titled “3.2 Variant (a): Situation → Complication → Resolution (consulting)”This is the workhorse for a business recommendation. It maps neatly onto Interest → Desire → Action.
| Beat | What it does | The trick to getting it right |
|---|---|---|
| Situation | A general opening statement about the subject the audience already knows and will agree with | Make it self-sufficient (needs no set-up) and non-controversial (they nod immediately). You’re establishing common ground, not arguing yet. |
| Complication | The statement that raises the new question or problem - the “plot” of the pitch | It disturbs the stable situation: something went wrong, something could change, here’s a different view, here’s something you hadn’t considered. This is what creates the need for an answer. |
| Resolution | The call to action - your proposal, your funding ask, whatever you want them to do | It answers the question the Complication raised, and is followed by specific next steps (e.g. a short project letter). |
Worked example - a power-tool company (close cousin of CERMEDES):
| Situation | Complication | Resolution |
|---|---|---|
| Sales are declining - EBIT is falling. 20% less net revenue Q1 year-on-year; a 50% crash in the value segment; the high-end segment stable; loyalty among professional customers fading. | The portfolio has a structural problem. The market is drifting away from the value segment; professionals are switching to low-cost, one-time-use tools; private customers are moving up to luxury high-end kit. | Launch a major restructuring project. Cut costs by phasing out the value segment; “skim the cream” with a luxury line (the “golden handle” bars); lift gross margin by moving the low-cost line to online sales. |
Notice the shape: nobody in the room can argue with “sales are down” (Situation). The tension comes from why (Complication - it’s structural, not a blip). And the ask lands as the obvious release of that tension (Resolution). Three problems named → three matching solutions. That one-to-one fit between problems and answers is exactly what graders and executives look for.
3.3 Variant (b): Pain → Idea → Next steps (storytelling)
Section titled “3.3 Variant (b): Pain → Idea → Next steps (storytelling)”The second template is warmer and more emotional - better when you’re rallying people behind a mission, not just fixing a P&L.
| Beat | What it does | The trick to getting it right |
|---|---|---|
| Pain | A tangible problem statement or short narrative | Keep it self-sufficient and non-controversial, and add genuine personal passion - “it makes me sad that…”, “this made me reconsider…”. Emotion is the hook. |
| Idea | A brief description of the solution to that pain | Develop a value-based “big picture”, and address the room directly with a rhetorical question: “wouldn’t it be great if…” |
| Next steps | A low-barrier invitation to join the journey with one small step | Give crisp highlights of results so far, then a straightforward description of the next step and its outcome. Ask for something small and concrete, not the moon. |
Worked example - the sepsis-alert app:
| Pain | Idea | Next steps |
|---|---|---|
| 11 million people died of sepsis in 2017 - about 20% of all deaths globally, and the number-one cause of in-hospital death in the USA. Yet sepsis is curable if caught early. It’s an emergency on the level of a heart attack or stroke - and it’s the most widely underestimated disease, because clinics and local doctors so often miss a timely diagnosis. | Our goal: cut global sepsis deaths by 50% in five years. Wouldn’t it be great if every clinic worldwide could share expertise on preventing, diagnosing and curing sepsis? We built a sepsis-alert app that raises a warning right inside clinical health-record systems. Now is the moment to go from small-scale to wide field use. | Today we invite you to join the adventure. All we ask for now is a venture investment of EUR 100,000. With it we’ll set up a network with the five major clinics in Hamburg to collect data and improve the app - and we offer you a fair early-bird share, today. |
Same arc, different temperature. The Pain grabs you emotionally, the Idea lifts to a vision (“wouldn’t it be great if…”), and the ask is deliberately small and specific - a pilot in one city, not “fund our world domination.” Low barrier, easy yes.
4 · Why structured communication works
Section titled “4 · Why structured communication works”Both templates lean on the same fact about human brains: we can only hold about seven items in short-term memory at once (Miller’s classic finding). Beyond that, things start falling out.
So the brain copes by hunting for patterns - it bundles individual data bits into logical groups so it can handle the flow of information. As you sit through any presentation, a big chunk of your mental effort is spent detecting the pattern in the words and images coming at you.
There’s a well-known illustration of this. Imagine someone rambling: in Zurich last week I saw loads of men with beards… and in any New York office you find moustaches and sideburns… and of course facial hair’s been part of London for a decade… - you have to work to spot what they’re driving at. Compare that to leading with the point: “facial hair has become an accepted part of business life” - in Zurich, in New York, and in London. Same facts, but the second version states the pattern first and hangs three examples beneath it. That “point first, evidence grouped below” shape is the whole idea of the pyramid.
5 · Minto’s Pyramid Principle
Section titled “5 · Minto’s Pyramid Principle”The Pyramid Principle (from Barbara Minto) is a storyline model that arranges every idea, hypothesis, argument and finding into a hierarchy.
The rules that make it work:
- Top-down. Key ideas go at the top, detail at the bottom.
- Each level summarises the one below. Any idea is a summary of the group of ideas directly beneath it - so a reader can stop early and still get the gist.
- Group only within a level. Ideas that support the same key idea are grouped together; you only ever group ideas of the same level.
- Order within a group. Ideas inside a group follow a logical order (by importance, by time, by structure - but some deliberate order).
Because each layer summarises the next, the pyramid hands the audience the information pattern up front - exactly what their pattern-hungry brain wants.
5.1 Two shapes of argument: pyramid vs queue
Section titled “5.1 Two shapes of argument: pyramid vs queue”Minto contrasts two ways to structure a case, and it’s worth knowing which you’re using.
| Hierarchical pyramid | Sequential queue | |
|---|---|---|
| Logic | Inductive - group specifics into a conclusion | Deductive - one point leads step by step to the next |
| Home turf | Business | Science |
| Shape | Key message on top; several parallel arguments beneath, each with its own data and example | A chain: statement → because → therefore → conclusion |
| Feels like | ”Here’s my point, and here are three reasons it’s true" | "Follow me through this proof and you’ll reach the only possible conclusion” |
For a business pitch you almost always want the pyramid (inductive): say the answer, then support it. The queue (deductive) is for a scientific argument where each link genuinely depends on the previous one - powerful, but risky in a pitch, because if the audience loses one step they lose the whole chain.
5.2 From storyline to slides
Section titled “5.2 From storyline to slides”Here’s the practical payoff. A storyline written as an indented outline expands directly into slides - and the numbered lines become full-sentence slide titles that state the point.
Take the power-tool storyline as an outline:
The company must make structural changes to its portfolio.
- The portfolio no longer matches changing customer demand.
- 1.1 Professional customers are shifting from quality to low-cost…
- 1.1.1 …increasingly buying at DIY chains and online.
- 1.2 Private customers are shifting from the value segment to luxury.
- The business is no longer profitable.
- 2.1 Sales down 20% in Q1.
- 2.2 Value-segment sales down 50%.
Each top-level line is a claim written as a full sentence, and it becomes a slide title. The sub-points become that slide’s content - a chart, a couple of bullets, a segment picture. The reader can skim only the titles and still follow the entire argument, because the titles are the pyramid’s key line. That’s the test of a good deck: read the titles alone and the story holds.
6 · Presentation do’s and don’ts
Section titled “6 · Presentation do’s and don’ts”The storyline and pyramid give you the skeleton. These habits are the finish.
| Do | Don’t |
|---|---|
| Start with the big picture - deliver the key message early, so they know where you’re heading | Don’t bury key information on the last slide, where it may never be seen |
| Use full-sentence titles that state each slide’s point | Don’t overload slides with text - less is more; keep them clean |
| Use visuals (charts, graphs, infographics) to simplify data-heavy points | Don’t be generic - tailor the deck to this audience’s specific needs |
| Focus on the audience’s benefit - always answer “what’s in it for me?” | Don’t skip the evidence - back claims with real data and case studies |
| Keep it consistent - one layout, font and colour scheme reads as professional | Don’t wing it - even a great deck falls flat if the presenter isn’t prepared |
The through-line: a pitch is about the listener, not you. Lead with what they care about, make the data effortless to read, and rehearse until you can speak to any slide without notes.
7 · How the report is graded
Section titled “7 · How the report is graded”The pitch is spoken; the graded deliverable in this course is a written management report (a deck of about 35 slides with headlines and management summaries). It’s marked on four criteria - worth knowing, because they double as a quality checklist for the pitch too.
| Criterion | Weight |
|---|---|
| Form & Presentation | 20% |
| Thread & Structure | 20% |
| Analytics | 40% |
| Recommendations & Conclusions | 20% |
| Criterion | What it rewards |
|---|---|
| Form & Presentation (20%) | Appealing visuals, a concise message, efficient use of space and time. Does the problem you outline match the strategy you propose (three problem boxes → three solutions)? Is there an executive summary? |
| Thread & Structure (20%) | A useful overall structure; interpretation over mere description; analysis steps that follow a logical process; headlines and intermediate conclusions along the way. Ideas should fit together - don’t just dump company facts. |
| Analytics (40%) | The right analytical toolset (strategic analyses, market screening, channel evaluation) used correctly; going beyond the obvious; a genuine deep dive that customises the tools to the case. Back everything with numbers - market trends, financials, quantification. |
| Recommendations & Conclusions (20%) | A clear conclusion, with a roadmap, timeline, priorities and financials. A five-step strategy is fine, but keep it simple and prioritise - don’t drown the recommendation in steps. |
The pattern to read off this: Analytics is 40%, so rigour is where most marks live - but the other 60% is all about whether that rigour is communicated clearly and concluded decisively. Which is the whole point of this chapter: brilliant analysis that nobody can follow scores like mediocre analysis.
Revision summary
Section titled “Revision summary”Next: Project Management - Foundations & Initiation → - turning a chosen strategy into a project you can actually run.