4 Questions to Help You Design a High-Impact Spirit Box Pitch
By: Aria Spears
Bringing a Spirit Box to your school can be a hefty undertaking, and it should be done with careful thought and care. You can review this blog post for 5 steps to take on presenting and advocating for Spirit Box in your school if you’re starting from scratch.
For now, let’s take a deep dive into four elements of a great Spirit Box presentation.
Who is your audience?
Imagine you start a new job at a car dealership and someone from your school is assigned to train you in how everything works. You are looking forward to the job, but don’t really know much about cars, except for how to drive one. Your new co-worker jumps right into training, walking you through the shop, pointing out all of the different tools and equipment, and explaining the various processes you’ll be assisting with from the front desk.
The only problem: they assume you know a lot about car mechanics, using all of the jargon, technical terms and acronyms that come with it. By the end of the first 20 minutes, you’re not sure where to begin with your questions.
This is an example of someone being unaware of their audience. Your co-worker didn’t take any time to ask how much you know about cars or your background to tailor their training to help fill in the gaps. Chances are, you may not retain much from the training.
The same idea applies to presenting Spirit Box: know your audience, and don’t make assumptions.
Here is an exercise to help you start defining what differences there might be in communicating about Spirit Box to different groups:
How would you explain Spirit Box to a new classmate who has never been part of a school store?
How would you describe Spirit Box to your parents/guardians? Grandparents?
How would you describe Spirit Box to a college business professor?
When you write down your explanations for each group, chances are, you take their unique factors into account. If all explanations look the same, perhaps you may need to dig a little deeper into understanding the audience as you develop your presentation for the school administration.
As you think through your target audience, here are some questions to lead your discovery:
How much experience do they have with school stores in general?
Have they heard of Spirit Box or is this the first introduction?
If they’ve heard about it before, do they generally view it positively or do they have some reservations I can address?
What aspect of Spirit Box will matter most to them?
What other presentations or requests might they be fielding right now?
Imagine it is a Tuesday, and you have a list of 5 assignments to turn in by the next day. You have managed your time perfectly to be able to complete each of them, but you really don’t have any time left over, except for breaks to sleep and eat dinner. You are working hard on an essay, when your phone lights up and you see a text message from someone at work:
“Hey, can you help me organize the new inventory that came in?”
You freeze. On any other day, you’d probably be quick to help your co-worker, but today, you feel your stress level increase. You really don’t have time. The request wasn’t an issue, but the timing made your answer a “no”.
School Administrators navigate through many requests during a given week, deciding how to allocate budgets and time on many different levels.
At least taking into consideration to some degree the number of requests Administrators may be working through at the time you want to present can help you determine the best day to introduce your ideas. You can’t know everything on their plates, but as far as you can, seek insight about a time to present Spirit Box when they will be able to truly engage with the idea.
What can you do to make the process as simple as possible?
Let’s go back to the co-worker’s text message. Imagine they asked you to come in for an hour to help them sort inventory, you agree, and when you arrive, they inform you that you need to go pick up some of the product and then bring it back to sort with them.
That would be a little frustrating, to say the least. Since it’s off the clock, it would add time and gas money to the equation—time and gas money that you may or may not have at the time.
Your co-worker including the details up front would have been helpful, at a minimum.
As you prepare your presentation, think through what you could prepare ahead of time to clearly outline the steps needed to make a Spirit Box program a reality in your school. What are the most important details they will need to know from the beginning? How can you make this process simple for the others you want to bring to the team?
If you’re not quite sure, the Spirit Box brochure is a great place to start, especially the “Your Investment” page which outlines the first steps and investment required for the program.
What stories can illuminate the benefits of a Spirit Box?
Let’s return to your new job at the car dealership. Consider if, during training, half of your first day was spent with the first trainer mentioned above who primarily listed facts and acronyms. And the second half of the day was spent with another trainer who told you stories of their past mistakes in different areas that helped them learn the processes more effectively. Which do you think you would remember more clearly the next day?
Stories bring life and color to statistics and numbers. Incorporating stories into your presentation can help make the idea of a Spirit Box program more concrete and relatable to those to whom you are presenting.
A common method of sharing stories within a job interview context can also assist you in deciding which stories to tell and a simple way to tell them for your pitch. It is called the STAR method.
S - Situation: What was the situation the school or Spirit Box group faced? Describe the environment or challenges.
T - Task: What was the problem they needed to solve or the task at hand?
A - Action: What action did they take to achieve the task and why?
R - Result: What was the result of the action they took? How did it better the school or their business program?
Utilizing the STAR method will not only help you prepare for future job interviews, but it can help you keep the focus on the most important and compelling elements of a story during your pitch. If you’re not sure where to start, the Spirit Box blog contains a few case studies you can review.
As you share stories, you are showing why Spirit Box can help your school, as opposed to simply telling them about it. Stories can help others catch your vision for how you think your school’s business program can grow.
You have what it takes to create a high-impact pitch! We are rooting for you as you work to build the Spirit Box community in your school. If you need help, check out the resources below!
See: 5 Steps On: Presenting & Advocating for Your Spirit Box
Additional resources: