High Frequency Pitching

Chris Cundy of Cambridge 80,000 Hours�(with edits from Rob Wiblin and Sam Hilton)

More details in the presenter notes down here ↓

How to pitch EA under time pressure

• Good for:
• University groups
• Local groups
• Pitching at conferences or tabling events
• Ideally practice in groups ahead of time

Defining High Frequency Pitching

• Limited ability to talk to everyone:

​

Number of ‘Sales’ = Fraction Sold ⨉ Number Approached

Goal

• Optimise for mailing list signups

​

How to avoid wasting time?

• Make pitch good; then speed it up

​

• Draw people over very quickly to avoid ‘dead time’
• Convert people in <1 minute with a honed pitch
• Can often do in 10-20 seconds if you ask the right questions
• Say ‘thanks and have a nice day’ so you can then move straight on to the next person

Why is this important?

• A good stall can get 100-200 emails an hours = equivalent of donating >$2,000 to Centre for Effective Altruism per hour!
• Recruiting new members
• Get people on newsletters --> change career plans
• Optimisation can make you 5-10x faster
• Optimisation is socially uncomfortable!
• New groups can do very well first time

Preparation

Approaching people

• Most important
• Tiring, can feel embarrassing, putting yourself out there, but worth it!
• Get in people’s way or shout out to them from the table or gesture for them to come over
• The more people you have helping you the more people you can approach - success in numbers!

​

Opening Line

• Tailor to the audience
• Need to be short
• ‘Do you want to make the world a better place?’
• Confidence is key
• If they waver extend your hand and say ‘hi I’m X’.

Key considerations

• Speed
• Don’t spend more than 1 minute on one person. There are lots of fish in the sea.
• Funnel people in by setting things up so people have to walk close to your stall
• A concrete thing that your group can offer them

Choose a pitch (3 options below)

• Rob: I’ve found the 80,000 Hours pitch to work best, because you’re offering a lot of value quickly, without asking for anything from them. But you may prefer to pitch EA or Giving What We Can if those are the focus of your group.

80,000 Hours Pitch

• ‘Hi, do you want to make a difference with your career?’
• Short, but bit generic
• Or: ‘Hi, do you want to make the world a better place with your career?’
• Longer, more concrete
• ‘80,000 Hours is the number of hours you have in your career - scary!’
• ‘Lots of research has been done - evidence available’
• ‘We have a talk coming up soon - sign up and we can let you know about it!’

Very fast 80,000 Hours Pitch

• ‘Hi, do you want to make a difference with your career?’

Yes

• ‘Would you like a research-backed guide to doing a lot of good through your career?’

Yes

• ‘Great, put your email here and we’ll send it to you and let you know about workshops we have coming up.’

EMAIL ADDRESS IN 20 SECONDS! SAY THIS TO A GROUP TO DO EVEN BETTER.

General EA Pitch

• Do you want to make the world a better place?
• ~ Get 'yes' answer
• We are Effective Altruism [Uni Name] and we want to connect students to the most up-to-date research and evidence about how to do good in the world. Make sense so far?
• ~ Get 'yes' answer
• So this could be research on how effective different charities are or what the best careers to go into in order to make as big an impact as possible. Sounds useful?
• ~ Get 'yes' answer
• Great, in which case let’s get you signed up on our email list . . .
• ~ Offer them the laptop
• . . . . you will get details of upcoming events and some of the research we have done so far and you can unsubscribe in like 1 click

GWWC / Poverty pitch

• ‘Do you want to eliminate extreme poverty?’
• Or, ‘Do you want to save lives?’
• ‘Did you know that some charities can be up to one thousand times more effective than others?’
• ‘We put on events from really effective charities and encourage people to donate to the most effective ones. We think this is one of the most effective ways you can make the world a better place’
• ‘Next week we have [Great Event]’
• ‘Sign up to the mailing list and we’ll let you know about it.’

How to collect emails

• An Excel spreadsheet where people put their emails
• Don’t have to type them up, and less problem with typos
• Have columns where people can opt out of other mailing lists (e.g. 80,000 Hours or EA newsletter) but don’t encourage them to do this
• Template spreadsheet you can use: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8_48dde-9C3TVF5ZkxOZjNONG8/view?usp=sharing
• But also bring paper and pen as a backup

More tips

• Be ruthless
• Have a diverse stall
• If you’re feeling uncomfortable, and getting tired, you’re doing it right

Any thoughts?

• Experiences to share

​

Exercise

• What does your group do that you could sell?
• Prestigious speaker event
• Meetups
• Dinners with interesting people
• New ideas
• How would you frame what your group wants to do?
• Start long - then condense

Exercise: Try to work out a pitch for your group

• Short
• Interesting (but not too weird)
• Concrete

Exercise: Sample Structure

• Opener: rhetorical question
• Short description of what you do
• Interesting fact
• Sign up to the mailing list so you don’t miss [thing you do]

Summary

• Confidence (Natural or pretend)
• Have a short pitch
• Optimise and practice the pitch as much as possible and use it every time
• Be prepared from beginning
• Get out there and let loads of people know about EA!

​