Making Your Networking Pitch Creative and Memorable

1. Role playing – I asked a couple of other members to carry out a short role play that I had created. This was to demonstrate how easy it is to go from a having a happy employee, to one that is injured at work and now prosecuting!! This was used to demonstrate the importance of Health and Safety Awareness Training in the workplace.
2. Props – I used a CPR mannequin as a ventriloquist dummy to read my pitch about our First Aid training sessions!!! Another prop I used were stepladders when I discussed The Work at Heights Regulations 2005 and what would be classed as a height.
3.  Full group involvement – Before the start of the meeting, I placed a small piece of paper with a single word on it in front of all the people at the meeting. At the start of our pitch I asked everyone to stand up and, as like a Mexican wave, take it in turn to read their word, moving around the room in a clockwise manner. The room read my pitch for me. making it memorable.
4. Case studies and statistics – I have used case studies and statistics a number of times, to again show the importance of staff training in order to avoid incidents in the workplace. My case studies have included real life stories of fires in the workplace (promoting our Fire Safety Awareness Training), care home case studies (promoting our Safeguarding and Dementia Awareness Training), food poisoning statistics (promoting our Food Safety Training), Case studies of tragic deaths caused by consuming food containing allergenic ingredients (promoting our Food Allergy Awareness Training) and many more…..
5. Questions to the room – One of my questions, which was also visual and involved props, was for the room to guess which of the food sauces on display contained fish as an ingredient. There were a lot of very surprised members once I told them the answer!!! This again also demonstrated the importance of Food Allergen Awareness training, not only in food establishments such as restaurants and pubs, but also in schools, nurseries etc… Quite often these allergens are what we call ‘hidden allergens’ and is therefore not always obvious or expected.
6. Poems and songs – I have created poems and songs to use as pitches for a number of training courses that we deliver.
7. Themes – I have also linked these poems and songs to times of the year. A couple of examples include a Valentine poem about a number of our courses and a Christmas song to promote our Food Safety Training (see below).

Cook it well and refrigerate it faster,
otherwise you will cause an involuntary splatter.

Christmas time, turkey and wine,
diarrhoea, stomach cramps and vomiting slime,
Don’t wait till it’s too late, I’m sure you’ll agree,

you should have looked after the turkey and brie.

A time for giving, a time for getting,
A time for forgiving and not for projecting
Christmas is love, Christmas is peace,
only reheat turkey once or you’ll get the sheeeeets!