How to tackle last-minute nerves like a pro

Twenty years ago, in a plush Sydney hotel, on the eve of pitching for what would have been our biggest client yet, I spent much of the night in my room on an expensive toilet, sick with nerves.

The next day I bombed the pitch, at one point freezing and forgetting what I was meant to say next.

Where was Alyson Meister’s and Maude Lavanchy’s recent Harvard Business Review article, “The Science of Choking Under Pressure”, when I needed it?

It shares some proven stress-handling approaches of elite athletes and shows how we can apply these for high performance too.

Here’s a Pitch Camp take on three of them:

1.  Visualise – see yourself succeeding

Visualisation is the practice of repeatedly imagining what you want to achieve. It’s a go-to strategy for elite athletes.

By game day they have already seen the putt rolling into the hole, the goal curling into the back of the net, or where they want to be midway through a race in order to power home.

As you get closer to your game day, learn from the pros, and find the time to visualise what a winning pitch might look like for you.

Visualise how you will arrive on the day. What you will be wearing. How you will face your audience for best effect. What your colleagues will be doing.

See yourself confidently introducing your key point to your audience, owning the room with your presence, nailing every question.

Seeing is believing. And for the best pitchers it starts well before the meeting does.

2. Relax with a pre-pitch routine

Ever watched Rafael Nadal serve a tennis ball? Picking and pulling at himself like a gorilla in the mist.

It’s not a nervous tic, it’s a pre-meditated routine. And it has helped make him one of our greatest high-pressure sportsmen of all time.

What routine can you embrace to help calm your nerves and steel your focus?

For many years my pre-performance routine consisted of making last minute changes to my pitch in the passenger seat of a car on the way to a meeting. How well do you think that worked for my stress levels?

Then as I got better, I found more time for a pre-performance routine. I began to favour a tip I learned at a Dale Carnegie course years earlier.

“Smile,” I would say slowly out loud, to myself, or my colleagues, through a big toothy smile. And I would repeat that several times.

It’s amazing how relaxing a smile is – for you and those around you. I can’t recall the last time I didn’t enter a pitch smiling. It’s a great way to start a session.

Finding your pre-pitch routine is another sign you are on the right path to high performance.

3. Develop a stress mindset – you’ve earned it

Meister and Lavanchy in their HBR article tell how tennis legend Billie-Jean King believed “pressure was a privilege”. And how we shouldn’t fight stress; we should embrace it. That we’ve earned it.

For many of us this will require a change in mindset.

One great piece of mindset advice comes from Atomic Habits author, James Clear.

To get in the right headspace, he suggests switching two words: “have” and “get”.

“I have to pitch to a room full of people today” is a very different mindset to “I get to pitchto a room full of people today”. It moves us from task to privilege.

Shifting from “I have to nail this pitch today” to “I get to nail this pitch today” immediately releases pressure and frees us up to do what we know we are capable of.

Not many of us get to have our ideas heard by the people that matter. Let’s enjoy the privilege.

Why should the pros have all the fun, and all the success? Commit to visualising your execution and finding a pre-pitch routine and mindset that work for you. You’ll be borrowing from the playbooks of some of the best in the business.

There are some other great tips in the HBR article. Good luck on game day, and happy pitching!