The Pitch:
Now more than ever relationships matter. The right person delivering the right message in the right way is infinitely more effective than thousands of letters from faceless, often fabricated, individuals who have no relationship whatsoever with the official. The RAP Index identifies, quantifies and qualifies key personal relationships within your own company, association or organization so that you can influence key influencers. A software service developed by advocacy experts for advocacy professionals, the RAP Index decisively measures the Relationships, Advocability and Political capital of stakeholders.
First, a customized, targeted online survey is sent to all of your stakeholders asking questions of each individual, such as: who they know, what organizations they donate to, how they get their news, and more. Secondly, each respondent is given a proprietary RAP Index score based on 1) the depth, breadth and scope of relationships they have with elected officials, 2) their willingness to take advocacy action, and 3) their sphere of influence in the community. Finally, an organization can search the results by elected official, constituency, or specific issue this allows you to locate the best advocates for any given situation, and the most effective ways to get them engaged on your behalf.
The Feedback: Matt Dunbar - Managing Director, UCAN
The first line of this pitch is a good one it’s punchy and attention grabbing and it has me intrigued about the “so what” I expect to follow. The second line starts off strong with the “right person/right message/right way theme” but then the message becomes murky. The pitch seems to assume a context that hasn’t yet been provided to the reader so its not immediately clear what “letters” the pitch refers to, or who “the official” might be. The next line helps bring some focus regarding the product that will be introduced, but its still not obvious who the “influencers” are who are being targeted. Its not until halfway into the second paragraph that it becomes clear that the product is designed to help identify relationships with elected officials.
Once the reader finally “gets” the context for the use of the RAP Index, the problem and solution become more clear; the description of the product then makes sense and the pitch does its work of enticing the reader to want to learn more about an intriguing tool.
One suggestion that might help make the pitch clearer and stronger out of the gate would be to start with a story about a previously unknown advocacy relationship that led to a great outcome for an organization. Once the context is set, the pitch can then turn to convincing the reader that the RAP Index can help replicate that story many times for any organization. Of course the story must be short and it should follow the Heath brothers’ outline for “SUCCESS” from Made to Stick: “simple, unexpected, concrete, credible, emotional, stories that sell.”
Feedback: Tim Reed - Owner, Margin Holdings
RAP Index is an actionable intelligence software service customizable and specific to a given organization, association or company. It was developed by advocacy experts for advocacy professionals and uses a breakthrough survey tool with a patent pending scoring process to decisively identify and measure the Relationships, Advocability and Political capital of an organization’s stakeholders, to find key relationships with influential policy makers and gauge their ability and willingness to engage. In short, the RAP Index finds their best messengers it makes the process much more efficient.
Another huge opportunity is the RAP index recently announced that it has secured an investment from Crest Capital Ventures. The multi-year funding allows the RAP Index to aggressively expand its sales and marketing efforts nationwide, add additional software programmers to continually develop new features, and execute its strategy to make RAP Index a must-have software solution for advocacy. In a politically charged time, this company has some great potential.
