The pitch is the absolute essence of modern business.

Ideas are the most valuable commodity in the modern economy and it is human skill which develops them.

However the skills of the pitch are not only relevant to the world of business, rather they apply to just about every significant personal transaction in your life...

So whether at a sales conference in corporate conference room hell or over lunch at a glamorous restaurant, Life's a Pitch tells you how to handle human transactions. A pitch is not a meeting, it's a drama. A pitch is not about transferring information, it's about transferring power. It is business, but it is also theatre.

Part inspirational manual for business, part guidebook to a successful and happy social life, Life's a Pitch is written as the result of an accumulated half century of (mostly successful) pitching by the authors. Ground-breaking and genre-busting, it will transform the way you think about the art of persuasion for ever.

Stephen Bayley (Author) In the 1970s, Terence Conran plucked Stephen from the obscurity of provincial academe to do his good works. One result was The Boilerhouse Project, promoting design in London's V&A, which became the most successful gallery of the eighties. Another result was the influential Design Museum. Stephen has since become one of the world's best-known commentators on design and popular culture. Roger Mavity (Author) Roger had been hired by Terence many times, and fired nearly as often. First at the French Gold Abbott ad agency where Roger won the Habitat advertising account; then at two more agencies including Mavity Gilmore, his own business. In 2006 he became Chief Executive of Conran Holdings, Terence's business empire, where he stayed for seven years. Roger also ran his own ad agency for ten years and was Chief Executive of Granada Group's technology and leisure divisions for another ten years. He quit business to work as a writer and photographer.

The date which leads to a passionate affair is a pitch. The interview which starts your new career is a pitch. Every meeting and every new opportunity involves pitching to someone, somewhere. We're at it all the time.

Now, Life's a Pitch tells you how to do it better. How to be best, first or, at least, different. How to get noticed, how to say the right thing and how to get to 'yes'. How to be smarter, cleverer, sexier.

Witty, irreverent and stuffed to the gunnels with unconventional wisdom, Life's a Pitch will help you win life's battles - in the office, at home and over lunch...

'One of the most honest books I've read in a long, long time. Maybe for ever'Tom Peters

'Crammed with ideas and rich in the kind of quotations that have a way of giving you a jolt up the spine and lodging themselves in your brain' Time Out