Haha, I can answer that here:

You pitch a movie based on the "ingredients" if it is a pre-sale. If it is a finished movie you show a trailer and then send a screener.

So you have a hook line which compares the movie to other successful movies: "The framework of MOVIE ONE, with a character comparable to MOVIE TWO and elements of MOVIE THREE." It's ideally based on a successful book, a famous person or event so people know what it is about and the audience can instantly feel interested.

Then you give the production details, i.e your USPs. For example who produces it is really important because the buyer can judge on their history and experience what kind of movie this will be and how it will perform. Surely, if Quentin Tarantino does a movie, everyone is after it (that is by the way not even sales anymore, these guys "select" who may distribute the movie).

Then you look at the cast and if it can draw an audience. Of course the budget is important, too.

Then you tell the story, because at the markets you only have 20 minute meetings (back to back, it's crazy!) you need to cramp all of this in 4-5 minutes max because usually you have more than one program to sell. Some programs you only pitch with one sentence.

You pitch a program only to relevant buyers. There's nothing worse than going to a commercial broadcaster and pitch them an indie splatter movie. Instant death of your career. So you do a lot of research, especially for the broadcasters because that's where the money is and you learn their schedule so you know it better than they do. Same goes for video, theatrical and svod. You need to know how movies that compare to your own movie performed for them or the competition so you can counter their argumentation.

I'm talking to acquisitions managers at broadcasters, home video distributors, all rights distributors (for theatrical movies), VOD distributors (Netflix etc). Sometimes on a CEO level, most of the time on a senior management level.

We meet about 3-6 times per year in person at industry markets and sales trips to the territory. The rest is based on emails and phone calls. If I was living in one of the hotspots of the industry, I'd probably meet my buyers once a week for lunch or dinner. Since I work for a start up company and recently added a new territory, I'm doing a lot of cold calling at the moment to arrange meetings for the next market. Cold calling is not really advisable in this industry because the buyers get slammed with contact requests and you're easily annoying them and damaging your relationship until you have a program they really want. The best introduction in the territory is to have a great, finished program, that is the only way to open the doors.

Buyers in our industry are usually super nice to you if you have good program. If you don't they don't waste their time for you. All rights buyers can be crooks (I work in a difficult territory) but you've sometimes got to use them for political reasons. For example, I had a deal carved out with a broadcaster once and the contract and everything was negotiated and when it came to signing, they told me that they need to change the company name and that the fee now was 15% less... turns out the new company was based in a tax shelter country and the new company was owned by the wife of the CEO. Next up was that the materials couldn't be delivered via courier to the territory but we had to instead send them to a middleman in a neighboring territory and then someone from the broadcaster picked them up personally and drove by car back to the territory. The reason? Because they used the tax shelter their customs would not allow the materials into the country without proof of a license deal in the territory... which obviously didn't exist because the license deal was officially done in the tax shelter country.

I also frequently get invited to vacation at someone's holiday house in exchange for better terms in the agreement.

However, this industry is completely over-saturated. There are too many products being produced. Good ones and bad ones. Since video is basically dead, theatrical is walking on crutches and is about to die. Only major blockbusters have a chance nowadays (with rare exceptions). Digital hasn't caught up fast enough to close the financial gap. Hence it's become really difficult to place your programs. You basically only have broadcasters left and due to the increase of locally produced non-fiction (Reality shows, cooking shows), there have been less and less movie slots. These get pushed to basic cable channels which pay about 10% of the Free TV channels. I'm lucky because I'm well liked and buyers did help me out but honestly, the company I'm working for is a start up in its third year and only this year we have relevant commercially viable programs. Before it was all this indie crap that gets produced on tax credits and by the director's parents... stuff that nobody wants to watch. That was tough on my self-esteem and on my bonus. In the end I learnt, it matters more that you have good program than having the right contacts. There is no niche for shit in this industry ;)

Anything else?