Using flare effect is great but if you wait until slecting the hover attitude to pull in the collective you are asking for trouble. The act of pushing the nose forward rotates the aircraft about its CofG and starts it accelerating downwards - now you need even more power to arrest the rate of descent as well as compensating for the loss of translational lift. Lots of pilots have overtorqued/heavy landed and worse trying this method which looks flashy but doesn't work.
If you are pushed for power coming to a free air hover eg to deliver a load on a long line then make a level transition to the hover as it uses less power than going forward and down to the hover.
As for taking a run at the load to get it airborne, I'm with SASless -you cannot be serious because if you can't lift it normally it's too heavy.