Owners of companies of any size and especially SMEs whose life blood is winning new accounts can learn valuable lessons from some of the highest profile pitches in the world. Whether it’s $50,000 or $50 billion, many of the rules of pitching remain the same.
The first lesson is that you should try to find additional ways to help the client achieve their vision – extending and embellishing your bid so that it becomes unique among all the proposals. The secret is to demonstrate that if the client appoints you as a supplier, they will gain additional benefits, in areas where they have the greatest concern. But finding the additional value involves research. Until you understand that client’s motivators, purpose and vision, you can’t tailor your bid, or maximize the power of that extra value.
But when you do invest that time and find, and highlight extra benefits, then it is much harder for the client to compare your bid with those of others.
The second lesson lies in the ability to tap into the emotion motivators of a prospect. Yet, of the thousands of proposals we read every year, most still fail to tap into the emotions of the client. They will answer every question from a rational and technical stand point - often with immense rigour - but they forget that people are also motivated by emotions like trust, fear, ambition, greed, liking, love and security - and they fail to address these.
For example, in times like these, if you can make your offer safer for the client – a guaranteed solution – you will deal with one aspect of a client’s fear – that they will waste money on a solution that does not work. If they trust you to deliver what you promise, you will lower their risk. If they respect you and feel you understand their business, you will help convince them that they will not have to waste time educating you about their business.
You can also find creative ways to put your proposal forward. It doesn’t have to be video, but it can be PowerPoint; it doesn’t have to be expensive, but it can be colourful and bright; it doesn’t have to involve actors, but you can tell relevant stories to make your point.
The biggest lesson – and a challenge for smaller suppliers – is that winners tend to have invested time and resources in attempting to understand the client at the deepest level.
Winners really understand their clients and what they really want and need. Losers talk about themselves and pitch generically. The days when one pitch would win multiple clients are gone. Now each bid needs to be tailored to meet the real needs of each client.
So if you have been thinking of investing in one corporate video to highlight your firm’s strengths, save your money. The odds are too long that one video will meet the needs of dozens of different prospects. You would be better investing in creating a series of presentations and proposals that are flexible and which can be tailored cheaply and quickly to suit each client.
So 10 rules for chasing new business are:
- Try to make a significant investment in understanding your client’s business. It will make your offer so much more powerful.
- If you are able, add value to prospects before the bid is called. That means when they decide they need a supplier, you will be top of mind.
- Talk about the client and the issues first and second, and about yourself last. Never start your proposal by talking about your company’s credentials. Start by talking about the client’s issues and challenges, then say how you will meet them, then give your credentials for doing so.
- Make sure that during the bid process, you and your team demonstrate the sort of behaviours that your client will want you to have if you win their business, including a sense of urgency, professionalism, caring and focus on the client.
- Deal with the client’s business challenges in every form: emotional, rational/technical and political.
- Don’t teach them how to suck eggs! Instead of delivering information about your products and services, give the client’s insights about them. Teach the client something they will find valuable.
- Tick every box in the client’s brief, with a bigger tick than your competitors.
- Find imaginative ways to tap into and harness the emotions of prospects.
- Don’t stop pitching when you send in your proposal, or make your presentation. Go back to the client and add value, until you have won.
- And finally: You may know your products and services, but you will need evidence to convince the client that what you say is true. There are only 8 sorts of evidence that we have ever found: irrefutable facts, statistics, case studies, examples, analogies, demonstrations, testimonials and visual aids. Each will support your case but only the right amount of the right kinds of evidence will convince the decision-maker.