At the moment this is little more than a title with an idea for a post. The spark for which came recently when pitching for new business and is perhaps a reflection on my position and experience.
Over more than a decade I having pitched for a wide array of marketing, web, branding and design jobs; and have built a solid agency in i-KOS with a fair share of 'wins'. In doing so I have gathered some useful insight into businesses and have srived ti use this to share my knowledge and empathise with the marketing director or business owner.
In doing so I realise that I am doing less research on the company and their market, trusting my 'bank' of information to guide me on the day. This is surely a mistake and one not easy to spot (especially if you are winning business).
However recently at the said pitch I tried a new strategy:
When the results arrived I was struck by how little kowledge I had actually gatherd at the meeting and during the follow up dialogue.
I guess this post could equally have been written about the tool (the survey) and indeed I owe this to my colleague Simon Surtees as this was, indeed, the corner stone to the success of the pitch but I want the key point to be one of complacency, or rather how to avoid it.
As to the result - let me say that it was the first time a client has actually phoned me to say 'thank you for the proposal, it is perfect, it covered everything we wanted'. This was followed with confirmation that we had won the job some 10 minutes later.
To be honest the proposal was the easy bit because I had to assume nothing; I really knew what the client wanted - of course I left room for pudding (future scope) and this too was well received as desert is after a good meal.
Over more than a decade I having pitched for a wide array of marketing, web, branding and design jobs; and have built a solid agency in i-KOS with a fair share of 'wins'. In doing so I have gathered some useful insight into businesses and have srived ti use this to share my knowledge and empathise with the marketing director or business owner.
In doing so I realise that I am doing less research on the company and their market, trusting my 'bank' of information to guide me on the day. This is surely a mistake and one not easy to spot (especially if you are winning business).
However recently at the said pitch I tried a new strategy:
- Firsty, for the first time, I used a requirement gathering survey to act as the agenda
- Having sought permission I also recorded the meeting using my iPhone; providing a transcript and link to the mp3 for all parties present
- Finally supplying a link to our an online version of the survey asking the client to answer some 50 questions (this worried me as it is quite a task for the client who, lets face it, ask suppliers in to provide the answers after all)
When the results arrived I was struck by how little kowledge I had actually gatherd at the meeting and during the follow up dialogue.
I guess this post could equally have been written about the tool (the survey) and indeed I owe this to my colleague Simon Surtees as this was, indeed, the corner stone to the success of the pitch but I want the key point to be one of complacency, or rather how to avoid it.
As to the result - let me say that it was the first time a client has actually phoned me to say 'thank you for the proposal, it is perfect, it covered everything we wanted'. This was followed with confirmation that we had won the job some 10 minutes later.
To be honest the proposal was the easy bit because I had to assume nothing; I really knew what the client wanted - of course I left room for pudding (future scope) and this too was well received as desert is after a good meal.
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