Two questions you need to answer to win a pitch
So if you have been reading anything of mine, you will know that I rate Experiential / Insight / Challenger sales and marketing approaches more highly than S.P.I.N. or other forms of Consultative selling. On the grounds that clients get bored answering long lists of questions, and they dislike those that make them feel uncomfortable (which is kinda at the heart of the Consultative process).
However, you cannot avoid questions at all, and there are two in particular that are crucial to your success.
- What is the client’s commercial strategy, or rationale for your services?
If their brief doesn’t cover this, you may discover – too late – that the client’s commercial strategy actually dictates something different from what the brief asks for.
This was brought home to me when pitching to one of the world’s largest and most successful management consulting firms. They specialised in what they called “jumbo” contracts; nothing to do with the aircraft, but with the size of their fee: $200 million a year.
Their problem was that their founding partners were retiring, and no-one else knew how to attract and win such massive mandates. They assumed that more and better PR would result in more leads, which would inevitably lead to more mandates; hence the beauty parade.
This was the wrong solution. Their PR was dwarfed by their bigger competitors, and so what they needed was a transformed marketing and sales operation (although PR played a role in recruitment and post-purchase reassurance).
None of our competitors had asked the question, and so their approach was completely wrong (and, interestingly, identical): “We know the City Editor of the Daily Telegraph”.
2. What do you need to do to win?
This is not one of those “what do I need to do to get you into this used Vauxhall Cavalier today” questions. In fact it’s generally not a question you ask out loud (because of its used car sales connotations).
But think of it like this: if you don’t actually know what the client really, really wants, then you stand little chance of delivering it.
And what the client really, really wants (for example, to endorse an idea the client head of operations has espoused; to make the marketing director look good to head office; to crush their competition; to save that struggling regional branch that’s threatened with closure; etc, etc, etc) often does not make it into the formal brief.
Next time you are preparing a pitch, try asking the team “are we confident we know exactly what we have to do to win this” and I guarantee they will hesitate, because most folk will be aware of the existence of unspoken agendas, even although they don’t know what they are.
So you have to discover it, and using an Insight / Challenger approach will get you there quicker than anything else.
Whatever sales approach you favour, bear in mind these two questions and make sure you get answers to them.
As always, there’s much to do and time is short, so good luck and get cracking.