August, 2019 | Furthr

Never Lose Another Pitch 8: how to disrupt the pitch

August 14, 2019

We now know that the pitch process is designed not to find the best vendor, but to cover the ass of the person doing the choosing.

We also know that if we submit ourselves to the pitch process, we are in effect admitting that we do not stand out sufficiently from our competition for the prospective client to make the decision without the need for a pitch process.

To make matters worse almost all pitches are won or lost before the pitch begins.

So we really want to win this pitch – give ourselves an unfair advantage – before we walk into the pitch itself.

To get ahead of competition early, we need to do two things. First show expertise and empathy.

Say you get a request for proposal from a potential client. Your first move must be to shore up the idea that you know what you are doing and also that you are nice folks to deal with.

What you must do is immediately replace the clients’ process with yours. The first step after receiving a request for proposal is to get on the phone and get a face to face meeting.

Get on the phone

This is important. Do not respond via email. Email is a cold medium and you need to use all the persuasive powers you have available to you.

On the phone, you must explain to the client that it is company policy not to tender a proposal blind. If they do not accept the meeting explain you cannot tender a proposal. If they say yes, they are on track for accepting your process.

The meeting matters, as it is at this meeting you get to take a temperature reading of how you are doing and whether you will win. Meeting people is good, and there are many ways to win, if you can make an impression who knows what may come of it

If the client is in another country you must ask yourself, are you willing to travel to meet them? If the answer is no, perhaps there is no point pitching this client. (The face to face element is important: if you are doing a call via Skype it is vital the prospective client turns his camera on. If they do not, wait until the call starts before turning yours on. Then say “I am turning on my camera now…” and hope they do likewize. If they do not, you have likely lost this pitch.)

Sampling

At the meeting you must share one great insight about the prospective clients’ business. It would be best if this insight was dazzling. You must also show the client a piece of work you have done that is relevant to them. Think of this as “sampling” just as a customer may sample a perfume. Studies show that sampling is the best way to sell a product.

Suitably impressed, it is now time to press your advantage with the client: encourage them to set up a workshop before taking any other step.

This workshop is very valuable so it is important the client agrees to pay for it. The output of the workshop is a brief which you will write and handover to the client. They can use this brief to hire other suppliers or hire you for a discount.

This moment in your process is filled with danger. I have had clients take me at my word and once I have completed the brief then gone on to hire other suppliers. The reason, I suspect is that while I communicated expertise, I did not communicate empathy, so they felt fine with ditching me at that stage. People want to work with folks they like. So make sure you are likeable. Here’s a list of how to do that.

Once you have warmed them up to your brilliance and personal magnetism (!), you need to see evidence that the client prefers you over your competitors. If you feel they do, it’s time to move to phase two: Disrupt the process. The idea is simple: break the clients’ process and see if they stay with you. Here’s four ways to do that.

Remember: the period before the pitch is a crucial time when the game is won or lost. So don’t feel awkward about throwing everything at it. Once you walk into that pitch, the decision has already been made. You have won.

Posted in: Infographic of the day | Leave a Comment

Never Lose Another Pitch 7: control the process

August 13, 2019

As we have discussed before, most pitches follow a process. They differ in their details, but the object is the same: to find the best person for any particular job.

Except that is not really true. The purpose of the pitch process is to cover the ass of the person charged with the difficult job of hiring a vendor. I myself have been in this position, and I know how stressful and difficult it can be. The last thing you want to do is hire the wrong guy and be blamed for everything that goes wrong.

The problem for pitchees is that if they follow the client’s process to the letter, the chances of their winning the pitch does not go up. It actually goes down. Allow me to explain why.

In order to be a successful business you must stand out from the competition, Usually this is because of your competitive advantage: you are cheaper, your office is near the clients’, you have the best creatives. When we submit ourselves to a pitch we are tacitly acknowledging that we are in fact so similar to the competition that clients need a special process in order to tell us apart.

Or, put another way, if we enter a pitch we are admitting we have not done a good enough job of communicating our expertise. If we had, we would get the job without pitching.

This sounds like a Catch 22 situation. But there is something we can do. We can wrestle control of the pitch process away from the client. If we can overturn their process and replace it with ours before we pitch, we can set ourselves up to win.

So what do we mean by getting control of the process? In poker – a form of gambling where in order for you to win someone else must lose – it is said that if you look around and you don’t know who the sucker is, the sucker is you.

Something similar happens with pitching. In the pitch process there is always a preferred candidate. Someone has an unfair advantage. You need to make sure it is you.

What this means in practice is getting the potential client to show favouritism to you before you pitch. If we have an unfair advantage, the process is a mere formality. If we don’t, whatever happens we will not win.

In the next post I will explain how to make it sure you have an unfair advantage every time you pitch.

Posted in: Infographic of the day | Leave a Comment

Never Lose Another Pitch 6: tone of voice matters

August 12, 2019

What do we mean by tone of voice?

Tone of voice is the way we communicate, as opposed to what we actually say. Given the real limits on what most businesses can actually offer their clientele, the way those businesses communicate is key. It is unfortunate that so few businesses devote much time to this question.

Any discussion of tone of voice, must follow discussion of who the audience is that business is trying to reach. One you know the audience, you build out a tone of voice that they approve of. I use a triangle to visualize the three constituent parts of the message: audience, benefits (the stuff you are offering) and tone. I call it the Content Triangle. See above.

A good way to think of tone of voice is to imagine a horizontal line from left to right. On the far left is “right” or “cold”. On the far right is “interesting” or “hot”. Somewhere between these two points is the sweet spot for your audience, a perfect mix of right and interesting. Or if you prefer, the goldilocks position of not too hot and not too cold.

The trouble is, no one really knows where the sweet spot is and it is always changing. The role of communication of any kind is to hit this sweet spot. When we do, we know it: we get noticed, we make money, we win votes etc.

However, if we misjudge it and make our communication too hot, we face a risk. On a corporate level it is a very real possiblility to get fired for running communications that are too hot.

On the other hand, we if get our comms “right,” but too cold, we cannot possibly get fired. So, as a result most people tend to run communications that are right, but not especially interesting. A bit “Man Does Job.” Whole corporations, and indeed industries, tend to run cold. They perceive they have too much to lose to do anything else.

Look at this story about The World Bank, where I train masterclasses.

31 percent of the reports the World Bank has put online have never been downloaded, ever, by anyone.

The cost? $20million. You can bet every single one of those reports was “right”. But they were a colossal waste of time and money.

While running cold can work for the short to medium term in the end your firm will go bust, because everyone else is playing safe too and the customer can’t be tell the difference between competing firms. Then, a new entrant to the market arrives with nothing to lose, takes risks, runs hot communications and reaps all the rewards.

Because while organisations may have a cold bias, the great reading public have a bias too. They run hot. If something does not smack them round the face they barely notice it. Successful political campaigns know this. It is why “Bollocks to Brexit” was an effective campaign line for the Liberal Democrats in the 2019 lEuropean election. It may be mildly offensive to some but it is unequivocal and unignorable. The Lib Dems knew some people would hate it. It got a reaction. That’s how they knew it was a good idea.

To avoid being someone whose work life is entirely pointless and to actually get our stuff read, it is vital that we move our work along the axis from cold to hot, from everyone saying “it’s fine” to some people hating it, and others loving it.

There are two ways to achieve this. First, you can edge out a bit at a time. After 46 iterations you might get close tot he sweet spot. The alternative is to go too far immediately and then, before you publish, calm it down a bit. (It is always easier to cool down messages than warm them up.)

Next time you are putting together a presentation, think of the cold hot and axis and try to imagine where on the X axis your presentation sits.

If you feel completely comfortable with everything you have come up with – if you feel “safe” – you can be sure what you have produced is as cold as Christmas and will not succeed.

If you feel your presentation is a risk and maybe you feel a little bit exposed, it is much more likely that you till win.

Posted in: Infographic of the day | Leave a Comment

Never Lose Another Pitch 5: discover the “real brief”

August 9, 2019

Last time we talked about understanding the true audience for your pitch. In most cases this is your clients’ customer. We also spoke about how, if we can get that customer down to one person, you will then in a position to empathize with them and figure out what makes them tick. It is from our understanding of the audience that all creative ideas flow.

Once we are clear about the audience, we need think about the benefits we are offering in the pitch.

Here are some examples of what other businesses offer their clients.

It is highly likely that the benefits we offer are likely to be the same as our competitors. In a post-scarcity economy most businesses resemble each other so thoroughly that differences only exists in the mind of people who work there. So how can we differentiate ourselves?

I believe there are two ways to achieve this. First, find out what the client wants. This sounds obvious, but often there are two briefs. The brief they send out to prospective clients and the “real brief.”

The real brief is what the client really wants. This is often conditioned by the clients’ past experiences. They may be terrified of making a mistake, or concerned the process runs smoothly this time. They may want you to make them look good as they are about to seek more investment or be sold. Each of these hidden agendas was on the mind of past clients’ of Furthr’s.

There will always be a hidden agenda behind the public one, and before you pitch you must find out what it is. I’d suggest face to face meetings with the client and some subtly searching questions. You need to find our what they are thinking.

You also want to leverage your advantage. If you are a small outfit, make clear the client will be dealing with the top dogs, not understudies. If you are inexpensive, make that a factor. If you have brilliant designers, make your pitch look fantastic. We will talk about this more in the “designing your deck” post coming soon.

Posted in: Infographic of the day | Leave a Comment

Never Lose Another Pitch 4: know your clients’ one true customer

August 7, 2019

Once you have positioned your business in terms of the highest value and expertise you offer your prospective clients, you are ready to pitch a client from a position of strength.

The next question to address is this: who is the clients’ customer, what are you offering the client and what is teh tone of voice you intend to employ to reach them.

You can think of it as a triangle.

Let’s start with the clients’ audience. You must hold the clients customer in mind when you are putting together your pitch.

Imagine you wanted to convince a politician to take a course of action. The fastest way to achieve this is to go directly to his or her boss: voters. Voters are the folks politicians care about, as their job depends on their support.

If instead you decide to go direct to the politico, you will sound like everyone else and likely as not you will be ignored. This principle holds for businesses too. Businesses care about their customers. Without them, they would not exist. When you pitch a business you are pitching their customers.

At Furthr we take a singular approach to the question of our clients’ customer. We get their customer base down to one person who matters more than all the others.

Next time you are in Waitrose, scan your food on their latest electronic till. If you cock it up, an avatar appears on the screen showing you how it is done right. Who do you think that avatar – an animation – is based on? A Waitrose customer. And who is that do you imagine? An older retiree? Wrong! It is a young mum with dyed blonde streaks in her hair.

Who buys the most food at supermarkets? Families. Who makes almost all the purchasing decisions for hungry young families? You got it.

So it follows that if you are pitching Waitrose, you must always keep in the front of you mind young mums. Because if they do not like what you are offering, it isn’t going to work.

In all communication, if you imagine your audience as a group – say 28-35 year old women, your communication will be bad. We are all useless at talking to groups. But if you can picture a young mum, you will be able to empathize with her and so be able to communicate with her with emotion. As a result, that communication will land.

Posted in: Infographic of the day | Leave a Comment

Never Lose Another Pitch 3: how to successfully position your business

August 6, 2019

Last time we talked about the fundamental importance of positioning. This is the idea that however you introduce yourself or your business in the first instance, will condition clients’ view of everything that happens next. So, with your opening line it is critical you explain how much of an expert you are and how valuable your services are to the prospective client. Put crudely, if you ran a shop, what would it say on the sign outside?

It goes without saying that you want potential clients to view your offer as of greatest possible value as you will be much more likely to win a pitch. Conversely, if you lose a pitch, it’s likely you failed to convince the client of your value and expertise, and that process probably started with your positioning.

So, the job of positioning your business – often the line under the logo on your website – is incredibly important. All you have to do is describe the single most valuable thing you do.

The reason is the what we call the “differentiation paradox.” If you present yourself as the world’s greatest expert at Y you will be believed, and a client may even ask you to do X and Y. But if you present yourself as the world’s greatest expert at X and the world’s greatest expert at Y, you will not be believed and will not be asked to do either.

Imagine you visited a doctor who also boasted of killer gardening skills. You’d give them a pretty wide birth. Or imagine a doctor who says they offer “medical solutions,” keeping their offer vague in the hopes of widening their appeal. It sounds absurd, but businesses commit both these sins every day It never works.

Picking the most valuable thing you do has sometimes been described as A Very Difficult Business Decision. It is difficult because it entails sacrifice. In the short line under your logo, you cannot possibly describe everything your business does, just the best bit.

Amazon do many things, but they call themselves the world’s biggest store. Google is a sprawling behemoth but describes itself as is a search giant.

In the field of politics, the UK parties which have done best at the time of writing promise just one thing: Brexit (The Brexit Party) or Bollocks to Brexit (Liberal Democrats). The parties trying to hold on to a coalition of votes – Labour and until recently conservatives – have suffered.

It may be that digital has destroyed the days of the “broad church” political party or “full service” provider (such as now-toubled ad giant WPP.) Books such as The Digital Party by Paolo Gerbaudo suggest so.

Certainly in my recent experience, going deep now yields better results than going wide.

Here’s some examples of how you might position your offer and examples of firms who have taken these positions.

If you want to rewrite the line under your logo, start by trying to think of the thing you do that could credibly describe as better than anyone else. This is not an easy job but it is not supposed to be.

But the fact remains pitching begins by clearly describing the outside of your business – your expertise and true value to the customer. From the line under the logo, you start to press your competitive advantage with prospective clients and win more pitches.

Posted in: Infographic of the day | Leave a Comment

Never Lose Another Pitch 2: Positioning matters

August 5, 2019

As we covered in my last post, if you are pitching without some kind of unfair advantage your chances of success are reduced.

One reason for this is that the pitch is an unfavourable dynamic between the client and you. Goals are not aligned: you want to win the pitch, the client, or the person acting on their behalf, wants to cover their ass.

But more than this, it is a truth of human nature that people only buy off equals. This, in my experience, is an immutable fact of business life. It therefore follows that if you enter into a pitch process designed by an ass-covering client, you are accepting a subordinate position in a process, designed to minimize risk, rather than select the best supplier.

If you do not think you have an unfair advantage in the pitch, my best advice is, don’t pitch. If you decide to pitch anyway, and accept the clients’ process, I’d say you are on the way to losing.

If that sounds hard to grasp, think about it this way: imagine you are going to see the doctor. Whether with the NHS or private medicine, you will wait in a waiting room until the doctor will see you. You can tell the doctor what you think your ailment is and the doctor will completely ignore you. She may ask your symptoms but she has no interest at all what you think the treatment should be.

Because you value their skills and respect their expertise, you mostly accept the doctors opinion. Generally speaking, doctors, don’t pitch.

If you want to be treated like doctors, then you must start to act like them.

This starts by positioning yourself as the expert practitioner whose work has real value in the mind of the client. It is from this point of strength that you begin the pitch process. If the client accepts your expertise, you are on the way to winning. If they do not, you do not stand a chance. So next time you are about to pitch and the client says, “Actually this pitch is now ten minutes instead of twenty minutes long” you know they have not accepted your expertise and you have lost. At this point, the best thing you can do is close your computer and walk out.

In the next blog post we will show you how to position yourself correctly, so the client accepts your value to them and respects your expertise. Just like a doctor.

Posted in: Infographic of the day | Leave a Comment

Never Lose Another Pitch: the critical importance of an unfair advantage

August 2, 2019

If you want to Never Lose Another Pitch it is important to first understand what a pitch is and what a pitch is not.

What a pitch is not, is a “contest of ideas.”

While it may suit creative types like myself to argue “the idea is everything” the bitter truth is that this is simply not the case. Most people, clients included, would not know a brilliant idea if it hit them in the face with a shovel.

(The reason for this is straight-forward. Most good original ideas make no sense. My kids love the cartoon Rick and Morty, but I would not wanted to be at the meetings where the idea was pitched. You know, a burping, schloretic grandpa takes in grandson on intergalactic adventures while tackling the problems of their disintegrating family. You can imagine the silence that met that pitch. Genius ideas are bafflingly strange.: think Uber, Facebook, Graphene. If they were made more sense, someone would have invented them. )

So forget about having original ideas, as only people brave enough to fail and practiced at recognising them (the US Army, Netflix) will grasp them anyway. Most times a pitch confirms a decision that has already been made. Let me give you an example.

In 2018, Amazon decided they needed a new office. But that sounded a bit boring, so instead they called it a “second HQ” in addition to their current HQ in Seattle.

So they encouraged US cities to pitch to become Amazon’s second HQ. Many cities jumped at the chance it create jobs and boost the economies of their local cities. Two hundred and thirty eight US cities fell over themselves to offer tax breaks to Amazon.

Of those, 20 cities made the shortlist. As well as major centres such as New York and Washington DC, Dallas, Denver, Newark and Montgomery MD also made the cut.

Who do you think won? In the end Amazon selected New York and Washington DC as their new second HQs. What do you think they had in common? They were both less than half an hour’s drive from one of CEO Jeff Bezo’s homes.

Put another way, all those other cities never stood a chance. Would the world’s richest man really spend time in Montgomery MD over New York or Washington? Of course not.

The important learning for pitchers is this: Amazon are not the exception. This is the rule.

Pitches are mostly won or lost before the presentation. (The pitch deck is just the proof.) Someone always has an unfair advantage. If it is not you, don’t pitch.

But there is a better way. Make sure it is you. Stay tuned and we will show you how.

Never Lose Another Pitch 3: how to successfully position your business

Never Lose Another Pitch 4: know your clients’ one true customer

Never Lose Another Pitch 5: discover the “real brief”

About the author

My name is Andy Pemberton. I am an expert in data visualization. I guide global clients such as Lombard Odier, the European Commission and Cisco on the best way to use data visualization and then produce it for them: reports, infographics and motion graphics. If you need your data visualized contact me at andy@furthr.co.uk or call 07963 020 103

Posted in: Infographic of the day | Leave a Comment