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.

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