As you may know, Amazon is currently looking for a location for its second US HQ, or HQ2, as it is known.

A plethora of US cities have jostled with one another to be the chosen location, offering world’s richest man and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos various tax breaks to place his new office in their city.

Miami, Pittsburgh, New York, Indianapolis and Columbus have all pitched, offering handsome inducements to the king of online retail.

They don’t stand a chance. Can you honestly imagine one of the world’s richest men spending up to half his time in Indianapolis?

The smart money is on Washington DC. Bezos has a house there and right now the greatest threat to Amazon’s on-going dominance of e commerce is government regulation. I could be wrong, but DC looks a no-brainer.

I believe this entirely pointless exercise can tell us a lot about pitching.

First: the pitch is not a level playing field. A city such as Columbus Ohio never seriously stood a chance.

Second: someone in this process has an unfair advantage. It is worth noting Bezos already owns a home in Washington.

Third: a rational business decision like where to put an HQ can sometimes cloak the bosses’ personal preference.

As one insider put it: “I’ve been on the board of seven public companies, and I’ve gone through four headquarter relocation processes, you know what it always comes down to, in retrospect? You find out the CEO cloaked business reasons in the decision, and the decision all came down to one thing and one thing only. Where the CEO wanted to spend more time – where he was chairman of a golf club or where his next wife was living.”

When you are invited to pitch it pays to know whether the client is intending to pick you or is just merely interested.  Or put another way,  ask yourself honestly, are you Washington DC or Columbus Ohio? If you are the latter, save your self the time and money and don’t pitch.

 

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