Winning New Business Pitches - 'Beauty Parades'

Pitching is more about avoiding elimination than trying to come first, putting down the competition, or even having points of differentiation.

Background

Most professional people have had little or no training in how to pitch effectively. They have been able to rely on their professional training and expert abilities to attract customers and clients. They used not to have to go into their marketplace to find clients for themselves.

Those traditional markets have all but ceased to exist now, with clients switching their investment banking, stockbroking, accounting, legal, advertising and PR advisers with alarming regularity, and solely on the basis of a business pitch.

We do not believe that this is the best way to choose such an adviser, but it is the way that most large corporations do so. We advise pitch teams on how best to increase their chances of winning pitches in these expensive and hostile environments.

It is an area where many clients have asked for help. In a 'beauty parade', a number of teams from short-listed potential advisers are asked to pitch in turn. Our advice recognises that rarely is the playing field level for these pitches. We have helped these teams to improve radically their chance of success, even ending up with wins when we knew that our client was only there as a stalking horse to unsettle the incumbent or opposition. Some of these pitches have been for mandates of several million dollars.

Areas of Advice

Our advice covers a number of areas: understanding that winning is more about avoiding elimination, where the areas really are for differentiation, how to work best as a team, and when to withdraw from the pitch.