Securing new business pitches and winning bids is essential to the success of most organisations. All too often the process is rushed and messages are unclear, leading to underwhelming pitches and loss of much needed revenue.
1. Make it easy for people to say yes
The pitches used by both the Remain and Leave camps left voters unclear and confused. I am not even sure people knew why they were voting the way they were!
On large volume contracts, the difference between winning and losing is often marginal. The referendum was no different. With hours of time invested and large amounts of money at risk, you need to demonstrate clearly and persuasively why prospective buyers should choose you. It’s not the best companies that are always successful, it’s the best sold.
Our task as a pitching team is to make it easy for people to say yes and hard to say no to your ideas. People are essentially lazy and won’t try that hard to work out the difference, that’s the task of the pitch team.
To do this, your messages should be clear and succinct, and supported by clear benefits for your buyers that speak directly to their needs. Talk about the positive impact your offer will provide or the negative impact it will prevent.
The Remain camp majored on the fear of the unknown rather than positive impact of Remaining as part of the EU, failing to appeal and convince many parts of the country, where personal economics rather than business, played a greater part in decision making.
2. Know your Audience!
We have heard this a thousand times and I am saying it again. Why; because although we know we should understand our buyer – there is part of us that is reluctant. I see this over and over again working with bid teams.
Pitch teams dutifully ask questions to seek to understand their buyers, but can they get past what they don’t want to hear? Are they really facing up to the fact that their arguments are potentially flawed?
We find ourselves arguing against what we are hearing, bias kicks in and we start to become blind to what our buyer is telling us. Are we really listening for the truth? Are we facing up to the weaknesses in our pitch? It’s hard.We don’t want to hear it. It feels negative. The pitch team has the challenge of on one hand being positive and believing they can win, but at the same time being realistic about their chances of winning against their competitors.
You have to do both.
As a pitch coach it’s my job to make sure they do. I use this technique. So the decision has gone against you and sadly you have lost. All the hard work and investment has come to nothing. Tell me what was the reason you lost. What went wrong? What are they likely to say if the outcome was sorry but NO!
By the way, at this point, in reality, it’s amazing how our willingness to listen improves!
So go there now. Feel what it feels like. Stand in your audience’s shoes and ask the difficult questions now.
In my experience people start being more honest with themselves. With the answers to these questions you can revisit your pitch and make sure you are really speaking to peoples’ concerns and needs.
Did the Remain camp do this? Definitely not! They became too arrogant and blind to the truth of how people were feeling on important issues.
3. Don’t ignore the emotional
We would like to think people make decisions logically and that if we present the facts then people will be clear as to why they should choose you over your competition. The reality is it plays a part and you do need to present a clear logical argument supported by facts, but if that is all you do you will be missing a much greater driver behind decision making; the way people feel. When asked what’s important to you, prospective buyers are more likely to list rational reasons but in reality they get trumped when there is an unmet emotional need. The skill is in uncovering these emotional needs through listening in between the lines. What are you hearing versus what are they really saying? British people by and large prefer to be polite and avoid confrontation. They are unlikely to say; the truth is we don’t like you! We just don’t feel comfortable. I am fearful of making the wrong decision. I have to keep my boss happy. I prefer to play it safe. Etc. etc.
Why? It sounds weak and flimsy. It’s not intelligent, logical thinking. So what do we do? We use logical arguments to justify emotional decisions.
This was the biggest failing of the Remain campaign. To recognize the feeling of unease that people are experiencing from the rate of change the EU has brought to Britain. It’s not that it’s a wrong course of action, it’s more about the need for control and the people of Britain feeling we were lacking control. This is a very strong emotion and one that was grossly underestimated. Sure there are other reasons but most I would propose are emotionally fuelled reasons for voting Leave.
I have only touched on three lessons, there are many more from this Referendum campaign that highlight once again how important both the art and science of pitching is to convincing and persuading an audience, and in this case 30 million people.
We have developed 10 Disciplines of pitching that when followed and executed to a high standard have proven to consistently increase win rates.
Call us to find out more how we can help you dramatically increase your conversion rates and win more clients.
Darrell Burberry – Natural Direction Facilitator
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