It’s exciting for us, less so for our clients. It can be boring, difficult and risky. We need to put ourselves in the client’s shoes. Will we make her or him look good internally? Are we a safe choice?
‘Track record’ only means what we can tell our prospective client about competitors and issues – anything that she or he doesn’talready know. If we do enough research our lack of an actual ‘track record’ is no impediment.
Experienced clients discount the senior people in the room and focus on the account managers and account executives. They are looking for people who will eat, breathe and dream their brand. It makes sense to give ‘juniors’ the starring roles in presentations.
Decisions are normally dressed up as rational choices, but it’schemistry that sorts out the winner from the rest. ‘I hired them because I liked them’. ‘We just clicked’. Confident clients admit this.
‘We may think we’re fabulous, but to clients we all look the same’ says Helen Calcraft of Lucky Generals. How are we going to stand out? We can design our presentation around the one thing they must remember about us forever.
Never waste time talking about the agency and its experience. We’ve passed that test already. Use the time we’vegot (which isn’t much) to give the client a sense of what it would be like to work with us. Will they want to see us every other day for a year?
The leave-behind is traditionally a copy of the presentation. They won’t read it. Leave something they will read – a White Paper about their industry, perhaps, or a long-form version of our media perceptions audit.
Keep visual aids simple. Clients can’t look at slides and us at the same time. Slides are cues for what we are going to say next. Keep their focus on us and our team-members.
Budgets: clients know that everything is negotiable once they’ve decided who they want to hire. Talk about quality control systems, how we source and manage third-party suppliers, how we will look after their money more carefully than they do themselves.
Rehearsals! Most agencies skimp on rehearsals and it shows. ‘A well-rehearsed team makes a very strong impression – probably because it’s so rare’.
Join our Successful Pitching class here: https://ow.ly/iR5P50SKP11