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”Is there such a thing? What qualifies a pitch to be perfect? Have you ever been part of a pitch that was perfect? If you say you have – you’re lying. No such thing. Unless….it’s not the pitch itself that needs to be perfect but rather, the goal of the pitch.
I came out of a recent pitch. This one was long, 5 hours in total. 16 people in the room and 7 more online. We spent countless hours preparing. Discussed the important underlying messaging after researching the client’s needs. Mapped our past and current relationships with each of the clients’ members, and analyzed the market the client is in – its challenges and vision. Dug into the company's history to better understand its culture and DNA. Made their mission statement our mission statement for this 5-hour interaction. Met with them online a couple of times before making sure their agenda requirements were clear. And…created a lineup for the agenda. Itemized, with allocated time to each subject matter expert, made sure we had time for questions and discussion at the end of the call and started rehearsing. Rehearsed a few times, made sure we were good on the time we planned and even all of us met in a room together one more time a couple of hours before this pitch to rehearse and discuss one more time.
During this last get-together prep session, a discussion erupted around a specific item on the agenda. This item was a specific 2-part question for the client that was strategically designed to get insight from the client. Insight that will allow us to better understand the client’s positioning on this matter and hence, better prepare a follow-up solution accordingly. However, the discussion was around how long we believe the answer to this 2-part question will take. Our designated emcee for this call, a brilliant, relatively young, sales executive believed the answer, both to the first part (a leading question) as well as the second part will take only a few minutes and that we will move on to the next item on the agenda. On the other hand, our designated “executive”, a C-level gentleman, who based his career on these kinds of sophisticated sales, claimed that the answer to the leading part might be quick; however, the answer to the second part could take 30 minutes as it will lead to further discussion. He continued to advocate that we should plan accordingly as this answer to this specific second part of the strategic question will be super valuable and hence, worth potentially replacing another item on the agenda if necessary.
We then spent the last 30 minutes together discussing (and this is something I highly recommend as a best practice for each client interaction) our goals for this meeting. What needs to happen for us to declare this meeting a successful one? The way I like to position it is: Imagine it is 6 pm right now and we are walking out of the meeting. We are in the car on the way to the airport and we all feel and know it was a successful meeting. Why? What happened that made it successful? What were the agreed next steps that made this meeting a successful one? And were these next steps the ones we planned for?
We get into the board room and start the session. Setting the right ambiance right at the get-go, getting somewhat personal with the people in the room and our emcee kicks it off. All goes as planned. Checking off item by item, healthy back and forth, and then, about an hour and a half into it….our emcee asks the first part, the leading question. 2 of the 8 people on the client’s side respond. A relatively superficial response as expected. At this point, our emcee seemed sated and got ready to move on.
OK, a bit of background here as to my involvement and my role in this meeting. You see, my role is to make sure all goes well. My role is to “instigate” when necessary but mainly, my goal is to constantly keep my antennas up and make sure EVERYONE in the room is attentive and being attended to. This means calling out people at times, looking at the videos of the folks online analyzing their body language, and ensuring ALL attendees take part and FEEL emotionally connected. It’s a mouthful but this is part of what I was hired to do. Our designated “executive” understands the importance of it and this is why, just as our “emcee” was about to move on, the “executive” and eye-locked eyes. So, I stepped in and asked the second part of the question. And as expected here as well, a 25-minute discussion broke out. No less than 5 people from the client side in the room took part and another 2 from the online world joined as well. Some of the stuff they shared would have never been discussed had we not had that discussion. And that stuff was so valuable for us to intimately understand their needs that it was worth every minute of those 25.
We finished the session, went through the routine goodbyes, got quite a few buying signals and we all had that feeling that we were now more than just prospects/suppliers but more like friends. Made fun of each other a bit and left. The next day we all got on a call. An internal post-mortem (highly recommend to have one within 24 hours of the session or as soon as possible after) discussion. We have a form we all fill in before this post-mortem of which each shares their take while it’s still fresh in their mind. Then, on the call we all share each other’s perspective and try to learn from it. Everyone felt the session went very well. Except one specific issue was brought up. We skipped an entire item due to that 25-minute discussion we had. Not only that, our subject matter expert, the one who flew in specifically to discuss that agenda item that was skipped, ended up saying very little.
So, I asked the group the following questions:
“Have you ever participated in a pitch, a session, or an interaction with a client where it went EXACTLY as you planned and that was perfect? ”
Alon Zaibert
The answer was a unanimous NO.
Was the insight we got from that 25-minute discussion valuable and did it offer us a unique angle into our upcoming proposed solution? The answer here was a resounding YES.
And lastly, were the goals we set in that prep session before meeting with the client met? Did the next steps we wanted in order to call this pitch a successful one were agreed upon? Looking at each other, and then looking at the goals we set everyone was forced to agree. Yes, the next steps were achieved.
Well, then it was perfect. Pitch Perfect…
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