So, You Scored a Face-to-Face Pitch Meeting? Here's How You Win It

If you sell to businesses, winning new clients can often require face-to-face meetings at the very end of the process. You navigate through the request-for-proposal, you make the preliminary list, and then (hurray!) the client wants you to meet with them face to face, so you can present your argument.

But making a pitch meeting like this work is not the same as making any other meeting work. Pitches need to be planned, rehearsed, re-organized, drilled, and rehearsed again. And they have to come off naturally, like they aren’t really the product of hours of preparation at all.

Obviously, you have to cover all the prospect's requirements, understand and focus on the key issues, and deal with the individual and group psychology in the room. But here are five additional ideas for making sure that the process goes better (and improving your chances!). The next time your organization makes the “short list” and gets the opportunity to win business in a face-to-face meeting, consider these ideas:

1. Appoint a "pitch ayatollah."

To maximize your chance of winning, you need a "pitch ayatollah” – a Supreme Leader who is the absolute, no-appeal, sole arbiter of policy disputes, organizational conflict and preparation scheduling. (Note: I use the word "ayatollah" because I just don't think the word "czar" connotes enough religious and moral authority for what is really required!) You want to look like a team, not just a bunch of individuals, and the pitch ayatollah's job is to make the final decisions about what gets presented and what doesn't, and how the meeting should flow.

Early on in the process your chairman or CEO should take everyone aside and say something like, “Folks, for this pitch to the XYZ Corporation, I've asked Jennifer to be our pitch ayatollah. She has my proxy, and I won't reverse her no matter whose feelings are hurt. Please don't hold it against her. She doesn't mean to be dictatorial, but if we're going to get this done well and on time, then someone has to be absolute ruler. For the next three months on this project she's it, so please don’t anyone come running to me.”

2. Get your prospects to participate early in the meeting.

Obviously, it’s Sales 101 to get as much input from the prospect as possible at all stages of any pitch. But in planning the final, face-to-face pitch meeting, here are some ideas for turning it into more of a conversation, and less of a presentation:

• Open the meeting by recapping objectives and expectations. Even if your prospect is reluctant to participate much, use this very standard opening as a way to get him to answer simple yes/no questions like, "Is this correct?" or "Would you agree?" After two or three of these, you should be able to ask even the most reluctant prospect to elaborate a little more, by following up with a "why" or a "how" or a “what else" question.
• Modularize your presentation and offer to start with whatever section the prospect most wants to hear first. When she states her preference, you have a natural bridge to conversing about why she prefers to start there.
• Embed your presentation with questions, and ask the prospect to guess the answers. How many lawyers do you think the other side employed? What kind of response do you think this ad drew? Why do you think they wanted us to approach it this way?

3. Don't prolong a conversation once your objective is achieved.

When a prospect agrees with you on something, let it stand. Don't try to get more. I once had a prospect in our ad agency’s conference room, and one of our creative directors was showing him potential print ad executions, turning over one idea at a time from a pile. As she showed him the second print ad, he paused and said, "That is without a doubt the most insightful headline about our product I've ever seen. This is terrific! Did you do that?" Her response? "Yes I did, and thank you! But let me show you what else we've done, too..."

4. Plan in advance for the unexpected.

As tightly structured as your pitch meeting is likely to be, and as comfortable as you are with your own material, a smart prospect will always throw a curve at some point, just to test your ability to think on your feet as a team. So before the meeting, rehearse the process for answering questions. Who can best discuss which topics, and who on your side will direct the discussion if it goes in some unplanned direction? And, unless there’s some vital legal or ethical issue at stake, never ever correct a colleague’s answer! (Did I say never?)

5. Never use an account executive to do a case study on his own client.

Now here's a tip that makes this whole article worth reading. When someone works directly on a piece of business they will know too much about it to be helpful in a pitch. They are likely to go into way too much detail, and include facts and information of no real interest to the prospect. You want an analogy? The best math teacher in high school is almost always someone who had trouble with the subject himself. The same is true for case studies. If you plan to talk about your success with one more of your accounts, assign the task to some executive who is not already familiar with it. In order to present it she'll have to learn it from scratch from your account team. As a result she'll be much better prepared to explain it and its relevance to the prospect.

In upcoming posts I'll suggest some more ideas, including ideas on how to use fewer slides in your pitch meeting, and how to rehearse your pitch more efficiently.

Photo: Alex and Laila / Getty Images