Four Ways to Make Your New Business Presentations Better

You’ve been nurturing a prospect patiently for months and now, finally, you’re given an opportunity to make a presentation to the client team!?

Hooray??

Of course, getting in front of a roomful of people who are in a position to hire you is a good thing more than it’s not. But presentation meetings are also a bit manufactured and forced. You’re given only so much time and often told to hit a list of points the client wants to know more about. It’s pretty one directional–you talking and them listening (you hope). And there’s an enormous amount of pressure to perform well. You underwhelm them and you may never hear back from them again.

If given the choice, I prefer having a series of conversations in which both the agency and the client get to ask questions and respond with information and at each step, there’s a reason to advance the sale–or not (as the saying goes, the second best answer to a “yes” is a “no” because you can turn your attention to other more promising opportunities).

But I realize my preferences are not enough to change standard practice. The pitch presentation has a long life ahead of it. So, before you trot out the same old credentials deck, here are four ways to get yourself in a better position to win.?

The blasted process!!

We like to roll our eyes when this subject comes up. Doesn’t every agency have a warmed over version of the five-ish steps?

Well, in a way, yes, they do. You likely have your own version, and at your most cynical moments you ask yourself how you can possibly pass this off as something special.

And yet, the client always asks you to explain your process, your approach. Why? Because it brings the abstract to life. Offering a step-by-step process moves your pitch from a vague pledge (“Trust us, everything is going to be great!”) to promise of repeatable success (“Let us show you how we take the wild yet brilliant imaginings of the human brain and corral them into outcomes.”)

Hiring an agency is risky. There’s no guarantee that the relationship will thrive and if it doesn’t, it means lost time, opportunities and money. A process helps your prospect understand how you mitigate that risk.

A process also provides useful structure for presenting your solutions as well as demonstrating your past successes. It guides your audience through the steps you take to explore ideas, meet and overcome obstacles, and eventually arrive at a better outcome.

A process is essentially a framework for a good story which is the key to engaging and delighting your audience.

Take them to the promised land

Did you know that the human brain is hardwired to engage with a story? It’s instinctual–we literally can’t help ourselves. Knowing you possess this superpower, wouldn’t you be using it every chance you get?

And yet, for an industry that collectively prides itself on its storytelling abilities, it’s amazing how little agencies use basic techniques in the pursuit of new business.

But you, dear reader, have an opportunity to seize a competitive advantage by designing your presentation to follow a narrative arc.

A narrative arc is a chronological construction that moves a person, group or a situation from one state to another to effect change. And that’s exactly what you want to do in a pitch presentation–effect change. Your job is to change your audience’s state of mind from uncertainty about whether to hire to certainty.

A while back, I identified three essential storylines that make attracting clients and winning new business easier. One of them is particularly suited to a pitch presentation. I call it the Promised Land. The Promised Land asks you to imagine a future your client wants to see and to envision a path to get them there.?

Remember, hiring an agency is risky for a client. There's a lot at stake! Your success hinges on the client’s ability to envision success given the evidence you present. (That’s why asking for spec work is so seductive for clients. It gives the strong impression that it’ll hedge when, for a host of reasons, it rarely does.)

To tell the Promised Land story, take what you understand about the client’s challenges and embark on a journey of possibility. This journey will be different for every client but it follows a similar arc that paints an enticing contrast between:

• The unsatisfying state the client is in now and the possibilities you envision
• The obstacles you’ll inevitably encounter and your methods for overcoming them

• The consequential decision they must make in hiring you versus your competitor and the steps you’ll take to ensure a smooth, risk-free transition.

It’s the contrast that gives depth to your presentation, that grabs the attention of the audience and holds it until they know how things will get resolved. A narrative arc like this provides useful context for bringing your process to life and for demonstrating the positive qualities of your team in ways that far outweigh the words we usually rely on, like “relentlessly problem-solving” or “fiercely independent”.

It also invites an opportunity to get out into the open concerns your client may have that they’re hesitant to raise themselves. For example, if you’re a small agency pitching against bigger agencies for a big client, consider calling that out in your presentation:?

“You might be wondering, ‘how does a small firm like ours handle a big client like you?’ Well, we can’t offer everything a big agency can, but what we can offer is…”

It sounds risky but it’s effective because:

• It’s a pattern interrupt–the client is not expecting you to reveal your flaws.

• It builds trust. You appear honest, transparent and authentic–exactly the kind of team they want to do business with.?

• By voicing their concerns and getting the issues out in the open, you can offset them.

Know your audience

How many times have you gone into a pitch presentation believing the business was yours to lose only to be unexpectedly derailed by a player on the client side that you either didn’t know about or whose role you had downplayed?

Don’t let enthusiasm, arrogance or even confirmation bias get in the way of a critical look at the people involved on the client side, what their roles are and why they’ll be in the room. Likewise, trust your instincts if a role isn’t going to be represented, especially if you think it’s important (for example, be curious why the online advertising manager isn’t involved in a pitch for a digital marketing campaign). Ask yourself–and the client!–why? What kind of agenda or internal power dynamics does this suggest that you want to be aware of?

Here are a few roles you want to watch for and identify:

• Decision maker – This person is where the buck stops, at least in terms of the relationship with your agency and the work you do. If it’s a large project with a big potential impact, this person might be the CMO or CEO. Likewise if it’s a small business with a small or no marketing team. These folks are likely most concerned with overall health of the business and are often more concerned with meeting longer term goals than relieving short-term problems. They want to know how you will help the business make/save money, improve efficiency, and stay safe—especially if you’re pitching a business in a regulated market, your creativity won’t offset a lack of familiarity with that market and the risk that you could make silly mistakes that result in ideas that go against industry regulations or are even illegal.

• End-user – This is the person who will be working with you day-to-day and directly using your service. They have a problem to solve right now and may be focused on that need rather than the longer term view of the decision maker. They appreciate anything that makes their work more effective so that they look good internally or their job is easier.

• Champion – Not the decision maker but someone who can influence the decision. It’s wonderful to have a Champion on your side and it sucks when you realize there was a Champion supporting another agency’s pitch that you didn’t know about and didn’t account for.

• Blocker – The same goes for a blocker, a person who wants to prevent the deal from happening. This may be a department head that sees this initiative as a threat. It may even be the end-user, who already has resources they like and resent having to onboard a new agency.

• Procurement – Like the Decision-maker, they are also interested in how your agency will save money and improve efficiency. The combative nature between marketing and procurement has improved but dealing with procurement is still an unpleasant hurdle for most agencies. Understand procurement’s role and be ready to sharpen your negotiating skills.??

Know your stuff

I’ll cop to the fact that I’ve made last minute presentation tweaking over the course of my career. I don’t recommend it, but I’m guilty of it and I understand the temptation.

However, I don’t let content creation get in the way of preparing my delivery because the better I know my content, the more effective I’ll be in the room. And I think that’ll be the same for you too.

It’s not about rehearsing (though I will always recommend that) or memorizing.

It’s about thinking through what you’re presenting and how it works together.

It’s about putting the proverbial pencils down early enough to allow yourself the chance to work through the content, test what works and adjust what doesn’t.

Paradoxically, knowing your stuff also makes it easier to go off script. Have you ever been witness to (or guilty of) a situation in which the client asks a question that throws the presenter off their path so much that they can’t recover? Or the presenter holds on to their plan so tightly that when a client interrupts with a question, it’s kinda blown off? Or even the opposite situation in which an agency gets hijacked by the client who leads the agency down a rabbit hole they can’t get out of?

There’s always a chance someone in the audience throws you a curveball . Know your content and you’re more likely to catch that curve ball and maybe even throw it back.

About the author

Jody Sutter is the owner of The Sutter Company , a business development consultancy and coaching firm that specializes in working with leadership at small ad agencies who are underperforming when it comes to winning new business and would like to win the right clients consistently but also make the process less chaotic and exhausting for their teams.?

Learn more here or get in touch by emailing [email protected]