366 How To Pitch For Business In The Worst Case Scenario

<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">Pitching for the business is quite different to selling to a client representative we may be meeting in a meeting room.  In the latter case, we have only one or sometimes two people to persuade, but in a pitch it could be department representatives from many parts of the firm.  The worst possible pitch environment is when on this occasion you have had no chance to meet the client beforehand to understand their situation, aspirations, issues and problems.  Hopefully the pitch would be after you have had a chance to consider all of their requirements and instead of just sending in a proposal, they ask you to deliver it to the key people in the firm.  There should be no reason why you cannot meet with some members of their team beforehand, but let’s assume that worst case is the scenario.</span><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang= "EN-AU"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">Even though we may not be able to meet before the pitch, we can still do research.  Often we have other clients in the same industry, so we will have some broad ideas about the current issues facing similar firms.  Even if we don’t have such clients, we may know someone working in the industry or we can find access to someone to find out more about what is going on at the moment. Additionally, we can do a literature search on media reporting on the company in question and on the industry in general.  There may be stock analysts who follow the industry, who for a fee, will provide us with their findings on what is going on.  Through LinkedIn, we might be able to connect with a senior person who has left the firm recently, who may be willing to provide some broad insights.  We shouldn’t expect to get all of the company’s dark and dirty secrets, but they may be happy to share in broad brush terms.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">ChatGPT is a bit useless as a research tool for current information.  For example, when I asked about the