Learns - sales pitches

Went for a sales pitch yesterday.  Good experience - not something I got involved with in the UK.  Back home I did non-stop delivery.  It seems I'm doing non-stop sales work nowadays...

 

Learns

 

- What stage in the sales process are you?  When will the remaining stages take place?  Is now the time to be engaging and building hypotheses as well as making a presentation?

- what are the interest points?  the influencing factors? (No good talking about methodology if they trust that all big consultancies have good methods.)

- will this client be receptive to BS?  some are impressed.  others fall asleep.  if yours is the fall asleep variety, then rethink your presentation.  (concise, provocative not informative.  debate and discuss, not present.)

- If technology or implementation is involved, then do they want to know how far our scope reaches?  If we are vendor independent?

- Do they expect a local team, or an international team?  (are you presenting local experience or international experience?)

- Goal oriented presentation planning.  What are the key messages you are putting across?  What is the Effect or Impression you want to leave.  What do you want the follow-up action to be?

 

- what are the roles of your team?  who should be looking out for scope?  approach? feasibility?  budget? 

 

- generate problem statements and value propositions at qualification stage, to feed into proposal writing and presentation.

- having consolidated and up to date sales collateral really helps accelerate bid preparation