Pitching for New Business

一个罢工，你出去了！

How to cope with Tenders, Beauty Parades and Pitching for New Work

Getting New Work

当谈到让自己在潜在的新客户面前并“抵挡你的东西”时，你真的没有第二次机会做一个良好的第一印象。这是一次罢工，你出局了，不是三个。

Which means you absolutely have to be brilliant first time around if you want to have any chance of creating a good working relationship with your potential clients.

良好的工作关系

Ah. The 'relationship' word.

We'll tell you this right now, most people, when they make tender presentations, partake in beauty parades or pitch for new work, rarely take the relationship side into account. They see their job as presenting the work of their own firm in as professional a manner as possible, making sure the facts are accurate, the material is polished, the PowerPoint slides are up to date and their technical expertise at the ready.

所有这一切都非常重要。但据我们所知，人们肯定是人们要注意的最重要的事情。我们知道这是一个陈词滥调，但最终是'你买'，而不是你的PowerPoint的光滑。我们甚至可以进一步走一些步骤：您隐藏您的技术，事实，数字和统计数据越多，您的机会越少。

Now, we can hear you already:

客户希望看到这一切。
Our rivals will come along with great presentations, so we have to as well.
我们一直都是这样做的。
My company's doing just fine, why change it now?
如果我真的诚实，没有PowerPoint我迷路了。
我们还如何向他们展示我们的曲目记录？

Rely on Yourself

We're not arguing with any of that; we're still saying, however, that the more you rely on anything other than you, the smaller the odds get of converting meetings into business.

We'll ask you this question: how high is your conversion rate? 80%? 75%? 60%? 50%? 40%? Lower than that? Then you aren't really even in the game, we have to say. You're probably relying on a couple of huge clients who give you work year after year, which is incredibly risky.

We know. In the early days of Impact Factory, we relied on one big client, and when they went we had to scrabble mighty fast to get ourselves some new clients. A mistake we've never made again!

总之，回到转换率。我们有很多客户来找我们，要求帮助他们进行“音高转换”，因为尽管他们知道50%，60%，甚至70%的音高曾经很好，但现在已经不够好了。

人际交往技巧

bob综合app影响工厂不是一个大型企业;我们没有分支到处都是分支机构，以便如果业务的一点有点弱，另一个人可以推动它一段时间。我们也没有完全不同的“产品”库存，所以如果一个人失去了市场份额，我们就可以从另一个人那里“借用”。

What we have is what we do exceptionally well: help people deal more effectively with interpersonal skills. So our pitch conversion needs to be high. And it is. In terms of face-to-face meetings, we convert 90% of them into work for the company.

We make no bones about the fact that in this area, we are very good at what we do.

Be Better

You too can be even better than you already are.

你必须回到'关系'的词。从潜在客户与您联系的那一刻起，您需要开始建立关系with them: your eye needs to be on who they are, not just on the work they potentially might give you.

This is about listening to more than just what they are saying. At Impact Factory, we find, time after time, that what the client initially thinks they want won't necessarily be what they need, or indeed, what they really want.

在我们进入一些可以帮助您的投球的事情之前，让我们看看我们注意到的一些事情。

Beauty Parade

Some people are spectacularly good at walking into a client meeting and wowing their audience, seemingly effortlessly. This document isn't for them. We're talking to the people who are usually uncomfortable with the whole beauty parade process.

原因有很多，但对我们来说，最常见的是，那些在完成成功投标过程中以技术专长受聘的人，现在也必须制造他们。哎呀！

“我没有为此注册。”

“这不是我被录用的原因！”

“我不是销售人员。”

感觉有信心

你看，当人们在技术上很出色时，他们会对自己的技能充满信心——这就是他们受雇的目的，他们了解自己工作的参数。后来，公司内部的情况发生了变化，现在这些“成就感”的人被期望承担更多的责任，为公司出面，而以前他们真正满足于做“幕后男孩（和女孩）”。

Or, if they did go out onpitches, they went with one of those naturals who could do all the client razzmatazz and then turn to their colleague to introduce the technical know-how and expertise.

所以在这里，您拥有所有这些有能力的人，过去，谁被鼓掌 - 而奖励 - 因为他们的专业知识，现在放在感觉非常不舒服的位置并因此桌面。他们的信心将被侵蚀;他们可能会感到怨恨，并且有点难以完成，因为这一新角色已经强加于它们。

Years of Experience

Think about it. Here you have a group of people with great track-records; they have years of experience; they do what's asked of them in a professional and timely manner. Their work gets good results and they may even be one of the leading edge creative thinkers in the business.

然后他们为所有人提供了这项责任;为了参与招标过程的各个方面。他们再也不能对客户认为他们想要的事情做出反应;他们必须了解客户甚至提出问题的背景。

They have to be able to gently challenge, suggest, persuade, influence - soft skills these people may not have needed to utilise when they've dealt with client pitches in the past.

Under Pressure

无论多么优秀的人的核心技能,competitive marketplace requires people to have additional and complementary skills they haven't been called upon to use before. We know this adds to the pressure people are under, especially in a successful company.

对于很多人来说，就好像专业的地毯已经从他们下面拉出来。

添加到此混合中是客户也是拾取的真实事实。

虽然以前，他们可能会根据声誉，过去的历史和坚实的专业知识做出选择;现在公司意识到他们需要并愿意要求，更重要。例如，如果他们有一个具有相对相似的高级技术熟练程度的公司，他们将开始寻找“X”因素：那些所说的特殊东西，“这个供应商是我们的一个。”

It's You They Buy

That 'x' factor is the 'you' in the 'It's you they buy'.

好吧，既然我们知道为新工作做宣传对很多人来说可能是未知的，当然也是不舒服的领域，那么关键的问题是：如果你发现自己处在一个没有太多路线图的潜在困难领域，你该怎么办？

You'll do what most people do; hunker down and rely on what you've always relied on: your technical expertise. Which is the very thing that makes you less effective in these situations.

Face it, you're not going to magically become a natural, but you can develop skills that will help you feel significantly more capable in this new arena.

改变视角

The biggest shift you need to make here is probably one of perspective. Tenders, beauty parades and pitches most likely look one way to you now: the client has asked for 'a, b and c' and that's what I'll give them.

Your new perspective has to include an understanding of where the client is coming from, which you, now, may have to help them articulate.

客户的观点

One of the most important skills you can develop is the ability to see a situation from your client's point of view, not just your own.Sounds logical; it's just that most people new at this pitching business simply don't do it. They want to plunge right in with solutions instead of taking the time to figure out what's going on for the other 'guys'.

这并不像你想象的那么困难。

您可以开始这样做：

真正感受和洞察公司的“动态”

创造双向的、有同情心的交流

让他们实际体验你的工作方式（而不仅仅是谈论它，或者给他们看更多的PowerPoint幻灯片）

Building Client Relationships

Here are some hints and tips that might help kick-start a new way ofbuilding client relationshipsfor you:

Identify beforehand your mosteffective communication skills, even thinking about what your colleagues and friends might say about you.

问自己在客户会议中使用的非工作中有哪些品质，您可以在客户会议中使用的社交情况。

Work out what you need to know before you go in, not just what you're going to tell them.

Never ask more than three direct questions in a row or it will start to feel like the Spanish Inquisition.

尽可能多地使用open questions as you can fit in.

把你正在做的事情想象成是在和客户“搭讪”。

给他们回答问题的理由；如果他们知道你问的原因，这会有帮助。

向他们提出建议，并提供同意或端庄的机会。

用停顿和沉默轻轻地推动他们说话。

You can check out where they are coming from without actually asking.

For instance, suggest that

"Some of our other clients are looking for such and such from us because..."

This is soft probing and is likely to create some response or reaction in all but the most poker-faced clients.

通过询问真正的软质疑，查看您的理解和假设，例如：

So what you're saying is...
I'm assuming that...
Does this mean that...
当你说…，你的意思是。。。
Would it be true to say...
我感觉到。。。
Perhaps what you're looking for is...

自我表露

试着记住包括一些自披露的东西，他们的名字（没有听起来像双玻璃销售人员！），赞美他们在适当的时候已经解决了他们的东西，包括他们的行话。

我们正在寻找的是提高客户对您的信心的方法：不仅仅是你知道产品，而且你来自一个真正的问题，对自己的问题和复杂性是什么。

When you understand a clients' needs - really understand them - then making suggestions, offering ideas and positioning 'products' becomes part of that relationship.

Use a combination of these techniques to discover things about the other person, and they about you. Beauty parades and tender presentations are a great way to shine and you can actually start to enjoy the fact that there is more to you than just your professional expertise.

你的“x”因素发展得越多，你就越有可能与潜在客户建立微妙而牢固的联系。