Secrets to a winning pitch

Our company is known as a great sales company, where sellers who graduate from our Global Sales School are highly respected. With rapidly advancing technology, we have to re-invent ourselves on a regular basis. How much more the front liners that lead the client engagement and the brand teams who provide innovative solutions!

The sales manager plays a part with the day to day coaching of the team for each client.  But even the most seasoned seller needs to take time out think out of the box to create innovative propositions.  

Besides sharing best practice examples, we conduct a Client Experience Academy to put the sales leader through a real account scenario to work through the methodology of creative thinking. The sales leader facilitates discussion with the team to come up with a winning pitch for a pitch competition.

The sales managers have to select an account, gather the account team across the various brand experts, start developing new ideas and learning IBM’s value proposition, deepening expertise and developing the value add for the account.  We arm the team with an opportunity workbook and client provocation tool to generate a unique selling proposition that delivers value in the sales proposal.

Facilitators are assigned to account teams, to help guide the sales managers to use key coaching techniques.In compressed time, the team learns to be concise, yet thorough, to develop a precise pitch.

From a total of 25 teams, 3 finalists are selected for the final battle. The team that I facilitated was voted as the overall champion.

Here are a few tips & secrets on why our team won:

1. Know your client: Besides the account team's knowledge of the client, we often forget that there is a lot of information about the client from annual reports and industry write-ups that help develop deeper understanding of the company’s strategic and business directions.  Knowing this helps to align business and technology.

2. Tap on expertise: There are experts from team mates who have contacts and experience in other similar organizations that can provide insights to validate whether our proposal would resonate with the client, prioritize the initiatives and help quantify the impact.  We also reached out to our Chief Financial Officer to consult on financial metrics and innovative pricing models for feasibility.

3. Break and re-group: An account team is more effective if individuals are allowed to choose to develop sections in their areas of interest.  So it is important to get inputs from the entire team, know when to break up the large team into smaller groups to dive deeper into specific areas, provide clear delegations and then re-group the team again for a final run through.

4. Test & validate: We secured the help of various mentors from different parts of the organization to put our proposal to the test. We validate whether key concerns are addressed adequately and ensure that we have considered every possible angle and have the appropriate response for every stakeholder.

The above applies not just in the pitch competition but also in real life! A boardroom pitch is short but its impact is measured by how extensive the prepartion has been. We sometimes neglect to gather the team to maximize the outcome.

Congratulations & kudos to the sales leader who led the winning team, the account rep and the entire cross brand team that collaborated to deliver the winning pitch.  May you also win the real deal!