How many Businesses Really want to Improve their Pitches?.. Does Yours?

Are your pitches to potential clients 100% perfect? Is there absolutely no room for improvement? Yes? In that case, sorry to bother you. Please just get on with your day.

Great, now I’m just talking to businesses that aren’t deluding themselves. If you’re still here it’s because you at least suspect that your bids, presentations and proposals don’t hit the bullseye on client expectations every time.

The question now, is what to do about it.

Coaching – we all need it, especially when we think we don’t!

Even if we’re good we need to be better. Elite sportspeople understand this. They are exceptional performers but still employ coaches to help them find marginal gains. These maximise their chances of victory and help fend off the challenges of hungry and ever-improving competitors.

The businesses that bailed out at the top of this article will be the ones that don’t grasp the need to improve. They are the ones that tell me, ‘We’ve done hundreds of pitches - so we should know what we’re doing by now.’

Really? What are you basing this self-confidence on? 

• How many of those pitches are you winning? 
• How many more could you have won? 
• How much mediocre practice have you developed over those 100s of bids that you are simply perpetuating?
• How would you know?

The idea that there is nothing to learn and nothing to improve is clearly absurd. It isn’t whether we need to improve, it’s how.

Learning for learning’s sake isn’t productive. It needs direction and focus. And this is where coaching comes in.  

Honest Feedback
Let’s be honest, we’ve all sat through the most dreadful presentations wishing the ground would swallow us up. Yet we still told the presenter “yes it was great”. We just didn’t have the heart to be honest. Maybe it was your boss and it wouldn’t have helped your career! 

A coach is always honest, and constructive.

Even if you are pretty good at something it can be very useful to have a ‘refresher’ course to get back to doing it well. We’re all inclined to forget some of the details that make for ultimate performance (cutting a few corners perhaps). 

Then, what about when we find ourselves in an environment which is not one we consider a “core” area of expertise – such as bidding or presenting?

How naive is it to assume that we can perform at the highest levels without investing in directed learning. Self-learning won’t give direct feedback, nor make carefully considered suggestions for improvements. Nor will it enable improvements to become embedded into normal behaviour.

What does coaching give you?

• Instant and objective feedback to improve performance.
• Effective communication techniques from expert coaches.
• Improvements that build on your natural communication style, and so are easier to adopt.
• Techniques that can be used in everyday business and personal life.
• Measurable improved performance.
• Higher win rates.
• Transferable skills.

’m so confident that you’ll notice a difference that I’m prepared to refund the fee if you don’t perceive a significant improvement in presentations, communication or self-confidence.

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YES, I WANT TO START IMPROVING OUR PITCHES