Only As Good As Your Pitch Mates
8am Thursday morning and you are stuck in the normal nasty traffic on I-5 headed to La Jolla for a 10am meeting that has been 6 months in the making. As you sit there in your deal closing suit with your account closing playlist playing on the car you are running through all those critical meeting elements in your head like:
- “Shit did I remember to tell Allen to bring those financial forecasts?”
- “OMG! Did I confirm the meeting time this morning with Angel?”
- “Is my suit coat getting wrinkled in the back seat?”
- “Do I need a breath mint?”
You know all the normal pre meeting jitters you go through, but at the next level as this is the meeting that can make your entire year.
As you pull into the parking lot a full hour early you find a spot away from anyone so you can pull out your laptop and go back through you notes for what the 400th time today? You know you are set, but want to make sure you have not missed anything.
- Presentation Deck, Check
- Handouts, Check
- Rebuttal hit list for team, Check
- Market Intelligence on competitors, Check
- Team prepared for their portions, Check
Okay time to take 15 minutes to turn up the tunes and get your mind off everything.
The 15-minute cool down is done and it is time to meet up with the team at the lobby café to go through any last minute items.
As you walk into the café you can see your team nervous, but excited. Everyone dressed just right, and all of them with their meeting packets in hand. “We got this in the bag!”
After the normal BS chit-chat you get everyone down to business and review the key points that each of them need to make sure to hit on, names and roles of everyone who is due at the meeting, and one more review of the intel you gathered before the meeting. “Okay time to go!”
As the receptionist shows you and the team into the conference room, and helps you get your mac setup on their TV you finally click into meeting mode. You are on autopilot from this point on because this is everything you prepared yourself for.
The meeting opens up and going absolutely perfect. You are working the room just like you planned, and everyone is engaged with your presentation. Then it happens. You bring up your counterpart in operations to help support you for the next portion and you fall out of the pocket. All of a sudden your pace, delivery rhythm, and everything just gets, well hard. You then realize you and your ops guy are just not in sync and the meeting is now headed down a path you did not plan for. “Holy shit my deal is going to hell in a hand basket!”
Somehow you fight through the operational portion, and get yourself back in the pocket for the remainder of the meeting, but know the damage was just done.
As you leave the client all you can think to yourself is, “what just happened?!” “Marty knows that material cold, but it was just so hard to get it out.”
Welcome to the day that every salesperson learns the best and most expensive lesson of their career. This is the day when you learn just how important your pitch partners are to your success, and why that connection must go far beyond the normal day-to-day in office relationship.
In sales your pitch partner and/or team need to become like an extension of your family. You must know one another on a very deep and emotional level so you all can read one another beyond the obvious verbal and physical cues. You need to be so in sync that while in a pitch it almost begins to feel like you are all sharing one brain, and delivering the information as such.
Many teams mistakenly believe that the only way to get to this level is through years of pitching together. That time will somehow bring everyone together. That is a truck load of BS FYI.
Building the bonds that a pitch team requires all begins at choosing the proper team that are all complimentary of one another from a skill, emotional, and positional basis. You need a team that really wants to help one another, and not simply drive their personal agenda.
So take a look at the team who is going to your pitch meetings. Are they all close? I mean really close? If you are unsure it is time to find out immediately. This is the team that ultimately makes your business a success or failure. Don’t you want to make sure you have done what you can to set them up for #successbydesign?
To Your Success & Prosperity!
If your biz would like to learn more about how BizSprints has been providing companies with unified Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service Campaigns please contact us at takeaction@bizsprints.com, or visit our website at http://bizsprints.com.