8 more questions to answer to understand your prospect
It has been said by Arie de Geus, business change expert, that ‘your only sustainable competitive advantage in today’s marketplace is your ability to learn faster than your competitors’. Following on from the last two posts, below are more questions to help you learn about and understand your prospect so you can pitch them better than your competitors.
1. What will best win-over the prospect (facts, numbers, examples, analogies)? 2. How many people should be involved in the live presentation? 3. Who should open the presentation and who should close it? 4. If you are in a queue of organisations pitching for the business, can you choose your position in the queue? (go for last position, or if you can’t get that go for the first position). 5. How does your position in the queue affect what you will present? 6. What do you want the prospect to absolutely believe about you at the end of the presentation? 7 Having clearly and simply answered question number (6), how will you convincingly demonstrate that you are those things? (ie. what you want them to believe about you/your organisation).
8. If in the end, you were successful and did win the pitch/business, what would be a one-two sentence reason the key decision maker would give for why you won? (This is one of the most important questions.) Spend time thinking about this question. Once you have clear insight on that reason, use it as a guiding force throughout the pitch process).
The ‘how to apply‘ for this post: Before an upcoming meeting/presentation come up with one thing you want the person(s) to absolutely believe about you by the end of the meeting (eg. that you have thought deeply about them, their needs and how to help them) and then demonstrate that thing in the meeting.
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Nothing but the best for an abundant 2011.