Barry Hand

Being respon­si­ble for mar­ket­ing spend means I get my fair share of pitches from prospec­tive sup­pli­ers, agen­cies and freelancers.

Most pitches don’t make it too far though. Out of all the com­pa­nies I’ve worked with — one thing holds true. I’ve always bought into the per­son first — hav­ing a good rela­tion­ship and a con­nec­tion with that per­son makes it much eas­ier from my per­spec­tive to buy into the service.

So how do you pitch the marketeer?

1. Research: Learn more about what we do — Google, social media, press releases — who’s talk­ing about us and why. Find out what we sell, how we sell it and who we sell to — no point offer­ing phone book list­ings to a web only company!
2. Approach method?: Every­one is dif­fer­ent, but the pub­licly avail­able infor­ma­tion is usu­ally best. My work email and direct line are eas­ily Googled — use them. An intro­duc­tion via an exist­ing rela­tion­ship also works well — but don’t let us down!
3. The Intro: So you’ve got a con­tact method, make it count — first impres­sions and all that — intro­duce your­self — Who are you, what you’re about and what the main strength of the ser­vice is. Don’t ram­ble on, I’ll cut you off — also don’t try and race to the fin­ish line for that fol­low up meeting/call. Tell me some­thing use­ful, show off that research you’ve done ear­lier. Make it mem­o­rable — I’ve already had five other providers this morn­ing who all saw that recent activ­ity we’ve done with your com­peti­tor. The days of take it or leave it are gone, romance me a lit­tle — offer me the chance to buy into you and what you’re offering
4. First Pitch: Keep it short — what’s the ben­e­fits?, would you buy what you’re sell­ing? Is this some­thing I need to see visu­ally? Is it actu­ally worth­while meet­ing up? Chances are I’ve just asked you to back up what you’re say­ing — I want to see some infor­ma­tion, stats, case stud­ies, sam­ples. Fol­low up the con­tact with a brief email on what we talked about, and the infor­ma­tion I asked for. Don’t BS me with how well it worked for other clients — and what great expo­sure they got. I want hard met­rics I can use — CPA deals if we’re talk­ing dig­i­tal and a hell of a lot of con­vinc­ing if we’re not
5. The Meetup: So we’ve got this far and have setup a meet­ing. If you’re going to present some­thing to me — make it short and sweet, and let me know before­hand what you’ve got. Sum­marise it before we set the meet­ing so I can put aside the time, have my ques­tions ready and make sure you’re bring­ing the right info. No need to kill me with pow­er­point, what­ever you’re try­ing to say, get it across in the first 5 slides or bet­ter still don’t bring any slides. Don’t hit me with some mas­sive ‘rate card’ price at the end, If what you’re propos­ing is good — we’ll talk money later, not now. But do know ball­park fig­ures for what you’re offer­ing, and make it a trial or intro deal — I’m not com­mit­ting to any­thing with­out run­ning a test campaign

Any­one who con­tacts me will always find out pretty quickly if I’m inter­ested or not, often with some feed­back. Take it on board and not to heart, what might be a great pro­posal just might not be the right time. Bud­gets and activ­ity get planned in advance, so there’s always a oppor­tu­nity to dis­cuss things again. If you are mem­o­rable, I’ll always have you in the back of my mind if the chance comes round again.

And for heav­ens sake, don’t do these

1. Cold Call King: Ring­ing the recep­tion or gen­eral phone num­ber with your shake down charm to get the con­tact details, then ring back two min­utes later ask­ing for them — oh clever. This pisses me off because you’ve pissed a col­league of mine off
2. Over My Head: So you were talk­ing to my boss and started pitch­ing them with the great ser­vice which would make us all kings, of course they think it’s a great idea — that’s why they’re the pointy haired one not doing my job. If you wanted to ask me out, don’t beat around the bush — con­tact me directly
3. Spam can­non: Per­mis­sion email, the clue is in the name. “I’ll keep you on the list anyway” — Please don’t, unless I ask — and the list is just your scatter-gun attempt at drum­ming up busi­ness. I can’t get off the bloody list with­out email­ing you ask­ing any­way, even then it mag­i­cally reap­pears for next weeks episode. If you’ve got some­thing inter­est­ing, and tai­lored for me — Get in touch. I don’t want some­one elses pro­posal or generic rate card weekly spam email
4. Voip Shoite: It’s great your com­pany is sav­ing 0.02% by rout­ing all calls through Soma­lia — but if I can’t hear what you’re say­ing, or the phone sounds like you’re hooked up to some weird elec­tric throb machine  — It’s makes the first time you call, prob­a­bly your last. Keep the com­mu­ni­ca­tion method clear
5. Online Stalk­ing: If we’ve not done busi­ness — don’t add me on LinkedIn, If we don’t know each other socially — don’t add me on Face­book. It’s all going to end in disappointment

These are just a cou­ple of point­ers, if the ser­vice and the per­son sell­ing is right — we’ll always do busi­ness. It’s a game, we both know that, but there are some basic rules and eti­quette which make it a lot eas­ier.