Consultancy pitch format

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Question: What elements should we include in our proposal to clients to position ourselves as the agency / consultancy of choice on a strategic project?

Answer: The key image we need to project is that we are the consultancy that can best be trusted to deliver the project to both its overt and hidden objectives as a “safe pair of hands” – we admire the client, we recognise that the client has done a lot of things right, we understand the problem, and we are uniquely positioned to fix it

Key points

The Consultancy Pitch tool is a means of ensuring that we include key components in our pitch presentation.

It is in the nature of consultants to want to get straight into the heart of the problem and to poke around, revelling in the fact that we can probably solve a difficult problem for a client, while trampling all over their feelings as we go. We forget that clients are often doing the equivalent of taking down their pants in public, and are feeling naked, exposed and vulnerable as a result.

So, the first thing we should be doing is to assure clients that their issue is only a tiny speck of dirt on an otherwise spotless horizon for which they are to be congratulated, and then to further assure them that we won’t be messing up everything else which is currently working fine. Most clients are knowledgeable about process thinking and realise that solving a problem in one area is likely to provoke different problems in other areas, perhaps considerably more intractable than the current focus of investigation.

So clients need to feel that we:

• are not laughing at them or considering ourselves superior to them

• will fix what needs to be fixed, without causing problems in other areas

• will make them look good and wise for having hired us, and will further their hidden agendas while we are at it

Having defined the problem effectively, and made sure that the client team agrees with the definition, we then need to start scoping potential solutions, explaining in some detail – with evidence from business theory, case studies, logic and personal experience – why the solution could potentially work.

We have to tread a fine line here between persuading clients that we are a safe pair of hands, and worrying them that we are pushing our pre-packaged solution at them, so the more objective evidence we can provide the better, while still emphasising that we have the hands-on experience they need and that it isn’t just all theory and no practice (or bad practice). Sooner or later they will ask us “Who else have you done this for?”

We must remember also that clients like choices, partly because they like to feel in charge, and partly because offering a range of options suggests that we have considered many options, not just our personal favourite which might be the wrong model to apply to this case. So we prefer to give clients a choice of three approaches, and argue each’s case as strongly as possible, even if we are quite clear which approach the client should choose.

This tool can be bought separately here.

It also makes up part of our broader “Outsider Insider Client Intimacy” training e-package which comprises an e-booklet and nine of our new product / service development tools. To find out more, please click here.

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