New Business Pitches: 9 Common Mistakes

Avoid these 9 common mistakes most people make when pitching a new client or pitching new business:

1. You don’t prepare and send an agenda for the meeting ahead of time. Instead, you just show up.
2. You assume or presume that you already know just about everything there is to know about the potential client.
3. You spend less than one hour preparing for the pitch/meeting.
4. You prepare a lengthy slide deck with lots of words and text on most slides.
5. When presenting in person, you tend to look directly at the screen and read the content of your slides out to the audience verbatim. 
6. When presenting on video, you do not look directly at the camera.
7. You fill all the available time by TALKING (mostly about your firm and yourself) and often run over time.
8. You do not anticipate Q&A ahead of time, nor do you plan to ask questions or ask your audience for questions.
9. Your follow-up is not pre-planned, well thought out, or scheduled appropriately.

To avoid making these common mistakes, check out the 10 key tips on the attached video.

For more information, email Julie Savarino, julie@busdevinc.com.