#ideaselling

Last month I wrote a blogpost with the 12 common mistakes about pitching & idea selling. I got some quality feedback on this, which I obviously love about blogging.  Now I like to take this topic into the more positive side. I took some of the companies I now work with as an example and did some thinking on them. What are they doing that I love? How did they get in? We also have had some excellent businesses coming in with a excellent pitch but where we did not end up doing business with. Also some examples of them. Prepare This is one of the most serious recommendations I have. Prepare the meeting. You can do this while reading the corporate website, and some other stuff your propably know, but try to dive deeper into the topics you are interested in.

For instance:

- Try to figure out what the social strategy is - What kind of marketingcampaigns they run - Which brands are in portfolio, and which of them have the most clear focus 

A good and thoughtfull preparation makes you look smarter in a conversation, and we won't have to waste time on much introduction. 

Working as a business developer also gets you in the frontline of every company that wants to do business with us from the perspective that we should be their customer. And believe me; there are a lot of companies, startups or temporary comittees of people pitching ideas with us. I've decided to take these conversations - wheter they were really high level or just informal coffee meetings - into a blogpost about common mistakes made here. A brief introduction to 12 most common mistakes in random order. NDA's Sure, I like to hear a bright idea, or a wildly innovative concept. But what I hate is when people think these ideas are billable. Some of these startups even ask to sign NDA's. We took the policy not too by default, cause we believe ideas are very hard to protect in an open and (very) competative business. 

We don't pay for your ideas Let's say this again; we do not pay for ideas. Especially not on ideas on operational stuff we can do ourselves. Such as; marketing, social media and other very operational things. Please, give us a prototype, or even better; a working example. Or, best; the project running for some other client who is so satisfied to write a review or recommendation about it. We don't want to hear your full story There are a lot of small companies who take an hour or so to chat with me about their product or proposition. Actually; I like these conversations, also on Skype or IM. What I hate are small businesses filling an hour of my time with a monologue of the things they did, how they came to start this business and how good they are doing it. Please, stop. Introduce yourself in less than 4 lines and then ask as much questions as you can to see wheter your product is actually needed in my company. Knowledge driven This is a knowlegde driven economy. We assume the data in your presentation are hardfacts, based on serious research. Not some N=1 sample or vague assumption. When you do vague assumptions to an MT or board you might get away with it, when you pitch this to a product manager or marketeer you won't. Don't tell me what the average spent is per user when I have more hardfacts on this. Be absolutely sure about numbers. You won't get away with this talking to experts in the field. Tailor made Obviously some products are tailor made. But too often I hear lines like; 'yeah we can do this, it is all tailor made.' Most people saying this try to prove their product is very flexible, but in general I think it's a bad idea. Custom made sounds like two things. One; the actual product misses out critical features and/or two: the product is very expensive and only suitable for one client Vague 'We have a higly adoptable, custom build frontend with some API's to extract data and integrated social media solutions which work out of the box.'' Yeah right. Get to know us Sometimes I get visitors who are very eager to make an appointement but then pitch their ideas with a total wrong concept of what we are actually doing as a business. When we are a B2C company, don't pitch me ideas for a B2B sollution. I won't be able to change strategy here. Sometimes I will forgive this, as it is hard to really see the sheer amount of brands etc. we have inhouse, but sometimes this gets me very annoyed in a bad way. Please do your homework. This usually has a correlation to the second thing I mention above; I don't want to hear your full story. Underestimation This has a lot to do with the thing mentioned above. Please, do not underestimate my company and/or the things we do. One example; people who actually think that social media is entirely new to us. Your wrong.  Exec level A lot of companies want to get in touch with the execs of our company. This is a bad idea for a couple of reasons. 1. Execs seem to make descions but they don't. While my exec points out he's complete overhead in many conversations, I take him very serious on that. 2. You won't be working with exec's. A lot of exec's will listen to your story and then decide whether and who they will send you to at a lower level. Save yourself some time and skip the usually very busy schedule of an exec. 3. I personally am not interested in your relationship with the exec (See below) and I don't want to talk about the business club you guys met.