If you are pitching and its you that has the inside track – great. It means your marketing is doing its job. What you have to do is use that inside knowledge to maintain a lead over the others (and get the client mentally inclined to hire you, before any actual pitch).
But if someone else has the inside track; what then?
The reflex is to just decline – and indeed that may be part of your Go/No Go checklist – but that’s not always wise.
In my experience, it’s rare for pitches to be utterly rigged, which of course would be a reason to say no (although its not unknown to have one person on the client side surreptitiously – and immorally – rooting for a friend of a friend, or – and this has happened to me – a son or daughter).
So assuming the pitch is being conducted reasonably fairly, what you don’t know is how deep the insider is with the client.
Getting on the inside track happens for a variety of reasons:
- The insider’s marketing programme has gotten the client really close (this happens less often than you might imagine);
- The client knows the insider from a previous engagement;
- The insider has been recommended by a third party;
- The client has a “pet” agency;
- The inside tracked firm is there because they are a big name in the industry, and the client is impressed by that.
And so on.
The 4th on the list could be a real problem; how important that factor is depends on the makeup of the selection panel and how much sway the pet owner has. So its not necessarily insurmountable.
And the other connections might all be relatively tenuous. The marketing effort may simply have given the insider a degree of name recognition, but failed to imprint that they and their firm are distinctive and expert.
The engagement may have happened a while ago and so the connection may be more a reflex than an enthusiastic endorsement. A recommendation is helpful, but no one is going to get hired purely on the basis of a 3rd party’s suggestion.
And the thing about big names is (a) they are often quite bad at pitching, relying on their name rather than their skill (b) whilst some of their people may well be James Bond-like in their effectiveness, even the biggest names have a fair number of Johnny English types on the payroll, and it could be the latter you are up against.
So what I suggest you do is set a couple of trip-wires to see how well the client responds to interaction with you, in the run up to the pitch.
If they decline a scoping meeting, for example, that would work agaist them, because it would show they were more interested in the theatrics of a pitch, rather than a grown-up discussion.
If you are able to come up with a series of challenges facing them that they had not thought of (and if you are expert, you should be able to do this. They are theoretically hiring you for expertise, not arms and legs on tap), that should provide the basis for a serious discussion. If they don’t engage, then that tells you they are maybe not a high-calibre client.
If you ask for – say – further information, or access to some of their people and they decline, that’s also a warning sign.
If their procurement function just stonewalls you and declines to add anything to the pitch information, and you can’t go around them (because you don’t know enough people in the client), that’s also a warning sign. But it’s worth talking to the procurement people, because they may just be over-protective against time-wasters, and if you can demonstrate (never just assert) you have expertise, they may let you in.
So, if you are faced with a pitch where you don’t know people on the client side, someone else has the inside track, they refuse to engage with you meaningfully and they decline to give you additional information, how successful do you think your pitch will be?
On the other hand, if they are receptive to a grown up discussion where you are able to demonstrate your expertise; if they willingly give you further information; if you can see they are really engaging with you (and the chemistry is good), then that’s an entirely different situation.
I suggest you need to invest some time in working out where the client is on the engaged – disengaged spectrum, and only then consider whether or not to go for it. It takes time and money, of course, so you have to think long and hard about where to invest your reources.
As always, time is short and there’s much to do, so good luck and get cracking.