Power Play: Think like a client to catch a client

For most businesses, adding new business is oxygen: if you’re not converting new clients, you’re going backwards.

Power Players know this, and this is why they spend most of their time thinking like clients. Why? Because to catch a client you need to think like a client.

It’s amazing how few of us do this when we are pitching new business.

Power Players put themselves squarely in the shoes of their client. They take an external view of their own business and how their offer appears: is it attractive?

The only way you can catch a client is to behave exactly as they would.

The story

I’m working on a big pitch and I waste a whole week thinking like an amateur.

And then it hits me. What I should be doing is seeing the whole pitch process from my client’s point of view.

There are going to be five agencies pitching this business, and all the strategies and creative ideas are likely to be the identical.

So I start to think like a client to catch a client. I’d want my agency to be original and not to kiss my arse. I wouldn’t need gifts and sweet emails and attempts at catching up for some fake meeting, or worse, lunch.

I’d just want them to back off and do an amazing job working out how to make my business work a whole lot better.

So we did. And yep, we won.