“Vision trumps all other senses.” – John Medina, Ph.D, Brain Rules, (Pear Press, Seattle, 2008.) Within your brain’s occipital lobe (put your hand on the back of your head) is your visual cortex—the place where your mind makes sense of what your eyes take in. Brain scientists such as John Medina call it “the...
1. Run a PowerPoint or Keynote presentation in front of clients for the first time on a particular laptop computer. 2. Misspell any name—product, client, or company. 3. Take a phone call from another client. 4. Leave your cell phone’s ringer on. 5. Check email, Tweet, Facebook, IM, or do anything else that involves...
Dear PitchSmarter: Whenever our team presents to clients, we always use the first person plural pronoun (“we”). We do this whether to describe recommendations for the client, as in, “We need to build our market share”, or to make commitments, eg, “We’ll get a pricing proposal to you by Thursday.” Is it just me,...
Earlier this year, five agencies pitched a pharmaceutical account over the course of two days. By the end of the second day, one of the agencies got the call: “Congratulations—we’ve assigned you the account.” The reason: according to my source, of all the agencies that pitched, it was the only one that had included...
When you make the CEO look good, you end up looking pretty good yourself. That doesn’t mean it’s easy. Everybody who’s worked on more than a few pitches or at multiple agencies has his or her favorite CEO horror story to tell. Mine happened quite a few years ago. The pitch was in the...
Dear PitchSmarter: We have a “friend of the business” who is helping generate new business leads for us. She has her own non-advertising company, but has helped sell us to prospective clients. She even help set up our initial meet & greet. We want to give her compensation for this but are having a...
