A Win Without Pitching Manifesto

by Blair Enns

Expertise is the only valid basis for differentiating ourselves from the competition. Not personality. Not process. Not price.

A Sales Advantage → To possess a sales advantage means that when and where we choose to compete, we win more often than not.

A Price Premium → To command a price premium means that when we win, we do so not by cutting price, but while charging more.

If we do not win while charging more then it is likely we are attempting to run a business of ideas and advice from a position of weakness; or we are trying to compete outside of our area of focus; or we have avoided The Difficult Business Decision

altogether and have chosen, by not choosing at all, to run a business without a focus or a fundamental business strategy.

It does not come easy to us to ask for control when we have little power in the relationship.

We are optimistic, enthusiastic people, but it is time to admit that our enthusiasm has not always served us well.

We Are the Sum of Our Choices

As creative people running businesses, the difficulty of deciding what business we are in is made harder by our inclination to preserve our options, to pursue something we’ve never done before, to reserve the right to do it differently next time.

I do this far too often, it can most likely be the cause of many frustrations. I need to make the difficult business decision and focus on a particular area of my skill sets or I need to focus on creating a new path into the territory that I have been. Do I believe in what I have been trying to achieve or accomplish? Or will it lead me to just more frustration down the road?

There are greater causes by which to frame an enterprise, and there are nobler metrics by which to measure the value of effort. But we cannot escape the fact that money is both a necessity in life and the most basic scorecard of success in business. Even if it is not the validation we seek, it is the most basic of tests that we must pass: Is there a need for our efforts great enough to sustain and nurture them?

This section is very true and hits home. I had a lot of good advice early on in my career and also a-lot of bad advice. Especially in this specific area, fun or money. For me it was in the fun of discovery, amongst the other areas stated in this section. The moment of realization that money is important, came after realizing that I have been trying to only fulfill my personal expectations, and fulfill my worth to others expectations of me. Money is a very easy business marker for seeing if it is successful or not. I need to reframe my expectations into creating revenue in this area now.

The path to financial strength begins with facing The Difficult Business Decision.

Until we make a brave decision, success will elude us and we will look at the market and complain about the economy or the clients, all the while knowing that it was us.

The revolution we must fight is within. There is no enemy. We are victims only of a creative mind that makes choosing a focus more difficult for us than most. A lucrative future where our enterprise sustains us and nourishes our creativity is within our control. We must simply choose to take control, first by specializing and shifting the power back from the client toward us, and then we can begin to shape our future.

This statement is the bulk of my struggles creatively. I have tried to use my lack of focus to run my business by adding new ideas without fully fleshing out one thing. I see the possibility of using one process and fully mastering it then using that process in to other facets of the creative industry. I need to become a specialist in one area, this is the best way for me to really conquer many other areas of the industry.

We love presenting so much that we are willing to do it for free. This is the dirty little secret of our profession.

We will never be free of the pitch if we do not overcome our addiction to the presentation.

Even when we pitch and win, we lose.

Stars do not audition.

(null)

Strategy First → We will agree with the client on the strategy before any creative development begins. By including the client in our strategic development processes, we will help ensure we never find ourselves presenting creative rooted in ambiguous strategies. We will not develop, nor share with the client, creative of any kind before the challenge has been diagnosed and the strategy prescribed and agreed to.

This is another area where I struggle I get caught up with the Creative development part and not focus the attention into the strategy area.

Continuous Reference to Strategy → Immediately prior to presenting any creative, we will review the agreed upon strategy with the client. In this way we keep the discussion around the creative focused and measured against the strategy. Any time we come back to the client to share new ideas or concepts we will set the stage first by reviewing, once again, the strategy that guides us.

Powerful methodology.

The client must ultimately approve of our recommendations, and be satisfied with the outcome, but he must also let us explore along the way.

us, considering adopting policies is akin to a claustrophobic person considering entering a coal mine. One of the costs of creativity is the abhorrence of routine – the dislike of systematic ways of thinking and behaving. This characteristic of our hardwiring that contributes to our creative problem-solving abilities keeps us from establishing policies on how we work. It causes us to perpetuate the process void, that by implication, we invite the client to fill. While we dislike routine, the client – and ultimately, any consistency of success – demands it. We must, therefore, reconcile ourselves with the fact that routine will be imposed. Once we accept this we can face the question, “Would we prefer to have routine imposed on us,