Each company has its own culture. A non sequiter, right? No. Presenting for, and initiating, new business now has peculiar challenges. Change in business is so rapid it’s disorienting the norms. How do you influence people in a market that’s turning around 180 degrees? Hard. How do you convince a company with solid earnings that they are under challenge imminently? Like TV networks any time recently. Even harder.

You absolutely need to know: what’s the level of risk taking that makes executives uncomfortable. How do people cover their backs. Or tracks.  Are there non-deciders in the company who need outsiders, agencies, consultant, other suppliers, validators, to tell them what to do Are you there to be blamed if something if goes wrong?

Is, in fact, this company  ready to do something different? Do they believe it’s necessary? Are they willing to do what it takes to make the new paradigms work properly? Call this some thoughts on a new season of business pitching.

Bottom line; customer driven markets have different characteristics to those driven by old style mass marketing.

And that means, increasingly, we all need to know what level of risk, or appetite for newness, lives within a given company before a pitch presentation. It’s important to build trust inside a business to do good work or make change. Both are necessary today.

It’s about trust and comfort. Or maybe just faith