New Business Pitches: 9 Common Mistakes

Avoid these 9 common mistakes
most people make when pitching a new client or pitching new business:

1. You don’t
   prepare and send an agenda for the meeting ahead of time. Instead, you
   just show up.
2. You assume
   or presume that you already know just about everything there is to know
   about the potential client.
3. You spend
   less than one hour preparing for the pitch/meeting.
4. You prepare
   a lengthy slide deck with lots of words and text on most slides.
5. When
   presenting in person, you tend to look directly at the screen and read the
   content of your slides out to the audience verbatim. 
6. When presenting on
   video, you do not look directly at the camera.
7. You
   fill all the available time by TALKING (mostly about your firm and yourself) and often run over time.
8. You do
   not anticipate Q&A ahead of time, nor do you plan to ask questions or
   ask your audience for questions.
9. Your follow-up is not pre-planned, well thought out, or scheduled appropriately.