Dating has come a long way since Jane Austen’s time. In Regency England, hopeful mamas shared information, reviewed the available prospects for their daughters and carefully screened out the misfits, paupers and gold diggers. They had a careful shortlist before the girl even put a name on her dance card.
These days it’s all gone online. It’s very transactional. You check out the picture and swipe right or left with little information about your date. Volume appears to be the game, with the hope of finding the right needle in the haystack eventually.
It feels like non-profits are taking a modern dating approach to prospecting for corporate partners. The traditional pitch deck is the tool of choice, and it’s becoming the biggest hurdle to success.
Why?
It’s all about you
Are you sending a glossy pitch deck as a cold approach or before your first meeting? Stop it right now. Elizabeth Bennet didn’t rock up to the Netherfield Ball with a CV, a list of accomplishments and her expectations for annual income.
If you’re including an outline of your partnership tiers and pricing, please stop that too. Mr Darcy wouldn’t be impressed by your demands for half his income for the privilege of being seen with you on his arm.
We know you’ve got a wonderful cause and a burning platform. Have you outlined how it’s relevant to your corporate prospects? Probably not, because you’ve spent the entire document talking about yourself. The tiers are a shallow attempt to guess which benefits might interest them. In reality, they’re just a list of different sums they can give to you.
Much better to introduce yourself with a credentials document that inspires and excites them. You can include your juicy snippets about your cause and your organisation, but it also needs case studies of what you’ve achieved with other partners and hints at the type of things you could do together. And it has no prices on it.
You don’t know anything about them
If you’re using a pre-made pitch deck as an approach, you don’t know anything about them beyond your desktop research. Even worse, you could be trying to send a proposal before you’ve even met them.
We’ve all received the mass email template in our spam folder. You know the one. It’s ‘dear insert name’ and then a list of their services and pricing. It always goes straight to the delete file. Why? Because it doesn’t address anything that’s valuable to me and it obviously looks like it’s being sent to a hundred other people.
Use a short, punchy approach like the SPEAR email template we outline in our Partnerships Reimagined book to get that first meeting. Then have a deep discovery session with your prospect to uncover their pain points and ambitions. You will uncover what’s really important to them and it may be nothing to do with what you’ve put in your partnership tiers. Don’t believe me? Here’s what our corporate contacts tell us:
“I don’t have a secret bank full of gold coins to dish out. Think and plan for a medium and long-term relationship.
Having an approach that shows you have taken the time to understand where we’re currently at and where you think you can add something to our current offer, jumps you quite far down the line versus the ‘stock standard’ approaches.” BUPA
“Don’t just send us a proposal without speaking to us. Get to know us a little bit more and find out where we’re heading, who we are and what our focus areas are” CSL
If someone is trying to sell you something new for the first time, what would you rather experience? A cold approach with pre-made offerings or a warm conversation that shows they’re interested in your needs. Mr Darcy’s first proposal received a blunt refusal; he told Lizzie what a favour he was doing for her by proposing. After a resounding earbashing he didn’t dare try again until he had really got to know her and warmed up the relationship.
You’re making it easy to say no
Nurturing new prospects takes time. A pitch deck with pricing tiers and assumed benefits is trying to make an introduction, warm then up and expect a sale all in one. You’re more like Mr Collins making his ill-fated proposition on the first meeting.
Never try to sell something at the first interaction. Nor even the second or third, usually. As the saying goes, when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me. By assuming you know what they want and putting out a random price, it’s too easy for a corporate to dismiss it immediately. Typically, there will be a bunch of ‘benefits’ they’re not interested in. For those who only want your logo and some easy marketing, they’re likely to grab the lowest price and ruin your life for the next twelve months with their constant demands.
Would you rather have a long-term relationship with a happy-ever-after ending? Try the Jane Austen approach. Ditch the pitch deck and the opportunity for a corporate to swipe left. Take the time to do the discovery first and shape your final proposal to their needs and ambitions. For a corporate in possession of a fortune is not in want for a partner. They can afford to wait for the perfect fit.