When losing a pitch is NOT a business loss

I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason, even the stuff that at first seems to have no silver linings

Recently I went in for the biggest pitch of my entrepreneurial career so far. The phone calls had all gone really well and I was excited about the potential for this project. I did have a bit of apprehension about how much detail the client wanted to get into the video - as well as some other details in the brief - but I went all out on my proposal nevertheless.

Turns out I was up against three other big Manchester agencies for this job

When I got the call to say that they wanted me - and only me - to come in and meet them because ‘none of the other pitches excited us like yours did’ I was pretty excited to say the least. This was the first time that I’d represented myself when going into a business to meet the CEO and MD for a job of this level. I felt a little nervous, however given that all the phones conversations I’d had with my contact there had gone really well up until that point kept I my nerves at bay.

I figured it'd be best to just go in and be myself, what's the worst that could happen?

In any creative project finding a person - or people - with whom you get along with both personally and professionally is crucial in achieving the best possible outcome. I saw this visit as an exercise in exploring whether our personalities were a compatible match, something that was just as important as experience and ability in my opinion. And I believe that being myself may have been what lost me the pitch in this case. Perhaps it was the mum vibe, the informal conversation or the fact that my t-shirt wasn’t trendy enough.

Whatever it was I have no regrets in being myself in that situation and if I could go back and do it all again I wouldn’t do it any differently.

We well and truly dodged a bullet!

When I walked out of that meeting I honestly felt more nervous than I was when I walked in. I was nervous that they might ask me to work for them, nervous for how difficult that working relationship would be and nervous for how to handle that conversation. Fortunately it was mutually agreed upon that working together wouldn’t work, I offered them some advice about how they should best move forward with their project and we parted ways. I truly believe that if we had gone ahead together on this project it would have been a very difficult working relationship, with little enjoyment and lots of stress involved at both ends.

No matter how big the financial return would have been, it absolutely would not have been worth it

This is when loosing a pitch is absolutely the best thing for your business. Keep the passion alive in your craft, be yourself, enjoy what you do and find joy in working with those who value and respect you for who you really are and want to invest their time and energy into working with you. That’s where you will find true satisfaction, which is priceless.