Finally figured out why my client pitches were falling flat

I kept losing clients after the first call for months. My portfolio was solid, my rates were fair, but something wasn't clicking. Turns out I was talking about features instead of their actual problems. Switched my approach to spending the first 10 minutes just asking what keeps them up at night. After I made that change, I closed 3 out of 5 pitches last month. Has anyone else noticed that clients care way more about empathy than deliverables?

2 comments

2 Comments

evac728d ago

What changed when you actually asked about their biggest headaches?

thomas_roberts8d ago

Look, I've been doing this for about 8 years now and I've got maybe 30-40 clients in my network who I've tried this exact thing with. Every single time it backfires. You ask someone what their biggest headache is and they immediately think you're about to pitch them some expensive solution. Half the time they just give you some vague answer like "I don't know, keeping up with everything" which tells you nothing. The other half get super defensive and assume you're trying to sell them something. I watched my friend do this at a networking event in Austin last month and the guy literally walked away mid sentence. People don't want to be analyzed, they want to talk about shared interests or complain about the weather like normal humans.