What’s your definition of a successful year when it comes to winning new business for your promotional products company? A 60% win rate? Higher? Maybe lower?

Over the years, I’ve been stunned at the answers I get from the hundreds of professional services firms I’ve spoken with. Many are delighted with win rates in the neighborhood of 30% or even 20%. And that’s just for firms that measure win rates. A lot of firms don’t have this data, or use skewed methods that make the numbers virtually meaningless (or at least overstated).

Being satisfied with low win rates means that the firm is wasting time, money and human capital on too many fruitless pursuits, many of which they probably had no business pursuing given that they really had terrible odds of winning. And in these days of The Great Resignation, when experienced professionals are leaving jobs in record numbers, this practice of chasing a lot and winning a little only makes their departures more likely.

My business exists to help our clients win more of their high-stakes pursuits at higher profit margins. That means we have to first understand why they aren’t winning more often. Issues can exist anywhere in the business development journey. We can pinpoint them with great accuracy. And the one weakness that surfaces most often is this: They pursue too much. They have a business development strategy built to get them as many inbound RFQs or RFPs as possible. And they respond to nearly all of them. Maybe they will end up with a satisfactory number of new projects. Maybe their topline revenue growth meets objectives. But at what cost?

Another thing promotional products business should consider about this “pitch everything” strategy: Inevitably, it means that each pursuit receives less attention and less effort than it should. More boilerplate, same-old-same-old communications and proposals that don’t reflect what really matters to decision-makers at the end-buyer companies. To us, that means they’ve probably been losing some opportunities they really could have won if they had done a better job and had approached those opportunities with more intention.

The solution to this is what we call—to borrow a term from Star Trek—The Prime Directive.

Pitch Less. Win More.

Firms that practice Pitch Less-Win More not only have higher win rates, they win more opportunities. And those wins can mean more to them in revenue and reputation. Here’s one real-life example from dozens that our large services clients have reported:

The Old Way:
• Respond to 20 RFPs
• Win four times at average revenue of $500K per win.
• Win rate: 20%. Revenue won: $2 million.

Pitch Less-Win More
• Respond to 14 RFPs
• Win six times at average revenue of $550K per win.
• Win rate: 43%. Revenue won: $3.3 million.

Going from 20 pursuits to 14 wasn’t arbitrary. And going from four wins to six, and from $2 million in revenue to over $3 million wasn’t just luck. Here’s what this firm did:

1. They established rigid qualifying criteria that gave them confidence that any pursuit they engaged in had a high probability of success, and the ones they said no to were low probability.
2. Those qualifying criteria included thresholds for revenue and profit. That meant that the ones they pursued had greater revenue value the ones they dropped.
3. They changed their pursuit strategies and tactics. With fewer pursuits to manage, they devoted more manpower, money and energy to each. They learned more about decision-makers and did a better job of aligning their expertise with real (not RFP-based) decision-maker criteria.
4. Their proposals and presentations were better prepared, more creative, more innovative and much more bespoke to each opportunity.
5. And they had more time to rehearse.

There’s another advantage to the Pitch Less-Win More strategy. It’s this: With less time being burned in fruitless pursuits, you can spend more time being proactive. Building relationships with the prospects you really want to work with before they issue an RFQ/RFP. You now have more opportunities to gain new business without going through the RFP process. Or, at worst, if there is an RFP, you’ll be the favorite.

And in today’s business environment of The Great Resignation, there’s another critical reason to consider Pitch Less-Win More. The shift in business development activities—and the ensuing higher win rate—can provide more job satisfaction and perhaps reduce the motivation for some of your people to leave. Minimally, the Prime Directive gives you the chance to use your diminished resources more effectively.

Bob Wiesner is managing partner, Americas of The Artemis Partnership, a global consultancy focused on helping its clients improve the results of their business development efforts. Wiesner has been working in this area for over 25 years. He’s the author of Winning Is Better: The Journey to New Business Success.