My biggest freelance pitch bombed because I didn't check the client's actual industry first

I was pitching a branding package to a tech startup in Denver, and I spent hours on a sleek, modern design. The founder stopped me halfway through and said, 'We're a B2B industrial IoT company, not a consumer app.' I'd based my whole concept on their old website, which was totally wrong. How do you guys do your pre-pitch research to avoid something like that?

3 comments

3 Comments

elliot_allen653mo agoMost Upvoted

Old website" taught me to always check their LinkedIn now.

hugog4320d ago

Yeah actually I used to think all you needed was their website and a quick Google and you were good. But after reading about @richard_ramirez and that pet food thing it clicked for me. The old website thing is a trap because companies rebrand or pivot all the time and never update it. Now I check their LinkedIn company page and then cross reference that with any recent press releases or news articles. Sometimes you gotta dig through a few pages of search results to see what they're actually doing these days not what they were doing two years ago. It's annoying extra work but it beats getting cut off mid pitch like that.

richard_ramirez3mo ago

My last pitch failed because I thought a pet food company sold actual dog food, not software.