One of the first projects carried out by Cox Consulting was a series of face-to-face interview with law firm clients who had recently conducted beauty parades to pick a firm either as main adviser or for a particular project. It was a multi-client study which drew out overall conclusions on success and failure factors in beauty parades and gave individual feedback to subscribing firms on a confidential basis.
The executive summary from this report is regularly rediscovered by new marketing people joining the law firms that originally subscribed. They say that the conclusions are still of value for their colleagues preparing beauty parades, although the original interviews were carried out in 1995 and 1996.
The executive summary, which has no individual firm-related material, is therefore being made available to firms that did not subscribe. Although focusing on the legal sector, the conclusions also apply to accountancy firms, corporate financial advisers and so on, where personal pitches are required.
The introduction to the 14 page report is reproduced below, followed by the contents list. The subscription fee is GBP 950 (plus VAT in the UK). This includes ten copies of the report and permission to make unlimited copies for internal staff use and/or post it on the firm's intranet.
Cox Consulting continues to conduct follow-up interviews for firms after major beauty parades on an individual and confidential basis.
This is the final report of the research study Success Factors in 'Beauty Parades'. It is based on seventeen interviews with clients who selected law firms in open competitions, in most cases including personal presentations.
There is, of course, no one 'correct' model for handling proposals and presentations. Different clients give different priorities to different issues. Success partly depends on developing the sensitivity to understand clients' individual preferences. In some cases there will be a cultural mismatch which simply needs to be accepted - a firm cannot adapt, chameleon-like, to suit every potential client. But large firms do have an extensive 'palette' of individuals they can combine in different ways to achieve certain styles. This report aims to illustrate the variety of expectations, criteria and responses which different clients applied, while drawing out the constant conclusions which can be made about approaches likely to improve or reduce success rates.
| A. | CONCLUSIONS ON SUCCESS FACTORS IN BEAUTY PARADES | 3 |
| A1. | Introduction | 3 |
| A2. | Behaviour in period before presentation | 3 |
| A3. | Pre-presentation briefings | 4 |
| A4. | Written proposals | 5 |
| A5. | Assessment of people and relationships in presentations
– the importance of teams | 6 |
| A6. | Construction of successful teams | 7 |
| A7. | Diplomacy and handling existing contacts | 9 |
| A8. | Structure of presentation | 9 |
| A9. | Demonstrating expertise | 10 |
| A10. | Trade off between experience and partnership | 10 |
| A11. | Audio-visual aids | 10 |
| A12. | Debrief | 11 |
| A13. | Views on beauty parades | 11 |
| A14. | The one guaranteed method to increase a firm's hit rate | 12 |
| B. | METHODOLOGY | 13 |
| C. | SUMMARY OF SUCCESS FACTORS AND FAILURE FACTORS | 14 |