Pitch Side Stories - The Cab Ride

Martin Tanner, 13th August 2025

The cab ride back to the station. Everyone's quietly replaying the pitch in their heads. Someone's nursing a lukewarm coffee. And then someone says it: "So… did we win it?" Cue the post-mortem.

“They nodded a lot, but didn't ask anything.”
“We lost them somewhere around slide 11 - probably the one with all the arrows.”
“We should've led with the results, not the org chart.”
“Did anyone else see the FD's face when we mentioned implementation fees?”

And the subject matter experts (who were roped in for their deep knowledge and promised it'd only be ‘a couple of slides’) are now wondering if they accidentally pitched a different product entirely.

It's funny how quickly we think we know. Sometimes we're right. Sometimes we're wildly optimistic.

But almost always, we realise something:

We weren't quite aligned.
The deck didn't flex.
We answered questions they didn't ask - and missed the ones they were actually thinking.

So here's one for the sales teams and those who are frequently part of the pitch team:

How often do you call it right in the cab?
And what's your giveaway?

I would be delighted to hear your thoughts - I'm keen to hear the tells, the triumphs, and the tragic misreads.