Woolley Marketing: To feedback or not to feedback, what is the difference?
In his regular column for Mumbrella, Trinity P3 founder and global CEO Darren Woolley says pitch consultants like constructive criticism. But feedback increasingly appears to be a luxury, rather than the norm, when doing business.
I know for some this is hard to believe, but pitch consultants are often required to pitch for business. No, we do not have to spend hours crafting speculative creative to a wishy-washy brief. But we are often required to complete long and detailed Requests for Proposal that include things like “Please provide detailed contingency plans in the case of catastrophic systems failures”.
But no matter if we succeed or fail, we always ask for a debrief. After all, for the investment in time and intellectual property, one thing we would like is constructive criticism on how we could be better. Even when we win. But feedback increasingly appears to be a luxury, rather than the norm, when doing business.
Most recently, we received an email late on a Friday night telling us we had not been successful in a tender we had submitted. That’s fine. But it was when we asked for the opportunity to obtain feedback and advice on our submission that the response shocked us.
