In advertising, design and the other creative professions, it’s common to hear people talk about a “credentials meeting.”

The credentials meeting typically precedes a pitch. Indeed, it often determines whether the agency gets invited to pitch its idea (for free) at all—in the hopes of eventually getting hired (and paid).

The agency’s objective in the credentials meeting is to impress upon the client how amazing—and amazingly suited to the client’s challenge—they are.

The meeting is typified by enthusiastic people at the head of the room presenting dozens of slides to poker-faced, cross-armed clients.   

Other professions have their own version of this meeting, some only slightly less supplicant in nature.

Conversations Instead of Presentations

In the Win Without Pitching model for selling expertise there is no credentials meeting. There are only The Four Conversations.

Each conversation has its own objective, and a framework for navigating to that objective. None of these conversations resembles the presentation that is a credentials meeting.

Let’s look at what should happen instead of a credentials meeting.

You Vet the Client in The Qualifying Conversation

The second conversation in the Four Conversations model is called The Qualifying Conversation. It is the vetting conversation where the parties determine whether there is a fit between the seller’s expertise and the buyer’s need suitable enough to start investing resources in a relationship that has a good chance of culminating in a sale/purchase.

The tone of The Qualifying Conversation should be one of discernment. You are determining if this is a good fit for you.

While there is discernment in the credentials meeting, it’s the client doing all the discerning.

Your Doctor’s Credentials Meeting?

Let’s contrast the tone of a credentials meeting with initial discussions with more vaunted professionals, like a lawyer or a doctor.

Does your doctor start the first meeting with reasons why you should work with them instead of other doctors?

Are you required to sit through a presentation on everything they know about your health based on what they found online?

Do they exclaim to you in an effusive tone that they’ve long been an admirer of your body and are therefore really passionate about your well-being? 

If they did any of this, what would your reaction be?

In a word, your doctor’s tone is “clinical.” It might be warm, it might be cold but it’s professional and pragmatic. They are trying to determine a fit. They have questions they need answered and they ask those questions directly, unapologetically.

The Client Vets You in The Probative Conversation

The Probative Conversation is the first of The Four Conversations. It precedes The Qualifying Conversation.

Your objective in The Probative Conversation is to move, in the mind of the client, from undifferentiated, powerless vendor to novel and desirable expert. You  move from a position of weakness to a position of strength.

The Probative Conversation is the most different of The Four Conversations because it happens without you present. It’s a “conversation” that happens over time, through your agents of reputation building (thought leadership and referrers, typically) that drive inbound inquiries to you with you already having been largely vetted by the client.

Most of the information you would share in a credentials meeting the client has already learned about you, in The Probative Conversation, before they reached out to you.

The Probative Conversation Doesn’t Always Happen

Even when The Probative Conversation has taken place, the client will still have some residual qualifying questions they’ll need to pose to you. And sometimes, regardless of your best efforts, the change in power dynamics you seek in The Probative Conversation won’t have happened and the client will vet you in The Qualifying Conversation as clinically and vigorously as you vet them.

That’s fine. You let them do their due diligence just as you would have them let you do yours.

After you’re done with your questions, let the client ask theirs. (Feel free to let them go first if they insist.)

Then respond with the appropriate answers.

In a conversation. Not a presentation.

It’s a Qualifying Conversation, not a credentials meeting.

There is no credentials meeting.

-Blair