Often the person who ends your new business bid will be someone you've never met.

It probably won't be the client contact who likes you, or even the person who invited you to pitch. It could well be someone in finance, procurement, risk or somewhere else, who's read one or two pages of your proposal and asks an awkward question.

I've spent most of my career in and around pensions, health and benefits. Firstly marketing to HR and pensions buyers inside global firms, and now helping firms win work in those same markets. The pattern is the same. Nobody in this space buys anything meaningful on their own.

A trustee board, a sponsoring employer, a scheme secretary, a third-party evaluator, procurement, and perhaps someone in finance or HR who has never heard of you. This adds up to a lot of people who all need to feel comfortable saying yes.

So your buyer liking you is only half the job. The other half is whether they can defend choosing you in a room that you're not in.

This changes what you need to produce. You need to think more about materials that your champion can use in conversations with their colleagues, and clear answers to the potentially awkward questions - before they are asked.

If your pipeline is full of opportunities that go quiet this might well be the reason.