That’s the second beauty parade of 2025 all done
Despite your writer (Shaun) having a face made for radio, I attended my second beauty parade of 2025 yesterday.
This is where a buying business, large or small, organises for prospective accounting (or other professional) firms to come in separately one by one to present their services against a tender description provided by the buyer.
It’s called because it’s like a beauty pageant where contestants compete to show themselves in the best light for selection, and often accompanied by fixed presentations about world peace (world accounting?).
I am quite a fan of them myself and have organised several of them for clients as part of the Request For Proposal (RFP) tender process that I designed for them to acquire new accounting and operational software.
As a buyer, you always quickly learn a lot more about the range of products and services on offer, the differences between the providers, and what could be the next hot and cutting-edge thing based on what they heavily signal to you (whether you agree with them that it’s going to revolutionise your business life is another matter of course).
Flipping it on its head as the ‘seller’, I also find it an enjoyable learning experience each time. It’s rewarding to engage in meaningful conversations with the client panel. From their questions, you can quickly gauge what challenges they are finding as a business that they would like you to solve and what is important to them and not.
That is then a good validation of your own offering that your experience, specialised skills and knowledge, approachability and innovative approach to problem-solving in pursuit of their success is hitting the spot (or not).
It’s a nice way of showing not just your technical prowess but also practising and honing your message.
Every time I go into one, I tell myself that I am not going to get over-excited about IT techy geeky stuff and give far too much irrelevant and potentially confusing detail. One day, I will actually listen to my pre-self and not do that 🙃
In a nutshell, the ‘beauty parades’ were not just about winning new clients; they were a celebration of excellence in our industry and opportunities to meet new people and raise our game. No matter what the final outcome (you can never win them all!) I am always grateful for the experience and come away enriched with new anecdotal and pure knowledge.
What do you think of business beauty parades? Have you held them, and they have worked for you? How many have you attended, and were you satisfied with the process?