As someone who has been in public financial management for most of his career, Steve Alexander, a Managing Director with financiaL services firm PFM was able to see that customers were changing, and that he and his team needed to sell differently. Instead of responding to RFPs and bake-off interviews the same old way, talking about the firm's history, capabilities and products, Steve and his team sought to reinvent their approach. His goal, to "ditch the pitch" in favor of a more challenge-based approach leveraging CLOSE value storytelling: a sequence of Challenge, Loss, Opportunity, Solution and Evidence.