In his book Win at Chess! Ron Curry says, “After the opening, the challenging, complex, and often critical middlegame begins. It is characterized by the three elements: strategy, positional play, and tactics. Strategy is the formulation of plans to exert maximum offensive and defensive force. Positional play is the positioning of pieces and pawns to control important squares for optimum activity and flexibility. Tactics, the most powerful factor in chess, are direct threats to win material or checkmate.”⁴ In middle game, players develop their positions further, press for advantage, strive for material imbalances, and execute their strategies. Generally, pieces are taken or exchanged as the players attack to create a tactical advantage or defend to prevent an opponent from achieving a favorable position.
Middle games can feature subtle strategic positioning that improves the odds of a successful outcome or brilliant coups d’état that abruptly defeat the opponent (see Figure 4-4). The latter happens in business development, too, when one competitor is so persuasive that the customer awards a sole-source contract and closes down the competition. As Jeremy Silman notes, “Many games don’t get past the middlegame. A checkmate ends matters in no uncertain terms, huge material losses convince experienced players to resign the contest in disgust, and the specter of a lost endgame can also lead a player to tip his King over in a gesture of defeat.”⁵ Because of the complexities of middle game play, it demands the most of players—strategy, skill, foresight, perseverance, and finesse. That’s why it must be played like a magician.
In business development, middle game begins once you make contact with a customer and start building a relationship. It does not begin when you first become aware of an opportunity. This is an important point because your failure to know whether an opportunity exists is no prohibition to your competitors. The clock is ticking the moment an opportunity surfaces. From that point, a variety of activities become possible that we describe as opportunity pursuit, including making the pursuit (or bid/no-bid) decision, which should be revisited frequently during middle game; making sales calls; analyzing the opportunity and the customer’s needs; meeting with key people and building relationships; giving product or service demonstrations; helping customers specify their needs; and introducing your core teams. These and other middle game tactics are intended to condition customers, to position yourself in their mind as the leading supplier (if not the sole supplier), to manage their impressions, to help them find the right solutions, and to bias them in your favor by ethical means. If you are proactive enough in middle game, you can often preempt the competition and create for yourself a virtually unassailable position from which to win the contract. Middle game ends when the customer releases the RFP. From that point on, you are in endgame, and—as in chess—if you aren’t well positioned by this point, you are in serious trouble.
FIGURE 4-4. Middle game. In middle game, the battle is joined. Success depends on how well you execute strategy and tactics, gain material advantage, and reduce your opponent’s possibilities. Most games are won or lost here.