No prizes for coming second – an agency’s view of the pitch process

A few months ago, one of our new clients, Shortlist, wrote an article in New Media Age about the journey they had gone through to choose an agency to plan, design and build their website. The pitch process for clients is a tough one. No matter how in-depth you make the process, there is still an element of faith in the final selection. Similar to a job interview, where you often need to make a decision based on a couple of interviews, you can’t really be sure of knowing if you’ve made the right decision until you’ve had time to work closely with your new agency. The proof, as they say, is firmly in the pudding. It can be a tough process for agencies as well, as increasingly the pitch process is becoming more demanding and more competitive.

Pitching is an agency’s life-blood. An agency that doesn’t pitch is either incredibly lucky (to be able to generate enough business from existing accounts) or incredibly unambitious (doesn’t want to grow). Generally, pitching is a process all us agencies go through and at Bluhalo, we’ve got a pretty good success ratio. What’s is like though to be part of a pitch team and what do we do to give ourselves the best chance possible?

Firstly, an agency and its staff shouldn’t be scared of pitching. It can be a daunting task from start to finish, as you normally begin with a complete blank canvas. The most successful agencies are the ones who truly embrace the situation and see it as an opportunity to show that they are the true digital experts.

The process normally begins with a client sending a Request for Proposal (RFP). This is essentially a brief for the project/campaign and is what you respond to. Unfortunately, the quality of RFP’s vary wildly. I’ve seen some that are incredibly detailed (some far too detailed) through to some that may have well been written on the back of a fag packet. Somewhere in-between is usually best! The clarity of the business objectives is by far the most important detail a client can give us. What are they looking to achieve, what do they want the user to do, how do they gauge success? Also, what is the business problem that is driving the requirement for the work? There usually is one (gone are the days where companies commission websites just because ‘so and so’ has got one!). At the very least, this information should offer us enough insight to develop a digital strategy that will meet and exceed the client’s expectations.

Sounds simple? Well, it should be a relatively straightforward process (though not without a lot of hard work) but the pitch process sometimes gets a bad press in the agency world. Most good agencies are constantly busy and the pitch process only adds to this. Sometimes you politely decline the invitation to pitch (an act only decided upon after a strict internal qualification process) but often it’s a case of rolling up your sleeves, accepting you are going to go through a series of very long nights and getting on with it. You just hope that the client is fair and clear in their selection criteria and that they manage the agency’s expectations with regards to the stages they want you to go through. There have been stories of clients supposedly setting up false pitches in order to get free ideas/strategies from a number of different sources. Does this really happen? I’m sure it has and you can imagine how we feel about it!!

There are many books defining the techniques, approach and state of mind you need to get into to ensure you are successful more times than not. To me, everything boils down to one thing. Preparation. Corny as it sounds, if you fail to prepare, you are preparing to fail. Once you have the RFP, a meeting is needed to plan the response. The pitch process is in essence a microcosm of a project in itself. Firstly, you need to get your planners, researchers, creatives (geeks), copywriters, tecchies (freaks) and account management in one room. A far from easy proposition. You then need to assign roles and responsibilities to each. Everyone has to be very clear what is expected of them and when they need to deliver. Everyone has to be totally committed to the process and Senior Management need to give total buy-in. This is where the most important person in the agency pitching process comes into it. At Gyro, they call this person the ‘Ayatollah’, and this person (for the time at least it takes to prepare the pitch) is king. No wavering, no excuses, no ‘lets start tomorrow’….the Ayatollah is the person who ensures that the agency produces the best possible response to the client. They are the person who organises the work in progress (WIP) meetings, tissue meetings, rehearsals and checks and double-checks the brief has been met. It is the Ayatollah that often has the biggest bags under their eyes at the end of the process!

The actual pitch should be something both the client and agency look forward to. For the agency (or me at the least!), there is always a sense of nervous excitement. You have to remember that a client may well need to sit through 4 or 5 pitches in one day, so bringing your recommendations to life is key (death by PowerPoint is a very real thing). There are some great stories in the agency world about the lengths agencies have gone to in order to win pitches. One agency turned a floor in their office into a supermarket aisle when pitching to a major supermarket; another presented the Marketing Director of a High Street bank with a share certificate showing it had purchased half a million pounds worth of shares in the group. The agency had originally been asked to demonstrate how it was committed to the future of the bank (don’t get any ideas!). The list could go on. It’s all about having empathy with the client’s requirements/problems, wowing them and getting them to trust you.

Win or lose, it is essential to ask for and get back decent feedback from the client. It is incredibly disappointing when you lose a pitch, especially when the agency as a whole has put its all into it, but you must learn from the process each time. This is the sign of a truly great agency. And if you are one of those people who believe in fate, everything happens for a reason!

Michael Brandreth
Senior Account Director