A winning pitch team
Pitches are a love/hate thing: All-consuming, bumpy and bruising, but not without pure joy on reaching the finish line.
Agency life thrives on them but, landing at the worst time as they inevitably do, they also put enormous pressure on business as usual.
Coming out of a three-month long pitch tunnel, I reflected on how I set myself up for success. I have boiled it down to six key elements which help build a positive narrative arc for the team tasked with the response:
Stop before you start. As pitch lead you need to take time to interrogate the brief. RFP documents are usually beasts. Don’t expect everyone to digest it all. Create a summary of key hygiene details - dates, the scope, response formats, the pitch process, marking criteria – and communicate these to avoid early panic.
Gather the top/most relevant brains in the agency to debate and agree on your approach. Have you responded to pitches like this before? What did you learn at the time that you can implement here? How do you want to respond to this? What do you think would set you apart? Do you want to remain in scope and/or offer a stretch solution? What motivations and concerns do you think the client will have and how will you address them?
Assemble the right skills and attitude in the pitch team. Once you’re clear on your topline response to the brief, you’ll be able to identify the people you need in the team. This should be a mix of sector experts and the right skillsets to make strategic and tactical recommendations.
When considering who to work with don’t just stop there. Are they capable of unpacking their ideas and explaining why something is of benefit and how they will approach it? Storytelling is what truly lands an idea with a client. Are they able to think laterally, adapt and evolve their ideas?
There’s no place in a pitch team for a fixed mindset. Of all the places in the world hierarchy shouldn’t exist it’s in this environment, so you need juniors who will speak up and seniors who actively value opinions.
Finally, are they accountable? When the deadline closes in, and you need a team around you to help rewrite the submission (even if it’s 5pm) are these your people?
Insight is the foundation. Insight should never be a token gesture. The timeframes for response are generally tight, and your research and insight will probably trickle through after you’ve started working on your hypotheses, but still make sure you still take the time. This is where adaptive and iterative thinking is required.
Start each pitch response with the market and sector insight that is driving your considerations. Build onto that what you can learn from competitors and adjacent players, good and bad. Take time to define and understand your target audience - their behaviours, attitudes and motivations – and state exactly who they are for the purpose of your response.
This insight will help you determine what the opportunity for the client is on which you are building your strategy.
Even if the research simply validates what you perceive to be general assumptions, you should still share your findings in your response so you can press ahead with more clarity and conviction.
If you have time, you could conduct qualitative research to test your solution with your target audience. Other reasons why taking the time to do the research is worth it: It takes the opinion out of pitch team debate and removes unconscious bias. Clients love it.
Project manage with military precision. This is not a time for assumptions. This is a time to dial up the directive energy.
As pitch lead, it is your responsibility to make sure you have all the response elements ready at the right time. Never underestimate how long it takes to filter the raw ingredients into a cohesive and client friendly narrative. Once you’ve worked backwards from that you need to share clear deadlines and expectations.
Ensure you have given everyone an individual brief of what is expected of them, how it fits into the overall response, and a deadline. Be available for all questions that arise. Going down dead ends is to be avoided at all costs.
Get a working document in play at the start so everyone can work into it and you can keep tabs on progress. (Have you got a great deck/doc designer lined up? If not, get one).
A pitch is like a funnel. You start the process with brainstorms and big thinking with everyone sharing ideas to get on the same page. Then you narrow down to the best solution that meets both the brief and the strategic opportunity highlighted through the insight.
Divvy up individual asks and come back together to share progress until you have a tight, clear strategic response. Your role here is to encourage creativity, connect the group, make decisions, and bring it all together into a strong, rational proposal.
Depending on the length of the process, schedule daily or twice weekly check ins with the core team and make sure you get time in the diary to share progress with wider stakeholders with plenty of time to respond to their feedback.
Embrace excel. This one is simple. There’s no point developing ideas that you can’t afford. Get a budget model in play early on even if it’s a bit finger in air and then finesse it ongoing.
Generally, RFPs have a set format for presenting budgets. Be clear on what that is and whether you’re going to work directly into it or use your usual template and recalibrate. Line up financial support to check over your calculations. Look at where you can present value add, incentives and other ways of convincing the client you’re a solid commercial partner.
Lead from the front. Finally, this is a note to you as pitch lead. Pitches can be fraught with tension, expectation and pressure. If you appear rattled it will affect others and ultimately the quality of your response.
Be passionate, focused, data centric and yet intuitive. What do you think the right answer is AND what do you think the client actually wants? This is a time to balance rational and emotional motivations.
Communicate. Over communicate. Get everyone aligned and keep stakeholders informed. Acknowledge good work and say thank you.
Be confident on what you’re proposing. Sometimes it is worth responding outside of the box and if you’ve done the research then you can support it.
Finally, when it comes to the pitch itself, rehearse the hell out of it. Tech rehearsal, page/animation/video click rehearsals, how you’ll introduce yourselves to demonstrate you’re a good bunch to work with rehearsals, and how you’ll bring to life all the hard graft you’ve put in. Don’t make the presentation boring at all costs. Say less, better.
Pitches. They can be tricky, but done right bring a really special kind of energy, a place for your brightest talent to shine, and each one represents an accelerated learning opportunity.
Good luck!
