Win the Next Two Quarters – Win the Year

For the last 20 years, one thing has been remarkably consistent in my career – September marks the start of pitch season. Just like accountants and CPAs have tax season, agency business developers and leadership teams have a 6-7 month window when the majority of their annualized opportunities land.

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While this can be a stressful time for agencies and their teams – particularly with the holidays smack in the middle – it’s important to make the most of this time frame and give your agency every advantage to win. Agencies that focus on their conversion rate and profitability, while continuing to build reputation and pipeline for the upcoming calendar year, set themselves up well to capitalize on opportunities across Q4 and Q1.

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Here are three pieces of advice I can share to help you maximize pitch season success, after leading hundreds of pitches over the years – inside agency walls as a business developer, and now outside as a growth strategist and consultant.

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Before You Say Yes:
Focus on Qualifying the Lead

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The majority of losses happen because those agencies should have never said yes to participating in the RFP or pitch to begin with. While it’s tempting to say yes to any revenue that knocks on the door, the agencies having the most success are the ones that know who they are, who they serve, and what problems they solve. And they say no when the alignment is off.

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You should only say yes to opportunities where you have a clear right-to-win. If you aren’t clear on your right-to-win criteria and haven’t developed a go-no go framework for qualifying and disqualifying opportunities, now is the time to put that in place. Establish your agency’s criteria for a “hell yes” – and as importantly, for a “hell no.” Within these boundaries, there is going to be a gray area. Which is where a quantifiable scoring rubric can help your leadership team make informed decisions about which pitches are worth the time and financial investment to pursue.

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I recommend 26 different criteria that agencies should consider within this framework, across sub-categories like client budget, bandwidth, visibility, chemistry, ICP alignment, win probability and cost to agency. In addition to determining if the pitch itself can be profitable if it results in a win, here are 5 of the 26 essential questions your leadership team should ask and discuss:

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1. Do we have bandwidth to complete this review now, without disruption to our clients?
2. Have we solved this business problem before, for another similar client?
3. Does the client have realistic goals that align to their budget, and our comp structure?
4. Does our agency have deep expertise in this industry, with the cases to back it up?
5. Do we have an understanding of why the client called the review – and why we were invited to participate?

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An essential part of establishing evaluation criteria is sticking to it. Don’t walk back scoring decisions based on personal feelings about opportunities. If your scoring tells you it’s not a good fit, accept and agree as a team that this is not the right one to pursue.

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During the RFP Submission Process:
Focus on Demonstrating Relevance

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One place many agencies go wrong before and during the pitch process is to focus on “we” (the agency) vs. “you” (the client or ICP). We talk at length about what we do, and how we do it. But not so much for whom we do it – or why.

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Flip the script this pitch season and invest time and effort going deep inside the mind of your decision maker. Whether they are a brand-side CEO or CMO, a brand or marketing director, a procurement manager, or a search consultant – what are they aspirationally seeking? What’s currently keeping them up at night with worry? What do they have at stake if they don’t hit their numbers this quarter, or this year?

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What your website, decks, case studies, proposals and pitches should do is hold up a mirror to your prospective client. They should immediately be able to see themselves and their situation in your past work, as well as your specific insights and ideas for their brief. Once they do, it will be very hard for them to feel the same way about any other agency. Not only are you holding up a mirror – you are effectively creating a magnetic force field of attraction. If you deploy a mirrors and magnets strategy in your pitches, you’ll see your win rate steadily increase. But first, you have got to stop talking about we, we, we. Start talking about YOU – your prospect’s problems, challenges, and opportunities. 

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Case studies are a great place to communicate the impact you can make for clients by holding up that mirror and letting them see their aspirations in your past successes. And, cases are a requirement of most RFPs. The trick to making your case studies more resonant is to distill them down to a single sentence. These one-sentence relevance lines should appear at the top of each case study submitted in the RFP, and next to the hero creative assets for each project that appears on your homepage. Far too many agencies implore prospects to “see the work” – all of their work – instead of telling them directly how one project or campaign is particularly relevant to their situation. 

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Make your prospects, procurement teams and search consultants' lives much easier this pitch season by taking time to write these relevance lines for your most-leveraged case studies. They will not only appreciate it – they will advance you more times than not to the finals.

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During the Pitch & Finals:
Focus on Investing in the Win

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A mistake that many agencies make is spreading themselves too thin across multiple RFPs and pitches vs. going all in and fully investing in the one or two they have the best shot to win. This is how you can end up losing 4 out of 5 pitches, or 11 of your last 12.

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When I say invest – I mean not only time investment, but also the hard cost of out-of-pocket investments that are going to give you the best chance of winning each opportunity at hand. For some agencies, this looks like an investment in research, data or tech. For others, it’s an investment in supplemental specialists – a consultant, strategist, comms planner or creative team that has deep subject matter, channel, industry or audience expertise. 

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An important discussion to have among your leadership team when you get to the finals of any pitch and are playing to win is – are our available resources capable of winning this pitch? Or, put another way – are our most capable people available to fully participate in this pitch? If the answer to either is no, give yourself permission and find the budget to hire one or more freelance ringers to help you win. This is nothing to lose pride over. The stakes are high, and you have to do everything you can to win the work – as long as it’s profitable.

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The more time you waste tapping available resources who aren’t capable of helping you win, the more frustrated you and your team will feel about the pursuit of new business. Getting on a long losing streak is one of the worst morale killers – especially at this time of year, when the nights-and-weekends sacrifices include your team’s important personal and holiday time.

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So how much should you invest? A good rule of thumb on an annualized basis is to put 5-10% of net revenue back into growing your business – for BD team salaries, pitch-specific freelance teams, external partners and consultants, PR, marketing, advertising, SEO/GEO, research, events, awards, etc. And you can do 10-15% or more, if you want or need to grow aggressively. Most agencies do not budget for their own growth. When I ask what their budget is and how it’s allocated across tactics, most look at me like I have two heads. Just like any other investment in life – you need to have a budget for your strategy, and a strategy for your budget.

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Win the Next Two Quarters – Win the Year

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The accounts you retain, expand and close in Q4 and Q1 set the tone for how the entire next year will unfold financially for your agency. So it’s critical you do everything you can to set yourself up for success over the next 6 months. Of course, you won’t win them all. In fact, you’ll lose more than you’ll win, statistically speaking.

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If your win rate is 33% or better, and your pipeline is strong – focus on developing and applying a rigorous go-no go framework. Say no to wrong-fit opportunities. Only say yes to those where you have a clear right-to-win, as well as available bandwidth and investment to win.

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If your win rate is <20%, and/or you have low lead volume – have an outside consultant audit the strength of your positioning, POV, visibility, pricing, team chemistry and casting. These may be some of the issues blocking you from winning consistently, or being invited to pitch in the first place. 

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There are three barriers that stand in the way of business growth (your own, and your clients) – awareness, alignment and urgency. You can be aware that you have a growth issue, but not aligned as a team about how to solve it, or whether it should be prioritized as the next investment. And you can be aligned on the importance of investing in growth, but not feel a sense of urgency about solving the issue, NOW. 

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Become aware. Get aligned. And take urgent action to prioritize your agency’s growth. A year from now – during next pitch season – you’ll be happy you did.

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