Life’s a pitch: The secrets to running the agency selection process

In order to be bowled over in a pitch situation, industry best practices must be adhered to. Maxine-Laurie Marshall reveals what marketers should do in order to avoid being caught out

Pitch. It’s a word filled with negative connotations. It’s harsh-sounding and is often associated with agencies being told to jump while the client organisation dictates how high.

While this may seem like an archaic view of the pitching process, there are still too many pitch ‘horror stories’ to say that the process runs smoothly. Some clients are running the process inappropriately and procurement can turn agency work into a commodity.

The former is something agency Omobono recently experienced. Agency MD, Sarah Pettinger, reveals: “We were recently asked to sign an NDA before receiving a pitch brief which immediately required us to sign over IP. We declined to sign. We’re nearly always asked to sign over IP, but to be asked to do so without any context of the work, scale, budget and requirements was unreasonable. We also recently withdrew from an international pitch process when we were required to sign an incredibly onerous contract before being able to participate in the pitch, and being given little time to even get it checked from a legal point of view, and no scope to negotiate any points.”

The pitching process is tough to regulate, getting every client organisation and agency to decide on an exact process and then feed that in to departments like procurement is almost impossible. Agreeing the process would turn into something very bureaucratic, Natalie Gross, CEO of agency Amaze, says: “I think best practice as opposed to regulation is the way to go.”

Clients have the power, technically, they call the shots. If they are calling the wrong shots, not only will that impact the agencies, but it will have a negative effect on the work the client ends up putting its name to. Getting the pitching process wrong is more than something for agencies to moan about, it could be detrimental to clients, so best practice should be adhered to.

Brief and time allocation

Surprisingly, the problem with pitching doesn’t seem to lie in the idea of it. Most clients are insistent that they need pitches and many agencies accept this. Adam Smith, MD of Rawnet, says: “Pitching itself isn’t a problem. The problem arises when the prospect doesn’t give enough information or time.”

Smith has hit on two of the most common areas that cause a problem in the pitch process, the first one being information. Agencies need enough information to be able to judge if the opportunity is right for them and then to be able to put together a decent pitch. As Pettinger highlighted earlier, the reluctance to be forthcoming with a brief is a major hindrance for agencies when it comes to pitching.

The Business Marketing Collective (BMC), an organisation for B2B agencies, marketers and vendors aimed at driving the industry forward, recently published a guide to pitching. It offers clear best practice on what should be included in a brief given to agencies during a pitch. It should include campaign objectives, the budget, timescale and measurement expectations (click here for fuller details).

Helping to get the brief right is half the battle for both clients and agencies. In the past clients have admitted struggling to write a good brief, and the reality is that without one agencies waste time and resources trying to put a pitch together.

Time was the second of Smith’s points. Quite often, not enough time is allocated to hearing agency pitches. Gross highlights: “Pitches that have very large requirements and only an hour and a half pitch don’t really marry in terms of the effort, what you’ve been asked to do and what you want to get across in terms of that process.” Smith agrees, saying if a client isn’t willing to invest the time themselves then a pitch is inappropriate.

Again, it’s not just agencies who suffer as a consequence. Gross adds: “To be honest with you I don’t think it’s fair on clients. They’re not going to get the best out of that process if they take it in quite a handsoff way.” Clients will not get the caliber of agencies they’re looking for, Smith says: “No agency is going to invest real effort in to a client that isn’t prepared to take it seriously.”

agency, pitching, process, b2b, marketing

When to pitch

Even more resources are wasted on both sides when a pitch is called for the wrong reasons. While Danny Turnbull, MD at Gyro, acknowledges some clients unknowingly abuse the pitch process, below are some of the most common scenarios in which agencies are inappropriately asked to pitch.

Pitching for short-term projects is questionable and often frowned upon as the process is time-consuming and costly. Turnbull says: “Annual pitches don’t make sense, it takes six-eight months for both parties to get to know each other and climb the respective learnings curve. Personally I’d say anything less than three years is questionable.” 

Calling a pitch as a way of generating ideas before you’ve decided what you want to achieve is an error. Drew Nicholson, CEO of OgilvyOne DNX, says: “Clients can too easily ask for free input when they don’t have their own clear view, this can lead to expectations not being met. It is also important that clients don’t open up the pitch process to all and sundry as it ceases to become a targeted pitch and more the feeling of a lottery.”

Who’s paying?

It’s no secret pitching is incredibly time and resource intensive. This makes it a costly process. Turnbull says: “Recent work by the IPA (thegoodpitch.com) shows the average cost to an agency of a pitch is in excess of £100,000, but that clients estimate it to only be a small fraction of this. Even more surprisingly, the cost of a pitch to a client also runs into tens of thousands of pounds.”

Some agencies are now seeing clients offering pitch fees, not in a bid to offset the costs of pitching but as recognition that the process costs agencies time and money. This is by no means standard practice yet, as many clients maintain a resolute no when asked if they’ll pay pitch fees. Catherine Howard, head of UK&I marketing at Atos, says: “I wouldn’t pay pitch fees. If an organisation is serious about working with you, then they will pitch for free.”

Georgios Kolovos, marketing director at GE Capital, agrees and returns to Turnbull’s point that it’s also a costly process for clients: “While I understand the position that preparing and managing the initial process costs money to the agencies, it also costs clients probably the same amount to prepare the briefing documents, take people away from their day-to-day work to engage in the discussion and evaluate all the alternative options.”

The reluctance for many clients to pay pitch fees isn’t putting agencies off. Smith says: “For me, this wouldn’t make a difference. I’d far rather work on a decent brief with an engaged prospect with no pitch fee. No one really cares about getting paid for pitching, it’s the win we want – and that’s more likely to happen when an agency is fully informed and dealing with an experienced prospect.”

Gross agrees with Smith and says at Amaze fees don’t incentivise them to pitch. However, she notes it can level out the playing field between small and large agencies and shows the client is taking the process seriously: “It shows a recognition of the effort agencies go to. For a smaller agency it may be more than a nice sign of commitment, it might be the difference between them pitching or not, in that sense it gives everyone a fairer playing field to be able to go out and pitch their wares.”

Turnbull also sees pitch fees as a way of adhering to a best practice that stipulates only three or four agencies should be asked to pitch. He says: “It makes clients think twice about having pitch lists much beyond the accepted best practice number of three participants. It’s common practice in Germany for example to make a token contribution (€5000) to each agency’s costs – this is usually enough to cover out of pocket expenses like travel or bought in research for example.”

Procurement

While the advice above is for client-side marketers, it’s not just marketers who need to be aware of accepted best practice. Speaking about the changing role of procurement, Gross understands the department has a bigger role to play in choosing an agency, but says: “What I don’t like is, if there is that change in their responsibility then there is a responsibility on them to actually take the time to learn and understand the role of a digital agency in their businesses and maybe adjust their processes and mindset accordingly.

“If they’ve got a bigger part to play in the selection of a digital agency then their criteria should be right and not the same criteria they would use to select even an advertising agency, certainly not a criteria they apply to broader procurement around whatever it is, supplies, electrical, and hardware, it’s a very different thing.”

Pettinger is in agreement, saying: “Procurement is right to seek comprehensive information from suppliers, but that information should be relevant for the services being procured, otherwise it’s a waste of everyone’s precious time.”

Wasted time can be a real issue during the pitch process. If a client uses it as a way of warning their incumbent agency to up their game, something Gross warns against, it wastes time. The same thing happens when an agency doesn’t tailor a pitch and just rolls out the same ‘one pitch fits all’ style presentation. An original pitch is something Howard regards very highly: “The criteria that are most important to me with pitches are if the pitch has been tailored, that an agency illustrates what value it will bring to your organisation.”

It seems like an obvious requirement but even agencies admit that this does happen. Smith says: “Problems arise when agencies simply go through the motions without demonstrating anything different.”

It’s a vicious circle, if agencies aren’t happy with the way some clients run the pitch process they are not going to put the effort in to deliver a tailored pitch. Turnbull concludes with a thought that highlights the importance of clients taking the lead and ensuring best practices are met: “There is a maxim that I often remind myself of that ‘clients get the agency they deserve and agencies get the clients they deserve.’”

Want to know more? Read our top tips for agency pitching>>

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