How to Lose a Pitch in 2024
Pitching marketing services to healthcare companies has been a big part of what I do for almost two decades now. Perhaps I'm a glutton for punishment, but I love to pitch and have had a good deal of success at it. I have a lot of strong opinions about what makes for a winning pitch presentation.
In the last few years, though, I've been hired by numerous agencies as a pitch consultant, so I've gotten to see a much wider varieties of pitch approaches than I ever did as an agency employee. (Note to any future clients or colleagues: if I'm in the room pitching you, I've made an arrangement with the agency I'm with to work on your business if we win. I hate bait-and-switch, and would never willingly be a part of it.) With that breadth of exposure, I've been on enough losing pitches that I've started to develop firm opinions on what makes for a losing pitch, as well. So I thought I'd share some watch-outs for any of my agency friends who might be working on a pitch.
1) A “Too Good to Be True” Brand Story
We all want to tell a positive story about the brand we're pitching. But not every innovation in healthcare is a game-changer, and walking in the room with a message of "together we can set a new standard!" when the client is aware that they'll struggle to gain a sturdy foothold in a crowded market only shows that you don't get the real challenge they're up against. Marketers want to know how they can succeed in the environment they actually face, not a fairytale world where their fourth-to-market drug takes over the entire category.
2) An Overhyped Opening
Resist the urge to create a hype video or inspiring opener that doesn't match the reality of the challenges you've unearthed. In particular, sometimes the opening five minutes of the pitch are significantly more dramatic than the creative reveal: if that's the case, either you have under-delivered on the creative solution or your hype doesn't match your story.
3) Disconnected Omnichannel
I'm a bit of an omnichannel skeptic in general, as it is often presented as something dramatic when it is really just contextually relevant customer targeting. But no matter how much you believe in your agency's omnichannel capabilities, if you get through the creative reveal and then stop to do a 10 minute lecture on how your proprietary platform is going to magically deliver the perfect message to each customer at the exact right moment, you are begging to lose. Every agency I work with has some version of the exact same story, and the only way it doesn't completely suck the air out of the room is if it is directly tied to the ideas you just shared. My advice: share the details of what you do in a follow-up or a written submission, give a 30 second overview of your philosophy and tools, and then give a concrete example of exactly how it would work for this client. It doesn't even have to be perfect: if you don't have all the data you need, say so and make some assumptions. Don't let your experience planner or media partner share a case study or blinded data.
4) Lack of Prioritization
Some of the above problems come because there's someone reading the RFP and pointing out that the client asked for 15 different things and insisting that they all need to get into the presentation. This is probably wrong, but if it is right, ask yourself if a client who expects you to address a dozen different problems in a 90 minute presentation is also going to expect you to deliver creative concepts in three days or get 50 different stakeholders to sign off on the wording of their positioning statement. Barring an unreasonable or unexperienced client, you can answer secondary questions in your submission or check the box on them quickly. But your pitch needs a focus: what is the real problem (or two, at most) standing in the way of brand success, and how does your strategic and creative approach overcome it? At least 80% of your presentation time should speak directly to that in a way that makes it clear you can help the client succeed.
5) Lots of Voices, but No Decider
Maybe what I just laid out seems obvious. If so, why does it still happen so often? Usually because the pitch team is not structured correctly. If there are multiple senior participants who are all weighing in on decisions, but no one who makes the final call and moves thing forward, you're sunk. I'd recommend the following roles, explicitly stated at the start of the pitch:
An executive sponsor who is ultimately responsible for the pitch process and who ensures the proper resources for the pitch are available.
A pitch captain who owns the overall story and makes the decisions about what content is needed from each discipline, and what is ultimately included in the presentation and submission.
A new business coordinator who owns process and timelines and makes sure each discipline lead is moving their part forward. (Sometimes, this person is also the pitch captain, but I think it is useful to split these rolls up if possible.)
A senior leader from medical/strategy, creative, experience/media and client services. These people are responsible for making sure that their respective disciplines support the pitch captain and provide the content needed.
There will, of course, be debate among the team, and possibly even competing visions for what a successful pitch looks like. That's fine, as long as the discipline leads respect both the pitch captain's direction and the new business coordinator's timelines. Debate is healthy, but debate needs to stop when it is time to move forward with a direction. Also, it is important that the total pitch team is not too big. If there are more than 10 people in the room trying to make decisions, you are either wasting the time of people who don't need to be there or inserting too many perspectives into the conversation.
I've shared a lot of thoughts about how to lose a pitch, but let me end with one about how to win one: change the structure. Almost every pitch I've done has the following structure:
Dramatic opening
Intro to the agency
What we did
Insights and strategy
Creative concepts
Tactical execution (omnichannel, convention approach, etc)
How we'd get started (30/60/90 day plan, team structure, etc.)
Close
Nothing wrong with that, but if everyone's doing it that makes it harder to stand out. What about trying this?
Creative tease: what if your brand could stand for this?
Strategy overview: what we saw as your big problem and why we think that creative approach could solve it
Why we think this works for your customers (insight section)
What our creative brief was and some other ideas we played with before we settled on the idea we led with
How we can make that idea relevant for your customers, with an omnichannel example
Why we're the agency to do it (past successes and team structure
Close that recaps the strategic/creative opportunity and asks for the business
That approach infuses creative into every aspect of the pitch and tightens the story. It also forces your main ideas to be really clear and compelling, and uses your insights and process to back them up rather than walking them through everything.
If you've read this far, maybe you're looking to shake up your pitch process. I'd be happy to help you do that the next time you're pitching to win.