Pitching for business

W&K have this take on pitches:

“The AAR recently published their annual new business league tables for the UK. Martin Jones of the AAR commented that an agency should aim to pitch 10 times a year. An article in Campaign this week follows this up with some more numbers: agencies should expect to convert one in four pitches and an average pitch will cost an agency around £50K in out-of-pocket costs. (i.e. external costs, not in-house costs like people’s time).
Given that most pitches these days seem to last four to six months, that would mean that by half the way through the year, an agency should “ideally” be aiming to have four or five live pitches underway simultaneously, have racked up £300K in costs, have expected to win nothing and presumably to have all their staff working nights and weekends in order to make this possible. Ah, the heady thrill of new business!
This all sounds like madness to me. If this is what’s seen to be a good way to run a company, then no wonder this business is screwed. Surely it’s better to pitch less and convert more often?”

Pitching less often and having the balls to walk away from pitches is what we are trying to do. We need to work with clients to get them to run pitches in a more professional way: clear briefs, regular conversations with the pitching agencies and post-pitch objective feedback.