The Ultimate Pitch Question

Good news: new business seems to be back.

I had three separate conversations with people and teams about pitches this week.

That’s great for all my advertising peeps.

Now, apart from sharing in their enthusiasm, I find I can be of real value when I ask this one key question: What kind of pitch is this?

Is it a process pitch?

A people/team pitch?

A creative idea pitch?

A money pitch?

Of course every pitch is all of these things. But each pitch is guided by one of these components as a priority.

Creative agencies tend to treat every pitch like it’s a creative pitch. (Guilty as charged, btw.)

But creative is not always the priority even if it’s important.

I learned this years ago on a global pitch.

I was working with our Japan team on a pitch for a Keiretsu. (A Japanese conglomerate company with lots of subsidiaries in products and services.)

This pitch was lead by a need for a telco effort.

We approached this opportunity with an incredible amount of enthusiasm and creativity.

We created an icon. We came up with unique art direction and distinctive design. We sweated the words. We sweated the images. We sweated each script and every creative piece on every slide.

Our deck and presentation was creatively irresistible.

We did the meeting and felt really good.

Then a few days later we got our hands on our competitor’s deck.

It was fascinating and one hundred and eighty degrees from ours and our approach.

Their first 30 slides — maybe 2/3rds of their deck — were charts. Tons and tons of charts. Org charts. Maps. Systems. Data points. If you came to it blindly, you might think you stumbled upon a deck from NASA and you saw how to land a human on the moon.

Way back in the deck there were about 5 slides which featured their “creative” idea. And the last part of the deck was plenty of financial models and schedules.

Our deck was energetic, joyful eye-candy with a little bit of “broccoli” in the back end.

Their deck was dry, numbers-heavy and filled with diagrams and charts.

Surprise.

They won.

Why?

They knew what kind of pitch it was: It was a process pitch.

So, this week when you look at the RFP in your inbox. When that “I have a client opp” txt appears on your phone. When you have that meeting with a client over coffee and hear that “something’s coming down the pike…” take a beat and really listen. Raise your view of the project to 30,000 feet, look down and ask the question: What kind of pitch is this?

You see that answer, you’ll dramatically increase your chances of winning.

Break a leg.