In January this year, New York agency Porto Rocha launched a (rather self-explanatory) online petition, ‘No Free Pitches’. Since then, over 6,500 of my peers have contributed their signatures to a global protest against a practice they argue is unfair and unsustainable.
I’m not surprised. Many of the agencies and individuals I work with regard unpaid pitches with something between mild despair and bitter resignation. The three certainties of agency life: death, taxes, and unpaid pitches.
I’m sympathetic to the cause. Pitching often consumes vast amounts of agency resources, involves punishing deadlines, and directs time and attention away from paying clients. Decision-making is often opaque and in many cases budgets aren’t disclosed. I’ve also witnessed egregious behaviour on the part of client organisations: using pitches as a source of free ideas, commissioning pitches for projects without approved budgets, or running performative pitches to create an illusion of competition when in fact the preferred agency partner has already been decided. It’s little wonder many agencies refuse to subject themselves to such practices.
But I love pitches. And I prefer them to be unpaid.
And if you’re in the early stages of your consultancy career, I urge you to learn to love them, too. You’ll learn more. You’ll learn faster. You’ll make a bigger impact. And you’ll have fun doing so.
For one thing, unpaid pitches are a fact of life. A well-run agency should allow for a reasonable amount of unpaid work as part of its budgeting process. Broadly speaking, junior consultants should expect to spend four out of every five working days on paid client work (a utilisation rate of 80%). As consultants become more senior, the balance of their time should shift away from ‘doing’ work and towards ‘winning’ work (and managing). As a broad rule of thumb, I’d expect senior consultants to spend two days a week on hunting and farming (60% utilisation) and directors to spend at least three days a week on non-fee-paying work (40% utilisation and below). All of this should be factored into budgets: at any time, an agency should expect around half of its consultants’ time to be spent on fee-paying work and the remainder on marketing, developing new client relationships, NPD, and running the business.
As the leader of an agency (big or small), the challenge is not to eliminate time spent on free pitches, but to ensure that any time spent isn’t wasted. This means (1) getting better at qualifying leads, and (2) making the most of the leads you choose to pursue.
Refusing to pitch for free is a miserable way to qualify leads. Most of the projects I’ve worked on and the relationships I’ve developed over 25 years have been the result of unpaid pitches. ‘Unpaid’ does not mean ‘unpromising’. On the other hand, most of the consultancies I’ve worked for have been poor at lead qualification, either because of a lack of qualifying criteria or a lack of backbone in applying those criteria. There’s no secret to getting this right: simply develop a set of criteria and then be rigorous in applying them.
These qualifying criteria can be personal, too. Even if you’re not high up in an organisation, having a clear idea of the types of client and project you want to work on will mean you can respond more quickly and ardently when a brief comes in. As a manager, few things pleased me more than when people enthusiastically put their hands up for something without having to be asked.
Next comes the question of how to make the most of the pitches you choose to pursue (unpaid or otherwise). I prefer unpaid pitches for two reasons:
First, most paid pitch fees are little more than nominal. To my mind, there’s little difference between throwing £40k of time at an unpaid pitch and £40k at a pitch for which I’ll receive £5k. I’d rather the client kept their money and I kept my IP (although this is another area where I’ve seen egregious client behaviour).
Second, I find the lack of a pitch fee liberating. It means the agency gets to choose how they want to run the pitch and how much resource to throw at it. And this opens up all sorts of wonderful possibilities. I don’t see pitching as a binary win / lose situation. It’s an opportunity to push boundaries and gain friends as well as winning work.
Let’s start with pushing boundaries: pitches represent a fantastic opportunity to try new ideas on, strategically and creatively. Inevitably, an agency pitch team will have relatively little information to work with compared to a full-fat project. This creates permission to colour outside the lines; to find the kernel of an interesting idea and to push it creatively as far as it will go. How might it transform the client’s culture? How might it subvert the unwritten rules of the category? How might it elevate the customer experience? What sorts of business models and innovations might it unlock? A pitch is a chance to provide a potential client with a glimpse of your creative and strategic best. If they don’t respond positively, then you’re probably both better off working with other partners.
For some reason a pitch fee alters this dynamic: it gives the client the right to expect you’ll follow their instructions and creates a responsibility to follow the brief. An unpaid pitch creates permission to challenge the brief in any way you see fit.
I also like to use free pitches as an opportunity to innovate. Clear M&C Saatchi were very good at this during my time there. We would constantly try out new approaches and methodologies in our pitches. New quant techniques. New workshop exercises. New frameworks. More ambitious launch plans. We’d also try to go beyond a ‘standard’ pitch presentation. Win or lose, we’d learn something valuable that we could use to drive our offer forward. I loved working there and learnt a lot. And we hosted some amazing pitches (and post-pitch lunches).
Unpaid pitches are also a chance to grow people. They can accelerate the rate at which consultants learn. If I had a new joiner on the team, I’d ask them to work on a pitch as soon as possible after joining. They would have to familiarise themselves with enough case studies to choose the most relevant examples to include. They would have to understand our ways of thinking and working well enough to apply these to the brief (not simply to meet it, but to go beyond it). For smaller opportunities, I’d ask junior team members to step up: lead the thinking, develop the approach and present in the pitch meeting. If the pitch was unsuccessful, they would at least have gained experience of leading, presenting, and feeling the bitter sting of rejection. If the pitch was successful, they would receive their due share of the credit, as well as being rewarded with a more senior role in the project team. I’ve rarely felt prouder than seeing a junior team member nail a great idea, present it with confidence and earn the respect of everyone in the room (even if they were shitting themselves the whole time). I’d feel guilty about pushing junior people to the front if a client was paying a pitch fee in expectation of a senior team. I felt no such compunction when responsibility for the investment fell entirely on the company I was working for.
I rarely feel like I ‘lose’ a pitch. There is always an upside, either in terms of pushing strategic and creative boundaries, offer innovation, or team development. I also believe that embracing unpaid pitches in such a way increases the likelihood of ‘winning’. The team working on the pitch is motivated and fearless, rather than reluctant or sycophantic. The prospective client has a better chance of seeing the team and its capabilities in the best and most honest light. It’s not about flogging a project at any cost; it’s about trying to work out if you’ll be able to forge a positive, productive and lasting working relationship.
Because I’ve found the pitching process so rewarding, there are almost never hard feelings. Quite the opposite: many of my client relationships originate from ‘lost’ or ‘failed’ pitches. If I enjoy a pitch, warm to the client team, and have a genuine interest in their challenge, I tend to interpret a ‘no’ as a ‘not yet’. I stay in touch, not because I’m an arch-networker (anyone who knows me will corroborate this), but because I feel confident that at some point there will come another opportunity to work together. And in the meantime, it’s fun and interesting to check in with people and hear how they are getting on.
At other times, the pitch process and outcome reveal a disconnect between the client team and my own. Perhaps they met another consultant or agency they felt more comfortable with. Perhaps they didn’t like our thinking or our creative interpretation. Perhaps the chemistry wasn’t right. Perhaps we have different ideas about what ‘great’ means. In each of these cases, I’d rather know something’s wrong before we commit to working together. Few things are worse in this job than a client who doesn’t like you, doesn’t trust you, and doesn’t like the type of work you deliver. I’m very happy to invest time and money to find this out, because I’ve found that great client relationships (like great marriages) can last decades.
A single great client relationship is more rewarding than five poor or average relationships: mutually, emotionally, financially, and in terms of the quality of the work and its impact. Why not invest a little up-front to find out if there’s potential to make something great happen together?
At a personal level, if you can learn to love unpaid pitches then you’ll have a superpower that people who loathe them lack. If you’re a junior consultant and you see the people around you are reluctant to respond to a brief, offer to take the lead. If you’re senior, then embrace the opportunity to experiment, to develop your offer, and to grow your team.
Every pitch will make you better.
Every pitch will pay.