10 Top Tips for choosing the right pitch team

1. Appoint the pitch leader:

They chair pitch meetings, hold the relationship with the key clients and have ultimate responsibility for the delivery of the pitch. There should only be one pitch leader and and everyone (including the CEO) should be in mutual agreement.

2. Ensure relevant client or sector experience:

Your first port of call should always be to search your agency for anyone who has experience working with the client you are pitching to or with similar clients in their market sector.

3. Team Diversity:

Make sure your team is representative of your agency. Show that your agency is forward thinking and appreciative that creativity and brilliant teams consist of the coming together of different cultures, backgrounds and experience.

4. Marking the client team:

It is essential you know who will be attending at each stage of the process. Every person has boxes to tick and every vote counts. If possible, mirror your pitch team to the client team, and task each person to ‘mark’ one particular client.

5. Role and responsibilities:

Spend time dissecting the brief and creating a ‘strategy to win’. List all the key elements and match that list to the key disciplines in your agency. Then you can establish who in those disciplines will give you the best possible team.

6. Pitch as the client team:

Clients want to be wowed by the people who will work on their business. This is great because it opens up the pitch process to the entire agency and gives everyone the chance to have that career-defining moment when they present in a pitch.

7. Consistency is key:

Pitches can often be very long processes with many stages before the final pitch meeting. It is crucial therefore, that the pitch team remain consistent to enable them to build a relationship with the client over the entire pitch period.

8. Keep the team lean:

The pitch should be the teams’ number one priority during the pitch period. Keep the team as small as possible and avoid people drifting in and out of the process. It is better to have 80% of 5 people's time than 20% of 20 people’s time.

9. Appoint a pitch doctor:

This crucial role should be played by someone senior who has not been involved in the pitch process but understands the brief and can be involved at various stages before key meetings, to provide an objective point of view on the pitch response.

10. Create a fun environment:

New business is something agency folk should want to be a part of, so team wellbeing is vital. A team that is enjoying the process will work better and more importantly, demonstrate a sense of unity to the client.