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Pitching New Business

Why you should just say no to scattergun pitching

By Andy Nairn, founding partner

July 13, 2015 | 4 min read

A winning pitch record is perhaps our industry’s most obvious and popular metric of success. In many ways, this is rightly so: new business is the lifeblood of any agency, as it brings in not only new revenues but new creative opportunities, talent and chances to learn.

Andy Nairn

But what about the opposite metric: how many new business opportunities do you turn down? I’d argue that this is almost as important as its flashier friend.

It seems counterintuitive, I know, but there are several reasons why a judicious approach in this area can actually be more effective than a more aggressive, go-for-everything-that-moves strategy.

For starters, it allows you to protect your most precious asset: your own brand. It’s very strange how some agencies forget the principles they preach to their clients, when it comes to themselves. By saying yes to everything, simply because of the potential to make money in the short-term, there’s a risk that unsuitable briefs are taken on that will be harmful to your own brand in the long-term.

Saying no to new business can also allow you to focus on existing clients. At best, this might present more lucrative opportunities, without the jeopardy and cost of a competitive pitch. At the very least, it should strengthen existing relationships and make sure that growth is steady rather than of the one-step-forwards-two-steps-back variety.

It’s not just your existing clients that can benefit from a focused approach, though: your own staff can too. Yes, good people in our industry invariably love the adrenaline rush of new business. But nobody can – or should – be expected to pitch constantly, not least because a law of diminishing returns soon comes into play.

That brings me to the final, clinching argument for politely declining more often than eagerly accepting. All the evidence suggests that a scattergun approach to new business just doesn’t work. It is far more effective to save your creative energy for pitches where you really want to win, and then to really go for it, than to chase after every opportunity that comes along and do an OK job. The competition in our industry is just too intense for anyone to win that way and prospective clients can always spot the team that is hungriest for their business and theirs alone.

The harsh realities above explain why we declined 22 new business opportunities in our first 18 months, and a further 26 in the first six months of this year alone. This wasn’t out of misplaced arrogance – in fact quite the opposite. Put simply, we recognise that nobody is good enough to pitch at that rate, win every contest, create great work on every single brief and not drop any balls on existing business at the same time. If you think you are, then we’d love to speak to you*, but in the meantime, there’s a lot to be said for saying no more often than yes.

*To tell you you’re wrong.

Andy Nairn is a founding partner at Lucky Generals

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