The five emotional stages of pitching

It starts with excitement, drifts to despair and ends in relief. In this posting from the LinkedIn Agency Influencer program, PHD's Simon Lawson takes us through the agonising ups and downs of the pitch process

Pitching for new business can be an emotional rollercoaster; there are five distinct stages on this particular ride.

Stage 1 – Excitement

It starts with a feeling of excitement.

Appealing blue chip brand X is reviewing their agency relationships and your agency has been hand-selected to participate. Brand X and/or pitch consultant Y is aware you’ve been studiously building a reputation for doing good work and thinks you might be a good fit for them: Are you keen?

Are you serious? The chance to work with them. Of course we are.

You call the team together. Everyone’s excited. Let’s do this thing!

Stage 2 – Optimism

The work begins with a palpable sense of optimism.

This time it’s going to be different. Let’s put the hard work in early, get our strategy sorted and focus on the delivery. After all, we’ve got heaps of time.

Progress is shared on a daily basis; there’s some great insights here. This is good thinking. Excellent work team.

Do you know what? I think we’re ahead of schedule. We’ve got this.

Stage 3 – Despair

The third and most difficult stage; despair.

You’re a week out from the pitch presentation and there’s still so much to do. Senior management and the respective heads of have started to pay more attention to the work in progress and have some questions.

This insight; it’s more of an observation isn’t it? Isn’t this a bit conventional? You’ve got 128 slides for a two hour meeting. It’s way too long.

Don’t worry about losing slides now, we need to get the ideas right: Let’s worry about the timing later.

How did we get here? We had 4 weeks to get this done: We said it was going to be different this time.

Mild recriminations begin and tempers start to fray. The nights are long and weekend plans have to be thrown out the window, but it’s worth it, the team is committed.

I don’t think we’re going to make it.

Stage 4 – Hope

The last stage before the pitch presentation: Hope

I do and don’t know how we’ve done it; it always seems to happen this way, but this is starting to look really good. Client X is going to love this. I would definitely do this if I was them.

The click throughs and timed rehearsals go off without a hitch.

You know what, I think we’re going to make it. Get a good night sleep, guys: This is going to be fun.

Stage 5 – Relief

The first stage after the pitch presentation: Relief.

You’re in the client’s elevator as a group, making your way back down towards the outside world: Nobody’s saying anything, obeying the mile rule.

You hit sunlight and freedom, for what feels like the first time in weeks.

That went pretty well didn’t it? Yeah, that went pretty well. Did you think that went well?

You make your way back into office. Eager faces look up at you.

Well, how did you go?

Pretty good. The clients were nodding along; there was good discussion at the end. I think they liked it.

You sit down for lunch at a nice restaurant, a well-earned reward and thank you for all the pitch team’s hard work over the last 4-6 weeks.

2 hours later and you’re back in the office getting back into regular work life and catch yourself in a thought:

Well, we gave it our best shot: I hope they appreciate how much work went into that.

Simon Lawson is general manager of PHD

This article is part of the LinkedIn Agency Influencer program. See more from the program by clicking on the banner below.

ADVERTISEMENT

Get the latest media and marketing industry news (and views) direct to your inbox.

Sign up to the free Mumbrella newsletter now.

 

SUBSCRIBE

Sign up to our free daily update to get the latest in media and marketing.