Beat Pitch Stress: 5 Tips for Agency Teams
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Navigating new business pitches can often lead to stress within an agency team. In fact, research from Campaignlive.com reveals that 50% of agency staff admit to experiencing stress or burnout during the pitching process. This strain sometimes culminates in 17% of employees needing to take paid time off, while an additional 11% opt to leave their positions altogether.
Suddenly, already full schedules across the team have another responsibility. And this responsibility isn’t funded. The hours spent diving in are above the hours needed to deliver on current client work. A 2023 MediaSense survey reports 64% of agency employees believe pitching negatively impacts their mental health and 86% of agency respondents consider pitching excessively time and resource-intensive.
This is also an area where there aren’t rulebooks, you often aren’t taught how the process works, every pitch is unique, and you need to just dive in and “figure it out”.
I created a Pitch Recovery Kit for my co-workers because of how stressful pitch season is: “In case you need some bubbly to celebrate with or some chocolates and a good cry.”
Below are five tips to help manage the stress of the pitch.
Start Slow – While this seems counterintuitive, this can make all the difference. Read through the RFP in detail. Take notes. Along the way, document the questions you have. Submit questions before the deadline and make sure you review the responses. Look at ALL the responses, not just to the questions you ask, but also those of other candidates. They may have seen something interesting that you missed when reading the original document.
State the Challenge – Once you have your notes and questions answered, figure out exactly what they are asking for AND determine if there is another challenge behind the obvious ask. Ensuring your entire team is aligned on the problem you will be solving will remove the stress of rework later in the process.
Create a Timeline – With all the current client work looming, it’s often tempting to push off the work for the RFP. However, waiting until the last minute isn’t healthy for anyone involved. Create a timeline early and stick to it. Set final deliverables for at least 3-4 days before the deadline so there is time for revisions if needed.
Have “Quick” Rounds – Throughout the process, have “quick” deadlines to enable more discussion and thinking from all teams involved. For example, have a 2-day strategy round where the strategy team pulls as much insight and information as they can in 2 days. This quick information can get the creative juices of the rest of the team going while the strategy team dives in deeper. This same process can be used for other teams like tech and creative.
Develop Your Process – While the team will start to carve out a process for new business pitches, individuals can start to do the same. What are the steps you personally take each time there is a new business pitch based on your role on the team? How could you make that process the most efficient and work it in and around your paid client work?
Summary – And a Bonus Strategy
The steps above can help you and your team reduce the stress of new business pitches. However, we all know that pitches can arrive at times when client business is at a peak. In an article on AdAge, 46% of agencies find it increasingly difficult to staff pitches, during those times, you can consider getting support from an outside team.
Maybe you outsource digging through the RFP, determining the deliverables, questions, and challenges. This could give your internal team the head start it needs to respond. Or you can go deeper and consider outsourcing the strategy and/or creative work. For those you hire, the RFP will be their day job and not something squeezed into an already full client book of business.
