When the chance comes to win new business, it is vital to make the most of it. We discuss strategies in today’s competitive market.

In times of recession, there is greater drive to win more business, yet there are fewer opportunities to do so. This is why it is crucial to deliver a pitch that wins the audience over whilst convincing them that your PR strategies are going to work. The first step is to get to grips with the brief. Chris Clarke, founding partner of corporate and B2B consultancy Clarke Mulder Pudie says, “Read the brief. Many times. Sometimes it's too easy to go off on a creative tangent and forget what the client is asking for. Creativity is great, but it must be channelled effectively”.

The next step is to do research, to understand the market and the commercial objectives. Clarke points out that PR must support the bottom line otherwise it isn't worth doing. And if, after doing the preparation, there are questions as to whether the brief is right, then Clarke believes this should be questioned: “Be honest. If, following real research and thought, you disagree with some parts of the brief or you think it will take longer to achieve certain objectives say so. If you don't it will only come back to bite you later.”

Ready, steady, professional

Once you get to the presentation, McDermott, managing director of training consultancy Edomidas offers advice for starting out as you mean to continue: “In addition to delivering your presentation with confidence and conviction, a pitch has to be relevant and engaging. Start with a strong hook to ensure your audience stay tuned in and be sure to talk more about them and less about yourself. You can do this by showing your audience you understand their objectives, their business and their challenges. You should also outline the benefits of your proposal.”

In order to get the audience to relate to you, it is worth taking the personal approach. Clarke says, “Agencies tout all their experience and say all the right things but the most important thing to get across is you and your personality. When all is said and done, your team has to be people that the prospect would want to work with. This means different things for different people so an agency lead must develop a sense of what that is at the very initial stages of the pitch. Talking to the prospect, face-to-face or over the phone beforehand can be the key to success. Pitching for new business is a bit like media relations – you don’t talk to all journalists in the same way or use the same angle for them so why would you do that for a new business pitch?”

Too much information

McDermott says that it is also important to make any pitch credible and concise. He warns against the “information dump”, in other words, swamping the audience with too much tedious background. He says: “Be selective about the information you put across, choosing the important points backed up with examples for credibility. You could also show research figures to support your case and demonstrate your own expertise with relevant stories of past successes.”

The last hurdle of a pitch is the question-and-answer session, and this is where many PR businesses lose their audience by not preparing each member of the team properly. McDermott claims that many pitches fail during this session, especially when a team is involved. He adds, “Plan who is going to answer questions on each topic beforehand and avoid adding to colleague’s responses with supplementary information without invitation. Above all keep the answers to questions short and punchy."

Clarke agrees that each team member must know their role: “Everyone we bring into a pitch talks. The prospect should always feel free to ask that person questions on what they’re presenting on. It can be very illustrative of the agency culture when that person answers and then is supported by their team mates – it gives the prospect a sense of how these people work together.”

Is it worth the effort?

You may have the pitching process honed, but the question for many PR consultancies is whether it is worth pitching in the first place. It is a costly exercise, takes up valuable time, and sometimes the client invites so many agencies to pitch, the chances of winning are too low to merit the effort involved. Ross Furlong, founder of Furlong PR says that his view on pitching is far from positive. He adds: “In fact I won’t do it now unless there’s a very good reason. This is hard-won experience. I remember being pulled to the northern reaches of England twice having introduced the idea of PR to a company and then lost out to a bigger agency it had decided to invite to pitch. I was also asked to go to Bristol to give free consultancy on the basis that if I didn’t, I had no chance of winning future business and made to wait 30 minutes by a very rude Frenchman who proceeded to tell me that ‘any monkey can do PR’.”

Furlong has decided that pitching to clients is at best, a time-expensive, long-odds way of winning business and at worst a power-tripping abuse of the potential client/agency relationship. His solution is to rely on doing such a good job that almost all his clients come through recommendation. He points out that although this wouldn’t work for the bigger agencies, for the small to medium-sized PR agency his advice is to “consider an invitation to pitch very carefully indeed.”

Warning bells

If the client is not keen to meet with you before the pitch, Alex Young, business director at agency-client relationship specialists AAR, says that this could be an early warning sign that the pitch is not worth doing. He says: “Be wary of clients who invite you to pitch without a prior visit to the agency to meet the prospective team, those who ‘don’t have time’ or won’t engage with you between briefing and pitch day and also the clients who won’t give a budget (even just for pitch purpose) or have an unrealistic budget vs. expectation. There should be no more than four agencies on a pitch list and clients who invite more than this to the final stage probably don’t know what they are looking for (making your job almost impossible before you’ve even started). “

As for deciding whether it is worth the expense of doing a pitch, Young says the rule for this is: “When the business is worth winning and you think you have a good chance of winning it! The best chance of winning a pitch is when the client culture and ethos matches that of the agency, the team are excited and motivated about the opportunity and have capacity, you have a clear brief from the client and, just as importantly, the commercial opportunity is viable.”

Teaching clients a lesson

In order not to waste PR consultants’ time, it is also important that clients are fully versed in how to conduct the pitching process. Tess Woodcraft, director of training provider the Centre for Strategy and Communication, says “Clients need to be very clear about what they want to achieve and what their budget is. Know the outcomes you are looking for (for instance, higher recognition amongst under-25s, or better take-up of services by minority communities). It is up to the PR specialists to suggest the best way to achieve these outcomes. As for the money, be clear about your budget, say ‘we have £10,000, how would you make the best use of this budget?’ rather than leaving it open ended. That way you