Agency pitch decisions still rely on gut feel

bigcoffee

After 15 years leading new business at an independent agency, I'm still amazed how few agencies have a system for deciding which pitches to enter. it's nearly always gut feel. someone gets excited by a brief, creative starts brainstorming in Slack, the MD says "let's go for it", and three weeks later you've burned hundreds of hours on something you were never going to win.

We built a simple scoring system - ten dimensions, hard red lines, a cost calculator. nothing revolutionary, but it changed everything. win rate improved because we stopped diluting the team on bad-fit pitches.

even winning a poor-fitting client is toxic: wasted resource, burnout, eventual loss. But in this environment - high competition, economic pressure, agency ego - I doubt many independents will adopt one. Leadership loved to ignore our system for big-name prospects. We usually lost those.

Curious what others do - scoring system or still gut feel?

nightowl

it's refreshing to hear of an agency that actually built a proper scoring system for pitches. That kind of discipline is rare, especially for independents.

winning the wrong client can be more damaging than losing a good one. Burnout, wasted resources, the eventual resignation - all of it compounds. It's like planting a crop in poor soil, you'll spend seasons trying to fix it when you could have just moved to better ground.

But the current environment makes it hard to be picky. high competition, shrinking margins, and that constant fear of the next quarter drive agencies into every pitch they can find. It's human nature mixed with ego and economic pressure - a recipe for desperation.

you were lucky to get buy-in from leadership. Most execs see a scoring system as a luxury they can't afford when the pipeline is dry. but in reality, it's the one thing that stops the death spiral of bad fits

dailygrind

I've been in that exact position. worked at a creative agency under a holding company, and we built a simple five-point scoring system to evaluate which pitches made sense-CAC-to-LTV alignment, resource intensity, win probability, strategic fit, the usual. The system was clean, repeatable, and everyone bought into it during the planning phase.

Management still overrode it every single time. Revenue pressure from the top meant "let's go for it" became the default, regardless of what the numbers said. Ended up burning the team out and eroding whatever respect we had left for the process. No system survives a P&L-driven culture that refuses to admit "no" is an option. It's a systemic failure, not a tooling one

metricsmuse

honestly, that line should be framed and hung in every agency meeting room. The sheer number of agencies who treat every RFP like it's a golden ticket, when really half the battle is knowing which ones to walk away from, is staggering. I've been on both sides of the table, and the ones who are quick to say "no thanks" always seem to have more time, energy, and budget for the pitches they actually win. It's almost like a superpower

pixelperfect

At my old agency, we built a scoring system to triage which pitches were worth chasing. We looked at budget size, how well their values aligned with ours, whether we had proven work in that sector, and whether we had the right people and capacity to deliver on the brief if we won.

The founder absolutely loved to bypass the whole thing whenever a big-name client came along. We'd all know we were about to waste weeks of resource, but he'd say yes anyway. and surprise, surprise - we usually lost those. 🙂🙂🙂

trafficcop

Oh honey, I've got a whole list.

Any pitch that requires me to "just trust the process" when the brief's about as clear as mud - hard pass. Also, if the prospect's CMO has "transformation" in their title and can't name one metric they care about, I'm out. And don't even get me started on the "we'll decide on the budget after we see your ideas" nonsense. That's not a pitch, that's free consulting.

My biggest red line? When they want a full deck before they've even agreed to a chemistry meeting. No chemistry, no pitch.

tiktokguru

couldn't agree more. it's baffling how many agencies still run on gut feel and hope when it comes to pitching.

🔹 For every pitch we chased and lost, there's one we won with absolutely no business being in the room
🔹 Talking about a tiny independent dark horse beating incumbent holding companies with multi-year contracts for some of the biggest brands on the planet
🔹 The single common thread across every single win? strength of our back channel

That back channel work - the informal conversations, the trusted relationships, the real intelligence gathering - it's the difference between wasting weeks and actually closing. If you don't have that, you're just throwing creative at a black hole

communityfirst

It's wild that after all these years, agencies still don't have a real filter. We've all been there - client says "no competitor in the same network", and someone still insists "let's go for it, we're different". Then the pitch consumes everyone, people burn out, some even leave - and the reaction is just "oh well, onto the next one". That's not a system, that's a lack of strategy. The real strength comes from knowing when to walk away and only chasing the opportunities where we can genuinely shine. That's how you protect your team and build something sustainable.

digitalnomad

This is such a key question! I'd love to know what dimensions you roughly map out - and what factors you're weighing up during the decision process. Would be super handy to see your framework

gmbpro

after fifteen years of fixing broken analytics setups, I see the exact same pattern play out in GA4 migrations.

The team has already started deploying event tags and building custom reports
Meanwhile, leadership is still debating whether we're even migrating to a new property
By the time someone calls "stop," we've got three half-baked implementations running in parallel

Your scoring system is essentially a forcing function for a decision gate that should exist at the front of any process - not three weeks and 80 hours of billable time later.

i've measured the cost of this: roughly 40% of the initial setup work gets thrown out when the actual requirements finally land. that's not a creative problem - it's a tracking problem, and it's entirely preventable

pixelpusher

15 years and you're still selling "be proud of your reel" as the filter? That's a nice luxury for agencies that don't need to hit monthly revenue targets. the real filter is cash flow: does this client pay net 30 and actually sign off within two rounds? a poor fit doesn't just cost three months of strained work-it kills your team's velocity for the next quarter because you're firefighting scope creep instead of doing the briefs that keep the lights on. the selection math lives in your accounts receivable, not your creative ego.

trendspotter

The sheer lack of any real selection system in most agencies still baffles me. We finally built a simple scoring rubric for every RFP that lands on the table. It strips out all the emotional noise and forces you to look coldly at resource drain versus actual win probability. Absolute game-changer for keeping the pipeline clean and the brand perception on point.

splittester

We rolled that exact system out once. When it was actually used, it ran like a sharp, clean blade through the chaos. Honestly, I wish more decisions in this industry-especially hiring-could be that objective and pragmatic. But the whole culture is addicted to gut feel. Instinct has been so deeply operationalised it's practically woven into the way people breathe. Unpicking that takes more than a spreadsheet.

gmbpro

One pattern I've observed across countless pitch debriefs: agencies can sell almost any scope if they roll out the polished senior faces - VPs, Group Directors, the ones with the best LinkedIn shots. in my own tracking of pitch outcomes, that approach secures the client roughly 80 per cent of the time. the numbers back it up. What's missing is any systematic evaluation of whether those clients actually retain or churn after the honeymoon period. That's the data nobody collects.

ppcnerd

It's a strange paradox of the agency world. Winning a client that's fundamentally misaligned with your agency's strengths feels like a pyrrhic victory for the business, yet for the rainmaker at the top, it's a jewel in the crown. They get the headline number, pocket the bonus, then polish their CV and move on before the hangover sets in. This dynamic mirrors the broader macroeconomic shift we've seen over the last decade-short-term incentives drowning out long-term value creation. The agency suffers the loss of focus, team morale, and eventually reputation, but the executive has already cashed out and climbed the ladder. It's a systemic flaw, not just a people problem.

bigcoffee

Personally, I've seen this exact pattern across a dozen or so agencies I've worked with. The system gets built during a quiet week-then abandoned the first time a shiny brief hits the inbox. Here's where the data falls apart:

Only about 30% of the agencies I've consulted with actually stuck to their pitch criteria beyond three months.
The ones that did? They treated it like a budget cap-non-negotiable.

Running my own shop makes it easier to enforce, but it still takes constant reminders with partners. Everyone's wearing different hats, so the conviction to follow through slips quickly.

tagmanager

Honestly, this hits home. I've been on both sides - client side at DTC brands and now specialising in SMS. so many agencies jump into every pitch that comes their way. It's exhausting for everyone involved, and the client usually feels it too. I'd love to know those five questions - because I've seen the difference it makes when an agency actually has a clear filter. what are they?

roichaser

Everyone wants process until a sexy brief appears. Then it's gone. Classic.

bigcoffee

Well, I took the same approach-built a structured framework and threw it up on Gumroad. Worth a look if you've got a budget for it.