State of the Pitch 2026 - How to Find the Right Agency Partner

James Lawrence: Welcome back to the Smarter Marketer Podcast. I'm here today with Darren Woolley. Darren, welcome back to the pod.

Darren Woolley: Thanks, James. It's good to be here. Always enjoy our conversations.

James Lawrence: 100%. So I'll reintroduce you, Darren, for those that might not have caught some of our earlier conversations.

So Darren is founder and CEO of marketing management consulting firm TrinityP3. TrinityP3 is well-known to most marketers in Australia, working with most of the largest advertisers in the country to help in areas like procurement advisory, agency selection, as well as agency advisory. TrinityP3 has just published its T- 2026 State of the Pitch report.

Got a lot of pickup in all of the media and trade publications. So I thought it'd be awesome, Darren, to have you on to discuss the report itself, the key findings, and I guess all things pitch-related, agency-related, procurement-related as we near the halfway mark of 2026. So I guess, Darren, just by way of background, what prompted the creation of this report as it is?

Darren Woolley: Yeah. James I think we all remember the global pandemic. We were actually running three pitches at the time for clients when lockdown suddenly hit us, and we had to transform from face-to-face in real life meetings into online meetings. Coming out of that, there was an increased noise coming particularly from agencies that they were feeling that the pitch process was broken.

There were public calls to ditch the pitch and that the pitch is dead, and we needed to find a better way of doing it, and the feelings were incredibly passionate from the agency side. The people were feeling that many of the behaviors that marketers were exhibiting through that pitch process were just unfair, unprofessional, unethical in some cases.

And what we wanted to do was to start to put some data around this. So we started a research project which we called State of the Pitch. That's three years ago, or actually 2023 was the first report, and we've repeated that each year. This is the third year. In that time, through our partnership with Haymarket Media Group in the UK, that process, that methodology is now expanded to Canada twice and the US, is about to roll out in Germany and in Asia as well.

And the interesting thing across the US, Canada, and Australia is that apart from some small local market nuances, the same problems are occurring again and again. So this is not just an Australian issue This is a global or at least an English-speaking market issue. It'll be interesting once we roll into Germany and and Asia.

But definitely the behaviors agencies are seeing and feeling, the things that they're objecting to are happening in Australia. And so that's why, it was to be able to quantify that so that we can start getting away from opinion and anecdotes into some sort of measure, and it's been really valuable.

James Lawrence: Yeah, it's kinda cool. Since the first edition, I've always read it. I've enjoyed reading it. You

Darren Woolley: must be a sadist then or a masochist. I- A masochist because as an agency owner, I find reading it is incredibly frustrating because you will experience those things, and nothing seems to be improving.

Yes. It's Almost like marketers are being told that this is what they're doing wrong. But the biggest frustration for me is that many of them are not taking the lessons on board.

James Lawrence: Misery loves company, Darren.

I did think it was funny when y- I think you used the word reassuring that we're kinda getting the same responses generally speaking in North America or in Europe.

I'm like, is it reassuring or is it terrifying? No but I think I I've really enjoyed The report each year, but what I really like now is having that look back and you can actually, it's starting to tell more of a story, right? I think the first one it's great to have data just starting forming discussion as opposed to opinion.

But as we get further along, we've now got trends where some of the trends are basically just annual, nothing's changed, and we can argue the toss on whether that's good or bad. But then you're also starting to see some different things, different trends starting to occur which I think is quite interesting, right?

As the, 'cause you actually, we now have. this kind of date stamp looking back.

Darren Woolley: And look, one of the things early on we, we had available to us and we decided not to publish at the time, was advertiser category results. Because one of the things that we asked the agencies to do is not name the client, but definitely tell us what category they were in.

And being able to look back this year and see which categories are consistently delivering poor pitch management has been really valuable. And the reason I say that is when you look at the data, it's not all marketers, it's not all pitchers, but there's a solid 30% of pitchers that every year are inclined to be poorly managed, that leave agencies feeling worse off than when they started the pitch process.

And so the whole of the category, the whole process of pitching, the idea of ditch the pitch or the pitch is dead, is based around the poor performance of a minority, a substantial minority, but nevertheless.

James Lawrence: And why does it matter? 'Cause obviously like I, I suspect that most of your work is you're working with big advertisers, you're working with companies that control marketing budgets and are choosing where to deploy those budgets.

There's a swathe of agencies, and this is, obviously not my opinion, given the fact that I own an agency, but there's hundreds of agencies out there generally scrambling and fighting to get access into those marketing budgets. Why does it matter? Like, why does it matter to a marketer if I'm running a pitch and I don't get back to people, and if I steal ideas, and at the end of the day-

as long as I get the best outcome possible for me, does it actually matter?

Darren Woolley: Look, there's a couple of factors working in there. The first is that marketers generally will talk about wanting to work with their agencies as partners, okay? And that they know that they will get better results if they have a close working relationship, a trusted relationship.

Marketers are demanding transparency from their agencies. Yet, how do you build that type of relationship if you run a process at the start of it that is counterintuitive to that? If it's not transparent, if it doesn't build trust, if you don't show respect for the other parties, even if you're not going to move forward with them, how can you say that you want to build this highly productive, high-performing relationship if you don't start out that way?

The second is the implications for individual marketers and their reputations. We all know the economy's under a lot of stress at the moment, and I've noticed that there's not just a lot of loss of jobs on the agency side largely being blamed on AI, but I think it's actually economic. But also marketers.

There are a lot of very senior, very qualified marketers that are, let's say, between jobs. Now, having good relationships with your agency, and I know there'll be marketers that cynically say, "Yeah, but agencies will be nice to me because when I get my next job, they'll be there." And look, that's true, but what we're seeing is that the integrity that you need to bring to this position means that you shouldn't be compromising that, your own personal integrity, your own authenticity, when you could absolutely avoid that by just carrying out some very basic what I would call professional hygiene factors.

Be communicative, follow up, keep people in the loop, treat them with respect, value what they do when you ask them to do it and, a lot of the problems we're seeing in the state of the pitch would be minimized, if not completely disappear.

James Lawrence: And it was interesting that

I'd encourage listeners , to download a copy of the report from the TrinityP3 website. And at a certain section of the report, it also looks at how people rated the pitch process based on whether they won the process, whether they lost out having gone through to the final round, or whether they lost out early.

And obviously, you'd expect it to be the case that the winners look back and go, "Yeah, it was a well-run pitch." But- It's actually not a ridiculously big gap between the losers and the winners, and I think it's, speaking from the other side, being on the agency side we will pitch for stuff and not win it.

And you can still look back and go, "So it was a really well-run process." And then there's definitely work we've won where I'm like, "That's not how I'd run a pitch," 'cause you're actually not getting the best out of the agency, and we won it, but I'd still say it wasn't a particularly well-run pitch.

Darren Woolley: And it's interesting, a lot of times I get cynicism from marketers, even when we're running, when we're managing a pitch where they go, "Oh the agency'll say anything, to win the business."

And yet, that immediately diminishes the professionalism of most agencies. The vast majority of agencies are highly professional, highly competent, incredibly ethical. And it's , a handful of rotten apples that have created a perception. So it's both sides, and marketers need to realize that their personal professional reputation is on the line when they go to market.

It's not just the agencies. If they think of agencies that way, then they should be expecting that they'll be the same way if they also act in ways that are unethical and unprofessional.

James Lawrence: Yeah. There's definitely a small number of- Organizations and or marketers that I wouldn't work with at Rocket, right?

Based on past experience. And I think we're a really good agency. I think we do a good job, but there's definitely people and organizations that based on the way they've carried themselves- Of course ... , i'm sure there'll be other agencies that will pick them up. But if you start to churn through a good number of the best agencies in a particular field you are limiting yourself, right?

Darren Woolley: Yeah, absolutely. And a lot of marketers I think don't consider that, and that's because there will always be agencies that will want your business, but are they going to be the best agencies? Are they going to be the agencies that you can truly trust? Or are they the ones that are just there because you've got a budget to spend and they want to help you spend it and keep as much of that as possible?

If I was wanting to get the best agencies, I'd be treating them so that they would want to work with me, that they'd be clamoring, not because I've got a budget, but because I've either got a problem that is a big juicy problem and I've got a reputation for getting the best from my agencies to solve that.

, This commoditization, this treating agencies as vendors, suppliers is actually diminishing the performance of that relationship. And I think marketers if they say they know that, they now have to behave like they believe it.

James Lawrence: Just common sense, right? But,

Darren Woolley: You'd hope so.

James Lawrence: You'd hope so. What were the the standout findings? Some of the ones that I guess your big takeaways or things that might have surprised you this year compared to last?

Darren Woolley: Yeah, look the thing, a lot of it was it's the same or slightly worse. I think the things that weren't surprising but, were reassuring in a way is that the economy is tightening, and so things like pricing and payment terms and things like that are becoming bigger and bigger issues.

The other thing, and this was a surprise until I reflected on it, but state-run pitches, so where a client is looking to advertise just in a single state, generally got lower scores than national-run pitches. And I think this is an example of where when you have a marketing department that is relatively small compared to some of the larger ones, taking on a pitch is an incredible burden On the marketing department.

A lot of us focused on the agencies and how much time and effort. If you've got three or four agencies, there's a multiple there. But even for marketers, there's not many marketing departments where they could take on a additional full-time job for two or three months to deliver on top of the work they're already doing.

And I think that's the problem here, is that the smaller the marketing department, the more likely they are to need additional resources to be able to manage a pitch. Whereas the very large clients, the large national clients there's probably more scope because it could be handled over a number of people.

But then we've got to a conundrum because global pitches also got low scores, but they also took two to three times longer to actually execute because of the complexity. And there's some interesting dynamics there. The other one that stood out was when it comes to scope of work, being able to define very clearly to an agency what you expect from them.

I was reassuring to know consultants rated very well. Procurement also rated very well, but marketers rated poorly. And I know from my own experience that marketers will think of scope of services. Here's all the things I need the agency to do. But scope of work, being able to quantify how much of those services became incredibly difficult for most marketers.

And yet for agencies, that's exactly what as an owner you need to know because that's where you'll start to understand the level of resourcing that you'll need to actually deliver that.

James Lawrence: It's such an issue and there's like definitely some common sense or Just doing the right thing as a professional type stuff I wanna get to a little bit later.

But the reading through the report as an agency owner that reads through a good number of RFPs and tenders and kinda is involved in or watches our team move through a lot of these processes, the scope thing is so crucial,

and I actually genuinely think there's a gap of knowledge or perspective, or I think a lot of marketers that are putting these documents together think that it's a really awesome rigid scope, and we look at it knowing nothing about the internal processes of your organization, what you do- Yeah what you do well, what you do poorly, what your real outcomes needed are, and it's impossible to actually respond to it.

And then you try to then move through, which is, "Hey, can we have a meeting to discuss this or get more information?" Or whatever else, and then you just get blocked 'cause it's this you're just trying to get around the process. You're trying to get access to us when it's all being run by procurement," or putting your questions into, via an email, and they're gonna be sent to all the other people responding.

There was a good quote in the report which I liked, which was, "When clients ask for rigid financial modeling but refuse to provide a budget or clear scope, then in brackets, essentially forcing the agency to guess what they want, it leads to a race to the bottom that damages the long-term partnership before it even begins."

And then it goes on to say "It is commercially impossible to price a service accurately without a defined scope of work." And it's just so true.

Darren Woolley: So true.

James Lawrence: And it- Sitting on my side it's like , I can protect Rocket, right? I can put a scope forward with some budget on it that protects us, but whether that's actually what you need to solve your marketing problem is highly unlikely.

There has to be either rigorous work done before you go out to tender or an ability to have the conversation around what does a suitable scope actually look like, right? Otherwise, you're literally just shooting yourself in the foot.

Darren Woolley: Now, and th- we're facing an existential crisis here as far as fees go because, a lot of marketers will

used to put in a retainer, and they would think I've got, five full-time people, five FTEs working across my business, and that should be enough to do what I need them to do," without ever defining what it is. And in many ways, the retainer hides a lot of these problems in the inability to produce a detailed scope of work.

But as we both know, AI is automating , a lot of those, and does that mean that you don't charge for the AI to automate it when AI, the AI itself has a cost associated with it? So a lot of the global trend is moving to output-based pricing models, charging for deliverables. In some ways that could fix it if you have almost like a restaurant menu of outputs that clients can then choose from.

But from an agency's point of view, there is still going to be people associated with that, and being able to deliver one of those outputs or 5,000 is going to have a huge impact on the agency's resources that are required. So marketers and procurement people need to get a lot more proficient at being able to predict what their work requirements are.

And certainly from a marketer's perspective, you want to know reasonably upfront what the cost that you're spending with your agency's going to be. But as you say, you can't do that unless there's a plan. It, it amazes me because most of the time we turn to the marketer when they say they can't provide a scope of work, and we go show me your marketing plan" 'Cause that's where the details will be.

And they'll have campaigns, and they'll go, "But I don't know what I actually need for each of those campaigns." And we go what did you do last year?" Because that's a good starting point.

It's better than nothing. And then you've got other marketers that don't have campaigns, they're always on.

And okay, but what is the volume that is going to be always... There's always ways of solving this. It just takes time and a approach, in many ways a logical approach to be able to approximate, if not perfectly, very closely to what you're going to get the agency to do.

James Lawrence: Yeah, that's it.

There's such a gap between, I think, what you know and take for granted in your organization versus what you then share as what needs to be worked on. And I think it's a ab- it's a classic one where the detriment probably comes to the marketer, not to the agency, right? If you d- if you misscope it or underscope it or don't scope it at all.

The next one I think it was an interesting one. There's a line in there around kind of-- There's a section in there around the number of agencies being taken through the pitch process and it's dot, anywhere from up to three agencies being invited to more than 13. I didn't like the idea of being involved in a 13 agency pitch process or pitch raise.

What would your advice be to m- in-house marketers on, like, how many agencies should you be taking through the process? I suspect that maybe it's a larger number at some point, but then a smaller number being brought through to another phase. What would TrinityP3's perspective be on that?

Darren Woolley: Yeah, look we very much believe that marketers should l- look and cast a net as wide as possible. I think the danger is most marketers will have, at best, a handful of agencies that they know about. And then if they want to go beyond that, they start to engage the agencies in a formal process, whether it's an RFI or an EOI expression of interest, which gets lots of agencies involved, and they could be 13.

They, in many government cases, they'll go to open tender, where they advertise and literally have hundreds of agencies respond. Now, from an agency's point of view, they feel like they're involved in a pitch. But what I'd say to every agency is that presenting your credentials and putting together some case studies is not actually a pitch.

That's the entrée to a pitch process. We will do that. We'll have chemistry meetings. We'll meet with the agencies. We'll ask them to provide questions to answers. Again, not a pitch. At that stage, you're in the consideration list, but the pitch actually starts when you get the marketers making a decision about the three, at very worst four, if they're taking the incumbent through, to actually go into a pitch process and really that's where the agencies start to have to commit significant time and resources to win that business.

But, going to open tender, if a hundred agencies and I know of one open tender where they had so many agencies enter- And everything from a two-person operation in Newcastle to a, 450-person agency in Sydney were tendering for this. Now, it's just a huge waste of everyone's time, and yet how would marketers find out everyone available without doing this process? We built an AI with 1,000 agencies in Australia to, to help that, but most marketers are not using it. Most marketers are asking their colleagues and friends, checking the trade media. They'll often even Google it, to see who's available.

W- where a lot of that takes, there's a lot more filtering that's required to get down - from your consideration list down to the three or four that you would then ask to actively participate in a pitch process or a tender process.

James Lawrence: Yeah, and You touched on it before when you were t- talking, about the regional versus national versus international kind of pitches.

I- if I'm sitting client side, the burden on me to actually meet with five, six, 10, 13-

...

James Lawrence: To go through that pro- like you start, I think it's that paradox of choice, right?

I think you start to potentially make really bad decisions when you haven't reigned it in,

and we've spoken before around that chemistry session, and as an agency owner, I've been involved in a good handful where it's exactly how I would want a process to be approached- where someone reaches out to you and says, "We're X, Y, Z. This is where we're at. We're not yet going to market with a tender or a process, but we'd love to just come in and have a chat."

And it's just such an effective way of going about it. Sometimes, you get an email back saying, "Oh, look, we've decided to stay with the incumbent," or, "We're gonna take it out to market, but just don't think you're the right fit."

And you go, "Thanks for not wasting my time." Exactly. It's half an hour, it's 45 minutes, and that's all just part of of running a business, right? But it's when you get dragged into those pitches the big processes, and you bring eight members of your team in, and a huge deck, and multiple meetings, only to know that you're never gonna get it anyway or it was always gonna go back to the incumbent, and that's when you get resentful, right?

And you've spent, 20 grand, 40 grand, 50 grand on a process that you were never gonna win, and multiply that by 10 businesses, and it's a really, what a waste of money in the industry.

Darren Woolley: And it also destroys agencies. During this research project, which happened July to December last year, and we put the report out this year.

But a couple of independent, small independent agencies, , under 50 people contacted me and said, "Look, we'd like to do this." But in one case, they'd been invited to tender for almost 100 different pitches during the year. That's two a week. Most of them were for projects, and what they said is, they were contacting me because they were saying to fill in this research, we would have to fill that in 90-odd times for each pitch that we're invited to.

And , I just said what's your success rate? What's your conversion rate?" And they said about 10%. Now, that is a huge amount of work- ... for a 10% win rate. And my point, and the thing I'll say to every agency, is that the thing most do wrong is they don't qualify the opportunity from a business perspective before they, they participate.

So to your point, if someone phones you up and says, "We'd like you to tender for our business"- I would say there are a dozen questions that need to be answered before you can evaluate, is this a legitimate opportunity that fits with our new business strategy that we have a good chance of converting and would be a positive outcome and process for us to participate in?

If they phone up and go, "We'd just like to meet with you to get a better understanding of who you are and what you do," with the possibility of a tender, then you would turn up anyway because it's a relatively low cost to go along, present your credentials, meet with the client, and for you as well to assess, is this a client you really want to have?

And I think that's the danger is that sometimes, when I say that to a lot of agencies, they go, "You don't get it," that we need to win business. There's a desperation and I go, "No, you don't get it," because when you're desperate, you can almost smell it on the agency when they walk into the room, and that's immediately diminishing your chance of success.

James Lawrence: Yeah. It's such... And I do empathize so much with agency owners 'cause it is particularly in tougher economic conditions and you're managing payroll and it's it's shiny and it's could be a good deal and you're optimistic. And I think most agency owners are optimists, right? It's probably why you went into it in the first place.

But the, it- it is a power thing, right? And the power to say no, and generally, if someone sends us a, an RFP or a t- we call them arm's length, right? We're being kept at arm's length- Yeah ... from the people we'd like, normally like to speak to, our default position is no. We say we don't typically respond to tenders, and that automatically gets, gets a response.

'Cause generally it's "Yeah, we'd love to be part of the process and send us the 30-page RFP document," right? And so generally if we haven't got that ability to have a proper meet, like to follow our process around new business- Yeah ... which is to do a proper exploratory phase to truly understand- That's right

what a good scope is to kinda dig around, right? Is this just gonna go to the incumbent? Like, how did you hear about Rocket? If we're there just to make the numbers up, we'll generally, just politely step out of it.

If it's someone we've worked with previously and they love us and we really feel we're a chance of winning it, then potentially we will. But the idea of, I can see why an agency in distress will just have a crack at absolutely anything. But it is, you're then just falling into that the continuing cycle, right?

Of

Darren Woolley: perpetuating- Absolutely. It's also, James, the big difference between independently owned agencies and networks, because what you've gotta realize is the managing director of a network office is an employee who is KPI'd often on revenue, so every opportunity is a win they're going to meet their objective.

Whereas an independent, you've got employees, you've got people. Yes, you're responsible for meeting payroll and creating a safe and positive working environment and growing, through your own perspective, growing the business. That's a much smarter business approach than being a manager of an office that is KPI'd on revenue growth at any cost.

And I think that's the danger in the marketplace, is that . there is generally a feeling in the market that indies are a really positive opportunity for a lot of marketers, but what they haven't got to is going beyond why it's a, feels like a more positive interaction, is because you're actually talking to the business owner who has to make those decisions.

It's not made somewhere halfway around the world, and the person you're talking to is really only empowered to say yes as, as far as getting additional revenue. And I'd like every agency watching this to know that we turn down opportunities as well. We have to tender for much of the work we do.

But if we don't see the opportunity in it, if they're unwilling to answer the questions that we need to answer to make that decision, we'll say no. And yes, it hurts because it's an opportunity you've rejected, but you have to believe that you're doing the right thing in the longer term for your team and for your business.

James Lawrence: Yeah, that's it. That's a really interesting perspective. , For marketers listening, I think there's a, an interesting kind of push and pull. , In setting the scene in the report, it reads, "Pitches remain the primary lifeblood for agency new business and client transformations.

They fuel speculation, create narratives of victory and defeat, and shape the reputations of agencies and brands alike. It's no wonder that they continue to make headlines. As an industry, we still have a strange relationship with pitches. They are often the thing that people love to hate, yet the buzz of competition, the joy of victory ensure they remain something agency leaders hate to love."

And then I think this is an excellent quote, and I think it's more than just something that appears in the pitch. I suspect this is some- probably a philosophy of TrinityP3. And the line is, "Pitch when it's right to pitch, but when you do pitch right." So I think it's, we've been talking about the state of the pitch, but from that, you're obviously suggesting it's not always right to pitch, right?

Absolutely. . What's your perspective on that? And I guess it's a little bit vexed, right? 'Cause I suspect a good part of your business is making money out of helping marketers run a pitch process. But advice to an in-house marketer listening to the podcast, like when is it not right to pitch?

Darren Woolley: Look personally And I'm speaking on behalf of TrinityP3 as well as the founder. But yeah, a lot of times pitches happen, for instance, because marketers just wanna know what else is out there. They've got a perfectly good incumbent, and they're going to pitch just to find out if there's something better, and I don't think pitching is the right way to do that. And the reason is, it's incredibly difficult for an incumbent to win a pitch, because when you go out and talk to other agencies, they're being on their best behavior. The incumbent knows what you're like as a client. They're limited in what they can then come and present to you , as a new opportunity.

If you're going to test your incumbent, then test them by doing an assessment of how well they're performing, okay? If you're wanting to know what else is out there, don't go to pitch. Just have a whole lot of meetings with other agencies. There is nothing incumbent upon you to just meet with other agencies.

In fact, good marketers do it all the time. If you read about an agency that's doing amazing work in a category that's similar to yours, then just reach out to them and come and ask for it, but don't go to pitch. The second is when procurement says, "Oh the contract's up, you need to pitch again."

The chances are it's one in five incumbents win. That means four out of five don't. And so I would say if you're going to take them to pitch and you think they're doing a good job, it's not an advantage for them. Their chances of winning are very low. One in- Yeah ... 20%. So don't do that to them.

There are other ways to ensure that you've got, market qualified arrangement relationship, and that's another service that we offer, to be able to sign off for another three years, and in fact, we- we've done that since 2019. It's been a core offering. Even when people come and marketers come and say, "We want to pitch," we go through, the process of there are options rather-

And

James Lawrence: I think it's such, like sitting on my side of the fence- It, there's, yeah, there's other ways to keep us on our toes if we are the incumbent and you like us, but there's, you just wanna maybe tweak certain things. And I think we we've spoken before around your analogy of, you're in a reasonably happy marriage, you don't you know- Yeah

t- tell your wife that you're just gonna go on a first date with somebody- Date other people, yeah ... just to see how it goes, 'cause if you like someone better- It doesn't work very

Darren Woolley: well.

James Lawrence: No, it's a nice analogy.

Darren Woolley: Now, there, there's a th- there's another one, though, and that is, marketers are under huge amount of financial pressure.

This idea of use- using the pitch to get lower prices is a race to the bottom, value is based not just on how little you pay, but what you're actually getting. And if you use it to just get your incumbent to be paid less, then invariably they will find ways to cut their costs. And so you will end up getting less.

You just won't notice it. And again, there are other ways of doing that. One is an, a detailed look at your scope of work, because what we've often found inside a scope of work is a lot of things that could be either not done, because they're actually not productive, or could be done in a more cost-effective way, so it doesn't impact the agency as far as having to produce more for less.

- We've even built a quiz on our website so you can self-assess whether you should go to pitch or not. It takes you through all the things that we recommend you answer before you decide to go to market. And you- 'Cause the cost is too high.

James Lawrence: Yeah, the co- and it's a cost on everyone.

I think it's such a simple observation, but one of those things where I think we're all just so pre-programmed to if I need to find a new marketing agency or if I need to test whether my current agency's good, it's pitch, when it's but hang on there's some real downside here, right?

Darren Woolley: Absolutely.

James Lawrence: It was interesting in the report, and I, I'll ask you to do your best to take the TrinityP3 hat off here, Darren, but the, it looks at pitches that are run by procurement, run by marketing or run by a pitch consultant of which TrinityP3 would be one. The- the rating of the pitches was much higher when it was run by a pitch consultant.

What, like legitimately what are the pros? And if I'm an in-house marketer when should I legitimately be thinking, "Hey I... This is outside of my skill set," when I really should be bringing someone in to help me with it?

Darren Woolley: Okay. So the first thing is I think we need to consider that it's not outside a marketer's skill set.

Okay? That as we know, 70% of pitches are being run by marketers. The fact is that the more marketers that are running them, the more dissatisfaction there is with, by the a- from the agencies. But marketers can run pitches. What they're not doing, and my belief is the single biggest problem for marketers is that they don't have the time or the resources to run a pitch, and this is why they're getting such poor scores in that 30% of cases where they do get very low scores from agencies.

You think about how much time, a marketer should be saying to themselves, "How much time do I have extra in each week for the next three months?" How much additional time can I d- give to running a pitch? Because our calculations are across your team, let's say you get three or four or five people involved, you're going to spend between 300 and 500 hours on a pitch process okay?

So can you build that into the next three, three to four months, that extra time allocation? And if you can't, then you need someone to help you. Sure, you could reach out. If you've got in-house procurement, can they dedicate that time? Because first of all, a lot of marketers come to us and they'll say, "Can you help us run a pitch?"

When we're able to dictate or outline the actual time that's involved, they're s- often surprised because I think many marketers underestimate. In fact I remember one marketer going, "Oh yeah, I ran my own pitch and, I couldn't believe how needy the agencies were. They were emailing me all the time, they were wanting to have meetings," and I'm going, "Of course.

They wanna build a relationship. They wanna get to better know you." In that marketer's mind, the pitch was, "I choose two, three, five agencies, I give them a brief, they go away, come back and present the work. I choose the one I like." This is not a proper tender process. And what we're seeing recently is a number of very high-profile situations where marketers have run their own pitch only to have the relationship break down within 12 to 18 months, and that's a very public breakdown.

Particularly if you're a high-profile marketer. And I think it's because they don't have the time. It's also why we see a lot of this bad behavior. They've chosen the agency they want. "Oh yeah, I've got five other agencies. I've gotta phone them and tell them why they didn't win.

I haven't got time. I'll just put it off," and they never do it, and it leaves a bad taste. Yeah. They don't have time to dedicate to actually get to know or understand how the agency works or the culture of the agency or ... and so these are all the reasons why marketers when they run their own pitch, which they have the ability to do, will end up, doing it badly, and the impact that has is on their personal reputation and on their business.

James Lawrence: And how often do you find you're ... Like in a bigger organization w- when you're in there working, are you often working with procurement as well? ... 'Cause I I think my observation is no- not being disparaging of procurement, but I c- in many ways, I can't think of a worse- group of people to procure marketing services, , 'cause I think marketing in many ways is different, and I think it comes back to your the whole scope thing, right? And it's an hour of marketing time versus an hour of marketing time, like the best paid media person I've ever worked with versus the worst. It's do you want the cheapest heart surgeon or do you want the best heart surgeon?

It's do you want the best tax barrister in the country to run your case or someone who's a bit cheaper? The power of expertise when it comes to marketing, a race to the bottom of marketing, getting junior people working on stuff, it's not a commercial rent or, waste disposal or whatever it might be.

So I think often when, and we don't deal with procurement too often, probably particularly more after the comments I've just made. I think the idea of a procurement-led pitch necessarily driving a good marketing outcome I'd be a bit concerned.

Darren Woolley: Okay. So there's a few things I want to address in that.

The first one is directly from the report. One of the things that traditional procurement tries to do is to create a level playing field by minimizing the interaction between potential vendors and buyers, and that's not a good thing in marketing. When you're buying creative services, when much of the work is actually going to be, once appointed, co-creation, where marketers are constantly interacting with the agency that they've appointed, you need to test that out as part of the tender process, and you can't do that by getting an agency to fill in a form and have a very structured meeting.

You actually need to create a number of opportunities for those interactions to occur. So that's the first thing that general procurement will get wrong. The second thing I'll challenge for you is that - Australian procurement is very different from the UK, the US, where much larger organizations actually have marketing procurement specialists.

These are people that are dedicated to the procurement of media and creative services and comms and merchandising and printing and all sorts of things. They know and they've often come from those industries into procurement roles. In Australia, what we find is that at best you'll have someone that's called indirect procurement and so they're responsible for all the things that are not core to the manufacturing or delivery of service.

So it'll be travel and accommodation professional services, which marketing will fall under. Now, imagine that your life your business life spreads across all those indirect categories, and suddenly maybe once every two to three years you get involved in a tender for marketing. How can you do a deep dive into a category?

What you're looking for then as an agency is a procurement person that is open to wanting to understand and learn what they're actually buying. Now, a lot of agencies make the mistake when they're dealing with procurement, they just do what they're told My advice is say to the procurement person, "I can do this, but have you considered a much better way is doing this?

And these are the reasons why." Because I've found the best procurement people are absolutely open to learning about a category, learning about new approaches, and so having those conversations stop feeling like procurement are the police- ... and that you have to do what you're told or you'll be arrested and thrown in jail is just not true.

If you meet a procurement person like that, run away. It's,

James Lawrence: it's so- It is not the way ... it's so interesting the way you framed it, much more articulately than I have, and I think I can think, I'm thinking of two in my mind, and one was completely arm's length. It was an Excel spreadsheet.

Darren Woolley: Yeah.

James Lawrence: And exactly- Wrong ... exactly to your point, it's leveling the playing. And I said to my team don't res- I'm not responding to it. We're stepping out of it." And I can think of one with a reasonably high-profile client that we went on to land, and I don't know what the term is, but it was almost, it was kinda just this security guard almost for the marketing team to make sure that- Yeah

Nothing untoward was happening, that the same questions were being asked, et cetera. But this procurement person, I think, really understood what they knew and also what they didn't, and they let the marketing team kinda come in, meet us, and would've done the same with all the other agencies, and that's exactly as it should be.

And I understand that in larger organizations you need to have your kinda due diligence and checks and balances and- Of course ... all those things. But I think a race to the bottom in marketing is not necessarily gonna drive better value for a marketer.

Darren Woolley: And increasingly won't drive better results, because that's the pressure marketers are under, is not just doing it cheaper or doing it for the budget, but actually then proving the results.

And that's something, really good procurement people are open to. - We have the same experience. There are times when marketers engage us and say, "We want you to work with the procurement team." When we have a procurement team that is open to ideas, asking for a, advice or challenging them on approach, that's a much better relationship than the procurement team that go you just do this little bit and I'll do all this."

Because us working in isolation, in that type of silo can't deliver the type of value that we could deliver if they were more open to collaborating. And, like most things in life, I find those people that are trying to control the process are usually the ones that are least confident- in their capability because they want to control it so that, there's no chance of them being revealed as perhaps being under-equipped to deliver on that.

James Lawrence: There's a Quote that stayed with me, which micromanagement comes from fear.

Darren Woolley: Yeah. Absolutely.

James Lawrence: And it's it's stayed with me.

As we look to wrap up, Darren I can't let you off before I read this quote, which I think is a good one. When an agency pours $100,000 of unbillable time to solving a brand's strategic problems, a generic procurement email saying you were a close second is insulting. Can we talk about the close second?

There's another quote in there, which I might struggle to find, but essentially it's saying, I was told I was a close second, and then I spoke to another agency owner who was told they were also a close second. So can we talk about a close second, and then can we talk about your best practice for what in-house marketers should be feeding back to unsuccessful, Of applicants or agencies that go through this process?

Darren Woolley: Sure. So look I've struck this personally when I've been managing a process, and the marketer is told ... I've been sitting in the meeting and they've said, "Oh, w- you did a great job, and you're a close second." And afterwards I said, "Why did you say that? They were actually more like a distant third."

I didn't wanna hurt their feelings." And so I've had to point out the silver medal syndrome. For those that haven't heard, there was a study done looking at facial expressions in the Olympic Games, weightlifting of all things, and they were looking at the facial expressions of the gold, silver, and bronze medalists.

Now, here's what they found. The gold medalist was naturally happy because they'd won the gold. The, they'd achieved the fr- the fruition of all their hard training. The bronze medalist was also ecstatic. They'd actually made it to the dais. The silver medalist in every single case had a face that was just filled with worry and concern.

Because when you think about it, a close second after all of that effort leaves you feeling like, "What could I have done that got, would've got me the gold?" And so what you're actually doing is torturing your agency by telling them they're a close second. You're actually better telling them that, "Look, you had a lot of positive things.

There was a lot of good things." You can even say, "It was a hard decision, but in the end, we've gone for a bet- someone that offered more of what we needed, and at this point in time, that wasn't you." All

James Lawrence: right? You Could start to tell them they came third. Just happy to be there.

Darren Woolley: In fact and I'm sure Adam Ferrier won't mind me saying this, he said he, he once told me, "Darren, I don't mind going through one of your pitches as long as I'm either first or last." "But if I'm in the middle, then we're... I've, I feel like I've really underperformed." And I think that's a really great view to have, you either push the boundaries and it's gonna be successful, hugely successful or not. But I think it does, it from my personal view is when I'm running a pitch, I want the clients to struggle because all the agencies are terrific. I don't want them to struggle because they're all ordinary-

...

Darren Woolley: Or they're all bland.

I think agencies have to have more self-confidence, more, let's call it swagger, in being who you are and being willing to be accepted for who you are or not being accepted for who you are as a company. This idea of trying to mold yourself to being something that you're not just to win the business is deceptive as well.

You're not being true to either the agency or to the client relationship if you win it, and I think that's really important.

James Lawrence: Yeah, and it's a relationship that you're starting off, right? And it's a complex relationship. The idea that you're not gonna be who you are and then it's gonna work out well once you actually-

kind of jump into bed together it's just- So

Darren Woolley: to speak.

James Lawrence: So to s- metaphorically, of course. It's just it's, yeah, you're setting yourself up to fail at some point, aren't you?

Darren Woolley: Exactly.

James Lawrence: Darren, it's always great to chat. So for listeners,... we'll put a link to the page on Tr- the TrinityP3 website, but it's trinityp3.com/state-of-the-pitch.

Darren Woolley: That's it. State of the pitch. Hyphens all the way through.

James Lawrence: Will include a link. So Darren, thanks so much for coming back onto the pod.

Darren Woolley: Thanks, James. I always enjoy this.

James Lawrence: Thanks, mate.