Winning a new account takes a special blend of creativity, insight, chemistry, and luck. There’s a lot invested on the part of the agen cy and the client and there’s a lot at stake. For the client, choosing the right agency can mean a successful launch, expanding an existing market, or extending the life of a drug. The decision can add up to hundreds of mil lions of dollars in product sales and agency revenue. And the decision can be the beginning of a commit ment, which can last for many years and often outlives the involvement of the original pitch team or the client team. For the agency, the pitch is the culmination of weeks and weeks of hard work boiled down to a presentation that lasts for a few hours.To win a pitch, everything has to go right and the agency team and the client team have to make the right intellectual and emotional connection. In a few short hours, everything has to go right. How does it happen? Commitment To do the pitch right takes a process and single minded focus. Few agencies have an organized and ded icated new business team. And pitchteam members have to prepare while keeping their regular “day job,” whether it’s running the agency, keeping existing clients happy, or meeting daytoday deadlines. Know the Customer Before you can know the customer, you have to determine just who the customer is.The obvious con clusion is that the prescriber is the customer. But that approach is too narrow.The customer is the prescriber, as well as other healthcare professionals such as nurs es, pharmacists, and therapists. The customer is the thirdparty payer and the professional societies. And the customer is the patient and his or her family. Insights on all customers must be gathered through primary research. To generate a core idea, evaluate inputs from four basic areas — patients, healthcare providers, social trends, and business trends. And of course, in a pitch the agency has to know one more customer — the client. Past Performance Does Not Guarantee Future Results The basic price of admission to the pitch is usually having the right experience in a therapeutic category without having a current conflict. But the pitch is about the client and their current situation. It’s not about the agency. And many agencies make the mistake of focus ing on themselves and on the past.The focus of the pitch is on the client and about the future. Making a Connection After the field has been evaluated on its strategic thinking, creativity, and depth of knowledge a selection often comes down to an intangible.The best clientagen cy relationships are based on an emotional connection. Everyone in the room must be an integral member of the team. Everyone needs to have a role, a chance to present and interact with the client.Too often an agency cares more about the PowerPoint deck than the ideas. Good pitches use a combination of media and straight forward conversation with the client to get the agency’s ideas across and to get the client to know the agency better. Making a personal connection at many levels is critical to the success of the pitch and a dark room and slides are a barrier between the agency and the client. Client Responsibilities The investment on the part of the agency is enor mous — clients need to respect the time it takes to put a pitch together. Even if a client considers many agencies for an account, the number of agencies actually invited to the final pitch should be limited to three or four. Clients should be open and responsive to agency ques tions during the pitch process. An informal dialogue established in the days and weeks before a pitch can give insight into the future client/agency relationship. And, agencies need clear evaluation criteria. It helps us know where to aim and what’s important to the client. Once the pitch is complete, clients should make a decision quickly and give feedback about the decision. Besides the emotional effort invested in a pitch, an agen cy spends about 10% of anticipated first year revenue on the pitch. Every time an agency pitches an account — win or lose — feedback helps us learn and grow. The Art of the Pitch Alan Toltzis President THEAGENCY PROCESS TRAPEZOID HEALTHCARE COMMUNICATIONS LLC,Yardley, Pa., is a fullservice healthcare communications agency and a division of Axis Healthcare Communications LLC. For more information, call 2155040200 or visit www.trapezoidhc.com. To win a pitch, everything has to go right and the agency team and the client team have to make the right intellectual and emotional connection. Trapezoid Healthcare Communications LLC

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