tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-199053302011-11-27T18:35:24.359-05:00Sorry, but this blog has moved. You can find it temporarily housed at http://neocortexconsult.com/Site/PitchSmarter/PitchSmarter.html. Thanks for your patience!Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.comBlogger321100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-34910689485674697952008-09-02T08:54:00.002-04:002008-09-02T14:14:26.807-04:00

Your firm, once growing quite nicely, seems to have hit a slump. You’re pitching for opportunities that match your company well (in capabilities, experience, size, and team chemistry), but other companies come away with the assignment. And you’re increasingly wondering what to do to revitalize growth.Maybe it’s time to let someone outside your firm look at your decks–or even create them for

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-57951405350997153132008-09-02T08:47:00.003-04:002008-09-02T08:57:28.566-04:00

If the business you run is winning lots of new clients (organically or through pitching), chances are you’re running out of time. (And if you’ve got the opposite problem, go to the next post.)Do you recognize any of these signs that you’re over-working and under-delegating:• You’re on a first-name basis with the office cleaning crew?• The late-night sushi deliveryman knows your regular order?•

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-30295172496733795432008-08-19T09:07:00.002-04:002008-08-19T09:22:19.930-04:00

If you think it's getting harder to get new business, you have plenty of company. New business director and Advertising Age columnist Noelle Weaver laments in the August 18th Advertising Age, Agency Reviews During a Recession, that 'it sure is a little wacky out there', with clients fishing for free ideas, inviting spec pitches for nonexistent projects, and other shenanigans. She has plenty of

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-77467206473118783742008-08-18T16:10:00.004-04:002008-08-18T16:23:56.115-04:00

One casualty of our era’s obsession with innovation and youth is the fading away of great and evergreen lore from yesteryear’s advisors. Dorothy Sarnoff, still alive today at age 94, was for much of her life a font of frankly-stated good sense about how to speak in public. I’ve never met her, but I sure do wish I had. Her writings have helped me immeasurably, helping me address groups, control

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-48517075647487349672008-08-15T14:20:00.003-04:002008-08-15T14:24:24.468-04:00

The scarcest resource a pitch team has is time. And one of the main reasons teams run out of time is that many lack someone who's both empowered to, and willing to, make hard, often-unpopular decisions. Not rushed decisions, not unilateral decisions, but decisions that stand nonetheless.Years ago, while talking to another pitch consultant, I heard her describe this function as a 'pitch Ayatollah'

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-42311034721191001202008-08-15T14:09:00.003-04:002008-08-15T14:19:09.823-04:00

My 14-year-old loves to watch the TLC channel's "What Not To Wear", a reality-TV show in which hosts Stacy London and Clinton Kelly gently mock the wardrobes of fashion naïfs, guiding them through makeovers. I get a chuckle out of it, too. Who can resist watching 'ugly ducklings' become swans, right before our eyes?I'm probably the farthest thing from a fashion guru, but over the years I've seen

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-37839208922687294982008-07-29T15:41:00.003-04:002008-07-29T15:49:45.103-04:00

It was big news last week that Johnson and Johnson is looking to consolidate its pharmaceutical brands with one or two agency holding companies.Bad news for independent agencies. And probably for J&J brands, too.Holding companies are to advertising what HMOs are to medicine: high-volume, low-quality, low cost deals. Within any HMO are some fantastic doctors. But the HMO concept is all about

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-84826824314008589312008-07-17T14:44:00.004-04:002008-07-17T15:53:17.882-04:00

Doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, accountants: These professionals can all do something you probably can’t:They can hire an ad agency.If you run a Med Ed, interactive, PR, or Managed Care unit in a communications network, you can’t go out and hire an ad agency. It's against network rules.You’re permitted to occasionally borrow one, sure. From a network partner. If they’re not too busy. And

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-89425954995298500662008-06-12T18:37:00.006-04:002008-06-16T11:16:13.348-04:00

John Wanamaker, retail baron of yesteryear, famously found the ROI of advertising unmeasurableI started to write about agencies and client procurement departments, but I got so hot under the collar I had to stand next to the air conditioner for five minutes to cool down. Then I realized the subject was too big to tackle in a single blogpost. So in this one, I’ll focus on what should be one of

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-50259770247586636102008-06-02T17:30:00.002-04:002008-06-02T17:31:31.564-04:00

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-21860774393403245802008-06-02T17:20:00.001-04:002008-06-02T17:23:58.168-04:00

Sometimes, a quick assessment of your idea by a client in a hurry determines whether it will live or die.Or you may be told that the presentation that you prepared exquisitely to fill 45 minutes now has to be given in just 5. Fact is, you can’t count on your client’s availability or attention, even under the best of circumstances. Or you may suddenly have a brief window of opportunity appear in

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-60030816299285635962008-05-27T14:05:00.004-04:002008-05-27T15:05:52.634-04:00

An advertising agency recently asked us to review one of their presentation decks after the fact, to see if we could help them understand why their pitch had failed.The deck was a bit complicated and busy, but probably no more so than the winning agency’s. And the creative work was clear, fresh, and original. The problem: the strategy was based on several erroneous, and in this case fatal,

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-58700761283904805072008-05-18T11:38:00.002-04:002008-05-18T12:29:40.448-04:00

Want to know how expert you are at making pitch presentations–or where you should focus your efforts to improve? This self-assessment can help.When you make a presentation to a group of prospective clients:(F1) Do clients typically like you within moments after you begin your presentations?(F2) Do you smile and seem happy when presenting?(F3) Do you disclose personal information about yourself to

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-12349815532876396522008-05-16T15:39:00.007-04:002008-05-20T09:48:04.571-04:00

I was leading a skills workshop recently at a Manhattan-based PR company, and I asked the group, “What’s your biggest fear about presenting?”“Blanking out,” said a young woman.Someone else added, “Not remembering what I planned to say. Losing my place and just standing there.” The rest of the room nodded, as they usually do in presentation workshops when I ask this question.If the fear of being

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-38749587902039801252008-05-16T10:22:00.005-04:002008-05-16T10:36:45.539-04:00

New business, like so many other endeavors, benefits greatly from a team approach. But each team member has to understand his or her role, and the roles of others. Otherwise, misunderstandings, overlooked tasks, and other inefficiencies can compromise your new business success.Relatively few agencies, even big ones, have a senior executive assigned exclusively to new business, and according to

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-65658993060653346452008-05-02T13:14:00.016-04:002008-05-03T15:02:22.442-04:00

(picture source: iStockphoto)In just a little over two decades, PowerPoint has become the software program pitch presenters most love to hate. Relied on for the speed with which it allows slides to be created and revised, ‘slideware’ is also widely reviled for the design horrors, bullet-riddled text, and mind-numbing excesses of data it far too often inflicts on pitch audiences.Slideware is

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-52461892640061410552008-04-21T12:02:00.005-04:002008-05-02T16:53:22.870-04:00

It’s the very first question you should ask yourselves when you set the wheels in motion for any pitch.I’m a fan of David Maister, the author, speaker, and consultant to professional service firms. Maister has an uncanny eye for irony, and he singled out one such irony in a blogpost of his last month titled The Shoemaker’s Children. Alluding to the fable of the cobbler’s barefoot spawn, Maister

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-24246667464237400442008-04-21T10:53:00.003-04:002008-05-02T16:53:46.689-04:00

While spending a weekend a few years ago at the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, I toured a huge, Cold War-era bunker nearby. Built in the 1960s to shelter Congress in the event of a nuclear attack, the now-declassified facility was designed to employ elaborate psychological measures to keep surviving legislators rooted in outside reality in case of an extended

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-88687607727496536812008-04-18T17:18:00.009-04:002008-05-02T16:54:17.896-04:00

Does your firm stalk tigers or elephants? Do you get along best with bulldogs, or do you snuggle up coziest with pussycats?These animals are metaphors for different kinds of clients. Market segmentation is not just for client-side marketers. It’s for you and your agency, too. When you use a segmentation strategy to analyze your current client portfolio, you’ll understand better what kinds of

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-42019992366844731032008-04-07T13:41:00.004-04:002008-05-02T16:54:42.019-04:00

If your agency never gets calls and emails from agency search consultants, you’re in the majority. Of the more than 72,000 agencies and design firms in the USA, search consultants can get to know a few at most. You can choose to look on search consultants as the enemy… or you could recognize their potential as an ally, if not a friend, in getting your business to grow. Here are some ways to court

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-31396504025974556422008-04-07T12:56:00.005-04:002008-05-18T13:25:24.435-04:00

The setting was the noisy, dimly lit Gotham Bar & Grill, an upscale destination for fine food and pricey wine at the northern edge of Greenwich Village. Along with the president of an agency, I was dining with an agency search consultant: the head of a firm that clients hire to help them find agencies.Tall and taciturn, he was a grizzled veteran of both client and agency sides in the

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-84198144508044994382008-04-07T12:31:00.006-04:002008-05-02T16:55:34.252-04:00

Agencies spend a small fortune on pitch paraphernalia, but where is the real ROI? It’s like an arms race. In their anxiety and eagerness to win, firms continually dream up new ways to up the ante, seeking to impress clients. Creativity is great—it’s what we do—but I constantly get asked, “what works and what doesn’t?” because these cost so much. There’s no hard data, unfortunately. But here are

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-17490796844209713672008-03-15T12:57:00.011-04:002008-05-02T16:55:49.230-04:00

Lately I'm seeing more and more agencies replace their screens and multimedia projectors with large plasma and LCD TV/monitors. My advice: don't rush to follow them.Sure, these displays look rich, imposing, and modern on the wall—that's why architects and interior designers like them so much. And they're great for showing movies and TV shows, compared with the big-tube monitors of yesteryear.But

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-66772513960156829692008-03-15T09:52:00.007-04:002008-05-02T16:56:13.115-04:00

Think you’re ready to pitch? These are the twelve key steps I believe are the most important ones that you must manage well to get the win you deserve.1. Manage first impressions. Make sure you sound organized, eager, and professional on the phone when you get the call. Get back to them fast if they leave a message. Ask smart questions—ideally, ones that they'll need to confer with several of

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-87160976829522788802008-03-02T12:36:00.000-05:002008-03-11T15:52:13.120-04:00

Get the word out to everyone working on a pitch: You’re on pitch time now. The heat’s on. It’s not business as usual. Your whole team has got to think differently about time.One of the strongest assets a pitch team can have is a driving sense of urgency. With ongoing work, agencies grow accustomed to round after round of reviews and revisions as campaigns evolve. In a pitch, there just isn’t time

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-1145752511384437572008-03-01T20:31:00.000-05:002008-03-11T15:48:11.516-04:00

Clients often say they’re looking for their agency relationship to be a love-fest – a true “strategic partnership”. Why, then, do they act so coy and withholding during the courting and mating process? Wouldn’t a little more generosity and openness make for better pairings in business, as in love?An agency executive recently shared this story: A potential client’s consultant asked the agency to

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-1138398524227888702008-03-01T15:32:00.000-05:002008-03-11T15:46:41.445-04:00

I just learned a new phrase: "cognitive miser".(No, it's not someone who won't share what he's thinking.)It's a term for how people cope with complexity in decision-making. I ran across the term yesterday while getting ready for a seminar I occasionally go to at Columbia University's Center for the Decision Sciences.It seems we're pre-wired to use as little intellectual energy as possible in

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-1142623935138959242008-03-01T13:24:00.000-05:002008-03-11T15:48:31.127-04:00

How many times has it happened to you that after you show creative work to your clients, one of them turns to you and says, "What's the agency's recommendation"?Careful. This question has explosive potential, although handled well it can help you a lot.When I coach agency rehearsals, I spend a lot of time with them rehearsing the Q&A -- the part of the pitch meeting when the client finally gets

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-80615276370245288172008-03-01T10:59:00.000-05:002008-03-11T15:47:20.414-04:00

It occurred to me today that marketers often approach communication strategy the way puppy trainers deal with the family pooch. It’s a question of which commands to give, and how to reward good behavior.For example, marketers of new brands often tell customers, “Fetch!” Drop what you’re doing, go out and grab the latest, greatest gizmo, and bring it home to show everyone. The incentive: most

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-9282640817246640682007-05-29T16:26:00.001-04:002008-03-01T12:27:53.754-05:00

I sat next to a strategic sourcing ('procurement') executive at a recent industry luncheon, a lovely woman wearing a stylish pink suit. Once she found out what I do for a living, she was intrigued -- she hadn't encountered pitch consultants before -- and we fell into a conversation about how clients 'procure' agencies.She spoke with pride of the innovations she had made in agency management and

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-1135812100745912942005-12-28T17:54:00.000-05:002005-12-28T21:07:50.123-05:00

One of the ironies of new business pitches has got to be this:The agency that presents best, not the agency that does the best work, is usually the one that wins.I'd guess more than 98% of the value agencies provide their clients has nothing to do with their presentation skills. The unique ability to listen to customers and derive brilliant insights... the bravery to put forward revolutionary

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19905330.post-1134686287578188592005-12-15T17:31:00.000-05:002005-12-15T17:38:07.600-05:00

This blog will be about the art of pitching business.Its primary focus will be advertising and PR agencies, but I hope it will also be useful to people in other service industries who pitch creative communication ideas. For example, I imagine architecture firms, design firms, training companies, and medical education companies will find useful ideas on this page.I hope to have fun, stir up some

Rob Buccinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18096337313683478927noreply@blogger.com0