Win rate for most agencies: 10-30%.
You pitch 10 times. Win 2-3 deals. Waste weeks on the rest.
Here's what happens after you leave the room: Procurement pulls out a scorecard. 25 criteria. Weighted scoring. Your beautiful creative? Worth 15% of the total score.
They grade you on risk factors. Process documentation. Compliance checkboxes. Things you never mentioned.
One procurement director from a $2B retailer showed us their evaluation matrix. Top weighted criteria:
- Strategic thinking (25%)
- Relevant experience (20%)
- Team stability (15%)
- Process clarity (15%)
- Creative approach (15%)
- Price (10%)
Your deck spent 80% on creative and pricing. They scored you on completely different factors.
Smaller agencies with ugly decks beat you. They knew the criteria. Addressed each point systematically. Scored higher despite weaker portfolios.
Clients don't buy agencies. They buy risk reduction.
Every pitch gets filtered through the same evaluation framework. Master it or keep losing.
Inside the client's evaluation process
Picture this: You just pitched. Door closes behind you.
Marketing loves your ideas. Procurement opens their laptop. CFO asks about risk mitigation. Legal wants contract details. IT needs security compliance docs.
Your contact? They defend you for 5 minutes. Then the scoring starts.
Real evaluation happens in three stages:
Stage 1: The filter (same day)
Procurement checks boxes. Do they have insurance? Case studies in our industry? Local presence? Senior team commitment?
Missing any requirement = immediate elimination. Creative quality irrelevant.
Stage 2: The scorecard (within 48 hours)
Committee members score independently. Usually 5-7 people. Each weights criteria differently.
CMO focuses on strategy. CFO on ROI proof. Procurement on process documentation. IT on tech stack compatibility.
Average scores determine shortlist. Top 3 move forward.
Stage 3: The comparison (within 1 week)
Finalist pitches get compared side-by-side. Same criteria. Now they negotiate.
References checked. Contracts reviewed. Final scoring adjusted for risk factors.
Winner chosen by committee consensus. Sometimes overruled by CEO who wasn't even in the pitch.
The three fears that kill deals
Every client shares these nightmares:
- The vanishing team - You pitch with seniors. Juniors do the work. They've been burned before.
- The scope creep - Fixed price becomes variable. Timeline extends. Budget balloons. Legal gets involved.
- The flake factor - Agency goes dark. Misses deadlines. Changes account teams. Loses momentum.
Address these fears explicitly or lose to agencies who do.
What clients actually score when you pitch
Strategic alignment score (25% weight)
Clients grade your business understanding, not your creative skills.
They ask themselves one question. Does this agency get our challenges or just our brief?
Generic market insights score zero. Copy-pasted competitor analysis scores zero.
One agency won a $2M deal with this opener. "Your 18-month sales cycle breaks traditional demand gen. Here's why."
Showed more understanding in 10 seconds than others did in 50 slides.
Strategic plan
Go-to-market strategy
Proof of results (20% weight)
Case studies need numbers. Real numbers.
"Increased engagement" means nothing. "Generated $1.2M pipeline from $100K spend" means everything.
Show revenue. Show ROI. Show timeline.
Skip the awards. Skip the impressions. Skip the brand lift studies.
Case study
Team credibility (15% weight)
Clients Google every person you mention.
They check LinkedIn. They look for industry experience. They spot junior padding.
Show who actually works on their account. Include their background. Prove they've done this before.
Mystery teams lose to transparent ones.
Process clarity (15% weight)
Clients buy certainty, not creativity.
Show exactly what happens week 1, month 1, quarter 1.
Vague timelines lose deals. "We'll develop strategy" loses to "Week 1: audit. Week 2: strategy draft. Week 3: approval."
Map every milestone. Define every deliverable.
Project proposal
Capabilities deck
Metrics and measurement (10% weight)
Agencies promise results. Few show how they'll measure them.
Define KPIs upfront. Explain tracking methods. Show reporting samples.
Monthly reports beat quarterly reviews. Live dashboards beat PDF reports.
KPI report
SEO report
Budget transparency (10% weight)
Surprise costs kill relationships.
Break down every line item. Platform fees. Ad spend. Management fees.
Show pricing tiers. Explain what triggers cost changes.
"Starting at $10K" loses to detailed cost breakdowns.
Creative capabilities (5% weight)
Creative matters least. Hurts to hear. Data proves it.
Show work quality through results, not beauty shots.
One great campaign with ROI beats ten pretty concepts.
Creative brief
Creative agency
Evaluation criteria by agency type
Every client type has their own scorecard. Most agencies pitch the same deck to everyone.
Digital marketing agencies
Performance clients don't care about your process. They care about SQL cost.
Last week, a SaaS CMO showed us their scoring sheet. Top line: "CRM integration experience." Not mentioned once in any pitch they received.
Digital agencies talk about traffic. Rankings. Impressions.
Clients score you on:
- Salesforce sync setup
- Lead scoring models
- Attribution window understanding
- MQL to SQL conversion rates
One agency lost a $500K deal because they couldn't explain multi-touch attribution. Beautiful deck. Perfect case studies. Failed the technical test.
Design and creative agencies
"We love your portfolio" means nothing. You still lost.
Creative evaluation happens backwards. They start with business metrics, end with aesthetics.
A luxury brand's procurement shared their matrix:
- Conversion impact: 40%
- Speed to market: 30%
- Brand consistency: 20%
- Creative excellence: 10%
The agency with the best book lost. The agency showing checkout flow optimization won.
Consulting agencies
Consultants get grilled differently. It's an expertise audit.
No pretty slides save you here. They test knowledge depth. Ask about implementation scars. Want to see where strategies failed.
McKinsey loses to boutiques who show implementation experience. Deloitte loses to firms who promise embedded teams.
How to implement a scoring system
Smart agencies reverse-engineer client scorecards.
Start here. Pull 10 recent RFPs. Count criteria frequency. Weight by win/loss patterns.
Most common criteria across 500 RFPs:
- Relevant experience (appears in 95%)
- Team qualifications (89%)
- Process methodology (84%)
- Pricing structure (78%)
- Technical capabilities (72%)
Now flip it. Build your pitch to hit each criterion explicitly.
The scoring matrix that works
Procurement loves spreadsheets.
Give them one. Create a one-page score summary. List their criteria. Show how you match. Use their language exactly.
One agency includes this as slide 2. Shows they did homework. Frames entire pitch.
Ugly but effective. Procurement forwards it unchanged.
Getting stakeholder input
Different roles. Different weights.
CMO cares about strategy. CFO about ROI. IT about integrations. Legal about contracts.
Ask upfront: "Who's involved in evaluation?" Then tailor sections for each.
One agency creates appendixes for each stakeholder. 5-page main deck. 20 pages of targeted appendixes. Everyone gets what they need.
Testing your pitch scoring
Before pitching, score yourself.
Use their criteria. Be brutal. Where do you score 3/5? Fix those sections first.
Then get someone outside your team to score. Fresh eyes spot gaps.
Using analytics to win more pitches
You pitch. They smile. Say "we'll be in touch." Then silence.
What happened? Who killed it? Which part failed?
Without tracking, you're guessing. With tracking, you know.
What tracking reveals
Ellty shows everything after you hit send.
CFO opened your deck 5 times. Spent 4 minutes on pricing. Forwarded to finance team. They spent 8 minutes on ROI calculations.
CMO? Opened once. Skipped to creative samples. Closed after 30 seconds.
Now you know. CFO is champion. CMO needs convincing. Finance wants more detail.
The patterns that predict wins
After tracking 10,000 pitch views, patterns emerge.
Winning pitches get:
- Opened 12+ times first week
- Shared with 4+ people
- 2+ minutes on case studies
- Multiple views of pricing
Losing pitches get:
- Single view
- No forwards
- Under 60 seconds total
- Skip to last slide
One agency saw their pitch opened 47 times. All on competitor analysis slides. They sent additional competitive intelligence. Won the deal.
Following up with intelligence
Generic follow-up: "Just checking in on our proposal."
Data-driven follow-up: "Noticed your team spent time on our ROI projections. Here's additional detail on those calculations."
Specificity shows you're paying attention. Makes you look sophisticated. Separates you from spray-and-pray agencies.
Start tracking your pitches today. Pick a template. Add analytics. See what happens after you hit send.
