This week on the PRmoment podcast, we’re taking another change of tack – we’re talking about the pitching process and on the show we’ve got a PR buyer and a PR seller.

On the buy side we’ve got Lenovo’s executive director, global corporate communications Charlotte West and on the sell side we’ve got 3 Monkey Zeno’s business development director Rebecca Wagstaffe.

Here’s a summary of what Rebecca, Charlotte and I discussed:

[00:01:19] What is a tissue meeting and are they a good idea?

[00:04:30] How reliable is the "that went really well" feeling post the pitch?

[00:06:45] How significant an influence do procurement tend to have in the decision making process? 

[00:08:38] How the pitch decision making scorecard will be weighted. 

[00:09:37] Charlotte talks us through Lenovo's score card for a recent pitch.

[00:14:12] Is the pitch process really about the creative idea? Or is it more about how quickly you can build a relationship with people? 

[00:17:45] As only about 30% of what gets pitched gets activated, is the pitch process a 70% waste of everybody's time? 

[00:22:09] Are there big differences in the type of ideas and activations that agencies pitch for, or are they broadly along the same lines?

[00:22:57] Is there a better way than pitching to start a business relationship between two companies?

[00:24:19] Why there must be parity and equality in the relationship between the company buying the consultancy and the agency selling it.

[00:26:09] How Lenovo ran its recent request for information (RFI) process, which only considered agencies that had a diverse range of employees.

[00:28:50] Here's a link to a podcast where Lenovo's Torode Neptune talks at length about its approach to encouraging diversity in PR through a change in buying behaviour.

[00:32:34] What techniques does 3 Monkeys Zeno use to you try and improve its chance of winning a pitch?

[00:35:28] Why a successful pitch is still about science plus art which needs a level of magical creative thinking.

[00:36:35] How the data piece of a pitch has become a staple now, it's just expected. 

[00:37:28] How on the buy side you must make sure that the key stakeholders are engaged in the process.

[00:38:38] Why normally there are still only one or two decision makers for every pitch. Everyone else in an influencer.

[00:39:02] How do clients decide which agencies to ask to pitch? 

[00:40:52] Charlotte talks us through Lenovo's scorecard approach at both the RFI and RFP stages.

[00:43:09] How stories of agencies pitching and never being told that they lost or receiving feedback is down to bad manners client side.

[00:48:27] How the minimum amount of time that goes into a pitch is about 100 hours.