This week (9th August) the Oystercatchers team welcomed in New Business and Marketing Teams from our Oystercatcher Club member agencies for a training session on new business fundamentals and pitching excellence. 

The session took agency New Business and Marketing Teams through the fundamentals of new business prospecting, and how to nail a pitch.


The purpose of this session was to get our agency partners thinking about new business, and share useful insights on how to run a winning pitch to forge better partnerships with clients. Here are some of the key take outs from the session:

Nail your new business fundamentals
It’s likely a client would have started researching an agency well before making contact. For this reason, agencies should ensure they have a clear plan for prospecting new business, and that New Business and Marketing teams are aligned with their senior team on each individual’s roles and responsibilities.

Each agency will have a different offering, so it’s important for them to make their unique value proposition clear to potential clients from the start, as clients will want to know if a prospective agency aligns with their ethos and can answer their business challenges. To ensure this, agencies’ contact approaches should be simple, with relevant people and information being easy for clients to find.

How to run a perfect pitch
The session explored the steps involved in an average pitch process, and what the Oystercatchers’ team seek to understand from the client to best guide the agency search and selection process.

Key take outs included how agencies can prepare the best pitch team internally, by having the right people on board, and pinpointing how New Business and Marketing teams can contribute to make the process as smooth and efficient as possible for their teams during the intensity of the pitch.

The final pitch is not the end of pitch – regardless of the outcome, what happens after the pitch is equally as important as the process itself. All agencies should take on board feedback, and successful agencies should establish defined ways of working.

Understanding the client
In addition to delivering on the brief, the session uncovered how clients will want to see that an agency shares the brand’s passion and ambition, and that their agency partners can be an extension of their team. Getting under the skin of the brief, carrying out extensive research, and a genuine curiousity for the client’s business and challenges will help an agency leverage their expertise to deliver a client’s objectives.

A final theme that was explored was to delve into the life of CMO – their scope, the timelines they work to and stakeholders they work with, and their overall experience and priorities during the pitch process.

To find out more on joining the Oystercatchers Club to unlock access to training sessions, get in touch.