You’re a senior agency leader and your agency is pitching a prospective client. Imagine your account lead answering a prospect’s question. The answer is good, but you know you could make it better.
You jump in with a clarification. Then you add some context, offer another example, and answer the follow-up yourself.
You are trying to help. You want the client to see how much experience and commitment your agency brings.
But the client may be seeing something else. What might that be?
The prospect sees a team whose leader does not trust it to handle the conversation. What felt like a rescue or enhancement may have created a reason to worry.
Your behavior happens with a megaphone. Prospects are listening.
And what are they hearing?
In a pitch, the client is evaluating more than your recommendations. They are also trying to understand what working with your agency would feel like.
Who knows the business? Who makes decisions? Can the people assigned to the account explain and defend their thinking?
Your behavior provides some answers. When you consistently take over, you are making a statement: real expertise lives with you and the rest of your team needs supervision.
We have seen agency owners interrupt their own teams to clarify, challenge, or change what is being presented. Even when the intention is good, it often leaves our client (the agency’s prospect) wondering about the talent of the team or if the agency leader even trusts the team.
Should the prospect trust your people if it doesn’t appear that you do?
Seniority is not the same as reassurance
Several years ago, we saw a large media agency bring the same impressive pitch team to three different clients. The presenters were accomplished senior department heads who were smart, articulate, and excellent on their feet.
They lost two of those three opportunities. In those losses, the prospects were concerned that they would never see those people again.
The problem was not a lack of talent in the room. It was the disconnect between the people doing the selling and the relationship the client expected to receive.
A senior leader or owner-dominated pitch can raise significant concerns. If the senior leader or owner supplies every important answer, what happens when they are not in the meeting?
You may know your team can do the work. The prospect doesn’t. They need an opportunity to see that for themselves.
Your role is important
None of this means senior agency leaders or owners should be absent, silent, or disengaged. Your presence can demonstrate that the opportunity matters and that the agency’s leadership stands behind its commitments.
Open the meeting with genuine enthusiasm, and explain why the business is important to the agency. Then get out of the way.
Let your team demonstrate why your confidence is justified. Give them room to explain the analysis, discuss the recommendation, and respond to the client.
At the close, reinforce the agency’s commitment. Tell the prospect directly and sincerely how honored your firm would be to be their agency.
That is leadership. It is different from treating every pause as an invitation to take the microphone.
Fix it in rehearsal, not in front of the client
If you want to improve a team member’s answers, the best time is before the meeting. That requires you to attend the rehearsal.
Not the last ten minutes. Not a quick review of the slides on your phone. Participate in the full presentation, including the questions and handoffs.
A proper rehearsal is not a conversation about what everyone intends to say. The team should deliver the pitch as it plans to deliver it to the prospect, from start to finish.
Hear the complete argument before interrupting it. Take notes, identify gaps, and ask questions like the client might. Give your team your notes and rehearse again.
Align on how the room will work
Before the pitch, make the operating rules explicit. This can be a brief conversation, but it should not be left to chance.
- Role clarity: Identify who leads on strategy, creative, media, measurement, and the working relationship. Let those people answer first.
- Handoffs: Practice transferring questions without making the transfer feel like a rescue. A simple acknowledgment of the relevant expert is enough.
- Corrections: Agree on how to flag a material error respectfully. Fixing a mistake is different from preferring your own phrasing.
- Unknowns: Give the team permission to say if follow-up is necessary. A clear follow-up is better than an improvised yet poor answer.
- Leadership involvement: Establish when your perspective is especially useful. Executive commitments, agency resources, and relationship concerns may appropriately belong with you.
These alignments do not make the presentation rigid. They make it easier for people to participate confidently without wondering when they will be interrupted.
Stay engaged after you hand over
Stepping back does not mean checking out. The client can still see you when someone else is presenting.
Put the phone away, listen closely, and take notes when appropriate. Show the same interest in the team’s contribution that you want the prospect to show.
Avoid visibly reacting whenever someone phrases something differently than you would. A grimace or impatient gesture can undercut an answer without a single spoken word.
Support also means allowing a little space. A thoughtful pause is not automatically a crisis requiring executive intervention.
Of course, use judgment. If a material factual error or an unauthorized commercial promise needs correction, correct it promptly and respectfully.
The goal is not to protect a performance at the expense of accuracy. It is to stop confusing responsible intervention with habitual takeover.
Build a team the prospect can believe in
Before the next pitch, ask yourself an uncomfortable question: if you were not in the room, would the team still make a convincing case?
If the answer is no, identify why. Is it preparation, experience, unclear authority, or simply a habit of relying on you? Each question requires a different response. None is permanently solved by making you the person who answers every question.
Your client is not just hiring your confidence. They are hiring the agency’s ability to deliver.
The strongest endorsement you can give your team is to prepare them well, make your commitment clear, and let them show what they can do. Stop rescuing people that don’t need rescuing.
The agency leader’s role in a pitch
Note: Portions of this article previously appeared in It’s Not About You: Winning New Business in a Crowded Agency World by Robin Boehler and Steve Boehler.
Steve Boehler, founder, and partner at Mercer Island Group has led consulting teams on behalf of clients as diverse as Ulta Beauty, Microsoft, UScellular, Nintendo, Kaiser Permanente, Holland America Line, Stop & Shop, Qualcomm, Brooks Running, and numerous others. He founded MIG after serving as a division president in a Fortune 100 when he was only 32. Earlier in his career, Steve Boehler cut his teeth with a decade in Brand Management at Procter & Gamble, leading brands like Tide, Pringles, and Jif.
Mercer Island Group helps marketers and agencies succeed. Company leadership is as much at home with marketers and their C-Suites as in an agency’s boardroom. With marketers, Mercer Island Group is a top 5 agency search consultancy covering all types of agency relationships (creative, media, web, PR, experiential) and assists marketers with marketing organization structure, workflow and critical skill development (briefing, creative evaluation & feedback, etc.). The company also supports leading and aspiring agencies with positioning, pitch and strategy training and pitch support.