Does the team that will do the work attend the pitch?
Often not, which is why pitch day is a poor place to judge personalities. You see the working team properly in week three of the project.
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A pitch day is for probing the gaps, not for repeating the brief
Use it to probe the gaps in responses you have already scored, not to hear them again. Before each agency arrives, find the questions where it scored a 3 rather than a 4 or 5, and ask the three or four that would have made the difference. Hold a structured debrief with the partners straight after each pitch, while memory is still precise, so the decision call the next morning weighs three debriefs rather than three performances.
What is a pitch day for?
The questions the written answers did not settle. The usual shape is three agencies, forty-five minutes each plus fifteen minutes of questions, and eight hours from arrival to handshakes, by the end of which the partners will have decided. The most common way to waste it is letting the agencies pitch their RFP responses again. You have already read and scored those responses and agreed which three to invite; the agencies are in the room because their written answers stood up.
How do you choose the questions to ask?
From the lowest scores. Before each agency arrives, look at its column in the scoring matrix and find the questions where it scored a 3 instead of a 4 or 5. Vague on integrating with the firm's CRM, a thin reference list, a CMS recommendation with a caveat, a timeline that did not quite meet the firm's dates: those are the questions. Ask the three or four that separate a 3 from a 4. Good agencies respect it, and an agency that resents specific questions about its own weak spots is showing you how the working relationship will go.
How should the debriefs work?
As structured conversations, not coffee breaks. Schedule a debrief slot of thirty minutes with the partner team after each pitch. What you remember at 6pm about a 9am pitch is far less precise than what you remember at 9.45am, and twenty minutes of structured conversation straight afterwards, with questions prepared, gives you a usable record. Ask what you learned that the response had not told you, whether the answers to your specific questions held up, who you would want to work with next Tuesday, and where this agency would frustrate you six months in.
What do partners add to a pitch day?
Sharper questions than you expect. Marketing leads sometimes worry about partners hijacking the day; in my experience the opposite happens. Partners briefed on the scoring matrix have spent their careers cross-examining people, and the question that lands hardest is often one not in your script, about a case study reference or a passing comment in the deck that did not ring true. Two or three sharp partner questions per slot work better than twenty from the marketing team.
What is a pitch day not for?
Judging the deck, judging personalities, or renegotiating the brief. The deck is an artefact made by the agency's best designers and says little about delivery. The people in the room are the senior team the agency chose to show you; the people who will do the work are often absent, and you see them properly in week three of the project. And if you realise part-way through that the brief was wrong, stop the process and rewrite it rather than asking agencies to hit a moving target.
Related evidence: Eleven responses. Three on the pitch day. One agency appointed in eight weeks.. Earlier in this journey: How to read eleven RFP responses without losing your mind.
Questions people ask
What if the brief turns out to be wrong during pitch day?
Stop the process and rewrite the brief, rather than asking the agencies to bend their proposals to fit a moving target.
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