💡 Key Topics:
✦ Cut vs. chosen: creative quality was the top reason North American marketers gave for passing on an agency (RSW/US, 50%), with category experience close behind (48%)
✦ Referrals still win: 71% of buyers found a new firm by asking a friend or colleague, and an existing relationship was the top deciding factor in the 2022 follow-up (Hinge, 822 buyers)
✦ What a real RFP rubric rewards: one national health association's website RFP gave work samples 20 of 100 points and capability and experience 30, so half the score was about what you've already done
✦ Why "high quality" is a weak filter: nearly every bidder clears it, and quality is measured against whose benchmark?
✦ The buyer the portfolio fooled: a well-known creative agency with a polished signature style, hired for a UX-heavy platform it wasn't equipped to design. A portfolio shows the look. It can't show whether the look solved the right problem.
✦ Your proposal is the first work sample: anyone can fake a process slide, but you can't fake clear writing. In our experience, lost pitches almost never come down to design. They come down to miscommunication about whether or how we can do something.
✦ The overload trap: B2B buyers facing contradictory information are about 153% more likely to settle for something smaller and less disruptive than planned (Gartner, general B2B buying rather than agency hiring)
✦ The one change to make on your next shortlist: screen on the work, read the process closely, then ask finalists to come in and walk you through a case study

📖 Chapters:
0:00 — Creative gets you cut, not chosen
1:02 — Why we stopped leading with case studies
4:20 — How one RFP actually scores the portfolio
6:48 — The buyer the portfolio fooled
9:00 — Process slides vs. the proposal itself
12:09 — Make them present the case study
15:16 — Judge our proposal however you like

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