Hacking the RFP: How Agencies can Use AI-powered Collaboration to Slash Biz Dev Costs
Spec-pitching is costly, time-consuming, and disruptive in a dozen ways.
In today’s volatile market, agencies face the relentless and often unrewarding challenge of spec-pitching. A 2023 study from the ANA and AAAA, estimated a single RFP can cost $200,000-$400,000 in labor and materials. The process frequently disrupts ongoing work, strains relationships, and hurts team morale.
We all know there’s no silver medal when it comes to pitches. Clients need to find the best fit, but the traditional RFP process drains resources, time, and money. A 2023 study from AgencyAnalytics reports that most agencies win between 30-80% of their pitches. In the worst case—$400k investment at a 30% win-rate—agencies could be investing an eye-popping $1.3M per win. But when do they actually recoup that investment?
The old way of spec-pitching is a vicious cycle for agencies. It doesn’t have to be this way.
There’s a different way to think about pitching. Why ask your already-overworked strategy and creative teams to go from blank sheet to concept every single time? Why follow the same process you’d take with a funded client engagement…for free?
We help agencies save huge amounts of time and money by filling the strategy and creative pipeline with legitimately viable early-stage concepts, from everywhere in the agency.
In 2024 - why should we still believe that AE’s and Media Planners, HR teams, Accounting staff, even the Receptionist… can’t contribute meaningfully to pitch-winning ideas? It’s a new world we’re competing in…we have to think differently about how to win.
Our AI-powered rapid-ideation workshops teach the rest of us to ideate like trained creatives.
We do one thing at The Navigator Collective: AI-powered rapid-ideation workshops. We’ve done over 200 workshops with clients in 13 countries, and the results continue to be game-changing.
On the psychology side, we deliver gamified learning about positive group dynamics, using essential concepts from social psychology and linguistics. This massively opens up the introverts and analyticals to start taking creative risks. A key step is helping the creative professionals have patience with the 1.0 un-trained ideas—focusing on the kernels rather than the critiques.
On the technology side, we combine GenAI with Agile, Design Thinking and Play Innovation. The approach empowers anyone to develop and evaluate viable early-stage concepts the creative team can run with.
After all, the blank page is the hardest part…more energy goes into getting past the blank page than any other stage in the creative process. What if anyone in the organization could help make that easier? That’s what we do.
After 200+ workshops, we can confidently say…it really works.
Take a recent case from my prior agency. Faced with high-demand, our team couldn't engage in a traditional spec-process for a multi-national SaaS firm. Instead, we hosted a workshop with a broad swath of their team and ours. Some were trained creatives, but many were from disciplines most leaders wouldn’t even invite to ideation.
We generated hundreds of divergent ideas in a psychologically safe environment. In just half a day, we came out with 5 viable campaign concepts that were pressure-tested with the CEO and Head of Marketing, both of whom are massively immersed in the customer. We won the pitch with a low 5-figure investment of staff time, leading to multiple 6-figures in agency revenue and 7-figures in media billings. The campaign delivered outstanding business results in three countries.
It was a great outcome for everyone involved - minimizing risk, and getting to viable concepts much quicker than a traditional process. And that was even before we started using AI. Now we’re seeing 100+ divergent ideas per hour from each participant in the room. The client walks out with a fully developed concept/prototype from every single participant—ideas that the creative team truly sees as viable.
This new AI-powered approach gives the agency a huge push towards a successful concept and plan, to help land the business. The creative team can get to work developing after a day, because their teammates came together and boosted them way past the blank page. It also gets the rest of the team invested in the outcome. After all, people get bought-in when they get brought-in.
We don’t just solve the problem. We train the team to do it again tomorrow.
It’s a little unusual to find a consultancy that truly wants to work itself out of work. But that’s us. We’re motivated to help people self-serve. So we give away detailed play-by-play workbooks and AI prompts after the workshop….enabling AE’s and Media Planners, HR teams and Accountants—anyone—to go back to their desks and do it again tomorrow.
We’re in the mutual-success business. Let’s hack your RFP process together, and get you on the fast track.
