Own The Room - The Evolution of the Pitch with Sophie Kelly

The Evolution of the Pitch with Sophie Kelly

Explicit content warning

02/13/20 • 24 min

Own The Room

For both agencies & clients, pitching is meant to result in picking a long time partner to work with. It should be a collaborative process on both sides. There needs to be a lot of shared information and openness for the working relationship to work. But Sophie Kelly believes that if a client doesn’t want to be transparent and engage in the sharing of their business issues, then an agency may need to consider if that's a company they can work with.

Sophie Kelly is the Senior Vice President of North American Whiskey Portfolio at Diageo. She is a committed and well-rounded marketer with a proven track record. Prior to her tenure at Diageo, Sophie was on the agency side herself, running The Barbarian Group, StrawberryFrog, and J. Walter Thompson in New York. She has many years of experience hearing pitches on the brand side as well as making pitches with some of the best agencies in the world.

In this week’s episode, Sophie joins host Michael Quinn to share her perspectives on whether or not pitching budgets should be transparent, how the pitching process has evolved over time, and the need for team participation in the pitch room.

Previous Episode

The Pitch Hygiene Checklist

Companies don't pitch companies, people pitch people. And the people you’re pitching to are oftentimes already stressed-out about a problem. What they need is a good pitch that focuses on a solution specific to their problem--nothing more, nothing less. This, Michael Quinn advises, is the right tempo of a pitch: direct to the point and focused on what’s important.

Michael Quinn is the Founder of Minor Nobles, a company that helps B2B pitch teams and leaders to change their behavior to win more business. He's also the faculty instructor for pitching with the Association of National Advertisers, the ANA, which is headquartered in NYC.

In today’s episode, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Michael. They will be talking about some of the mistakes people make while pitching, why it’s important to focus on the needs of the company which requires the pitch, and how Minor Nobles helps companies avoid going back to their comfort zone.