The Mirren Post-Pitch Client Debriefing Guide
The Mirren Post-Pitch Client Debriefing Guide, created by training firm Mirren and managing director Brent Hodgins, provides agencies with a structured approach and customizable questions across seven key topics to effectively obtain honest, actionable client feedback after pitches—whether won or lost—addressing the common challenge of clients' reluctance to share candid insights, especially in remote settings, to help agencies improve their future performance and client growth strategies.
Longtime Winmo partner, Mirren, is a training firm that specializes in providing agencies with the skills, methods, and tools to completely transform their ability to grow current clients and win more new business. This guide shares actionable insights from Mirren managing director, Brent Hodgins, including how to acquire critical post-pitch client feedback.
Whether you’ve won or lost the pitch, getting practical feedback from the client is critical. The goal is to uncover the truth on how effectively your agency performed – to then improve your approach moving forward. The Mirren Post-Pitch Client Debriefing Guide will allow you to do just that.
One challenge is that, for the client, this is an uncomfortable breakup call. They want to get you off the phone so they can move on. As a result, agencies rarely get the truth. “It was so close. You were a close second place. I wanted you to win, but it was someone else on the team. You guys were great.” Many agency pitch teams go their entire careers either winning or “coming in second.” Or so they’ve been told. And, with everything being remote right now, it’s only gotten worse.
How to uncover the truth about how well your agency performed
You’ve done a tremendous amount of work for the pitch – often months’ worth, completed in just a couple of weeks. It’s a reasonable assumption to expect constructive feedback. Once you have the client on the phone, lead them through a brief post-pitch analysis process. Having a well-thought-out approach (and set of questions) will help to uncover new insight into your team’s performance.
The Mirren Post-Pitch Debriefing Guide will walk you through the seven key topic areas to address. Within each topic, the guide outlines a set of questions designed to get to the truth. Note that you will need to customize these questions, depending on each particular pitch. As you will have limited time, you’ll need to prioritize which questions you use.
The seven key elements for client feedback:
- 1.Team/talent
- 2.Chemistry
- 3.Strategy
- 4.Creative thinking
- 5.Solutions
- 6.Effectiveness at answering the brief
- 7.Overall presentation impact/persuasiveness
Other areas to probe related to the pitch process:
- 1.Written submissions
- 2.Pricing
- 3.The winning agency
- 4.The pitch process
- 5.One final question
Refining your post-pitch debriefing approach
Be careful of being too grateful for their time. Being authoritative and confident will ensure you get more out of the client. The opposite – sounding meek or apologetic – will reinforce their choice of not selecting you. Part of the goal is to command the respect you deserve, but without being arrogant. Be specific in the questions you ask. Otherwise, you will most likely receive the “oh, so close but no cigar” answer.
As you lead the client through this process, do not let them off with vague answers. Rarely should you take the first answer at face value. Ask the client to expand on each answer. Get them to open up about why you were not selected.
Remember this is a break-up, so the client may initially be reluctant to open up. The onus is on you to lead.
Taking action after the call
Once the call is complete, do not make any immediate and drastic changes to your process. You should not revise your approach based on one call, as the feedback is ultimately from only one person and flavored with a “break up tone.” Instead, look for common threads over time. If you hear the same feedback over several calls about specific areas of your process, then you should make the appropriate changes.
When the post-pitch client debriefing call is orchestrated more methodically, it can play an invaluable role in helping to fine-tune your new business process – converting more business for your agency.
To learn more about strategies for new business and organic growth, join us at Mirren Live. We’ll be addressing how to grow your agency, win remote pitches and drive organic growth. The goal: build a faster, smarter, healthier agency.
Special Registration Discount: our conference partner, Winmo, is providing a $200 discount off the current early rate for a limited time. Use code: WIN200
Related
The Mirren Post-Pitch Client Debriefing Guide – Part 2
The Mirren Post-Pitch Client Debriefing Guide – Part 2 offers a detailed, step-by-step approach for confidently conducting client feedback calls after a pitch—whether won or lost—by probing specific areas such as written submissions, pricing, the winning agency, and the pitch process itself, with the goal of eliciting honest, actionable insights to improve future new business efforts.
The Mirren Organic Growth Plan Guide
The Mirren Organic Growth Plan Guide, authored by managing director Brent Hodgins, offers agency leadership and account management actionable strategies to aggressively grow existing clients by becoming proactive problem solvers who identify and address clients' key challenges, emphasizing organic growth as the highest ROI revenue source, and invites agencies to further learn growth tactics at Mirren Live 2025 with a special Winmo discount.
Agency Search Consultant Panel: Advice for New Business - Winmo
The webinar panel featuring Russel Wohlwerth, Lorraine Lockhart, and Dave Currie offers detailed guidance for agencies on how to effectively engage with agency search consultants by understanding their criteria, avoiding common pitfalls, strategically positioning themselves to stand out among competitors, and leveraging their unique offerings to secure spots on consultant agency lists amid evolving industry dynamics.
Do your client teams measure up with other agencies? - Winmo
The article emphasizes that as client expectations for agency account teams rise—demanding stronger leadership, strategic thinking, integrated activation, and measurable business impact—agencies must assess and develop their account leaders using models like The Mirren Account Leadership Assessment to ensure teams proactively lead clients toward tangible business outcomes rather than merely maintaining brand reputation.
How Secure Are Your Most Valuable Accounts?
The article emphasizes that agencies must consistently over-deliver strategic value beyond expectations to retain clients, introduces Mirren’s Agency/Client Relationship Evaluation tool to assess and strengthen client relationships, and promotes the upcoming Mirren CEO Summit as an opportunity for agency leaders to learn growth strategies and operational improvements.
Partners - Winmo
Winmo partners with leading organizations such as the 4A’s, Ad Club NY, DPAA, and The Drum to support growth and success in the media and advertising industry by providing leadership, advocacy, training, networking, diversity initiatives, industry standards, and global media platforms.