Yet another excellent new business win this week. No, sorry, it’s confidential – as indeed was last week’s, and I think the week before’s.
We’re still waiting to hear on a couple of other recent pitches, so I don’t want to tempt fate, but it does seem that this year we’ve got on a bit of a roll. It depends a bit on how you count it, but since January I think we’ve played 8, won 5, lost 1 and waiting to hear on 2.
All of this is in very agreeable contrast to last year, where we somehow managed to lose not just pretty well all of our competitive pitches but one or two uncompetitive pitches too.
Of course, at every point along this roller-coaster ride, one undertakes large amounts of navel-gazing. But it’s an almost-complete waste of time. You never really figure out what you’re doing right when you’re winning, or wrong when you’re losing (although I think we can safely say that our two worst habits are a) simply not spending enough time on pitches, especially time together as a team, and b) not always listening quite as closely as we might for clues about where the clients are coming from).
Statisticians would probably tell us that sequences of defeats interspersed with sequences of victories (L, L, L, W, W. L, L, W, W, W) are statistically more likely than simple binary alternation (W, L, W, L, W, L). Still, I think all of us in agencies still think – or maybe hope – that there’s some secret formula hidden in there somewhere, and that maybe just a little bit more scrutiny of the midriff may reveal it.
But if it does ever come to light, don’t expect me to share it with you.