AGENCY REVENUE

Why agency pitches are becoming harder to remember.

The impact of pitching the same, and what independent research says about how buyers really decide. An introduction to a new evidence paper from AAAnow, with each figure stated to its source.

ARTICLE ID ART/2026/AR/0027
UPDATED 15 June 2026
AUTHOR David Milton
READ TIME 4 min

More than 1,000 pitches. Fewer than 10 remembered.

One agency adviser sat through more than 1,000 credentials presentations over 20 years. Fewer than 10 stood out.

This article introduces a new evidence paper from AAAnow on the impact of pitching the same. The paper draws together independent research rather than opinion, and each figure here is stated to its source.

The cause sits in the structure of the pitch itself. Capable agencies arrive with the same sections, in the same order, making similar promises, and the buyer struggles to recall which one mattered.

01The decision forms before the room.

By the time the pitch happens, much of the decision has formed. 6sense studied nearly 4,000 B2B buyers and found the winning vendor already on the Day One shortlist in 95% of cases. Harvard Business Review data, cited by Robert Craven, puts it at 90% choosing from a shortlist built before any pitch begins. The room an agency is pitching to has usually made up much of its mind.

Winning vendor already on the Day One shortlist
95%
Buyers choosing from a shortlist built before any pitch
90%
6sense, a study of nearly 4,000 B2B buyers; Harvard Business Review data, cited by Robert Craven.

02The stakes have risen.

The stakes have risen at the same time. BenchPress, The Wow Company’s agency survey, reports winning new business as the number one challenge for 46% of owners, the highest reading since 2012. The 24% who describe themselves as clearly different keep outperforming the rest on growth and profit. Sameness, in that light, is a margin problem as much as a memory one.

Owners naming winning new business as the number one challenge
46%
Agencies that describe themselves as clearly different
24%
The Wow Company, BenchPress agency survey. The new-business reading is the highest since 2012.

03A new evidence paper.

This is the subject of a new evidence paper from AAAnow. It draws together independent research rather than opinion: 6sense and Harvard Business Review on how shortlists form, BenchPress on agency performance, Marketreach’s trust work summarised by Robert Craven at GYDA, and academic analysis of how pitch decks are built. The pattern across the sources is consistent.

04The same sections, in the same order.

Most pitches share a recognisable architecture: credentials, awards, team, process, case studies, sector experience and a closing reason to choose. Each of these sections is legitimate on its own. The difficulty is that several shortlisted agencies present the same sections in much the same way. Familiar material, however polished, leaves the buyer little to hold on to.

The language compounds it. Strategic partner, data-driven, integrated, client-first and extension of your team are phrases that lose force through repetition across the field.

05What buyers trust.

Trust research points the same way. Marketreach’s model, summarised by Craven, places Reliability at 35%, Reciprocity at 19% and Aligned Interests at 14%, while Fame sits at 2%. That 2% is the part much agency marketing leads with.

What an evidence-led pitch supplies Where much agency marketing leads
Reliability
35%
Reciprocity
19%
Aligned interests
14%
Fame
2%
Marketreach trust model, summarised by Robert Craven at GYDA.

06The sharper companion.

The paper’s conclusion holds that credentials still matter, but no longer on their own. They need a sharper companion: current evidence about the prospect’s own position, generated independently, that the buyer did not already hold. A conventional pitch starts with the agency. An evidence-led pitch starts with the buyer, which is what gives a familiar room a reason to remember one agency over another.

The Agency Revenue Radar exists to supply that evidence, the outside-in reading an agency can bring into the room.

Pointillist painting of a pitch room: a row of presenters stands in shadow before identical boards, while one presenter is lit by the glowing charts of evidence she holds up, seen over the shoulder of a buyer.
Shadowed by Evidence Pixels on page  |  430″ × 209″ © AAAnow · MMXXV

Read the paper.

The full paper sets out the research in detail, with each figure sourced, and what it means for the next pitch. It is open to read and download, with no form to complete.

Read the paper: The Impact of Pitching the Same

Sources & evidence base.

The following sources support the public evidence base used in this paper. Internal AAAnow review material is listed separately where the analysis comes from AAAnow source material rather than a public third-party source.

  1. Paula Cabezas and John Bateman. Slide Structure of Pitch Decks From an Accelerator Program. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, first published online 15 June 2024. Used for the 96-deck, 1,513-slide pitch deck corpus and recurring topic structure. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/23294906241257448
  2. Paula Cabezas. Visual composition of the pitch deck: a multimodal analysis of entrepreneurial pitch presentations. Visual Communication, first published online 2026. Used for the finding that pitch decks can be structurally comparable while visually diverse. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14703572261424383
  3. Darren Woolley, TrinityP3. 5 Ways to Present Agency Credentials Effectively. TrinityP3. Used for practitioner evidence from more than 1,000 agency credentials presentations. https://www.trinityp3.com/pitching-support/5-ways-effectively-present-credentials/
  4. The Wow Company. BenchPress 2025: Introducing State of the Agency Nation. The Wow Company, 25 March 2025. Used for agency new business pressure and differentiation context. https://www.thewowcompany.com/blog/benchpress-2025-introducing-state-of-the-agency-nation
  5. Robert Craven, GYDA. Trust: Your Agency’s Untapped Superpower. GYDA, 25 February 2026. Used for GYDA’s summary of Marketreach trust pillars and the relative role of fame. https://www.gyda.co/insights/trust-your-agencys-untapped-superpower
  6. 6sense. 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report. 6sense, 2025. Used for Day One shortlist, selection phase and buyer preference formation evidence. https://6sense.com/science-of-b2b/buyer-experience-report-2025/
  7. Gartner. B2B Buying: How Top CSOs and CMOs Optimize the Journey. Gartner. Used for the non-linear B2B buying journey and buying jobs framework. https://www.gartner.com/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey
  8. Corporate Visions. Unconsidered Needs: The Key to Defeating Your Prospect’s Status Quo. Corporate Visions. Used for the B2B simulation on unconsidered needs, perceived uniqueness and buyer decision framing. https://corporatevisions.com/blog/unconsidered-needs/
  9. Ryota Tanaka and others. SlideVQA: A Dataset for Document Visual Question Answering on Multiple Images. AAAI / arXiv, 2023. Used as evidence that deck-level reasoning across multiple slides can be studied at scale. https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.04883
  10. Tsu-Jui Fu, William Yang Wang, Daniel McDuff and Yale Song. DOC2PPT: Automatic Presentation Slides Generation from Scientific Documents. AAAI / arXiv, 2021. Used as evidence that document-to-slide structure and layout can be modelled at scale. https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.11796
  11. AAAnow internal review material. Website and CMS pitch deck review activity. AAAnow, 2026. Used for internal observation across 81 website and CMS-related agency pitch decks and repeated agency claims. AAAnow internal material, not publicly published.
  12. Robert Craven, GYDA. The Day One List, citing HBR data. GYDA, 2026. Used for the finding that 90% of buyers choose from a shortlist created before any pitch begins. https://www.gyda.co/insights/if-youre-not-on-the-day-one-list-youre-already-out
All articles