The pitch
The pitch wins the room, one person at a time, and keeps winning it after you’ve left. In a committee sale the decision is made in the week after the meeting, when the champion forwards the proposal to people who never met you. Gartner puts a typical buying group at five to 16 people.
The pitch is less a performance than a kit: the assets that carry the case into rooms you’re never in.
in 19 cells
Why it matters for being chosen
This build leads more cells than any other: 19 cells and 28 moments, almost all after the buyer has made contact. It’s also where nearly all of Kestrel’s score comes from, which is the trap: a firm that’s good in the room assumes the room is where it wins.
A 24-slide credentials deck made to be talked over. One 12-page proposal, the same for every client, written for the COO. Three case-study PDFs with no figures confirmed by the client. Kestrel wins 9 of 19 proposals, and 4 of its 10 losses are “no decision”.
Where your craft is
A proposal that works forwarded is a piece of storytelling: a summary the board can read in a minute, then a page per person that names their fear before they raise it. Naming a fear well takes empathy and nerve. That’s still the agency’s best work.
The seven steps
The same anatomy as every build, with this build’s specifics and Kestrel’s example.
Take the shape from outside the firm: the sales motion (fit call, one-page scope, committee proposal, reference call, business case, contract, week zero) and the standard proposal structure the category uses.
Set the coverage unit: a person’s fear at a step. Behind each question sits a fear, and the section has to answer the fear. Kestrel has 37 moments to cover this way.
Hold today’s kit against the 37 fears. The plant manager fears losing their best people for six weeks; the improvement lead fears a verdict on their work, delivered to their boss.
Reconcile into the pitch kit, the pitch’s sitemap: every asset the team can put in a buyer’s hands, each traced to its moments. The 24-slide deck became a six-slide fit-call guide.
Brief each deal (the group, the alternatives, their figures, what wins it) and each person’s page: their question answered in the first line, their fear named, proof from someone in their role, one ask.
Check that the fee, the six weeks and the way out read identically in the fit-call guide, the proposal and the terms.
Measure proposals that reach a decision within 30 days, “no decision” losses, kits opened by a second person, and days from verbal yes to signature.
From the finished example
The committee proposal to Hartwell Plastics. The book writes it in full; this is how it opens.
Hartwell’s costs are rising on two injection lines, and the first fix probably isn’t a new press.
Kestrel, its clients and its people are invented.
The template
The measures
Common mistakes
A partner who has run fifty reviews can’t easily imagine not knowing what one involves. Write every page as if the reader has never hired a consultant, because often they haven’t.
The Loop for this build
Each quarter the Loop puts the win-loss record beside the Score’s deal moments and asks: at which moment are deals being decided, and did the kit answer the person who decided them? Losses clustering at building the case point at the finance director’s page.
You should be, a little. One firm: a ten-step motion, seven people in the room, 37 moments, 13 assets, a deal brief and a seven-page proposal for every account, and a win-loss record that has to tell the truth about why deals die. That’s why the method runs in software.
Do it in RocMode for Agencies
What stays yours: The story, the fears named well, and the room.