When Your Best Work Doesn't Win Pitches
The team spent three weeks on the pitch. Late nights. Weekend work. Everyone pushing to make it perfect.
The creative concept was bold. The strategy was solid. The presentation was polished. When they walked out of the pitch meeting, they felt good. Really good.
Two days later, we get the call. We didn’t win.
The creative director asks for feedback. The prospect is vague. “We went in a different direction.” “It just wasn’t the right fit.” “We loved the work, but…”
Nothing concrete. Nothing actionable. Just rejection.
Now I’m watching the team try to process it. The designer who worked 80 hours that week looks defeated. The copywriter who nailed the concept is questioning whether they’re any good. The account team is already pivoting to the next pitch like nothing happened.
And I’m stuck figuring out how to help people move forward when the rejection has nothing to do with their performance.
In agency work, the team pours everything into a pitch. The work is brilliant. And you lose anyway.
Not because the work was bad. Not because the team didn’t execute. You lose because the prospect’s CEO liked the other agency’s founder better. Or because the other agency was cheaper. Or because they had a relationship you didn’t know about. Or because of reasons you’ll never fully understand.
This happens constantly. And it’s brutal on morale.
In most jobs, if you do great work, you get rewarded. Close the deal. Hit the target. Solve the problem. There’s a clear line between performance and outcome.
In agency pitches, that line doesn’t exist. You can do everything right and still lose. The work can be objectively strong and it doesn’t matter. Because the decision isn’t just about the work. It’s about chemistry, timing, politics, budget, relationships, and a dozen other factors you can’t control.
From my perspective, this creates a specific kind of demoralization that’s hard to manage. When someone fails because they didn’t perform well, you can address it. Coach them. Help them improve. Give them a path forward.
But when someone does brilliant work and loses anyway, what do you say? “It wasn’t your fault” sounds hollow when they just spent three weeks of their life on something that went nowhere. “The work was great” doesn’t help when great work didn’t win.
And you can’t just move on like it didn’t happen. Because to the team, it did happen. They invested themselves. They cared. They believed this was the one. And now they’re supposed to just shake it off and do it again for the next pitch.
Here’s what happens when you don’t help people process pitch losses well.
People stop caring as much. If great work doesn’t win, why kill yourself on the next pitch? They start holding back. Doing good enough instead of great. Protecting themselves from the disappointment of going all-in and losing again.
I watched a senior designer completely change after a big pitch loss. Before, they’d push for the bold idea. After, they played it safe. “Clients never pick the brave work anyway, so why bother?” The cynicism spread. Other designers started following their lead. The quality of pitch work declined because nobody wanted to put their heart into something that might not matter.
Team morale crashes, especially if losses pile up. One pitch loss is disappointing. Three in a row feels personal. People start questioning whether they’re good enough. Whether the agency is good enough. Whether any of this is worth it.
During one particularly rough stretch, an agency I worked with lost five pitches in two months. The creative team was demoralized. People started job hunting. Not because they were being treated badly. Because they couldn’t handle the constant rejection of work they were proud of.
Leadership loses credibility if they don’t acknowledge the impact. If leadership treats every loss as “on to the next one” without recognizing how hard the team worked, people feel disposable. Like their effort doesn’t matter. Like they’re just resources to be deployed on whatever’s next.
You also create a culture where people are afraid to take risks. If bold work doesn’t win and safe work doesn’t win, people default to safe because at least they didn’t stick their neck out. The agency’s creative reputation suffers because everything starts looking the same.
So why is this so hard to manage?
Pitch decisions are rarely about the work alone. They’re about relationships, budget, timing, internal politics at the client, who presented well, whether the chemistry felt right. The team can control the quality of work. They can’t control any of that other stuff.
And prospects rarely give real feedback. They say nice things. “We loved your approach.” “The work was strong.” But they don’t tell you the real reason. Maybe you were too expensive. Maybe their CMO wanted to work with their former colleague at another agency. Maybe you reminded the CEO of someone they don’t like. You’ll never know.
That ambiguity makes it impossible to learn. If someone tells you “your work wasn’t strategic enough,” you can address that next time. If they just say “it wasn’t the right fit,” what are you supposed to do differently?
There’s also pressure to keep moving. Agencies can’t afford to dwell. There’s another pitch next week. Another opportunity. Leadership needs the team focused forward, not processing backward. So they minimize the loss and push everyone to the next thing.
But humans don’t work that way. You can’t just switch off disappointment because there’s another deadline.
Here’s what I think actually helps. You can’t eliminate the pain of losing pitches. But you can create space for people to process it and move forward without becoming cynical.
Acknowledge the loss before moving to the next thing. Don’t rush past it. Don’t minimize it. Give the team a moment to actually feel disappointed before you pivot to “here’s what’s next.”
This doesn’t need to be elaborate. It can be as simple as the creative director saying, “That one hurt. You did great work. I know you put everything into it. Take the rest of the day. We’ll regroup tomorrow.”
That acknowledgment matters. It tells people their effort was seen. That the loss is real, not just a blip to ignore.
Separate the work from the outcome in your debrief. Help the team understand that the work being good and the work not winning are two different things. Both can be true. The work can be brilliant and still lose because of factors outside the work.
I’ve seen effective creative directors do this by reviewing the pitch work as if it won. “Here’s what was strong about this concept. Here’s where we nailed the strategy. Here’s what we’d absolutely do again.” That reinforces that the work had value, even if it didn’t get chosen.
Then separately, talk about what might have influenced the decision beyond the work. Not as excuses. As reality. “They might have gone with someone cheaper. They might have had a relationship we didn’t know about. We’ll never know for sure.”
Create rituals around pitch losses that give people closure. Some agencies do a post-pitch drink. Some do a team lunch where they talk about what they learned. Some literally archive the work in a “great work that didn’t win” collection.
The specific ritual doesn’t matter. What matters is marking the end of that effort so people can actually move on instead of carrying the loss with them.
Be honest about the pitch win rate. If your agency wins 30% of pitches, tell people that. Help them understand that losing is normal. That even when you do great work, you’re statistically likely to lose more often than you win.
This doesn’t make individual losses hurt less. But it helps people not internalize every loss as a personal failure.
One agency I worked with started sharing their pitch win rate transparently. When they lost, leadership would remind people, “We win about one in three. This was one of the two we don’t win. It doesn’t mean the work wasn’t good.”
It sounds simple. But it helped people separate their performance from the outcome.
Protect people from pitch fatigue. Don’t put the same people on every pitch. Rotate who’s involved. Give people breaks between pitches so they’re not in a constant cycle of intense work and potential disappointment.
This is hard because you want your best people on every pitch. But if those people are constantly pitching and constantly losing, they burn out faster.
Find ways to celebrate the work even when it doesn’t win. Enter it in award shows. Share it internally as a case study of great thinking. Feature it in portfolio reviews or recruiting conversations. Give the work a life beyond the pitch so it doesn’t feel like wasted effort.
Another way to think about it is if your team just lost a pitch they worked incredibly hard on. Instead of immediately assigning them to the next pitch, the creative director sits down with them. They review what was strong about the work. They talk about what probably influenced the decision beyond quality. They acknowledge the disappointment and give people permission to feel it.
Then they take the work and submit it to a few industry awards. Not because it’s guaranteed to win. But because it gives the work another chance to be recognized. And it tells the team their effort mattered, even if this particular prospect didn’t choose it.
A few months later, the work wins an award. The team that created it feels validation for what they made. The loss still stung. But it didn’t define the work.
Your team is going to lose pitches. Probably more often than they win them. That’s the reality of agency work.
The question is whether you’re helping them process those losses in ways that keep them engaged and willing to try again. Or whether you’re creating a culture where people protect themselves by caring less.
You can’t control whether prospects choose your work. But you can control how you help your team navigate rejection that has nothing to do with their performance.
How are you acknowledging pitch losses? And what are you doing to help people separate the quality of their work from outcomes they can’t control?