You Can Refuse the RFP and Still Win Clients. The pitch is where you accept the terms.
The RFP is not where an agency wins the work. It is where it accepts the terms, at the moment it has the least leverage it will ever have with that client. Two questions on the first call change the economics more than the fee does.
Nothing here argues for wanting smaller clients. The email from a national brand, with a budget that would change your year, is not a fantasy, and this is a better year for independents to get it than most. The question is what you agree to on the way in, because the process that hands you the logo also hands you the terms, and almost nobody reads the second part.
The cost of entering a pitch is covered in an earlier piece in this series: about $204,461 for a non-incumbent agency, with the incumbent kept two times in three. This one is about what happens if you win.
The average time advertisers took to pay agency fees in 2019, up 27 percent from 45.7 days in 2013. About one in ten marketers set terms of 90 days or more. The extensions were driven by finance and procurement, not by the people who hired the agency.
Most of an agency's costs are people, and payroll comes due every month. So do rent and, increasingly, freelancers: New York State's Freelance Isn't Free law, in force since August 2024, requires written contracts and payment within 30 days for covered freelance work. When a client pays in 60, 90 or 120 days, the gap does not disappear. The agency finances it. The client's cash position improves by exactly what the agency's worsens.
The agency trade body has said so without hedging. In its 2023 guidance on extended payment terms, the 4A's stated that anything beyond a 30-day cycle is incompatible with the typical agency commercial model, and called fronting media costs for clients particularly destructive, turning agencies into banks for clients that are usually better capitalized.
The argument here is about leverage rather than a measured rate. An agency has the least leverage it will ever have with a client at the moment it is trying to be chosen. Forrester has estimated the agency review process costs the industry about $12.5 billion a year, and reported that 76 percent of chief procurement officers prioritize reducing cost. A term sheet presented inside a review, run by people whose stated priority is cost, is accepted under different conditions than the same terms raised at a renewal, after two years of results.
| Won in an open review | Grown from an existing relationship | |
|---|---|---|
| Who sets the terms | Procurement, before you arrive | Negotiated, with a track record on the table |
| Review clock | Often scheduled; tenure as low as 3.8 years where reviews are frequent | Often none; tenure averages 8.1 years without a mandatory review |
| Your leverage | Lowest you will ever have | Highest you will have |
| What you should ask first | Payment terms and review cycle | What the client needs next |
Tenure figures from the ANA and 4A's Client-Agency AOR Relationship Tenure study, April 2025. Sixty percent of clients have no mandatory review period.
Big clients do not leave faster. Reviewed clients do. The ANA and 4A's found average agency-of-record tenure is now about seven years, independents keep clients longer than the holding companies, and the variable that separates long relationships from short ones is whether the client re-tenders on a schedule. The review is not a one-time cost. It installs a clock.
The payment-terms data is old. The ANA's figures are from 2019. The 4A's cited later studies putting average terms near 60 days; nobody has published a recent U.S. figure at the same standard, and practice may have moved further.
That terms are set worse inside pitches is reasoning, not measurement. The leverage argument is strong and consistent with the tenure data, but no study has compared terms accepted in reviews with terms negotiated at renewal.
Some pitches are worth it. A review with no incumbent, clear terms and paid participation is a different decision from a defended incumbency with free creative requested. This piece argues for asking before entering, not for never entering.
Freelancer payment law varies by state and city. New York's is cited because it is statewide and specific; check the rules where your freelancers work.
- You have never asked about payment terms before deciding to pitch — the terms are set in the process, not after it.
- Your last three pitches were unpaid, and one asked for free creative — a month of senior capacity you cannot invoice.
- You could not say today what your largest client's terms cost you to carry — the financing cost is real whether or not you have measured it.
- Your biggest account has a contractual review date you have not planned for — a scheduled review is a scheduled risk.
- You accepted terms inside a pitch you would have refused at a renewal — same client, same work, different leverage.
On the first call about any new RFP, ask two questions before deciding to pitch: what are your standard payment terms, and is there a mandated review cycle on this account?
Ask them before anyone sees your work. Both answers are usually given freely, and both change the economics of the opportunity more than the fee does. Then do the arithmetic before deciding: the monthly fee times the days beyond 30, at your own cost of borrowing, plus the review clock against the tenure you would expect from a client that does not re-tender. Decline, or counter, while you still can.
- What it costs
- Two sentences and a little nerve. Some procurement teams will read the questions as friction, and you may be dropped from a process or two you would otherwise have entered.
- How you'll know
- On the call: you get a number and a yes or no on reviews, and the conversation shifts to how you work rather than what you will give away. Over the next year: the pitches you enter are fewer, the terms on the ones you win are ones you chose, and your average days-to-payment falls.
You do not need to win more pitches. You need to be in fewer of them, to know the terms before you walk in, and to be the obvious answer before a review is ever called.
Related from Sound Decisions: Your Next Client Is Already Inside This One · They’ll Pay for the Work. They Won’t Pay for the Thinking. · The Budget Line
One conversation. The RFP on your desk.
Not pitch coaching. A read on whether that opportunity is worth a month of your senior people, before you commit them.
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