The Digital Agency Growth Podcast · 2026-03-05 · 37 min
Learn the small shift that makes referrals repeatable. Check out our new video training: - Most agencies treat the RFP as the cost of doing business. Chris Rose has built a career out of sidestepping them entirely - landing clients like Hilton, Planet Fitness, and NBC Universal along the way. Chris serves as Executive Director of Growth at Cylinder Studios, a design and production studio within the Cheil Agency Network. Before that, he led new business at Movers and Shakers. We got into why RFPs are almost always poorly written, how to bypass procurement with preferred vendor status, what's changing with AI and pricing, and why the best pitch teams are smaller than you'd think. What You'll Leave With: - Diagnose before you pitch - co-write the brief with the client - Become a preferred vendor to bypass procurement - Smaller pitch teams win more - Production is the new strategy - Stay close to the work after you win it Connect with Chris on LinkedIn: Cylinder Studios:
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Balancing biz dev and ownership, scaling w/ partnerships, and hiring for soft skills - Adam Yaeger