Count on two to four months between the first longlist and a signed contract. That is field experience rather than a measurement: the duration depends almost entirely on your side of the table.
Where the time goes
- Building and checking the longlist: one to two weeks.
- Chemistry meetings: two to three weeks, because you are matching six diaries.
- Work-up by the agencies: three to five weeks. Shorter is possible, but then you get what was already in the drawer.
- Presentations and decision: two weeks, if you fixed the dates in advance.
- Contract and start-up: two to six weeks, and this is the phase that overruns most often.
What makes it longer
Decision makers who were not there at the start. Every person joining halfway brings a question that was already answered, and sometimes a round.
Procurement and legal. As soon as they join, a parallel track appears with its own deadlines. Involve them at the start rather than at the award, and the two tracks run together instead of one after the other.
A holiday period. A pitch starting in June decides in September. That is not a delay but arithmetic you can do in advance.
A briefing that changes mid-process. That is the most expensive delay, because it makes work already done partly worthless.
What makes it shorter
Fixing dates in the briefing, handling all questions in one round, and deciding in advance who is in the room. And: fewer agencies. Inviting six instead of three adds no quality but does add three diaries.
The agencies are rarely the bottleneck
They have a deadline and they meet it, because they want to win. When a process overruns it is almost always on the client side, and it is useful to know that up front: it makes the calendar you put in the briefing more realistic.
A process driven from outside rarely overruns: the dates are then in the briefing and someone is guarding them. That is what IKAg does under Agency selection & pitches.
See also: how to run a pitch and what a pitch costs you internally.