How much does a pitchbook cost?

Lawyers, management consultants, doctors, advertising executives—all careers with a client relationship at the center and all professions that charge by the hour. If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a statement for billable hours, you know what this feels like. However, despite its tight focus on delivering client value and frequent client interactions, investment banking never adopted a “pay by the hour” model.

It works for the industry and for its clients not to charge by the hour, (as who wants to be charged for the average 90 hour week of a junior analyst?), but, as the majority of a banker’s time is spent pitching, without that hourly fee sheet, pitchbook creation is a huge unitemized cost on the books of banks.

Indeed, most firms will tell you how difficult it is to know exactly how much it costs to staff and run a team of bankers. And, as the management theory says, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

So we wanted to get some firmer numbers on how much it actually costs to produce a pitchbook.

Combining some of our own research with the extensive internal analysis conducted by banks, the average cost of a single pitchbook is about $40,000. At first blush this may sound astronomical, but when you break down the efforts of say, a 70-page book (bear in mind many books run closer to 100 pages) that has charts made by analysts, data checked by VPs, and approvals given by MDs, you can see how this number is actually a conservative estimate and assumes a minimal amount of editing. If a data point is discovered to be incorrect or something changes during the pitchbook creation process, the price very quickly grows.

We averaged these costs, based on what we know from working on Wall Street, but you can calculate your own using our Pitchbook Calculator. Just enter a few assumptions and you can get a sense of how much each pitchbook page may be costing you.

Calculate your pitchbook costs

Now you know the true cost of a pitchbook, should you stop making them? No. They play an important role in client communications and relationship building. Should you look for ways to produce them more efficiently without sacrificing quality? Absolutely.

Email me at adrian.s.crockett@gmail.com and I’ll show you how we can bring down your pitchbook costs so you can spend time on more valuable things.