Grant Gooding is the founder of Proof Positioning, a research company that uses neuroscience and math to measure the emotions, motivations, and preferences driving customer decisions. Proof has worked with agencies, Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, and governments — helping them figure out not just what customers do, but why.

In this episode, Grant breaks down why most agencies lose pitches they should win, what decision-making actually looks like in the brain, and the research process that gives agencies an unfair advantage before they ever walk in the room.

What You’ll Learn:

• Why 70% of agency pitches fail before they start — and the one reframe that changes everything
• The neuroscience of decision making: what Antonio Damasio’s research revealed about emotions and why logic-only pitches literally can’t be processed
• The RFP trap — why checking every box puts you in a box of sameness
• What buyers actually want (hint: it’s not your awards)
• How to de-risk a pitch for a multi-stakeholder buying committee when every person has different priorities
• The elicitation technique developed by the FBI — and why making statements beats asking questions every time
• What “pre-work” looks like: testing value propositions in the field before the pitch so you show prospects something they can’t unsee
• Why “build me a website” almost always means “we have a business problem we don’t fully understand”
• Where AI is genuinely disrupting research — and where it still falls short
• The McKinsey effect: how any agency can create it by showing they understand the situation
• Why most businesses are really insurance companies in disguise
• The threat to agencies from holding company acquisitions and what to do about it