The Seven Masteries of the Rainmaker

David re-reads the 2nd chapter of Blair’s first book, leading to a discussion about how sales people have to choose between either presenting to clients or being present to them.   TRANSCRIPT DAVID C. BAKER: Blair, we are going to talk today about replacing presentations with conversations.  BLAIR ENNS: The second proclamation. DAVID: Yeah, it's actually the second chapter in your book, which I'm holding right now in my grimy little hands. The book, it's black with red, looks like foil to make it look expensive, so you could charge an extra couple bucks for it probably. It says Win Without Pitching Manifesto, and the second chapter is about replacing presentations with conversations, but I think if you would let me, I'd like to make a public confession before we get into this. BLAIR: Sure. DAVID: Your book actually sells better than mine, and I want you to know that that pisses me off. BLAIR: I read a great quote the other day, maybe it was Gore Vidal who said, "Every time a friend succeeds, a little part of me dies."  DAVID: I don't know if this was the third or fourth printing, but since we published the book, we got these three skids of your books. Not only do I hate the fact that your book has sold better than my last book, but I have to haul these skids of your book like for punishment, to remind me constantly that they're selling. BLAIR: That's what you get for moonlighting as my publisher. DAVID: Yeah, instead of focusing on what I should be doing, yeah. BLAIR: The fourth printing should arrive any day now, it's larger than all the other ones. Can I just keep bragging here? I'm surprised it's been, well I think it's somewhere around seven years, and sales just keep going up, I can't explain it. DAVID: I'm more surprised than anybody, because I've read it and I know you. The idea is replacing presentations with conversations, and actually I read through chapter two again, it was actually fun to read that part of the book again. You talk a lot about avoiding the big reveal, and the first thing I could think of was several episodes of Mad Men where they have the single pitch board on an easel in the conference room and it's covered, and when they say "big reveal", they mean big reveal, they lift this thing up and there's this tension in the room. You talk about the fact that we're addicted to that. I'm not sure that people would admit that they're addicted to that, can you talk more about that first, to start us off? BLAIR: Some people might listen to that and think, "Well, I'm not addicted to that," but I think you and I probably have different definitions of creativity. You might have kind of a broader look at what it means to be creative, and I take my cues from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who wrote the book Flow, and he studies happiness and creativity. He says creativity is the ability to see, the ability to bring kind of a new perspective to a problem. It's not the ability to write or draw, he refers to that as "personal creativity". BLAIR: Creative people who can look at things differently, they just see things differently, that's kind of to me the hallmark of creativity, one of the things that goes hand in hand with being creative is the ability to think on your feet, so these two things, for reasons I don't fully understand, they're tied to each other. When somebody has this really strong ability to kind of bring a fresh perspective to a problem, they also have a really strong ability to go with the flow and deal with whatever kind of objections are thrown at them. If your strength is standing in front of a room, saying something, hearing an objection, and then having to react to it, and then kind of sell in the situation or recover from a situation, then you are going to look for as many situations like that that you can create. BLAIR: I'll give you a great example of a friend and a client from many years ago, creative director at a small design firm, and he was presenting a new identity to a consulting firm. He does the big reveal, and it's very quiet, and then he's a little bit nervous because it's so quiet, and he says, "What do you think?" One of them says, "Well interesting, I notice you've changed our name from XYZ Consulting to XYZ Consultants." It was just a mistake, an error on his part, and he responded immediately. He said, "Exactly, because consulting, that's what you do, consultants, that's who you are." They bought it, so they changed the name because he just responded in the moment. BLAIR: Creative people love being in that situation of presenting, having to deal with an objection, and then coming through it, because the euphoria is profound, it's huge. If that's who you are, if that's your strength, commanding a room, having to dance, having to respond to objections, et cetera, not knowing what's going to happen next, then you will create as many situations as possible where you get to do that, and the whole time you will tell yourself and tell others and tell me and tell you, "No no no, that's the way this business works, or that's the best way to communicate this information to the client," and it's not. It's all about you and your personal need to present as a creative person. DAVID: You would say that that's pretty widespread in the creative field, because most of the creative field has been walking down that path for many years, there's something about that personality. I think of it as diving into an empty pool and inventing water on the way down, that's how I think of it. When I think about public speaking, to me that's sort of what's happened, or when I'm doing consulting where I know that within a few hours, we're going to have to have some at least provisional answer, and we don't yet, and that's terrifying but also thrilling. There's something about the creative feel of creative entrepreneurs that's bringing that. Now, would this equally apply to presentations in a new business setting as it would to presentations as the work is unfolding? BLAIR: There are different types of presentations, and there are different times in the relationship in which we feel like it's appropriate to present. If we start with the idea that we are addicted to the presentation and the presentation does not need to exist, if you come around to my way of thinking on that, then you will look at the presenting that you do in a new business situation, and you'll realize that this is not necessary, I'm doing this for me. You really first have to come to grips and be honest with yourself about your own need to present. What I recommend is, reform yourself when it comes to your existing clients. DAVID: First. BLAIR: Yeah, first. Replace the big reveal with a series of little reveals, and then once you get your head around that, then you will be able to think about your need to present in a new business situation a little bit differently. There are all kinds of creative people outside of the creative professions, so most entrepreneurs I think fit this description of a creative person, because I think you have to be somewhat creative to be ... I test for this in the tests that we do for all of the people who enter the Win Without Pitching program, so I can get an objective measure of how creative in that sense, or how much they crave standing up in front of the room and being forced to dance. BLAIR: There's a rudimentary question that's, and I'll ask the audience right now, and I've asked this in many seminars or workshops I've led. Usually I do it after break, I come back into the room and I say, "Hey," and I'm clearly kind of roleplaying or playing a scenario, I say, "Hey, in the hallway, I just ran into the chairman of the board of your most highly coveted client. Think of the company that you've always wanted to work for. They're having a board meeting in the meeting room right next to ours, and I told them that I was spending the day with you, and they said, 'Oh great, can you send somebody in to do a 15-minute presentation on their firm? Because we're looking to hire a firm like theirs.'" BLAIR: Then I say to the audience, "You have 10 seconds to get over there and present. You have no time to prepare," you get up out of your chair and start walking, and then I say, "Okay, stop. What's your reaction? Everybody just measure what your reaction to that is, I've just told you you have no time to prepare, you have to go to a 15 minute presentation, you have to be there in 10 seconds, what's your reaction?" You look at the audience, and you can see the range of responses in their faces. Some people are grinning, these are the people, they would say, "I'll think of what I'm going to say on the way over there," and they love the stress of that moment because they have this great ability to respond, to think on their feet. BLAIR: These are the people, as you say, who love to dive off the diving board and invent water on the way down. Then you've got the kind of low autonomy people that are very systematic and process-oriented, and these people are horrified, they need vision and clarity of what's going to happen next. They need to know what their steps are, they need to be prepared, it's their worst fears to come off unprepared. They haven't even considered what they might say or the objections that they might encounter, and they need to be able to think through all of those things. BLAIR: If you're in that first category, then I can all but promise you that you have built your business around that strength of yours, and you have driven your cost of sale way up, and probably your closing ratios down. Now obviously, there's some places where it's served you well, but for the most part when it comes to getting new clients, I'll bet you it's hurt you more than it's helped you. DAVID: Do you remember years ago, when some creative firms, especially designers, would take a portfolio book, and there were pages that you'd flip? I remember reading this study, I don't remember where it was, how the pacing was so different if you controlled it as, say, the principal of the firm making this presentation, or let the client control the pace, how much faster the pace was. They were not interested in the presentation, they were much more interested in getting to their issue. I think that plays into what you're talking about, but the question specifically that's coming to my mind right now is, like so you talk a lot about how the expert needs to direct the relationship, how is the expert directing the relationship if they're not talking that much, if the client is doing most of the talking? In other words, if we're letting the client fulfill their needs here, how are we not relinquishing this need to direct the relationship? BLAIR: Well, I think you know the answer, because if you're not talking, what's left? DAVID: Listening, or asking questions. BLAIR: Yeah, if you map out the role of the two parties, buyer and seller, over the length of the sale, you will see that when it's done properly, a proper consultative sale, early in the relationship, the salesperson is talking about 25% of the time, and they're using their 25% to ask questions, and the client is taking 75% of the time, and they're using that time to give their responses. Then at the end of the sale, the close, it's reversed, the client is speaking 25% of the time, and they're asking you, the seller, the questions, and you're taking 75% of the time to respond to their questions. Nowhere in there are you standing at a PowerPoint deck in presentation mode, you're either asking questions or you're responding to the clients' questions. BLAIR: It's interesting, that portfolio book and the amount of time. I had a really interesting conversation just a week or two ago with a principal that I know well, and we were talking about capabilities presentations, and I was saying, "No, the capabilities presentation does not need to exist." We were getting into a very constructive, respectful argument or a discussion where we're each advancing our views on the subject, about capabilities presentations, he was saying, "No, it's valid, you have all this information you want to communicate about your firm." I said to him, "How long does it take you to get through your capabilities presentation?", and he kind of looked a little bit sheepish, and I said, "Is it more than five minutes?", and he kind of looked at his feet, and I said, "Is it more than 30 minutes?" He said, "Well, it's about an hour." DAVID: I'm already bored just listening to that. BLAIR: Yeah, just by answering that question, I think he got the realization that, "Okay, this is all about me," but in fairness, this person is more kind of on the low autonomy process-oriented type person who's more comfortable, and it takes more training, more practice, and never comes completely easy to him to kind of stand up and be responsive. DAVID: Right, so we're going to have different perspectives on this based on who we are as people. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: One of the things that you say, and as I read through this I made a note of this phrase because it really intrigued me, you said, "We cannot be transparent if we are withholding information for the presentation." First, I'm not sure I completely understand. My mind first went to, are you talking about like putting the price at the end of the presentation? I don't think you're talking about that necessarily, but what do you mean and why do you say this specifically? BLAIR: I'm talking about in your relationships with existing clients. The big buzzwords of the last, I don't know, decade or so, authenticity is one, we need to do a whole podcast on authenticity. DAVID: God, I'm so tired of that word. BLAIR: My least favorite word on the planet. DAVID: "Storytelling" is close second for me. BLAIR: People talk about authenticity, transparency, and collaboration, these are three of the big buzzwords of our time. Let's just put authenticity aside, and talk about transparency and collaboration. Firms are out there saying, "We work transparently and collaboratively with our clients." Okay, well if that's really true, transparent means the client has a window into what you're doing, what you're thinking, where the project is at any time, you're not withholding. DAVID: Like and they know that you haven't even started it, and you've had it for three weeks and it's due in three days, that's transparency. BLAIR: Yeah, and they know it, that's transparency. Collaboration is where you're working with your client, rather than going away and coming back and presenting, so transparency and collaboration. You think about it, the presentation can only exist in the absence of both, right? The need for presentation is only there if you are withholding information from the client. DAVID: Yeah, if you're delivering new information that you previously had and chose not to give them, you're saving it for the presentation, so that's what you're talking about. BLAIR: Yeah. When I was still a consultant, I had been writing about this and talking about this for years, and then one day I realized, "Oh my God, I still do this." When I'm doing a business development audit, I withhold all of the learning until the end, and then I unveil my genius findings that makes me feel great. DAVID: I'm just going to let that pass, okay? BLAIR: Yeah, but it's like, "I'm going to rock this person's world by letting them know the really insightful things that I've discovered about their business," and my reaction is I want them to go, "Oh my God Blair, you're so smart, I never thought of that before, this changes everything!" That's the reaction I'm looking for, and all of us who go into presentation mode, we need to admit that that's the reaction we're looking for and it's really all about us, because what if I'm wrong? What if I got the name of the company wrong, like my friend, the creative director? There's a renamed company out there because of a slip like that.   BLAIR: I realized I was admonishing my clients for doing this, and I realized I still do it too. What did I start to do? As I'm learning key things, I would share them with the client. I would never get rid of the final reveal, the final share, I knew I was being transparent and collaborative when in that final phone call, when I was delivering my findings and recommendations. I would begin by saying, "Okay, I've already shared with you most of what I'm going to share with you here today, we're just going to put a nice little bow around it." I'm just letting them know, "There is no big reveal, because I've already shared with you." BLAIR: If I would get a hypothesis, I would reach out to my client and say, "You know, I think I'm seeing this pattern," et cetera. That doesn't come naturally, but I felt like I needed to take my own medicine, and I realized that when I was doing this, I was far less likely to make a big mistake or miss something vital altogether. Like how often does that happen in a presentation where you think you've killed it, and the client goes, "Wow, that's great, what about Singapore?", "What do you mean Singapore?", you've forgotten something significant. DAVID: This is an early test along the way, so if you get your hand slapped it's not a big slap. It's not getting hit with a baseball bat, it's like, "Silly man, no, that won't work." I hear people objecting though, because I know that a lot of my clients and your clients are listening to this and saying, "Listen, I have the answer early in the process, and I just withhold it because it makes it seem to easy if I just blurt it out." I'm going to say, "Okay, I really know the answer, but we'll get back to you in about a week or 10 days, and then we'll embellish and clean up and prep the answer and give it to you," because they feel like they're not going to be able to charge the fees they want to if it looks that easy to them. What are you going to say to somebody that's, I guarantee you some people are going to think that when they hear what we just talked about. BLAIR: I completely sympathize, I mean I operated the same way for many years as a consultant. I know you, I'm not going to give away your secret, but when you've modeled out how it works, when you've seen all the patterns, you know the information that you need. When you have true specialized expertise, it's really just small pieces of information that you need. That's the difference between an expert and a generalist, a generalist needs to collect all of this information and then sift through it all, and try to find some sort of relationship and pattern. The specialist comes along and says, "I've done this 1,000 times before. Give me these four things," and then you can deliver, like in your case, it might be 20, 30, $50,000 worth of value probably really quickly, like probably in minutes, but you let things unfold and you reserve the right to, "Well, maybe I'm missing something." BLAIR: I think that's valid, "Maybe I'm missing something, let me just let some ideas kind of gestate, let me think about things a little bit differently," but I see the pattern, I have the hypothesis right away, it's pretty clear to me. I sympathize with that, and I think there's some sort of middle ground here where I think that's valid. I think that some clients, not the best clients, but some clients have a real hard time with the fact that it took you 10 minutes to come up with a solution, and I've just paid you $50,000. DAVID: Yeah, and I think I do ask for more information than I need sometimes to make the process to look more thorough, so that it looks like a better value proposition for the client. That's an immediate sort of recognition on my part. I think just as the recommendations I'm making to my clients are shorter and more on point than they used to be, we should not be giving clients more homework than we need to either. Let's just ask for the things that we really need, they should only be allowed to answer questions, they should not be allowed to talk unless they're answering a specific question. DAVID: We can't be transparent if we're withholding information for the presentation. Another thought that popped up as I was reading through chapter two again is that when you are presenting, you are not listening, you're not being present. In other words, you can't effectively multitask here. Do you want to talk more about that? BLAIR: Yeah. I think I've said this on other podcasts, you can present to somebody or you can be present to them, and you can't do both. You're either transmitting or you're receiving, and another kind of sub-point under this is when you're presenting, you're kind of in violation of some of the principles of value pricing, value pricing where you're getting paid to deliver value. You're not on inputs like time and materials, not on outputs like delivering X or Y logo, et cetera, a campaign, but on the value that create for the client. Ideally, that's the place where we all want to get to or get closer to, where we're commanding fees or remuneration for the value we're creating for the clients. BLAIR: For you to value price, you need to have a really meaningful value conversation, and there's steps to a value conversation. One of the keys to a value conversation is, you need to be focused on uncovering a desired future state of the client, it's this duality of zen mind, beginner mind, like the blank slate of a beginner and the mind of the expert. You need to be expert enough to know the questions to ask, but you need to be beginner enough to kind of move off of the solutions, as Mahan Khalsa would say, and just quit thinking about what you're going to sell to this person. BLAIR: The ideal state of somebody who's selling creative services or marketing services or any consultative services, the ideal state of that salesperson is you are present to the client, you're intently focused on understanding them, learning about their situation, learning about their desired future state, and you are letting go for the moment of how you are going to help them get there. I think in a large enough sale and a long enough sale, you want to uncover the information, and ideally go away, and then start thinking about solutions. That's not always possible, but you want to have this line in the conversation where first it's all about you, Mr. Client, and then I'll start thinking about solutions. When you're presenting, it's not how focused are you on the client, you're up there with a PowerPoint presentation talking about you. DAVID: Or inane things about them that an intern could've gotten with a Google search. BLAIR: Yeah. Here's the section of the deck, "strategy', or, "Here's everything we know about your business that we Googled last night." DAVID: "And that you already know and don't need to hear again." BLAIR: Yeah, "I'm just showing you that I have great search skills." As you can see, I have an opinion on this, it drives me crazy. People are listening to this and thinking, some people are just never coming back. I believe this so strongly, and I believe most of the creative profession gets this entirely wrong. I get, I don't know how often anymore, it's not once a month anymore, but for awhile there was once a month, inquiries saying, "Do you do presentation skills training?" My reply is, "No, I deprogram people of their own need to present." BLAIR: Now, they always go away after, "Okay, thanks, I'm going to go get some presentation skills training." If you are focused on presentation skills training, your mind is in the wrong place, it's all about you. There are some things you can do, some courses, there's a woman out there by the name of Anese Cavanaugh, she has this methodology called IEP: intentional energetic presence. It's basically how to show up, how to show up at work, how to show up physically and emotionally in a meeting, how to deal with situations. DAVID: How to be authentic. BLAIR: I don't know about that. DAVID: See how I slipped that in? BLAIR: You should do IEP training instead of presentation skills training. Presentation skills training is the wrong thing to do. Now, there's a time and a place for the presentation, internal presentations, even the odd client presentation when you're collaborating with your direct client and they need you to present to a larger audience. All of that is valid, public speaking, you want some presentation skills around that, all of that is valid. Looking for presentation skills training to improve your new business development results- DAVID: Like your close rate. BLAIR: It's exactly the wrong thing to do. DAVID: I'm just pausing here just to let that sink in for people. BLAIR: Good, yeah, I'm going to have a cigarette now. DAVID: You're saying, don't look for training to do presentations better, don't do presentations at all, but there's obviously room for training about how to listen, how to ask better questions. You're not dismissing that sort of training. BLAIR: No, not at all. In fact, I think that's what IEP is about, that's what some of the things that we talk, you know the ideas, I forget where this comes from, I've stolen it from somebody who has a book on leadership, the idea of what I call the physiology of leadership. Leadership as a social science, that's a great model for selling. You can study anybody's model of leadership, and you'll become a better salesperson, but I refer to the physiology of leadership as two things: calm presence. You're calm, you're not anxious, and you're present. That should be your demeanor every time you're selling, and there's all kinds of different ways and different methods and models that you can use to improve your calm presence in a situation. BLAIR: You and I have done seminars on IP development where we've used constraint-driven exercises, and we use constraint-driven exercises in the Win Without Pitching program, I use them in speeches and workshops, I've become a huge fan of constraint-driven exercises. Just think of this as a constraint-driven exercise, I'm talking to our audience here. DAVID: We can't present naturally normally. BLAIR: Yeah, what would you do if you were not able to present, how would you go about trying to win this business if you were not able to give a presentation or use a PowerPoint deck of any kind, what would you do? Well, the short answer is you would have a conversation, right? DAVID: Right. BLAIR: Then there's all kinds of things that you need to sort out about, "Well, what questions do I ask? What framework do I use for the questions?", but you will find most of the time that the need for presentation, it's really on your end and it's not really reciprocated by the client. Now, there are some caveats. If you work in packaged goods, CPG or FMCG as it's known in Europe, and you're dealing with brand managers who deal with creative firms all day long, they kind of want to see the dog and pony show sometimes, so you might have to make the odd exception.  BLAIR: Now, I remember a client of mine many years ago, a very strategic firm, but not the best creative in one of the largest markets in America, and they were competing against the hottest creative shop in that market. When we set up the final meeting, so it was down to the two of them, I had them put all of the creative stuff that they wanted to present on a table over in the corner of the room. When they were facilitating the conversation, they made the point that, "The quality of our creative is good, you know that or else we wouldn't be this far. You've already seen it, if you want to see more of it, it's on the table over there, let's get to why we're really here," and so they move onto the more kind of valuable part of the conversation. BLAIR: Of the three people on the client side, there was the president, there was the COO, and there was the brand guy. The brand guy got a little fidgety at this, and at the end of the conversation, the president and CEO of the client business, they didn't need to see the creative again, but at the end of the conversation the brand guy got up and said, "I'm sorry, I just need to have a look through this," and he flipped through some stuff. He came back and he sat down, and he had this sense of relief, "Okay, good, I'm good," and they won the business, they beat the hottest creative shop. BLAIR: If they had stood up and gone into presentation mode to try and match this other firm at their own game, instead they facilitated a conversation. The point I'm trying to make is, the senior people at the client side, they don't want to sit through a presentation. DAVID: Right. BLAIR: You know, we all have websites, right? DAVID: Especially nowadays, you could see maybe that would've made sense 15, 20 years ago, but not so much today, it's boring to people. BLAIR: I'm fond of saying, "Sometimes it's better to be different than it is to be better." If you are going into a competitive situation against three or four other firms, and everybody else is doing the dog and pony show, you have an advantage if you treat the situation differently. If you try to break down the walls and facilitate a conversation, and if you can go first and do that and set the tone, then things will feel really different, first or last I'm a fan of. DAVID: Really not trying to sell things, but I'll do this for you. I really do think if you folks, listeners, if you haven't read The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, I would recommend it, it's $25 list, and there's also an electronic version of it. I think it's one of those books that just has a really long life, because it's perennial, there's some core very human points in the book that you can just read and reread, and it's a great book. It's the second-best book that I know of at the moment, but it's a good book. BLAIR: It's success is due entirely to its publisher. DAVID: Yes, that's right. BLAIR: Thank you very much. DAVID: Thank you Blair. BLAIR: Thanks, David.

1 Aug 201828min

There are seven patterns that almost all principals are guilty of. When David and Blair point them out, it leads their clients to say, “you must have hidden cameras in my office!"

18 Juli 201826min

Blair leads a discussion on how clients tend to take mental shortcuts in making business decisions, and how we can nudge clients without manipulating them to make a decision that is in their best interest.   Links Rory Sutherland Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion and Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade by Robert Cialdini Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein "The Dark Arts of Leveraging Cognitive Biases" by Blair Enns Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely Richard Feynman Dunning-Kruger effect Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour by Blair Enns "Pricing Creativity" 2Bobs episode

4 Juli 201840min

David and Blair compare each other's competitiveness, and then offer some specific ways principals can actually collaborate with their competitors as a part of building beneficial business relationships.   TRANSCRIPT BLAIR: David, today we're going to talk about how to crush your competition, is that right? DAVID: Instantly I got very excited about the concept, that's really not what we're going to talk about, but I love that idea. Oh my God, I'm just too competitive, but that's actually the opposite of what we're going to talk about I think, unless you want to switch it at the last minute. BLAIR: No, I was with a bunch of guys the other night, and had this little men's night retreat thing, and maybe more than half of them were entrepreneurs. One guy was winding down a business, and he was saying, "I'm not sure if I'm competitive enough to be in business." I didn't say anything, but I thought, I suppose that's vital for you to be competitive in your nature to succeed in business, would you agree with that? DAVID: Yes, I would, but there's something wrapped around competitiveness that is just as important to me, and that's risk-taking. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: It does seem like the two of those are related, that's why I quit doing a few things outside of work, because I realized I was not as competitive as some of the young fools that were willing to sacrifice their body, and I wasn't. It's not that my body is so precious, it shouldn't be sacrificed, it was more I was allergic to the pain. Yeah, there's something about competitiveness and risk-taking yeah, for sure. I'm competitive, do you think of yourself as competitive? BLAIR: I've measured my competitiveness and your competitiveness, and you're more competitive than I am. I'm as competitive as the average person, but the makeup of that competitiveness is a little bit skewed. You can break down competitiveness into different forms, so I think of myself as average competitiveness. DAVID: Okay, this is more about how do we tame or tamp down some of our competitiveness for our advantage, and for the advantage of the world really. BLAIR: You really want to talk about this idea of collaborating with your competitors, is that correct? DAVID: Right, yeah, and it's something I've learned in my own business life, but I've also tried to coach my clients to do it as well. It's been really interesting, it's a concept that strikes us like, did he really just say you should be more collaborative with your competitors, or did I mishear him? No, that's really what I mean. BLAIR: Okay, so we think of being in business just like my friend said the other night, we think of it as business is highly competitive, and we need to be cutthroat, and we need to always have an eye on our competition. We're trying to best them, I'm fond of saying that positioning is an act of relativity. You position relative to your competition, and in endeavoring to position your firm against your competition, you're trying to kill them. BLAIR: Now that's an overstatement, but that's the prevailing view, right? The competitors are there, people that ... It's your job to beat, it's your job to win against them, and you want to fly in the face of that a little bit, so where did this idea come from? DAVID: Well it's been rooted really in 20 plus years. I did something a little crazy back in the late 90s. I wanted to start an event, and that was obvious to me, I wanted to start an event. Okay, so what kind of an event would it be? Well it needs to be an event that's going to attract a lot of people. How do we do that? Well, the content has to be fantastic, it's like okay, then I just stopped in my tracks, because I'm thinking, well if the content's going to be great, then I've got to invite a lot of my competitors there. DAVID: We don't see eye to eye on everything, but I need to have them there, because they're very smart. People are going to come and want to hear from them as well, like what kind of a stupid conference would it be where I'm the only one speaking? That's not a conference, that's like your own personal platform. I was faced with a decision, do I really want to give my competitors a platform? DAVID: I was nervous about it, other people were a lot more nervous about it than I was, they thought I was crazy to be doing that. I thought, this is a worthwhile experiment, and maybe there's some value in being the person who organizes the conference, and does the programming for it. There turned out to be that value, but it was a wonderful experience. It opened up my eyes entirely to the fact that I don't have to make somebody else lose in order for me to win. DAVID: That I can let my guard down, and it actually translated into the way I run events now. People come to an event for the first time, and they're surprised that within about an hour, an hour and a half of the start of the event, people are starting to share stuff that they would not have thought they'd see themselves sharing at the beginning. They're much more transparent about it, and it's just sort of that style that I like to have, it fits with this notion of competitors. DAVID: Recently what struck me, and then I'll shut up for a minute, because I know I'm taking a long time to answer your question. I was listening to the Dan Patrick daily talk radio sports show, and he was talking about interviewing Kobe Bryant one time. They were talking about how do you get yourself up for a game that doesn't really matter? In other words, maybe you're out of the playoffs already, or you know you're going to beat this team, because they're not good. DAVID: What Kobe Bryant said, was at the end of the game, I want my competitor to question why they even got into the sports game. I want them to question why they even became a basketball player, right? I thought, well that's kind of funny, but it's really not the kind of spirit I want as a collaborator. BLAIR: Even when he's playing in a game that they're almost certain to win in, he's still thinking about crushing the spirit of his competitors. DAVID: Right, yeah, what's the point of that? BLAIR: Do you still have a page on your website that lists your competitors? DAVID: I do, right? I do. BLAIR: Am I on there? DAVID: I don't know, I know you don't want to be, so let's just say you're not. BLAIR: Yeah, I think you had me on there, and I called you out, I said, get me off that list. DAVID: Right. BLAIR: I don't know why that is, okay, so you conceived of this idea, this event, and you had a partner in this event, can we name the event? DAVID: Yeah, it's MYOB, Mind Your Own Business. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: The how people, were the financial partners and the marketing partners, and I did the programming. BLAIR: That's where you and I first met in 2003. I reached out to you when I started my business somewhere in 2002, and you invited me to speak at this thing. DAVID: Yeah, and look at how much good has come from that, right? BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: You and I have become friends, we do a podcast together, we share a lot of clients. Here's the biggest thing, I learned so much by having you there. I mean the very first time I heard you speak, I learned so much. It made me such a better advisor, and the same could be said of the other folks, not everybody, but most of the other folks that I invited. It's like, oh wow, it made me a much better advisor by listening to them in that kind of a setting. BLAIR: Let's walk through how somebody can, once they get their head around this idea, how they can put it into practice. First, I can imagine what the objections are, right? When you're talking to somebody about this idea of be more open to your competitors and collaborative with them, what's the first thing that comes up objection wise? DAVID: Well it comes up a lot too, and it's like, "Oh, that's a good idea, but I can't put that on my website, because what if my competitor's see it?" It may be something like our new focus, that's usually not as big an issue, but things like client criteria, or some unique way we have of going about solving problems for clients, or a case study, or something like that. They envision these competitors in the wee hours of the morning sneaking onto their website and furiously copping things down and grabbing screenshots, and then reinventing their own firm, as if they're really doing that. DAVID: That's the objection, I don't want my competitors to see that. I don't want them to copy me. Do you hear that, or do you see it in other ways? I'm curious if it's just my clients. BLAIR: I'm not sure if I hear it a lot, but I sense it a lot, and I've experienced it myself too. My own experience has been, if you're really carving out a path of leadership in something, it means you're constantly, by the reinventing your business, or coming up with new IP, with new ideas, and by the time somebody's adopted something that you've ... Let's call it stolen, stolen something that you've put on your website and made it their own, you should be somewhere else, right? You should be off into the distance. DAVID: Right, and that's part of your practice, part of my practice, part of what we urge clients to do is to reinvent themselves frequently every couple of years maybe. While this may work beautifully for you now, it's not going to be the thing that you're doing down the road, reinventing. Let's talk about the whole positioning thing, how many competitors does Win Without Pitching have? BLAIR: It really depends on how you frame the question. If you look at sales training for creative professionals, I don't actually know of any other organization that frames their value proposition, the discipline in the market, the combination of discipline in the market that way. That would be ridiculous for me to say there's no direct competitor, so that's at the very narrowest, who else says we just do sales training for creative professionals? DAVID: Right. BLAIR: Our real competition is any new business consultant to the creative professions. DAVID: Right. BLAIR: Anybody who's selling sales training. Most sales trainers aren't specific to a market, so anybody in the sales training business, any new business consultant. DAVID: If somebody popped up, let's say you just heard through a client of yours or something, and they said, "Hey, have you seen [inaudible 00:09:14], it looks a lot like yours?" Pretend that you have this conversation with them, and you look at the website. It is the same positioning, sales training for creative professionals, or creative entrepreneurs, what would your reaction be? BLAIR: My reaction would be, I would gird myself for a fight in the most positive sort of way. I love a challenge, if somebody was using that same language, I would just steel myself and whip my team into a frenzy, and run out into the battlefield. DAVID: I'm picturing this movie scene, yelling to this guy. BLAIR: Yeah, Braveheart. DAVID: Right. BLAIR: Somebody would have to be using very specific language, very specific to me. One of the things that I've seen over the last few years, is when I started my business back in 2002, when I was a new business consultant, there were very few new business consultants. Whoever was out there, the Internet was still a relatively new thing, right? Web browsers were about seven or eight years old in 2002. BLAIR: If there was a lot of competitors out there, I wasn't aware of them, I was really aware of two or three. Nowadays there's rarely a week or a two week period that goes by where I'm not made aware of a new business consultant. I made this conscious decision a couple of years ago to just quit thinking about them as competitors, and just to think about them as my future distribution network. BLAIR: I recently put out a call on LinkedIn saying I want to forge a closer relationship with the world's best new business consultants. I know I met a lot of consultants out there who say, "I give your book, the Win Without Pitching Manifesto to all of my clients." What I said in this post on LinkedIn, I had about 30 inquiries from it, is if you're already preaching the principles, and if you're already teaching the Win Without Pitching way, and you're interested in formalizing the relationship, then reach out to me. BLAIR: I had to see somebody else doing that, and somebody else talk about the benefit of it just the way that you're doing it now. DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: For me to just have this switch in my mind. You've been very good at this, and you've been a very good role model for me in this, in being a generous competitor, and it hasn't been in my nature. I'm the person who loves a fight, so something has shifted in me in the last couple of years, and I look around at the people I know in business, and some people that you and I both compete with. They are such open, generous, sharing people, even though we are fairly direct competitors. DAVID: Right. BLAIR: I've just decided that these are going to be my role models in that front too. Now, I'm mellowing in my old age or something, because something's definitely changed. DAVID: Yeah, it is really interesting to see. I'm doing an event shortly, and I've invited ... You'll be speaking there, it's really important to me that you speak there to address the whole sales training process. I'm just unqualified to even speak to it, but I feel like the people coming need to hear that. Then, I think four of my competitors will be there. They won't have a platform, but I will introduce them, they're coming for free. DAVID: I invited them, and I plan to put in the work. We're going to split up into groups, and we're going to try to apply these positioning principles to the individual firms. These competitors know what they're doing, and so the evil side of somebody might hear that and say, "Well, wouldn't someone just hire one of these." It's like, well that's fine, because in my mind feeling like you have all these competitors is really misunderstanding the fact that it's not just about what you do, but it's about how you do it. DAVID: I have a very specific style, and whenever I try to cross the line and be somebody that I'm not to a client, like more of a coach or something like that, I am doing a disservice to them, and I'm doing a disservice to me. I find it really wonderful to have these other folks who are very good at what they do, who have a more appropriate style for a certain client. When I think about living in a world where I couldn't recommend other options for my clients, it's a little bit sadder to me, because I do want my clients to get help, even if it's not with me. DAVID: Now what's interesting though, is we have different approaches to this when we're not as busy. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: We tend to be a little bit less generous when our businesses aren't run well, when we don't have a steady stream of opportunity. That's just another argument of 100 arguments to run your firm well, so that you're not paralyzed by not enough work, or thinner margins, or something like that.   BLAIR: I was going to play devils advocate here a little bit, and push back and say, well it's easy for you to be magnanimous this way, you're the worldwide leader in your field. You've got all the work you want, I think most people from the outside looking in would see that, so it's easy for you to just say, "Well there's plenty for everyone." If you're running an independent creative firm, you've got a dozen people, you're not seen as meaningfully different, do you think the principle still applies? DAVID: No, I don't, and I think the solution there is to have a positioning where it's so much clearer to you and to your prospects where you're a perfect fit. If you haven't nailed that positioning equation yet for your firm, then I think this is a very dangerous thing to do, right? Now you could still be generous in some other ways, like you could be generous in sharing contractors with other agencies, or even some employees. In terms of clients, I think that would be a dangerous thing to do, if you haven't ... DAVID: Well, a couple of things, not just positioning, but also having this lead generation process in place. You and I have talked quite a bit about this, how we have a simplified plan that's driven by discipline, so if you don't have the positioning and lead generation in place, then it's a pretty dangerous thing to be this magnanimous. The way to fix that is not to be selfish, the way to fix this is to fix your positioning and lead generation. BLAIR: Do you find that your generosity towards your competitors is returned? Are you referred business or other similar invitations from these competitors? DAVID: In some cases I am for sure. I think about Tim Williams for instance who I think does really good work. I've sent work his way, he's sent work my way for sure. I think about Carl Sachs, I think about the folks at Newfangled. I think about Philip at the Consulting Pipeline podcast. I think about Drew McClellan, I hate mentioning names, because there's going to be a bunch of names I've left off, but in general yes, absolutely. DAVID: Even at the beginning where they're taken aback by the generosity, they'll soften up over a few years, and discover that it's real. I'm really trying to help them, I'm not trying to hurt them. That started years ago, like you write a new book, or you have a new program, tell all your competitors about it in a gracious, respectful way. Hey, this is where I'm headed, just want to let you know, and oh by the way, here's a copy of the book, hope you're doing well. DAVID: You see an article that's really helpful that would benefit them, you send it to them. I tell you, a big one is speaking engagements. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: If I've been on the platform somewhere, and I talk with the program person, I say, "Listen, this was fantastic, I loved this event. I appreciate you inviting me, do you want a couple of suggestions for people who are also would be a really good fit for this?" That's a perfect opportunity to extend that graciousness to one of your competitors. I find that you're not hurting yourself in any way, you're simply helping everybody in the process. DAVID: I've found that to be very effective, and I've had a lot of my competitors do the same for me, where they've introduced me to a speaking opportunity, and it's been very, very much appreciated. BLAIR: A guy I know who does over a million dollars a year in speaking fees said to me, the number one lead source for speaking engagements is other speakers, right? They get approached and say, "Well, I can't do it, but you might want to think of this other person." He said it's important for you to cultivate relationships with these other speakers, and that means you start referring speaking opportunities to them. DAVID: That's interesting. BLAIR: Two weeks later I was invited to speak in Dubai when I was in another part of the world, and I referred to my new friend. DAVID: Yeah, because you didn't want that long travel, yeah, absolutely. BLAIR: Let's talk about some specific ways agency principals can collaborate with their competitors. I think I've got a list here of some things that you've identified. At the top of the list you've got learn how to run your firm from each other. Do you want to unpack ... Oh, I just said the word unpack, do you want to peal that apart? DAVID: That even sounds more pretentious than unpack. BLAIR: Like an orange. DAVID: Let's just say unpack, okay? BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: Yeah, what's the possible benefit in not helping another principal run their firm well? Hoping that they'll fail? Well, that seems pretty evil, right? The one area where it seems like there's the most benefit for everybody, is to learn how to run your business well. You've learned some principles about key metrics you want to look at, or how to hire the right person, or how to run a meeting better, or how to have the best relationship with your bank, or there's 100 things we could list there. DAVID: Those are the kinds of things that I would put at the top the list, because nobody enters this field with the business management training that would really benefit them. They're all starting from some other skill path, not a role path, and so they come into the business, and they have to learn everything either from somebody that they worked for, and often that's the best place to learn it. DAVID: A great example of a principal that you worked for before you started off on your own, or they learn it from maybe an advisor, like a paid advisor, or maybe they learn it from another principal. That would be the first area I would suggest collaboration, it could be informal or formal. I find that most principals have three or four people that they're friendly with, they can just shoot them an email, or get on the phone and say, "Hey, I'm facing this noncompete situation, what have you learned? Can you introduce me to a lawyer?" Something like that. BLAIR: Oh, that's great, including on here help find good employees. I was thinking about there's an agency principal in Australia you and I both know him. I've done a bunch of work with him. He's told me some stories of when he's had to fire people, they don't say fire in Australia or UK, they sack them, which always sounds extra harsh to us in North America. He's told me stories of he'd bring somebody in who isn't working out, and says, "You're not working out, I'm letting you go, but I think you've got great skills in these other areas, so I've lined up two interviews for you today." DAVID: Wow. BLAIR: Yeah, so he's ruthless when it comes to correcting hiring decisions, but he's very kind in how he goes about it, and he recognizes that everybody's got strengths, and he's got good relationships with his competitors. He's very clear about why he's letting that person go, and why he thinks his competitors should think about bringing that person on, and usually in a different role. DAVID: Right, yeah I think that's great, like if it's for the right reasons, there could be something about the style of this firm that wouldn't be true of another firm. It's not like they're a bad person, they're just not a good fit for this particular role. BLAIR: Is there a line that there's the danger of crossing? The first word I wrote down when you sent me notes on this was collusion. DAVID: Yeah. BLAIR: At some point can you get too close to your competitors? Does it cause some sort of problem, or the perception of problems maybe among clients, or maybe even regulators? DAVID: Yeah, well in the US that would fall under the jurisdiction of the FTC, Federal Trade Commission. Where collusion is very clear, and you can get your hand slapped pretty quickly would be around pricing. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: Not so much which opportunities to pursue, although you could get in trouble there, like hey, if I don't pursue this one, can you not pursue that one, that would be collusion. The main area would be on pricing, like how about what's your price on this? There have been some specific lawsuits, the handbook of pricing and ethical guidelines was one example that had to get rewritten, because of a lawsuit as I understand it. DAVID: That strikes me as evil, and I don't think we're talking about that so much. It's more like here's an example, so let's say you're going to respond to an RFP, okay? I know, don't shriek on me here Blair. You're going to respond to an RFP, and you know that another agency has been through an RFP process with them. You might just call them up and say, "Hey, what was that like? Is this even worth it?" Most of the time it's not going to be worth it, but that would not be collusion, that would just be simply sharing public information. BLAIR: I hadn't heard the story around pricing, I was doing a talk on pricing about 18 months ago to an industry group slightly tangential to the creative professions. There was a lawyer in the room, and he kept warning about collusion, he did not like the idea that the competitors were in the same room talking about pricing. I thought he was being ridiculous. DAVID: I think he was being ridiculous, where it can be collusion, is if we're talking about a specific instance. It's not about for instance, the labor law allows you to band together against a common enemy so to speak, that's not collusion. Collusion would be a specific instance related to pricing usually. BLAIR: Gotcha, all right, so let's say somebody's listening to this, and they're warming up to the idea of being more collaborative with their competitors, but they don't currently have relationships with those competitors. How do they go about it? Where do they find these people? Maybe they're so highly specialized, or poorly specialized, they're just not sure who their competitors are, how do you go about it? DAVID: Yeah, if you're poorly positioned, most of your competitors are the ones in your locale geographically. You know those, because they're there, and you share employees, and so on. If you're well-positioned, your competitors are more known to you, even though they're not close to you geographically. These are the names that keep coming up when you are competing for work and so on. DAVID: That would be one way to identify them, obviously Google's our friend here. Another way to identify them, is going to trade conferences. Trade conferences are almost always vertical, or they could be more demographic oriented conferences, horizontal conferences, where you keep seeing the same people there, not so much exhibiting, but you just see them there, they're speaking and so on. DAVID: You notice that these are the folks whose articles are appearing in the same places that yours are, so just connecting with them through your contacts, within a particular focus would be a good way to connect with them. Another might be a common mentor, I get this question a lot, like do you know of somebody that's doing this that I could talk with and so on? I don't connect people who aren't clients of mine, but if they are clients of mine, then I'll try to find somebody to connect them with. DAVID: I actually put round tables together, which are specific attempts to do this, that's not really the subject of this podcast, but that's an example of what a paid advisor might do. Sometimes a common mentor, so like if you're getting advice from an older woman or gentleman in your town who's coaching you on running a good creative business, because they've been in that field, and they've slowed down a little bit, they usually are going to know somebody else that would be a good fit for you. DAVID: I am talking about cooperating with folks who are definitely otherwise competitors of yours. I'm not talking about people that you might meet in a YEO, or YO kind of a context, I'm talking about people that you'd compete with normally. BLAIR: Okay, are there instances where this can go wrong? Obviously, I wouldn't ask you to name names, but I'm sure there has to be situations where you started being magnanimous towards a competitor, and then at some point realized this is a one-way relationship where this person is taking and not giving, and your idea about them ended up changing. DAVID: For sure, yeah, I can think of an attorney actually in New York that I was referring lots of work too, and it turned out that not only did they never share generously, but they kept asking, kept asking, and it became annoying. I just basically shut them down, they still do good work, so I haven't done anything to hurt them at all. If somebody is actually out to hurt me, then we come into the Kobe Bryant crush them phase, which is actually the evil side of this, and it's kind of fun. DAVID: You have to do that once or twice a year, right? Otherwise, I was just wondering if people are still listening at this point. Otherwise, it just doesn't happen, because who are the people that are going to hear the worst things about me as an advisor? It's going to be my competitors, right? If my competitors hear about me, but their experience in working with me is not at all matching, they're going to pause the conversation and say, even just to themselves, you must not be a good client, because that's not how I've experienced him. There's so many advantages here to make this work well. BLAIR: Yeah, it strikes me as this is going sound a bit corny, it's a bit like love though, right? The more you give, the more you get, and the more open you are, and more gracious you are with your competitors, the more likely you are to get back. Even if it's not a full reciprocation, there's still that feeling of you helping others, of yourself worth, etc., it's got to escalate. DAVID: Yeah, for sure, and there are many times when somebody does great work, and you've sent them lots of work, but they're not sending you work. That's okay, because they might be at a different place on the referral chain. In other words, by the time they hear of a client, they're past their need for you, whatever you happen to do along that chain. DAVID: It can't be a tit-for-tat thing, it's really just about surrounding yourself with people who are generous in life in many ways. I find that, that's a very satisfying experience, almost regardless of the outcome. BLAIR: Well, you've convinced me, I'm going to start thinking about maybe referring a piece of business to you. DAVID: Yeah, it's about damn time honestly. BLAIR: Thanks David, this has been great. DAVID: Bye Blair.

20 Juni 201827min

Blair and David come up with descriptive words that help clarify each of the four parts of what David calls the "pantheon" for new business: positioning, lead generation, sales, and pricing. Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour Mastering the Value Conversation podcast episode

6 Juni 201827min

David and Blair explore the big topic of personality assessment tools that can help firms “get the right people on the bus.” Not Your Typical Personality Types →

16 Maj 201833min

Blair and David dive into a discussion on ownership structures, looking at the results of a survey that David did recently about partnerships.

2 Maj 201834min

Listeners on Twitter wanted to know what clients actually want from creative firms, so David makes a list based on his experience of what good clients want, while Blair's reaction is "who cares what clients want... all they wanted was a 'faster horse.'"

18 Apr 201834min