Selling Expertise with Blair Enns (What Solo Marketers Need to Know)

So I, my business is called Win Without Pitching. I wrote a book called The Win Without Pitching Manifesto. That line comes from Orin Claf and his book Pitch Anything. So it's the Win without pitching, guy, quoting, quoting the pitch, anything guy. It really is an excellent book and, um, uh, I cite it multiple times every week.

Welcome to the marketing team at one podcast where we have conversations about the issues one person marketing teams face when trying to meet their goals with limited time and budgets. Now, here's your hosts, Eric and Mike. Ladies and gentlemen, I am so blessed today and I thought, uh, I would bring you another amazing great mind in the world of, uh, marketing and sales.

Uh, today we've got with us, Mr. Blair Ens. Um, thank you for being with us Blair. My pleasure, Eric. I wanted to bring Blair on because Blair specifically works more with agencies and that he's, uh, been a source for us, uh, of inspiration. We've read all of his books. He's read three. He's written three books. Uh, but today I wanted him to talk about his latest book, which is all about selling expertise.

Now, I know this is a marketing team of one podcast where we speak to the solo marketers. Uh, oftentimes the solo marketers are also playing the role of a salesperson, so I thought that this would be very helpful, but it is specific to people who are selling. B2B expertise. So it's usually higher ticket sales and it's something that Blair has really perfected a framework that, uh, speaks to having conversations around those sales and making them work for your sales team.

So, um, back in 2010, I think is when you wrote Win Without Pitching. Is that correct? That's correct. And that was your first book. Um, and that kind of opened the door for everything. What did you do before that? Well, I launched Win Without Pitching initially as a solo consulting practice in 2002. And I'll correct you.

Um, I do refer to the Win Without Pitching Manifesto as my first book, but really there was a book that launched the consulting practice in April of 20 2002. Sorry. Um, and it was just called Win Without Pitching and it was a. You're familiar with my second book, pricing Creativity, which is a manual, it's a pricing manual basically.

Yeah. Um, I wrote a sales manual that was for sale on my website, and I charged $995 a copy for this book. So when I launched the consulting practice, I sat down and wrote out everything I knew about selling for agencies. Everything I knew about new business development is the, as you know, that's the code term that we use for selling, because we don't like to use the S word.

Right. And I wrote it out and I thought I should sell this as I was just trying to organize my consulting practice and I thought I should sell this as a book. Um, but I thought, well, it's worth a lot more than $20. So I charged $995 for the book. And so we were a, so I was a solo consultant at the time. I launched the business in 2002.

Before that, I worked in ad agencies and design firms. In account management and new business development. Very good. Yeah. So you're very, I, that's why we've used your pricing creativity as a great book. Uh, but the four Conversations was your last book, four Conversations, a new Model for Selling Expertise.

And I think what's wonderful about that book, so The Manifesto was literally like a manifesto. I was like stinking or putting a flag in the ground. Uh, and you know, please live by these rules, you know, and, and you'll be better off for it. But then the other two books, the two following books were much more tactical, I would call 'em, and that's what I really loved about you literally get into what the craft of those conversations are when you're speaking.

Um, and, and when you're selling, I should say, when your team is selling. So, um, you also have a podcast. Mm-hmm. Two Bobs Conversations on the Art of Creative Entrepreneurship, which I co-host with David cba. Please, everyone go to that podcast is after you're done watching this one, then go over to audio only podcast.

But it is, uh, a really wonderful, very concise, beautifully done, uh, podcast. Two giants in the industry speaking about all kinds of different things, but, uh, mostly about selling, positioning, um, and, and kind of from an agency standpoint, but I think you can take away some other universal lessons from that as well.

So let's go into it a little bit. I wanted to go into translating your four conversations book into what solo marketers can build for them as a salesperson or their sales team. Let's say they've got two or three people or maybe more, uh, that when they are helping run sales. So this conversation, I wanna, I want to kind of craft it in a way of those solo marketers or those people who are the marketing teams of one.

Can run, can kind of saddle up alongside of a sales team. And I want to talk a little bit about how they can help during those four conversations. And then I want to talk about, of course, as we're going through each of those points, how does that marketing slash salesperson actually execute on those tactical things that you had talked about?

Um, really one of the best. Lines that I always love and is, I don't know why. It kind of warms the cockles of my heart a little bit, but I always love the idea. You have a wonderful quote that is the sales is the sample, and I love that. Um, what do you mean by that? I know what it means for me, but why don't you talk a little bit about that first before we get into the book.

Yeah. And I, I heard that somewhere and I spent, when I was writing the book, and it took me years to write the book, but when I was writing the book, I was trying to find the source of it. I think I've since found the Source. I think it's Mahan Alsa who wrote a wonderful book on selling. It's the only, I own all the books on sale on selling.

I've only read one cover to cover that wasn't mine. And it is, is that one Mahan calls says, let's get real or let's not play. I can't find that attribution, that line in the book. It might be in there. Um, it's a bit of a strange book in that it started as, um. Series of audio recordings that was then edited into a book.

And there are different versions of it, and I think it's out of print and you can find different versions and different used book markets. But the idea and what Mahan calls Usad, excuse me, what Mahan calls Usad was, um, that, uh. How I sell is a sample of how I deliver. So I think, you know, you mentioned the title of the book, the Four Conversations.

The subtitle is A New Model for Selling Expertise. So it begs the question like, what is it about the sell sale of expertise that might require a model of selling that is different from the model that's used for people selling goods, um, or more transactional services? And the answer is, as you've pointed out, in any sale of expertise, the sale is the sample of the engagement to follow.

So the sales person, it went, so my, like my market is, um, people who are experts first, either advisors or practitioners of some kind who have to sell second. The second job is selling. Now. The target's not the market. The target is that at which you aim the market is the broader thing which you would be happy to hit.

We do do a lot of training for people who are se sellers of expertise, but they're not the expert themselves and the principles still apply. But in any sale of expertise, the clients, there are two things going on. The client's trying on what it would be like to work with you, and the roles that each party will pay play in the engagement are established here.

So the problem I'm trying to address comes down to this a lot of. Salesperson behavior is what I would, uh, call needy vendor behavior. Hmm. And if you are the expert and you're showing up in the sale as a needy vendor or even a nice, polite, compliant vendor mm-hmm. Then that is the role you will be assigned in the engagement.

Now, it almost doesn't matter what form of expertise it is that you possess and that you're selling and that you hope to deliver. If you want to be seen as the expert in the engagement, if you want to earn as much money as you can, if you want to have the greatest impact on your clients, then you need to be allowed to lead the engagement.

And if you are not, therefore, if you're not leading in the sale, you'll not be allowed to lead in the engagement. A friend of mine has a great line. He says, um, the prospect's mind is malleable. The client's mind is fixed. Hmm. So you can shape how this is going to work. If we work together, this, here's how this is going to work.

But you have to shape it in the sale. Once you're hired, the client will bring their model of how they expect you to work, and often they'll bring it to you in the sale itself. They'll, they'll say, we, I mean the language will be, will differ from expert to expert, but they'll basically say, here's the process first we're gonna do this step and then this step, and then this step, and then I want you to deliver on this.

That's kinda like telling your doctor, let's just skip the diagnostic part. Let's just get to the open heart surgery, which I'm pretty convinced I need. So, yeah, the sale is the sample. If we don't behave like a, the expert in the sale, then we will be assigned to the status of just another vendor. Which, uh, I think leads me to my next favorite quote.

And this is a quote you attribute to somebody else, but, uh, I think I'm gonna get this tattooed on my forearm and it says, you are the expert, you are the prize. And I just love that because it really does. Put you in a different mindset as far as when you're going into that. If you truly are the expert, you need to look at yourself as you are not just looking at that prospect as, oh, I need this job, but maybe it's.

Gonna work, or maybe it's not gonna work, but I'm testing them just as much as they're testing me, correct? Yes. So the book is a model for selling expertise all. As I say in the book, there's a quote attributed to somebody who's famous for just this quote. All models are wrong, some are useful, but the model is we view the sale as a series of four linear and discreet conversations.

Within the model, there are frameworks, so frameworks for navigating to, um, each of the conversations unique objectives. So each conversation has its own objective. Each conversation has a framework or set of frameworks for navigating to that objective. In addition to frameworks, the model also contains principles.

These ideas that you embody. As you're using a conversations framework to navigate to its objective, and you've pointed out, um, one of the principles in the book is, I call it mindset first. What do I mean by that? If you wanna show up and behave like the expert in the sale, then your behavior is underpinned by the thoughts in your head.

And if you're having a hard time, if you're looking at what I'm suggesting you do in the book. In terms of the questions that you might ask, the frameworks you might use, and you feel this, um, discomfort or dissonance between, you think, well, I, I don't know if I could see myself doing that. It's because I'm asking you to do something that any expert would do, and you are overlaying that.

Action over a mindset, a vendor mindset. You've thought of yourself as the vendor and you've behaved as the vendor up until now. So you look at this different approach and think, oh, I can't do that. There's a conflict there. So how do you get over the conflict? You deal with the thoughts in your head. So I've coined, um, this four, four line mantra called The Expert's Mantra that you would recite to yourself before you go into a sale.

And the first of the four lines is, I am the expert, I'm the prize. And you're quite right, that line. I am the expert, sorry. I am the prize. That second part that comes from. So I, my business is called Win Without Pitching. I wrote a book called The Win Without Pitching Manifesto. That line comes from Orin Kla and his book Pitch Anything.

So it's the win without pitching, guy, quoting, quoting the pitch, anything guy. It really is an excellent book and um, uh, I cite it multiple times every week. It sounds like it's a conflict there. Pitch everything as opposed to It does, but it's a different context for the pitch. It's, um, it's, it's really about raising money for, uh, uh, venture getting, venture backed financing.

So it's about getting your message really tight. So. I initially almost didn't read it because I thought of the conflict was obvious. There's, there's no conflict at all. In fact, the two books are quite complimentary to each other. Yeah. 'cause I mean, you can't live in a world of VC funding without pitching.

I mean, that's just, that's how that world works. And they take, what is it, 10, 20 meetings a day. So you need to be concise, you need to get your message down really tight. Yeah. I just had Guy Kawasaki on, uh, a couple of episodes ago and his book, the Art of the Start, is one of those books I think everybody should read as well in the sense of it.

It's another tactical book on how to put together a pitch for startups. And it's very specific to this slide says this, limit it to this. Yeah. It should have this, you know, it's very tactical. I love that. Um. Let's get into it then. Let's start a little bit with that probative conversation. That's the first conversation.

It's actually not a conversation, correct? Yeah. The I, so it's the only one in, it's the conversation in air quotes that happens without you present. Hmm. So it's the first conversation. And so for this one, only the idea of a conversation is a bit of a construct. How do you have a conversation without you present?

Well, let's look at the objective of the probative conversation. Your objective is to prove your expertise to your prospective client, and then move in their mind from this position of powerless vendor to a more powerful position of the expert. Um, that, so you're trying to go from just another possible provider to somebody who's seen as meaningfully different, whose expertise is recognized and valued, and thus you're changing the power dynamics in the relationship Now.

It happens without you present. It happens through your agents of typically thought leadership and referrers. So those your best clients or customers who refer you and speak very highly of you. And in an expertise based business, it's, uh, a big part of it would be proving your expertise in the public domain via thought leadership or some form of content marketing that positions you in the mind of the client and drives, draws inbound inquiries to you.

And I would also include other agents of reputation building. So in a creative firm, it might be winning awards, um, it could be other things too, but there's a wide range of those kind of things. But you're. And we found this too, referrals are gold. I mean, that is really one of the best things you can have as far as one of those agents out there is having other people maybe actually, you know, in real life, you know, point you out and say, you know, qualify you as somebody who's amazing.

Um, what, so what other proof as, when you say content marketing or, or thought leadership pieces, you're talking like LinkedIn articles potentially. I would see, think that that's something that would be valuable. Website is just kind of, I wouldn't call that. How would you categorize a website? Is that just something that.

It's just your entry into doing business that's not really, uh, it should collect everything and, and, and house it all, but it's really not, uh, that source as important maybe as other things. Well, it, it is important. So, um. In the book under the probative conversation. So the probative conversation is really a function of three things.

It's fundamental business strategy, um, where are you going to play and how are you gonna win? And that's the domain of the business owners and mm-hmm senior leadership team. Uh, positioning how, and this is a function of the, this is in the domain of the marketing team. Um, how are you going to position your offering relative to that of your competitors in the mind of the prospect?

Mm-hmm. And then lead generation. How are you going to go about driving inbound inquiries with this, the objective of the probative conversation having been reached, so again, back, the objective is to prove your expertise and move from the powerless position of vendor to the more powerful position of the expert in the mind of the client or the customer.

We have a, an a term for the moment when that objective is reached, we call it the flip. So the flip is when they quit thinking of you as just another option and think, no, they're the one. Hmm. Right. They're the one we want, or at least at the top of the list. I want to hear your model. Yeah. I've got a question.

So the model is the ladder of lead generation, and it's a way of organizing your lead generation activities. Um, on along these three ladders, sorry, three rungs on the ladder at the bottom, you have, um, sales based activities of unsolicited inquiries, outreach. Basically in the middle you have marketing based activities, um, messages broadcast to many, usually in, usually paid, but not always.

And at the top you have educating activities and that's thought leadership, content marketing, et cetera. And the reason the educating based activities are on the top is they confer the highest status. They will engender the flip and drive an inbound inquiry. The ones at the bottom, sales-based activities are lowest status.

Doesn't mean they're not valuable. The marketing based ones are in the middle in a sales-based outreach. So if I, if I call you Eric, or message you on LinkedIn, send you a direct message on a social platform, I can make a claim of expertise. And I used to sell creative services back in the pre-web days.

So I would phone somebody, I worked for a generalist, full service marketing communication firm. I would phone somebody and claim some sort of expertise that I thought. Was relevant to what I imagined there needs to be. And what they couldn't do in that moment was go to my website and see if I was lying or to see if the words coming out of my mouth match the words on my website.

Hmm. So in a personal interaction, anybody can make any claim on your website, you're making a more public claim of expertise. So you're putting your stake in the ground, you're conferred a little bit more status because at least you're making a public claim. And then at the highest level, education-based activities, you are proving your expertise.

Or maybe you're invited to a platform that even validates your expertise. So if you think of at the top, we have these educating based activities, the problem with the ones at the top is. Even though it's high status, it's low immediacy. The ones at the bottom are low status and high immediacy. So the website is in the middle.

Everybody needs a website. Everybody should be doing some form of marketing based activities, but expert based businesses should strive to climb the ladder over time and have more and more of their lead generation activities be in that educating rung that drives inbound inquiries. With the flip having happened, what's the highest value?

Educational? How would you rank? I mean, I would think like a TED Talk maybe would be top of the food chain. Yeah. Like Ted proper talk as opposed to a TEDx talk. Although TEDx talks can go viral and get millions of views. Writing. So that's, that's broadly popular. But if you're a niche business mm-hmm. Yeah.

Then maybe writing the, the definitive book on your area of expertise would be one. So if you're, if you're the solo marketer and you're thinking like, what's, what's the best I can, like, what are the high level. Lead generation activities I could do for the organization. Pull a book out of the CEO. Mm-hmm.

Get them a TED Talk. Get them to speak at that conference, launch your own podcast. Like all of these things are high up on that ladder of lead generation. Now, again, low immediacy. If you, it takes me eight years to write a book. So if I wanna write a book, if all, if I put all my, all my lead generation eggs in the book basket, I'm not gonna survive.

So you do have to have this balanced lead generation plan where you endeavor to climb it over time. Perfect. And I think of all of the conversations of the four, the one that relates most to those marketing teams, if they are just specifically relegated to doing marketing, this first one is probably the most important for those, right?

It the, the O. The other three conversations are very much centered around that sales person and their personality and ability to kind of follow along with your very prescriptive set of frameworks for those conversations. But yeah, this one seems to be. Uh, obviously work with your sales team if you have one to develop these, these materials.

But, um, this one in my mind falls solely or, or mostly on the responsibilities of that marketing department or marketing person. Yeah, I agree. And I love just imagining as we're talking this like solo marketing person who has a team of salespeople. You can drive the marketing leads and you can drive the education, educating leads.

And often that means enlisting more senior people in the organization. Maybe it's the CEO, and try to position that CEO as a thought leader while you're also working in the marketing based activities. And then you can watch as your salespeople do ridiculous things to undo your good work, like a 30 page proposal.

I mean, I, I think it would be helpful for the marketing people to, to read the full scope of the book Es especially when you get to the, um, pricing and proposal development and then the closing conversation. You might, it'd be re really interesting to get the marketing person's take on as a. An adjacent observer to the salespeople and what they're doing with the leads that you hand them.

And you might have some, you might find some interesting ideas in the book that you might try to impart to the salespeople to help them not waste so much time. Um. On those leads. That's constant. It's so funny, the people that we've had on here that we've had, people that have run, you know, a single solo marketing person has like 50 salespeople that they have to manage.

And some of the stories that you hear are just terrifying. Yeah. And the headbutting and you know, it's like, I, I did all that stuff that you wanted and I have, well, I just, I need a different version of it just for this client. You know, it's just bending over backwards and, you know, becoming that vendor, you know, that's, yeah.

What those salespeople have to fight all the time. And I don't want to mean to say those salespeople because Yeah, no, I know you, I love the intersection of sales and marketing and I love joking about that. It's like, um, you know, sales people say we need, we need marketing's now giving us leads and, uh, these leads suck marking's saying, I'm handing you leads.

These leads are gold. These are the Glen Gary leads. And you don't know what you're doing. You keep blowing them. So yeah, I don't do, I never do like a, like a very direct plug of like, you should hire me for training, but. In this situation, um, when you're the solo marketing person, you think, what can I do?

You know, just give, give the sales VP of sales a copy of the four conversations and just say, Hey, I read this for the marketing stuff in the probative conversation and at the front. But this is really interesting stuff in here on how you can get your proposal down to one page and you can increase your closing ratio significantly by moving to three option proposals and et cetera.

And sometimes the marketing person is enlisted to help with the big pitch deck. Yeah. Right. To write the actual proposal. Like those things, those marketer, those things can go away. A lot of businesses, you don't need to be doing that at all. And this is, this model helps you around that. So if you're wasting a lot of your time building these tools for the salespeople and they're not like repeat, they're like one-off tools and they're not like, um, evergreen tools that just get built once and used multiple times.

This is, I would encourage you to explore this model. Yeah. Uh, that's the one thing that was so amazing reading. It was just the level of detail that you included in there that would help those salespeople. But from a marketing standpoint, you can see how you can help those salespeople position themselves and feel confident positioning themselves for those.

Somewhat maybe difficult conversations in relation to how they had those conversations in the past. Correct. It's, uh, you know, the idea is that you're changing the model of how people are selling these enga, you know, selling these, uh, engagements. Yeah. And as I, I always thought that what, one of the reasons I love the intersection of sales and marketing is as a marketer, if there's some things that you can do to help sales.

And conversely, as a sales person, if there's some things that you can do to help marketing, you look like a hero in the organization. Yeah. 'cause you're, you're building a system. Compare that to the agency business that you and I know so well, and just think of all the late nights. Crafting those lengthy, stupid proposals, and it's like you get to an age where it's like it's 3:00 AM and you think I'm, I'm never doing this again.

Oh man. Every time too, it seems like, you know, you get to the end, you're like, Nope, that was it. I'm done. The last one and then one more time. Yeah. Three weeks later you've forgotten everything and you're like, yeah, let's go do that again. No, no, that doesn't work. Um, where do people accidentally commoditize themselves when it comes to this first conversation?

Or do they over prove themselves? It is one of those situations where, is that a risk in this first conversation or is that something that kind of comes along later on down the line? No, it ha it's happens in the person to person conversation. So the second conversation is the qualifying conversation, which is a vetting conversation.

You're vetting the lead to see if an opportunity exists. So. And, and that's actually where in any of the subsequent conversations after the probative conversation. So let's just say simplify and just say for the sake of this discussion, that we, we view the probative conversation as the domain of marketing and the three subsequent conversations, it as the domain of sales.

And that's largely true. Yeah. Like that. Um, so marketing does a great job. Of positioning the organization and driving inbound inquiries with the organization, seen as kind of the leader in the space. So you're in the power position. You've eliminated a a lot of the competition. The lead comes in, a salesperson takes the lead, and then through either pushy behavior or this like customer service mentality.

What do I mean by that? Where you're, you have this smile plastered on your face. The client's talking and you're nodding yes before they're not even finished saying what they're saying, and you're just waiting for them to stop talking so you can give them your sales pitch. We all know what that feels like because we've all been on the buyer end of that.

Marketing does this. Beautiful job of positioning and driving an inbound lead with the flip having happened and then the sales person or the sales team reverts to high pressure or needy vendor sales tactics. All that work is destroyed and basically the flip un flips and you're back in the vendor status.

Is there, I mean, going back to then to the first conversation, I mean that you folks talk a lot about niching down and specializing, and I know that that's a pretty common belief. It's hard to be an expert at everything, right? So you wanna pick something that's very specific, that obviously you have domain expertise around.

Uh, but some firms or some, you know, companies, they can do a lot of different things, but the, the, the focus should be to pick one, I think. Correct? Well, so if you're a marketer in a larger organization, that niching down is the domain of the business owners or the senior leadership team. Okay. Typically, in a small organization, it's completely the domain of the owners, or it should be, yeah.

So you, you kind of have to play the hand that you've been dealt. Now let's say you have a broad mix of services, or it's a broad swath of the market that you're serving. Um, doesn't mean you have to go to all of that market with the same broad message. You do have some choices you can make about where you're going to aim.

And again, I said it once, I'll say it again. The target is not the market. The target is the narrow thing at which you aim, and the market is the broader thing that you're happy to hit. The metaphor I use is if you're a golfer and if golf, actually I do play golf occasionally. I'm not sure if it's supposed to work this way, but think of it as you're aiming for the flag.

And you're happy to just land on the green. Mm-hmm. And there's something about a narrow value proposition that builds credibility. Um, as you and I know Eric in the agency world, there's something about creative people. We don't need to get into the whys of it, but creative people want to reserve the, reserve, the right to do all kinds of different things for all kinds of different people.

So creative businesses tend to be broadly positioned, and they make these broad claims of expertise that lose them credibility. Hmm. So when you make a more narrow claim and say, we're experts at helping clients like this, create value like that, or solve problems like that, the client can extrapolate from that.

Well, if that's your discipline and that's your market, then you could probably also serve a, a related market and you probably also have a related discipline. But as soon as you say, you go really broad, we can do all these things for all these people, you lose credibility and they lose interest. But you've flipped it in a sense, you flipped it back over again.

They Yeah. They no longer look at you as that expert. I have a friend who's a very narrowly positioned solo consultant, and I once asked him how, how business is, and he said, business is great. I'm not doing any, anything that's in my wheelhouse, like the my in my claim of expertise, but I'm seen as so different people.

Come to me and say, Hey, can you also do X? And the answer is, yeah, of course I can do X. It's not why people tend to come to us, but if that's what you want, I can help you with X. So you, you don't have an issue with, or do you have an issue with people who market very niche, but then when they come to you with these, oh, I see you do annual reports for ag companies, but then they come to you and they're like, well, you know, we kind of are related, but it sounds like you could do you, are you, do you frown on us or us?

I'll put myself in that position. Yeah. Opening up and saying, so the marketing does this, but sure we can do that. And then we kind of jump into that mean I don't Fran it. It's two different decisions. There's the business that you pursue and there's the business that you take. And they're two different things.

Yeah. And in one business there might be, it might make sense to not take anything outside of that defined area of expertise. Gotcha. The message that you go to market with in another business, it might be different. I always say, here's, here's a little thought experiment. It's 11 o am your phone rings and somebody says, Hey, do you wash cars?

I need my car washed, um, pretty quickly and I'm willing to pay a thousand dollars. I. W what do you do? I, I'm thinking about it, you know? Yeah. Because I, like, I think your first response is, I'm, you may have, I think you've called the wrong business. We're a design firm. We do blah, blah, blah. Right? And the client says, yeah, yeah, yeah.

But it's car wash. How hard it can be. I have a thousand dollars. Will you wash my car? I, my answer is, my lunch is in 45 minutes. Bring it by. I'm gonna take the thousand dollars. I've, I've told them, are you sure you haven't, you're not calling the wrong Yeah. Come on. It's squash it, it's branding. It's like it's a logo.

Everybody can do it. Like whatever. Whatever their rationale is. Surely you can do it. You're just the first phone number I call. I just need somebody to do this. The money's worth it. I can do it. I'm not asked to compete for it. So I'm, I'm personally, I'm going to take the work as long as the opportunity cost is not greater than the thousand dollars.

Right. What I'm not going to do is then go to the language on my website and update it so that it now also includes car washing. I love that example. That's perfect. Okay. Th then, then that makes sense. I was gonna say my answer would, uh, I would've to look at my accounts receivable and then I would, that would help me make my decision.

Well, you know, yeah. It's a little light. Then. You know what guys, we're, we're in the car washing business we're, we are for an hour. Yep. Yeah. And then we're not, let's get back to the qualifying conversation 'cause we've kind of stepped away from that a little bit. I, I drove us off into the first conversation again.

Um. You're vetting the lead, you're qualifi, you're, you're testing them, they're testing you. It's kind of a back and forth process. Would you describe it a little bit about that? Like, like that, or is it, uh, walk us through that, that second conversation a little. It's a great conversation. So the objective is to vet the lead to see if an opportunity exists and determine the next steps.

Then there's a secondary objective around, uh, while maintaining the expert position. So trying not to give up the high ground that you earned in the probative conversation. Mm-hmm. And let's just put that aside. It's, it's not as complicated as it might sound. You just follow the framework to the conversation's objective.

And the flip should, if it didn't happen before, it should happen in this conversation, it might not though. Okay. So it's the betting conversation. Um. You are vetting the client. So the framework that we use is a framework for vetting the client, simply asking the questions that you need to ask and get answered to determine whether or not there's a good fit here, and they would make sense as a good client for you.

Now, the second half of the, I call it the second half of the qualifying conversation is the client still has to vet you. So after you're, you've done, you, you've finished vetting the client, you might say, I think on the surface here, it looks like a pretty good fit. Um, I have some more questions I'd like to get to, but before I do, what do you need to know about us to determine if there's a good fit on your end?

And then you let the client ask their questions and you answer them. Now, as you know, Eric, in a creative firm. W we don't tend to think of this as a qualifying conversation. We actually call it a credentials meeting. Mm. Right? Mm-hmm. Or a capabilities presentation where we're trying to qualify for the client to do business with the client.

Now, if the probative conversation has happened, they have largely qualified you. They're still going to have some questions, but you're not gonna get the, why should we hire you? That type of attitude. Yeah. Um, the qu qualifying is largely done, but you still wanna ask the question, what do you need to know about us?

So in that space, there could be two or three potential other competitors that they're talking to as well. Correct? Yes. I mean, it's not like you've just won the prize and now you're just seeing if it's a fit check and everybody likes each other and, you know, Blair sounds like a nice guy, so let's just go with him.

It's not really, there's still, there's still back and forth and maybe some decision making where there could be that temptation. Of jumping in and we can do that and s you know, sing Dan, you know, like the whole thing. Right? It's like there's still some of that dynamic at play. How do you get around that or how do you compete with that?

How do you compete with your own bad habits of trying to prove that you're worthy of being hired? That is the question. Well, the, the short but kind of long-term answer is you have a meaningful probative conversation, which takes quite a while. So I'll give you an example. I was leading a win without pitching workshop, I wanna say six months ago.

And in there was one person from a firm that we had trained a few years earlier, and as they get new employees, they would send them to the workshop. And so, as. This person was introducing themself. They said, I'm told that when the firm went through the training three years ago, 100% of their leads were outbound.

Today, 100% of their leads are inbound. So that's somebody took seriously this idea of having a probative conversation, proving your expertise in the public domain, and driving inbound inquiries now, so the marketers watching this and listening to this, you can do a great job, but you're still going to have to, and then you're gonna hand over these leads.

They're, and they're gonna be great, great leads for the most part, because. The prospect already recognizes and values your expertise. You've done a lot of work to eliminate, or at least, if not, eliminate the competition, become the advantaged player. And I talk about that in the book and the numbers around that.

So it's yours to lose effectively. Hmm. And then you're gonna hand over the salesperson and the salesperson. Being a salesperson is going to go into convince mode. Right? Let's take a coach. Let's say you, you wanna hire a coach. That sales experience, when you're having a conversation with a coach where you're trying to determine if this is the coach you want to hire, the last thing you want is a strong arm sales approach from this coach that you're going to work with or this consultant you're going to work with.

Again, this is in the sale. This is where. The roles are established and the client tries on what it's going to be like to work with you. So when you start getting these high pressure sales tactic tactics, like, yeah, I can only honor that price till the end of the month, or, let me expose you to my presentation deck for the next 25 minutes where I talk about me and us for 25 minutes.

All that stuff, that person is now undoing all the great work that you did. They've moved from the advantaged player to a, to one of many or maybe even a disadvantaged player. By nature of the tactics, the sales person in this conversation maybe comes across a little aloof. Yeah, I would say aloof is going too far.

Okay. I think you wanted to be clinical. So what does a clinical mean? Mm-hmm. You go interview a new doctor, talk to a new doctor. They're asking you or a lawyer or an accountant. They're asking you the questions they need to get answered to make a determination on whether or not they can help you. And they're not leaning on trying to be overly friendly.

They're not trying to befriend you into hiring them, although some will do that because that's in their personality. Mm-hmm. Um. And, but they're also not begging for your business. Like, imagine you had a serious heart condition and you're trying to find the right doctor for whatever reason your doctor is making you happy.

So you, you set up a couple of meetings with other doctors and the first one you see, you walk in and it's like, oh, Eric, oh my, I'm so happy to see you. I'm, I'm like, I'm really, I'm just really, really passionate about your health. I really, really, really, really, really wanna work with you. I can't, I wanted to work with you for a very long time.

Like, I gotta tell you, like, this is, I'm so excited. Like, how do you respond? We are human beings. It's an unfortunate trait characteristic of human beings. We are repulsed by ne neediness, so it's more likely that the person's gonna, like in the, in the, in the creative business, there's the person who's just like, thinks they're gonna win the business by being, showing how, how be, how much they wanna work with this brand.

Mm-hmm. Um, other salespeople, they're just competitive. High drive. They're hired for that rejection proof, high drive. Don't take no for an answer, and they come across as pushy. What you, if you're selling expertise, you wanna show up and you want to embody that expertise in the moment to extend that out.

If the client does, you know, is expecting you to jump through hoops and look, I can juggle, I can do all these things, and that's what you want, right? Like, you probably don't wanna work with that person anyway. I mean, if the, if the client or the pro prospect is wanting that from you to o over serve. That also is kind of a red flag as well.

Like, wait, what am I getting into as an expert here? If they expect that kind of behavior from me over and over and over again. This is just gonna be a drain, you know, on, on myself here is that, and that's tricky because if you're talking to a prospective new client, they've probably fired an agency. And David Baker and I just recorded a podcast on this, it won't drop for a couple of months yet.

But, um, and the idea is that you, the reason you're hired is different than the reason you're fired. So to quote David here, um, you're fired for lack of service. And I'm sure this applies in a lot of the listeners and the viewers businesses, but this is a kind of an agency truism that's largely relevant to many other business types.

You're fired for lack of service, but you're not hired for service. You're hired for your expertise. So when you hear. If they fired their last agency because of lack of service, you're going to lean into that. You, there's already, we already have this mentality that we're in the service sector and in the service sector.

The client's always right. The customer's always right, but that's not true. You're in the expertise business and the customer's usually wrong, or at least your default assumption should be that when the client comes to you, self-diagnosed and self prescribed, they may be right. They're more likely to be wrong, at least in some small way.

Regardless, as a professional, you have an obligation to diagnose before you prescribe. And if the client comes to you self-diagnosed, you have a professional obligation to validate that self-diagnosis. So it's not about smiling. Yeah. Yeah, we can do that. We can do that. I'm not saying be difficult or as you alluded to earlier.

Don't be aloof. Just be practical and pragmatic and clinical. And we know what clinical is when we're dealing with real professionals. When they're just like, they have the questions they need answered and they just ask the questions, we need to do that too. You know, it's, it's one of those deals where that is a behavior model that you could almost look at and be modeling that clinical behavior.

I like that a lot. I share this. Analogy most days, imagine you walk into your doctor's office and you say, doc, I have this pain in my chest. I think I need quadruple bypass surgery. And the doctor thinks, well, it's probably an just angina, but you're the customer. And the customer's always, right. So they say, lie down, I'll cut you open.

Let's do this. There's a word for that. It's called malpractice. And in any expert based business, if you proceed on a self-diagnosed client, on any engagement of any meaning without validating that diagnosis through your own diagnostic tools, oh, then you are committing malpractice. It's unfortunate we never have to make some sort of hippocratic oath or anything like that as marketers or, or designers.

Sometimes you wonder if we need to. Yeah. But yeah, let's talk a little bit, let's move into that value conversation because we haven't talked about money yet. Money, shouldn't that be the first thing we all talk about? I, you would think, and I know that sometimes, uh, just tell me how much it costs. Come on.

How do we deal with that? And that's what this conversation's about. Yeah. I, I think I lo, I love like outing price buyers. You get a price buyer? No, just like it just did a I know what I want. Like what, what's your price? The answer is we are not the lowest. We are not the lowest cost option. Nice. So if, if it's price you're looking for, you, you, you've come to the wrong place.

Now I don't, I don't speak to everybody. Look on this call, you might be marketing, doing marketing at an organization that has a cost or a production advantage, and you are the lowest price in the market. But the value conversation, it's the third conversation. It's the second person to person conversation.

So if you have a qualifying conversation and you determine it's a good fit, you qualify them in, you would move to a value conversation. And this is where you're not, it's, it's kind of the pricing conversation, but you're not setting prices necessarily. You're setting pricing guidance based on the value that might.

Be created not based on what your solutions might be. Ah, so try Yeah, go ahead. Just re Yeah, reiterate that because I think that's where, uh, so many companies are like, well, let me see what the cost is and let see how many hours it'll take. And it's, it's just a, a math problem at that point. Yeah. And that's the, you're not talking about that.

That's the, that's the exact opposite of what I'm talking about. And so what, just to finish, what, what you started there, Eric? It's um. A client says, here's my, here's my problem. Maybe even here's the solution I want. And then the sales person says, okay, well this is the solution that I have or I can put together.

Let me figure out what the cost is. Um, in most businesses, you'll add on profit to get to price. In some businesses you conflate cost and price. That's back to agency business and, and so the price is a function of the cost plus profit, which is a function of the solution. Now. I'm proposing, and I'm not the only, I didn't invent the value conversation.

I'm not the only one proposed this, but the value conversation proposes that You flip that around. So the client comes to you and says, I need X. You go, great. Okay, X, let me ask you a few questions about X. And you put the description of X aside, and then you follow. It's a four step framework. What do you want?

What will we measure? What's the value of hitting these metrics and getting what you want? And then the four step is if we could help you bring this vision to reality. Step one, what do you want? We hit these metrics. Step two, create this value that we just talked about. Step three. What would you be willing to pay step four?

And you don't ask that question. There's nuance around all of these steps, but you're basically setting initial pricing guidance typically in a fairly broad range. Hmm. And you're setting it based on the value of the client solving the problem, irrespective of what the solution might be. But what this value conversation framework has you do is get to price without.

Talking about or thinking deeply about solutions, would you pay us this much? If we could help you create this value, would you pay us this much? The client might say, well, what would you do for that? The answer might be, I don't know. I haven't really thought about it. Hmm. And I would add, and it's part, it is killing me because I really wanna jump ahead to solutions.

But before we get to solutions, I wanna know if we could help you create this value. Would you pay this much? No. Would you pay this much? Maybe. Would you pay this much? Yeah. Okay. Did you have a, A budget in mind? Yeah. Tiny fraction of that. Okay. So now we have a range. Now I have a price range. Now I can go back to the team or retreat for myself, and I can think creatively and expansively about.

What are the different ways that I could help you create this value? And I've heard you say you want X, I'll show you, I'll show you what we can, I'll show, give you a price for X. And I've heard you say your budget is y. I'll show you what we can do for Y. But I would like your permission to think creatively and expansively, think beyond that, to think what else we might do.

So if you're dealing with people who are not leaderships or not given the agency to make these decisions full stop without any sort of, you know, oversight from CEOs or leadership, that's great. But oftentimes we're dealing with somebody who's maybe lower down the food chain and so they don't see the value.

They're looking at price. And I like the way that you've already talked about this. You didn't say the word price. Until way down into this conversation where you were talking first about value, and this isn't a pricing conversation, this is a value conversation. Yeah. And, and leaders, that's their job.

They need to create value. They don't create lower costs. I mean, that might be part of their goal, but ultimately they do that with the goal of getting to creating more value. Often you end up in this place where with the manager, where you say, listen, I'll show you what we can do for X in exchange, I would like permission to think creatively and expansively about what's the most that we could do.

And if I come back with something that's novel and interesting, I'm gonna come back with it. Something at this higher price, higher than X. I understand you only have a budget for X. What I hope to do is to put you in the uncomfortable position where you look at one of the other options and think, you know what?

This is worth looping in some more senior people. Mm-hmm. And seeing if they want to. Allocate some more resources to think differently about this and, and then I would say, but, but that's your decision and I won't, I won't try to force you to do that. I wanna, I wanna put you in the uncomfortable position where you think, oh, maybe we should think bigger about this.

Yeah. That decision is yours. Well, and it gives them that choice of like, Hey, I could really increase my reputation here if I bring something that's maybe a little bit more Yeah. Groundbreaking as opposed to just these prescribed, gimme a website. The flip side of that is I could, I could expend some serious political capital.

I could lose my job and I'm not going to put myself in that position. So you, as the salesperson, you do not wanna put somebody in that position, but you wanna hope that their person who's like, has dreams and aspirations and is willing to take a little bit of risk to put forward something that's bigger and more provocative.

Let's talk about the closing conversation. Um, this is one where you've presented your pricing options. You've navigated those, maybe somewhat choppy waters. I don't know, maybe the dynamic went very smoothly. What's this last conversation? So, the objective of the closing conversation is to help the client select and commit to a path forward.

So if you are not using a three option proposal, if you have a take it or leave it, there's only one thing that you're proposing that the client can buy from you. You're doing yourself a disservice on multiple fronts, and one is do, do you wanna be the salesperson in that moment? If you're the salesperson, then you have, and you have one option, then you're in a position where you're trying to talk the client into taking that option.

Mm-hmm. But as soon as you move to a MultiOption proposal, now you can stay in the expert mode mindset and you can simply view closing as facilitating a decision that is in the best interest of the client. In a three option proposal, there are four possible outcomes. Three are positive, 75% are positive, and one is negative.

So yes, yes, yes. No. When you put forward a three option proposal, your job is to facilitate and simply say, okay, based on our last conversation, I went back with the team thought creatively and expansively about the different ways in which we might be able to help you create this value. Uh, I've got three different ways that we might do this at three different price points.

Let me start with the most. Elaborate and expensive one. I'll walk you through all three options and then we can talk about the trade-offs of each option because you have three options and you wanna start with the most expensive one. For the principle known as anchoring, you have three options. Now you can stay in facilitator mode.

So the reason why you might command a price premium in the more expensive option, yeah, you might be doing more. There might be more inputs or outputs or guarantees, but you should think of it this way, the client, you are taking risk away from the client. They are paying a premium for you to make risk go away.

So the more expensive options are less risky to the client, the less expensive options see the client taking more risk. So when you're explaining the three options and you're comparing them and talking about the trade-offs, the trade-off is. You're not trying to convince the client that one option is better than the other.

It's, um, belief of mine that I think it doesn't matter how good of a salesperson you are, you will never uncover all of the trade-offs this individual needs to make in selecting the option that they select. You should be the expert advisor, the trusted facilitator, who is simply saying, there are three paths forward.

So there are four paths, maybe there are more A, B, or C, or none at all, or maybe some different variation of A, B, and C. Yeah, and I'm here to facilitate the conversation, what you're getting, what you're giving up, and then the decision is yours and I'll respect that decision. There's no right or wrong answer, only right or wrong for you.

There you go. Yeah, exactly. That's a real good model for how things will go during the engagement, even if during difficult times. It's just that kind of clinical, a little bit more clinical approach, I think, to everything. You always preach the value of that magical email too. Let's say they ghost you, you never hear back or anything like that.

Why don't you just give us that magic email example, just one, one more time here. Uh, we're gonna close things out here pretty soon, but I just want to, if, if you'd never hear back from a client, if you wait where you know. What, what's that one magical email that you, you write a proposal, you sub submit a proposal, A client says, yeah, this is great.

We're gonna do this. I'll get back to you. And then they don't get back to you and you follow up a few times and they're ghosting you, you send them what's known as the magic email. It was taught to me as a voicemail script 25 years ago. I don't know the original author of it. Um, you can find it on my website, win Without pitching.com if you search for a magic email.

But it, the formula is this. You send 'em an an email that says either within the email thread or you create a new subject that says, closing the loop. And you say. Dear client or just client name, I haven't heard back from you on X, whatever the project is that you were discussing. So I'm going to assume you've gone in a different direction or your priorities have changed.

Feel free to reach out if we can be of assistance in the future. So it's two sentences. First one says, I get it. You've either hired our biggest competitor or you're no longer doing this. Second sentence says, I'm not gonna call you. You call me. You know where to find us. And the subtext of it all is, it's just business.

I get it. I'm an adult. You're an adult. I can see the writing on the wall for whatever your reasons, you haven't been able to tell me the reasons are your reasons. You've imbued the decision with too much emotional weight and they this. Email removes that emotional weight. I've never measured what it, but I suspect it's at least 50% of the response, maybe as high as two thirds of the responses are, uh, wait, don't go.

One last question and then we're gonna close this out. What's the smallest behavior change a marketing member of a marketing team of one, or that marketing team of one person can do and implement this week other than go buy your book and read it? Tactical stuff. What, what, what, what's, well, I give the answer for a sales person, but this would apply to a marketing person.

This apply to anybody probably in their career. Their principle is called embrace silence. Human beings abhor silence. They fill si silence with concessions. So if, and I refer to it as the single biggest little thing that you can do to become a better salesperson, be comfortable silence. Love that. Yeah.

It's, it puts a whole different chemistry around the conversation when there's that perceived uncomfortableness. Yeah. Thank you so much, Mr. Blair ends. This has been a dream of mine for so long. I listen to you guys forever. I've read your books and just admire everything that you do. It's really helped us in, in what we do as an agency, but I do think that it is something that you put something out in the world that's made, I, I would hope a lot of people's lives, salespeople's lives, uh, a lot easier.

You know, this has really, uh, been a wonderful conversation. Thank you so much for the time. Let us know how we can reach you, Blair. You've got a website, but you've got other things too. Win without pitching.com. I'm also somewhat active on LinkedIn. I'm Blair Ens on LinkedIn. I think I'm the only Blair Ens in the world still.

So, uh, if you find somebody doing something stupid on LinkedIn, that's probably me. Oh, nice. Yeah, that's what I, that's what I go to LinkedIn for, is to watch all the, the folly, the Blair Ens Folly. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Cheers. Cheers. Thanks for tuning in. For more information and other episodes, subscribe to the marketing team of one podcast on YouTube, apple, or Spotify podcast networks.

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