Video - Ben Potter on How to use Qualifying to Win New Business
VIDEO: 53:38 mins
AUTHOR: Robert Craven and Ben Potter
In this GYDA Talks, Robert talks to Ben Potter. Ben helps agencies to win the right clients. He is a mentor for agency owners and business development managers. In this session, Robert and Ben discuss how to master qualifying.
What is qualifying?
How can you implement it in your agency
How to use qualifying to help you win new business
Click here to view our Qualifying Questions worksheet.
Transcription:
Robert Craven 00:07
Hello. Welcome to GYDA talk today. I am absolutely delighted to have with me Mr. Ben Potter delighted because he is the man you keep going back to talk about how on earth to get customers to come and buy from us. How on earth do you get customers to talk to us? And we've got a general title of always be qualifying. So hello, and welcome, Ben.
Ben Potter 00:32
Hello. Thank you for having me on again, Robert. Good to see you.
Robert Craven 00:36
It's absolute pleasure. So let's without further ado, let's just go straight in to these three words, always be qualifying three questions. Do you really mean always, second one, be doing it all the time? Because we've got agencies to run. And what the hell do you mean by qualifying?
Ben Potter 01:02
Or very good questions. Why should we start, perhaps what we mean by qualifying so I described qualifying as, as a collaborative process, first and foremost, between the agency and a prospect. It's collaborative in the sense that each of those parties is looking to understand if the other party is the right fit for them. So that's broadly what it means. So if we imagine a lead has come to us, it's really that process from the first phone call, really all the way through, actually to the point of which hopefully, they sign on the dotted line. And qualifying happens at every single step during the course of that process. Whereas what tends to happen in a lot of agencies, it's a box ticking exercise at the beginning. And then not a great deal more qualifying happens as they move through that process. But as I say, I have the opposite view, in that it should be something that's happening all the way along.
Robert Craven 02:12
So just for my simple pooh bear brain, your definition of qualifying is ...
Ben Potter 02:20
It's a collaborative process to determine whether a prospect is the right fit for the agency.
Robert Craven 02:28
And when you say collaborative that does that mean, collaborative with the potential client or collaborative within the agency?
Ben Potter 02:35
Good question, both. It's a collaborative process with the prospect because what it shouldn't be, is a prospect making a whole load of demands on us with respect to our time, our resource and ultimately our expertise. In vain hope that at the end of it, we might get something back. So it should be collaborative between the two parties, but it should also be collaborative internally. Absolutely. It's not just the loan, business developer going out and making the decision as to whether that prospect is the right fit, the business developer or agency owner who's ever leading the process is going to need the help and support of the team, particularly the subject matter experts to help determine that the prospect is a good fit, but also to help put together any analysis any proposal that's been put in front of that, that prospect, it's going to need some help and support in most instances from people within the agency as well. So yeah, good question. Collaboration means both between the prospect but also with the team internally as well.
Robert Craven 03:44
So I guess before we get too deep into always be prospecting, I mean, maybe qualifying
Ben Potter 03:53
But always be prospecting.
Robert Craven 03:59
Yes, as well. We call it assumption, though, that people aren't qualifying or aren't always qualifying or they're doing qualifying wrong. I mean, what's wrong with how most people do qualifying because it is because what happens is a lead comes in, you look at it, check out their website, you maybe check out their company accounts, maybe try and see what they're doing online, what their activity is, or trying to see who their agency is and what they're doing. Have a conversation, you might have a tick list. Do I like them? Don't I like them. What's wrong with that?
Ben Potter 04:35
I think in some agencies that does happen. I'm not saying all agencies are not doing a good job at this. But certainly the vast majority that I speak to and work with, are frankly not doing a good enough job when it comes to qualify. I'll tell you what tends to happen in most agencies to begin with, and then we can maybe compare that to perhaps what good looks like In most instances, a lead comes in, there might be a little bit of desk based research to identify a bit about background and revenue, that type of thing. As you rightly say, there'll be a phone call. And there'll be a series of quite specific questions probably about the service itself, that's under discussion, the agency will then get very excited coming off that call, because every opportunity is a great opportunity. And they're likely to rush straight into writing a proposal. They'll send that proposal over via email, and then they'll spend the next month chasing up for feedback. And at the end of it, they won't get any feedback, they don't get a reply, they get ghosted. That's an extreme example of what happens. But in my experience, that happens, an awful lot more than it should do. And the reason why it happens is because there was a lack of proper due diligence and process that agency consistently worked through to make sure that ultimately not wasting their time writing proposals for prospects that in reality, they stand very little chance of winning. So there's issue with the process itself, there's probably a more fundamental issue around positioning and understanding, well, actually, what does the right client look like, for our agency? Because once you know that, you have a framework by which you can qualify against when you say we do anything for everyone, then it's very difficult to qualify because you've got no reason to say no.
Robert Craven 06:34
So where do you stand, then on the idea of a, what I would call a consultative sell, which is where you step back, and you're saying, I understand you'd like product service acts. But before we talk about that, I need to understand what your problems are and what their problems look like. And I need to understand more about your business, please, Mr. Customer. So are you suggesting that the consultants sell is no longer the way of selling or?
Ben Potter 07:12
Not at all. And I think that's an absolutely critical stage of the process. If I kind of talk about the first couple of steps, typically, what I think should happen is that lead comes in, you do your desk bound research, first of all, and you may be able to make a decision just off the back of that as to whether you even arrange a phone call or not, because we all get leads coming in and we look at them and go, they're not right for us, hopefully, you're able to maybe pass that along to somebody else. So there's a bit of added value there. So you're not just ignoring them, or just shooing them away. The first call you have or meeting I think should be primarily about determining whether you and the prospect are the right fit. And to what extent there is intent on behalf of the prospect, how serious are they about doing this thing they say they want to do. So I think initially, you probably have a half hour 45 minute call, where your questioning is primarily geared around those two things. If they then pass that test, as it were, that's when you get into a much deeper dive discovery type call or session, which is much more along the lines of what you were talking about there. It's that consultative sale, it's understanding where the business is where they're trying to get to the problems, the challenges, the issues they're facing. What do the right outcomes look like from this project, or this piece of work that we're looking to do? Who else needs to be involved? What stakeholders should we be talking to, and so on, and so on. But what I don't want an agency to do is get too much into the detail of that, to them find out they haven't got the budget, or they use their proposal to test budget, or worse, they don't even talk about budget, they just put some prices in the proposal and hope that the client has the money. So if we're talking about budget as being one of those key kind of criteria around fit, we want to really find that out within the first half an hour before we spend an hour and two hours on that much deeper dive discovery type call that you quite rightly alluded to. And that is the sort of consultative sell piece.
Robert Craven 09:27
So you kind of saying that we get the line that goes something like we've not seen under your under the bonnet. So clearly, we don't know exactly. You know what the issues are. However, I think we're probably talking about a spend of in the region of 10 to 15,000 pounds a month. Was that the sort of budget you are expecting to pay? Is that the sort of line that you're suggesting?
Ben Potter 09:53
And of course, I guess it does sound like a fishing trip. If they're saying, Well, they say we're talking to a few people. It's a fishing trip. If they haven't decided whether they're spending 5 or 10,000 pound a month, or whether there's a project, they were thinking in the range of 30 to 50,000 pounds, then they're probably not the right client for us. Yeah, I think so. I think there are various different ways of having that money. Come sation of various different ways of phrasing that conversation, I tend to encourage my clients to avoid the word budget. I think sometimes when you just say to somebody, what's your budget that can make people feel quite uncomfortable. Sometimes we don't tend as Brits to like really talking about money, do we but I think in a business context it is important that we are talking about money, and we have the competence to do that. So certainly the way you suggested there where you might give somebody some ranges, and you might say to them, or which one of these do you potentially fit, you might talk more about investment. So how much is the business willing and able to invest? And where is that money coming from? We really want to make sure that you know, there is a line in the budget for this thing. Rather than what sometimes happen is that a prospect will go to market before they've really made a decision, that they're going to spend this money, and they're using agencies to kind of work out how much they should spend. I see it as a bit of a red flag. If you ask the question, how much can the business invest? And they're not prepared to give you that answer. And you keep pushing, and you keep asking, if you don't get a reply to that answer. That's a big red flag for me. And you should tread very, very carefully. And potentially, at that point, you don't move forward. Because how are you going to shape a proposal around something in which you have no idea whether they've got the money there or not, and how much they're able or willing to invest? It makes it very difficult. The analogy I use is if you're going to get an extension on your house, and you speak to a builder, they're going to ask how much you can spend on it, because they're going to need to know, okay, well, what materials are we going to use? Actually, what's the floor space? What kind of doors do you want? What kind of windows do you want? What kind of roof do you want? If you don't give up the amount of money you are able to invest in that extension. The builder has no idea what he's playing with. I think you can use that analogy in a similar kind of way, when we're talking about investment in digital marketing or websites or whatever else it may be on the table. Yeah, well, I think, do you know what, there's nothing wrong. And I like the analogy of fishing trips as well. I think whenever we can use analogies, it's a good thing. In a world where we get very caught up in the language of agencies, and SEO, and your PPC and all that kind of stuff. So I think it does help us, you know, use these analogies. But I don't think there's anything wrong with a client going on a fishing trip and speaking to a few agencies to get a gauge on what's out there and what they might need, as long as both parties understand that from the offset. And as an agency, you can potentially create yourself a decent advantage by guiding a client on what it is that they need, and how much they need to invest, etc. You know, if a client doesn't have a brief, certainly in my agency days, again, I'd want to tick a few boxes before I offered this, but I'd gather all my notes, and I'd effectively write the brief for them. And if you're the agency doing that, there can be a real advantage because you are adding value in helping.
Robert Craven 13:40
I've never lost a proposal for a brief that I've written.
Ben Potter 13:43
Well, exactly, exactly.
Robert Craven 13:45
I tell you what, let me write the brief. So I think the person I should be working for should look a lot like me. I mean, in a way you're doing that you're saying , for performance agency, they can be pointing out the split between performance versus SEO, or the split between your brand versus performance, and so on and so forth. So that you are getting the audience on your side. And in fact, there's a stronger and stronger argument that says, you know, what are the questions that people ask? How much? So if we don't answer it, you know, flipping it around the other way, they're gonna go elsewhere. They're gonna ask how else can I get this stuff done? And if you don't answer that they're gonna go elsewhere. Can I do in house? Does it have to be SEO? Could it be content could be PR? They're going to be asking Who else could I be going to you know, to supply this solution so if you don't do that, they're gonna go somewhere else now that in a way I'm talking about websites, but I think also in those opening conversations, they are thinking these kinds of questions. And I find it fascinating. And when I going out trying to buy from agencies, as you quite rightly say, how often when you're phoning up saying, I'm just trying to understand your local politics or someone local, whether your sort of agency we could work with. They've got their sales hat on already. And they're like, four steps ahead, and you can see them scraping into the pipeline, you know. Oh, Robert Craven, 1000 pound a month. Possibilities. No, I'm actually just phoning up to find out. Do you do this kind of stuff? And whether you're familiar with working with, blah, blah.
Ben Potter 15:57
You know, why that is profit is because there is one of the fundamental issues, I think, and this is not just down to agencies, this is also true of prospects as well. But everybody is far too keen to get to the money shot. And the money shot is the proposal. Well, can we have a proposal on our desk by yesterday? And the agency tends to say, yes, we can do that. We'll get that proposal to you by yesterday. But the parties don't spend enough time really working out whether they are the right fit for one another. But perhaps to your point, what should actually be in that proposal, because they're not spending enough time asking the right questions to understand the business more broadly, outside of just the service that is under discussion, which by the way, might not even be the right service. Because what clients think that they want, and what they actually need are often very, very different things. So you're absolutely right, I think there is often a mad dash to, you know, get it in the pipeline, stick it on the whiteboard in the office, the celebrate with champagne is already on ice. And that's before those steps have been taken between that first call, and between the point of which that proposal or pitch goes in.
Robert Craven 17:15
And there's also that dreadful phrase, I use land and expand.
Ben Potter 17:18
Yes, yeah.
Robert Craven 17:19
I kind of get if you're going for a large player that you just want to get on to the list, you just want to be in the frame. And that you might as a consequence, scraps to catch Mac calls, whatever you want to say. But also, I think there is a naivety you know, we'll accept this at 25k. Because once we did one that we accepted for 25k, that turns into 2 million. I'm not sure those numbers stack up like that quite so often, in the same way that I know he's a bad employee after a month, he might turn good. I've never known an employee turn good. Who wasn't awesome. At the end of month one, I'm not sure the clients can't turn good. So just going back to it always be qualifying. What else do you mean by that?
Ben Potter 18:23
I apologise if the sound isn't very good. It's just started absolutely pelting you down with rain. I've got skylights above me. So if you can't hear me ...
Robert Craven 18:35
Lean into the microphone.
Ben Potter 18:37
If you can't hear the pitter patter of rain, that is it. But um, I think if we think about, again, our process and the idea that it's not something that happens once at the beginning, it's something that happens at various different steps along the way. I think it's then a case of saying, Well, what are those steps? Okay, so we've said at the beginning, we might have an initial kind of screening call where we're determining fit, and we're determining the intent or seriousness, if you like, of the prospect, we then having a deeper dive sort of discovery session, we're having class that first test, we start really digging into, again, not just the service, but we're digging into the business, what's happening more broadly, within that organisation of where do we kind of fit in, but then I think there are more steps even then, between that point and the point of which we're submitting our proposal, we are probably going to have some kind of internal briefing session. With our team. We talked earlier about this being a collaborative process. It needs to involve the team, you're going to have different perspectives, different opinions, probably different questions coming from those from within the agency, particularly again, those that are actually going to be potentially delivering the work so let's get them involved. So there's another opportunity to qualify because there might be more questions that come out of those internal discussions. At that point, what I like to do is then or just prior to that, actually, once you've agreed the brief with the prospect is you pick up the phone again, you go right, we put this brief together, have we captured everything that we need to know at this stage before we move forward. So you're qualifying again, you're making sure that all that information you've captured is correct, and that there isn't anything else you've missed. So another, I suppose stage of the qualifying process, if you like, if it's possible to have a favourite stage of my qualifying process is this next one. So once you've sat down as a team, and you've decided top line, whatever the strategy is, or the plan, or the idea, or whatever it is that you are under discussion with that prospect, before you put pen to paper, and you write that proposal, or you put together that pitch deck, you have another conversation with a client or prospect, rather, you pick up the phone and you say something like, we sat down as a team, we're really excited. I'd like to just talk you through what our proposal is going to look like, this is what it's going to include. This is our top line ideas, strategy, direction of travel, whatever you want to call it. What do you think, two things will happen to that point, either, they'll turn around and say, brilliant, we love it. That's exactly what we were thinking, perfect. We just like to now see that in writing. Or they say, Hmm, not sure. Not sure the NDA is gonna go for that part of it, can we have a discussion about how we might revise it. So it means that by the time you write your proposal, and this is an absolute golden rule, for me, your proposal should be confirmation really, or what you have broadly agreed verbally, it shouldn't be the Don Draper massive pitch revealing where you're going in hoping the idea is going to land. So for me, that is another key part of the process. And again, why qualifying is not a one off event. It's something that happened throughout the process. Because at that point, there are going to be certain questions you're going to ask. What would you like to see next, then, Mr. Prospect? Do you need to see a written proposal? Or would you like to see a pitch deck? Are we going to come and present that to you? If we are going to come and present that to you? Who's going to be there? Who do you want to see from our side? There's loads of questions, you're asking to make sure that you don't turn up to a meeting. And there'd be any nasty surprises on either side of the fence.
Robert Craven 22:29
I love that , I'm doing some work at the moment with some people about creating pitch decks. It's complicated, but in essence, it's about pitch decks and decent they've missed out is actually quite the assumption they've made. It's a large corporate, the assumption that they've made is that the way of selling is through a pitch. That's a fair assumption. We're doing work around presentation skills. But that is, you know, it's a flawed thought to think, how do we sell? We sell by delivering a proposal. And then on the last slide, we say, and for 10,000 pounds a month, you will get 50,000 pounds a month of sales? And, you know, slides one to five, you know, are you'd have to buy from us, because we're the largest in the industry, we fly 5 to 10, our liquid all the great people we've learned worked with flyers, 10 to 15 are all the qualifications we've got. And everyone's fast asleep. It's like, why don't you treat me like an adult. And one, to your point, the proposal should be confirmation of the conversations you've had before. And it's an indication of the gap. Between you and the client, if when you go to do the proposal, you then have to do the kind of the trial close of out on a scale of 1 to 10. How can you use a buying something like this? And they go, Oh, I made 7 out of 10, you get what do I need to do to make it into an 8 out of 10? And helped me think these techniques are fantastic. Because I used some of them myself or the right time using them yourself. But also it's about you know, when I think about the work that we do here, the proposal is really the contract, you know, the bottom of the bottom of the proposals just says, sign here to confirm and we'll start working on Monday. Because you agreed that's the problem. You've agreed that's the solution. You've agreed that's the time shedule that's how you roll it out. You've agreed that's right roughly the proportion of work that's going to take place. You've agreed it's in phases or whatever it is. So all you're doing is confirming that. And I think you're absolutely right. That's a piece that people, certainly when I'm on the buying end of it, how often do I get that call? We've just got a piece of work, a quote from a builder this morning. And it's like, wow, I hadn't seen that number coming. And I've written back to him and said, That's very interesting, but I'm not sure whether it solves what the original problem was.
Ben Potter 25:47
I think we've all become somewhat conditioned, I think I'm quite, I count myself quite lucky these days, in that I've been able to kind of step out of an agency, where you are very often very sort of tunnel vision and focused on what's happening within that business to position fortunately, in last sort of four or five years, where I can work with lots of lots of different agencies and kind of observe what happens across all of those respective agencies. And the one thing you do notice is that both agencies and clients have become sort of conditioned to do things in a certain way. But really, when you step back and look at some of those things, they're all a bit nuts. And the whole proposal process is definitely one of those examples where this assumption that we do need to go away and write this huge long 50 page proposal, or we have to go and write, you know, 100 Page pitch deck and go and sit in front of the prospect and present mostly stuff about us, to your point around, you know, the 30 slides around the agency, which is all wrong in itself. But a lot of this stuff, you know, when you're able to step back and look at it and see that it happens frequently, you start to really question it. But I think sometimes, you know, to be fair to agencies, when you're in it, you just tend to fall into line and do the same things you've been accustomed to doing. But the idea of this conversation, what to do more broadly, is to try and show agencies that you don't have to fall into line. There are other ways of doing it. Phone call is magic for me. It can be massively powerful, that little pre proposal check in, as I call it, that really can work magic.
Robert Craven 27:31
So I get the kind of a legacy thing of why do you do it this way, because the last agency I worked with when I stole the stuff from the Dropbox, Google Drive, including the proposal template, and the, you know, the scores, scorecards, and so on. So that's how they did it then. And it's like, and they were like, 200 people, so they must be good. So that's why we use this deck and up. I get that if you treat people as if they are in the B suite, not the C suite, yada, yada. But it's short changing everyone shortchanging your business development team, if they're expected to go down this sort of old system. Shortchanging the client, because if you're asking me questions about my business, and what our expectations are on what our experiences and what we've tried. You're actually helping me understand what my problem is, you're actually helping me define what the problem is, helping me define what the implications of not resolving the problem are. And you're consulting live, if that makes sense. You started consulting already.
Ben Potter 28:59
But through the questions you're asking, that's the key thing.
Robert Craven 29:03
So you're building the relationship, buying engagement, so your concept of always being qualifying is about always engaging. And if you're always engaging, you're creating the relationship. And we all know that the final purchase decision is not rational unless you're selling into the AfD.
Ben Potter 29:34
And that's really what I'm talking about here. We're talking about this series of conversations, rather than one conversation and then jumping ahead and writing a proposal because you're absolutely right. When you do that, you're missing the opportunity to ask those compelling questions and to build trust and rapport with that prospect. You can't possibly do that when you rush too quickly into writing a proposal. which then by the way, you're using written words to try and do the selling, rather than your mouth and your ears, which is really what we should be using when we're talking about, you know how to sell effectively, the ability to ask the right questions, and listen to the answers. Patients are really about.
Robert Craven 30:23
So the problem is that many agencies have a process that their bizdev people are expected to go through.
Ben Potter 30:33
If they haven't processed by the way.
Robert Craven 30:38
Maybe I'm being a bit generous. They have a way, let's just put it that way. My definition focuses on the proposal. And therefore thinking that you're doing the right thing and putting the hours into the pitch deck and spending all your time looking for really funky images. You that we missed out. It's not what you did. It's how you do it?
Ben Potter 31:12
Absolutely. What we tend to do if we lose a pitch, if we lose an opportunity. Or it tends to be when we're looking at the reasons why the emphasis will be on the actual proposal or the pitch meeting and everything that happened or didn't happen at that meeting. But actually, when you really strip it back and go, Well, why did we really lose this opportunity? It's because of everything that happened, or maybe didn't happen, leading up to that point. So it's the poor qualification, it's the lack of those bigger picture, discovery questions. It's the lack of that check in conversation around the direction of travel, it tends to be actually all of those things that didn't happen. That meant the proposal wasn't really right. It didn't really land. And that's why the prospect said, no, they either went with another agency, or they stuck with the incumbent, or worse.
Robert Craven 32:11
I get that. I sat in on a board meeting about three weeks ago, and it was, you know, we need to win something. Look at the last five, we're getting closer and closer. We were in the Title Five, we're in the final three, we're in the final two. It's something about how the others do it that we need to understand if actually, no, it's not something about how the others do something about how we do it, you know, we always come second. And it's very nice to come second production. But what happens in the station to tender? Because there you're not able to qualify, you're not able to engage normally. How does your thinking apply with respect to invitation to tender?
Ben Potter 33:06
I think you have to go right back to the beginning. And you have to ask yourself, and ideally ask the prospect because there is normally room for questions in a very formalised client process. The frustrating thing is that those questions often have to be asked over email. And they often then share all the answers with all the other agencies. So any advantage you might have in your ability to ask good questions, is probably going to be lost. But I think it goes back to the beginning, you've got to ask yourself the question why have we been asked to pitch for this business? Why have they approached us? What is it about us that has attracted them in the first place? I think if you're able to either ask those questions of yourself, or ask those questions as a prospect, because you will get some kind of opportunity to engage with them. Now, either they're going to say something like we've asked you because we saw you speak at an event a couple of weeks ago, or we really liked the work that you've done with one of our competitors, or something like that, that sort of says, Okay, there's a reason why they've asked us to be a part of this process specifically. Whereas if it's a bit wishy washy, or where we were just looking for agencies on Google and your name popped up, then you've got an immediate idea at the beginning that you have no real advantage in that scenario, and therefore it really is a bit of a numbers game. And the chances of you winning that are significantly less than if you have some kind of advantage from the outset. So I think with very formalised RFPs hype processes or request to tenders, whatever you want to call them a thing. I think that's where you have to sharpen your sharp and you'll gain even more and not get just sort of sucked into the process which is going to probably require an awful lot of your time to write stuff with RFI and RFPs. And before you even get to the point where they might want a proposal, I think you've got to try and double down there. And I really like the approach that Blair ends recommends sort of taking it in when without pitching where, to what extent can you try and bend that process? Can you get any leverage by almost trying to break the process? If you like and say, well, actually, we're not going to do that. We're not going to do that bit, because we don't believe it's to your benefit or to ours. But we would like to do this. What do you think? And if they actually bow down and say, Yeah, we like Pat, then I think Blair ends on our LinkedIn a few weeks ago, put a startup that says if you can gain some kind of leverage in the process, I think it was either four or six times more likely to win that business, because you've been able to slightly manipulate or bend or break the process that everybody else is following. But you said actually, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to actually recommend we do it like this. So can you bend the process? Can you break the process is another thing to try and determine early on as well?
Robert Craven 36:07
And sometimes it works. And sometimes it doesn't. And I guess, in a way, it doesn't matter. So I remember going in an invitation attended RFP situation, and walking in and they said, Okay, now you can give your presentation. And I say, I don't want to give a presentation. I think it's better that we have a conversation so we can understand what your needs are, which is our proper engaging conversation with you. And his reply was, well, I want a presentation and further conversation, he said, you don't seem to understand you're going to give a presentation. And funnily enough, we didn't win that piece of work. But that's fine. Because if that's a sort of client, they were a big ticket. And they were going to be playing by those kinds of rules. I mean, how did that suggest, it wasn't gonna get any easier? No, it wasn't. So fine. We wasted an afternoon of our time and a day or so doing not doing a proposal. And then other times when we've done that, which is I'd rather not give a present. One of my consultants, Rosemary, doesn't work with me now. She just used to walk in with nothing. And say, you've had three presentations so far today. And 100 pages, pap to go with it. And they go nuts. Well, I'm Rosemary, and this is what you get. And she won everything. She won everything she touched. Because it was just kind of disabled people, disabled everything. And so what is it you want? Straight in and proper engagement, proper eye contact, and none of this. Next slide, please. Next slide, please.
Ben Potter 37:56
And that comes from the fact that those clients you're referring to there, they fall into the trap of thinking, well, this is the process we have to go through, we need to go and find, you know, 20 agencies, and we need to get them all to fill in an RFI, and then we'll shortlist those and then we'll ask them for an RFP, they fall into the trap of believing that's the best approach as well. And very rarely is it you know, actually, if they did a bit more research and just found five agencies that have specific experience within their sector, or whatever it is that they really need, I think they would find it easier, they would spend less time speaking to dozens of different agencies to try and really understand what it is they actually need. So, you know, a great example there of where she's gone and said, You know what, you don't need any of that. You need a conversation, let's actually get to the crux of the matter and talk about rather than the kind of present a load of slides of which probably 80% are completely irrelevant.
Robert Craven 38:52
You know, and there's that lovely book, getting naked. It's Patrick Lencioni. And basically, it's about small consultancy. And it wins all the work. It's a big consultants. And the reason it wins is because they start consulting at the first meeting, just leaned straight in and start having a conversation, whereas the big consultancy wants to fill in its form when it wants to do its proposal and do its presentation. And whereas this guy says, Okay, so what's the problem? Okay, maybe we can sort that out straightaway? It's sometimes you lose, we've got a client at the moment where we go, we've been giving an awful lot of our stuff away, they haven't actually yet started paying. But the majority of the time you're able to demonstrate what it is that people are buying straightaway. If you buy from us if this is what we're giving away for free now. Imagine what it would be like if you're actually paying for it. And again, I think it's about this kind of engagement, you get to understand whether they're partial or not partial numbers driven or not numbers driven, and so on and so forth. So how does your always be qualifying mantra? How does that fit in with the unbelievable commoditization everyone feels is going on at the moment in the industry?
Ben Potter 40:26
I think you, in part, in answering that question, you just raised a really good point there that this whole process, how you go about selling is a window into what it's going to be like to work with you later on. And if you are asking lots of very intelligent questions where the person's going, God, no one's ever really asked me that before. That's a really good thing, because it's getting that person thinking in a way in which they haven't previously thought, which can be very, very powerful. So I do think this whole process can be an experience a positive experience from the prospects point of view, but in terms of the I mean, there's a whole load of stuff we could talk about when it comes to kind of commoditization. But I think again, it goes back to some of the things we talked about already in that you are going to be commoditized, if the prospect doesn't have a good reason as to why they come to you, versus the 10 other agencies around the corner that are kind of doing the same thing. So this, again, goes back to I suppose the question of positioning, our expertise, where that expertise is best applied, how we communicate that to the outside world, to make our agency attractive to a specific segment of the market. If you say, we do all of these services, and we can work with everybody from one man bands up to multinational companies, that's not going to work, you are always going to be commoditized, when you claim to be able to do everything for anyone. So there is a positioning piece there. But then I think once you get the right people in through the front door, where I think you can potentially avoid a scenario where you are commoditized. Is this really through the questions you're asking? It's that little sort of, we're not little quite chunky, actually is that it's how that discovery meeting is managed, I call it a discovery meeting, it might just be the second meeting in the process, or whatever you want to call it, the deeper dive, blah, blah, blah. But I really believe that the big advantage an agency can gain during the course of the pitch process is through the questions they are asking. If you only ask very specific questions about the service under discussion, you're only ever going to have a conversation about that. And therefore it's less strategic, it's more tactical, and therefore you're more likely to be commoditized. When it comes to talking about the price and so on, if you want to elevate that conversation up to the next rung of the ladder, where you're really getting to and getting to understand the business, how they make money, what are their bigger picture, you know, goals, objectives, vision? What are the challenges, the barriers they're facing in getting there, all of a sudden, you are elevating yourself above probably 80 or 90% of the other salespeople out there.
Robert Craven 43:20
And these are the use of you hear it, then is how do you present that as curiosity, rather than a spreadsheet with a bunch of questions in it? Because if it comes from a place of curiosity, you know, so I'm sorry, this is a really dumb question. But can you just tell me how you make money? Can you just tell me what your business model is? Can you just tell me, how you imagine your business will be trading in a year's time? However, how are you presented? If it comes across in terms of a curiosity? Then the client, I'm going to use that word willing to engage with you. But if it's number of staff, the number of products, what's your top product? If there was an 80/20 rule here? What would that product be?
Ben Potter 44:12
It needs to feel very natural. It needs to be a very natural conversation as if you were either down the pub on a Friday night, or I asked you one question, you give me an answer. And then my next question is a natural lead on from that where I'm trying to maybe just dig a bit deeper. You're absolutely right. If it's a box ticking exercise or it comes across as if you are scripting those questions, and I was on the receiving end of this a couple of weeks ago, I was on the end of a sales call on behalf of one of my clients, and it was literally SPIN Selling and you could see marked off trying to dig into. It was just horrible. And when I couldn't give him the answer he was looking for when it came to the kind of the implication bit, because I just didn't really know if we didn't do this thing. I didn't really know what the implications were going to be whether there's going to be good, bad or indifferent. I couldn't answer the question. But he kept going three, four times to try and get to that point. And it felt horrible. I felt like I was being sold to because it wasn't a natural conversation, it was following a script coming out of high water, whether I gave him the answers or not, he was still going to follow through that script. Whereas that deep dive conversation you have has to feel really natural, you might have a checklist of things that you want to cover off. But don't feel like you have to work through those in the order of which they appear on that bit of paper. So something I used to do is I would get to the end of the meeting, or I would look down all of my notes. And I would say to the person that can I just spend a minute just double checking that at this stage. I've got everything I think I need. And then I look down at actually just before we finish. Yeah, I didn't quite cover off this question. Can I just ask, do you mind if I just asked that at this point before we leave today? Yeah, absolutely fine. Yeah, let's cover that off. So even if you get to the end of that meeting, and maybe you go back and review your notes and realise Oh, actually, I didn't ask that question. Then what's wrong with picking up the phone and going oh, actually great meeting today. Lovely to meet you. You know, there was one thing I just didn't quite get around to ask him. Do you mind if I just float that by you now, you know, a prospect where, you know, the intentions are good. And they see that there is benefit to these conversations, will not mind having another five minute chat to give you a bit more information. And if they don't, and you're getting those red flags along the way, then actually to your point earlier on, where you're either not getting the budget or, you know, they're saying no, you've got to do the presentation, and we're not going to bend over at all, then you're right. Is that going to be the right client for you later on? Yeah, not sure that it is not sure that it is.
Robert Craven 47:01
I had a lot of charges in the wild, asked us to do some work and aren't saying who they are. And I was so excited because there's a charity that I fundamentally believe in and it was about working in 120 countries. I mean, it was like it was written for us, you know? Yes, you want us to go out and you want us to go across Africa and deliver this message. We are there you know, we are there my words. This fits in with everything. But as you suggested, it wasn't landing just a relationship wasn't landing. Was great bitterness. Actually, I was really cross about we withdrew from the process, because I just knew this was going to turn into the client from hell. Even though the original. We believe in it. It's strategically good for us. We get to travel. It'll be good for the world. It's right up our street had a whole bunch of ticks. But the relationship was fundamentally wrong, where they were saying, Oh, by the way, here's a slide deck we'd like you to use. And by the way, here's the valleys you need. And it was like, this is just not. I think we're probably coming to the end of our time then. Which I've been Thank you very much for your generosity. It's been absolutely fantastic. Let's try and wrap this up. Always be qualifying. And I think for me, certainly something for me is about engaging. And this is about taking ownership of the process. Okay. It's about sometimes zig zagging when everyone is zigging. I'd love a few pithy one liners from you, a few kind of final thoughts to leave in our minds as we leave this conversation. What are your final sort of one liners about this subject?
Ben Potter 49:10
Good question.
Robert Craven 49:13
What do you hear yourself saying to people all the time?
Ben Potter 49:25
I've got a few of those rubber. I think when it comes to qualify my mantra very much it's not a one off event. I will say that repeatedly, to prospects and clients. It isn't a one off event. It's something that has to happen all the way through even to the point in which you are having them sign on the dotted line, there's still a chance that for any reason, you might walk away or the prospect might walk away. So I'm telling you that you got that signed contract in hand. There are questions you will be asking at the pitch meeting there will be quiet Since you're asking as you're sending across those terms and qualifying those terms as well. So I think for me that the real key thing is not to treat it as that one event or treat it as something that happens all the way through the process. I'm going to leave you with a couple of stats, which I know that when it comes to stats, you can interpret them or misinterpret them any way that you wish. And you can dress them up and tell a story around them. But there's a couple of stats which I've I've come across in the last year or two, which I think paint a picture of a pitch process, which is heavily weighted in the favour of the client and reinforce why having a process and having more steps in that process. And treating qualifying not as a one off event is so important. The first of those is that 97% of b2b decision makers already know the supplier they want to work with before they go into the selection process. Now, that was from a b2b, some b2b marketing research in association with gyro and Google a few years ago. Now I think that's quite punchy. But even if it was 50% of the time, that's still quite high 50% of the time, a decision making pretty much knows the agency they're going to work with before they even start the process, that's fine. If you're on the right side of that, if you're on the wrong side of it, half the time, you're wasting your time. And the other stats from a great book, let's get real, let's not play by my hand kelser around the village 80% of lost sales opportunities are the result of a lack of an adequate and non-existing or non existing qualifying process. So when you combine those two things together, as I say, it's a process, which is heavily geared in favour of the client, and not particularly well geared towards the agency. So this is why we really need to double down on this stuff and get better at it. It's why of all the things that I talk about. It's the one area that I'm probably most passionate about. Because I see agencies introduce these additional steps and see really great results from doing so. They waste less time on opportunities, they actually are never going to win. And they spend more time on those that ultimately they do.
Robert Craven 52:16
That is a brilliant place to stop them. Thank you so much. It's kinda like there now needs to be a part two. But we're out of time. But it's been a really great conversation. It's really kind of got me thinking about several agencies I work in at the moment and how the biz dev process needs to be reviewed and reexamine because it's just being taken for granted that this is what you do, because this is how it's always been and it doesn't have to be. So Ben, thank you very, very much for being a really wonderful guest. Thank you very much.
Ben Potter 53:03
Thank you very much for having me. I really enjoyed it.