Reverse Trojan Horse Syndrome

Blair is confused by David’s mixed metaphors about creative agencies being able to sell strategy services up front, instead of entering through the implementation door with new clients and then trying to demonstrate how much more your firm can provide.

Transcript

Blair Enns: All right, David, the topic you have chosen to speak on today to discuss is Reverse Trojan Horse Syndrome. Now, if I remember correctly, and I believe I do remember correctly because I'm reading your notes, the original story from the Trojan horse was Greece's waging war against the city of Troy. At some point, they give up or pretend to give up, and then they say, "Hey, here's a horse."

David C. Baker: Yes, here's a gift.

Blair: "We're out of here." It's a gift to honor the goddess Athena, I think, and then the story of Cassandra, Cassandra's the one who says, "No, don't. It's a trap, it's a trick." She has this gift of prophecy, but the flip side of the gift is nobody will ever believe her.

David: Is this how you feel about life?

[laughter]

Blair: She's like, "It's a trap," and everybody goes, "No, it's a free horse. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth," and then the Greek soldiers come out in the middle of the night, open the gate, and the army comes back in. I forget what happens after that. That's the Trojan horse. We've lost so many listeners. The reverse Trojan horse is what? The horse are in the men? What are we talking about?

David: God Almighty. The Trojan horse is a really bad surprise wrapped in a good surprise, and the reverse Trojan horse is a really good surprise wrapped in a bad surprise. The Reverse Trojan Horse Syndrome is all these firms, all our listeners, who the client lowers the drawbridge and the horse gets wheeled in and they think they're just getting the implementation and they're fine with that, and then out pops all of these strategists, and of course, instead of killing everybody, the client is really thrilled. It's like, "Oh, this is more than we bargained for."

Blair: That's the Trojan horse.

David: That's the reverse Trojan horse. Do we need to start over?

Blair: Fine. Whatever. Anyway, if we put the metaphor aside, what are we talking about?

David: We're talking about how so many firms enter a client relationship and the client, it's always a new client, isn't aware of how capable they are until they get in there, they hire them thinking they're just-- "Oh, they're going to do this, this," and then they get in there and they realize, "Oh my God, this is pretty amazing." When I explain this to my clients, they say, "Yes, that's exactly right. How do we get hired for our capabilities out of the gate instead of us having to surprise them with how good we are strategically? They hire us for something and then they discover how good we are." That's the reverse Trojan horse thing.

Blair: I'm barely still with you, but you're saying you're advocating the approach of, "Let's just get a tactical project, get our foot in the door, and then we'll show them how brilliant we are, and they'll buy strategy from us." Is that what you're advocating here?

David: Yes. Right.

Blair: Everything I've railed against for 20 years.

David: That's right.

Blair: Prepare to be challenged on this topic.

David: Picture a conference room. All the client people are there, and they're discussing stuff that's really important to them, and your ear's at the door and you're listening and thinking, "Oh my God, I could lead these people. I could really guide them down the right path," and you think, "How do I get in this room?" and you say, "Oh, I'll dress up like a waiter, and then I'll come in and I'll hand everybody a glass of water."

Then at a key moment in the conversation, I'll just raise my hand and say, "Hey folks, how about this?" Everybody looks at you and says, "What the heck is a waiter doing talking to us about this?" but then they look at each other and say, "You know what? That's a pretty good idea. Hey, let somebody else take this tray of water." They make room around the table for another chair and says, "Hey, waiter, why don't you sit down and give us some of your thoughts?" I am such a good storyteller. I am into this too.

Blair: Oh my God, you are so deeply into this. We're mixing metaphors.

David: I own this metaphor though.

Blair: This is beautiful. You own the reverse Trojan horse waiter.

David: Get over my treatment of the metaphor. Don't you see this?

Blair: I'm trying hard to get over your metaphors, so your point that agencies really want to be hired for that brilliant strategic work. You in your book, The Business of Expertise, talk about these two rooms where-- how's your offerings? There's the strategy and the tactical implementation, and you're saying you want to be known for the strategy.

Our listeners, they want to sell the strategy than if they have to do implementation, or maybe they want to do the implementation because that's where the low margin, high volume work is. Then that implementation follows afterwards. We all want to be known for the brilliant work that we do, and then there's stuff we'll do afterwards to support that brilliant work.

You are saying, if I understand your three or four mixed metaphors correctly, you're saying, no, you should be comfortable. Just go in through the implementation door and then swim up to stream to the strategy door.

David: No, I'm saying that's the way it happens and I still think it probably needs to happen in some cases, but I want you to be hired for your brilliance right out of the gate and not have it discovered later accidentally, where they say, "Oh, wow, these people are way more than implementers. They're really deep thinkers."

Blair: Okay, so we are in agreement here. All right, I'll quit fighting you and play it along.

David: Well, thank you. We'll get through this a lot faster. if you'll just cooperate. It's a reverse Trojan horse where there's a good surprise that comes out of the horse like, "Oh, we hired this implementation horse." It's like, "Oh, wait, we didn't know this. They're pretty amazing." You hear this in the stories, so pretend that there's this agency-client relationship and the agency knows that the client needs something.

They hear about it through the grapevine, and they want a shot at it because this is exactly the work they do. Then they hear that, "Oh my God, the client just hired some other agency," and they're so happy to be working with this high-profile strategic thinking firm. Meanwhile, the agency that's been there forever is thinking, "Hey, what about me? I've been here this whole time. Do you not realize I can do this kind of work too?" It's just being, I guess, misunderstood or not being valued for what you can really provide. I want to acknowledge that this happens, and I'm going to give them some ideas about how they might address it.

Blair: You can lead with strategy or you can lead with implementation. You can enter through either of these doors, it's better to lead with strategy. You want to be known that way, but the reverse Trojan horse is when you're hired for tactical implementation and then you get noticed and allowed to deliver on this more strategic work.

David: Exactly. You might get hired to do a presentation deck for an annual sales meeting, and they think you are going to massage the language and do a great visual representation of everything, and then you question something and say, "Hey, I really think we ought to change the order of this. We ought to talk about this. We probably shouldn't do--" That's not what they hired you to think about, and of course, they might be annoyed, but they also might say, "Oh, wow, you all do a lot more than just put presentation decks together. You are persuasion experts. Using that example, I want you to be hired as a persuasion expert right out of the gate who also does presentation decks."

Blair: Got you. Let's say a client comes to you and says, "Hey, we need a presentation deck." You look at it and you go, "You don't need a presentation deck, you need a business strategy and a deck that explains that." They say, "Yes, our strategy is a mess, but just do the deck." Is your advice that the agency should take that work? Let's say it's a new client you've never worked with them before.

They should take that work and try to build that deck and still try to go after the strategy work, or should they draw a line and say, "No, no, no. If we're going to do this, you need to begin at the beginning. There's no point in doing a deck if you don't have the strategy fixed."?

David: That's a fantastic question. I think the answer to that hinges on how much work you have. If you don't have much work, and if they're at least paying you decently, then you probably ought to take it, and there's still a small chance that you might convert that client into one that thinks of you more highly than they do at the outset, and you probably ought to take that chance.

If you only have one slot on your roster, and you have that client and another client that thinks of you the way they should, the way you want them to, then you would say no to that. That's how I would answer that.

Blair: There are principles, and there are trade-offs, and we've talked before about this idea of a principal stack, which I've stolen from Ben Thompson from Stratechery, which is an idea that we have all these principles and values and we need to order them.

It sometimes feels like we're being hypocrites when we're agreeing to do something or we're doing something that contravenes one of the principles, but very often we're doing so because there's another principle that is higher up in the stack that is more important. One of the key principles, fundamental principles that's really high up in the stack is don't go out of business.

[laughter]

David: Put that on a plaque so you don't forget it.

Blair: First survive, and then after that, you can become more principled. Then it's easy to become more principled as the money's flowing in and there's more security. I imagine you and I are of the same mind, which is at some point you want to get to the place where you have the security, where you would say to a new client who comes to you, who wants to put the cart before the horse and do the tactical stuff before the strategic, you'd want to be in a position to be able to say, "No, that's just not how we work. If you want to do this, let's do it right. Hire us to do the more strategic work at the beginning," but the reality is you're in the ring, you've got to box.

There are certain situations where there will be over the lifespan of your firm where it makes sense to take the waiter job and then try to drop the Good Will Hunting moment of genius, maybe it's the janitor job, if we're mixing in another metaphor. I've made a mess of your outline. If I understand you correctly, you have eight pieces of advice that you're going to share with the listener, and it's really advice on how you can get better at selling that up-front strategic work, and maybe you want to sell implementation afterwards rather than going in through the implementation door and trying to swim upstream to the strategy door. Is that correct?

David: Yes, exactly right.

Blair: Eight pieces of advice. What's the first one?

David: These are all little and silly, but together, I think they add up to something. The first is really to show it on your website. I am forced to look at all of your websites, and basically, they suck. [chuckles] No, they don't all, but I just think, "Man, have you ever stepped outside of yourself and looked at your own website to pretend to understand what it is that you do?" There's so much implementation, so much doing, and that's because it's harder, I think, for us to express how the thinking unfolds and because we're also in love with the final product.

We skip all of that strategic messy stuff, the whiteboard thinking, the attempts that we have to then back up and throw away and go somewhere else. All we show is the end result so that it looks like we are manufacturers of the end result of creativity. We show the billboard, we don't show all of the work that it took to get there. Show it in context. Part of that means that your service offering design-- this is one of my absolute favorite topics, your service offering design, there are some really core principles here.

One of those is that most of your clients should use most of your services most of the time. You don't have six service offerings and they get to dive in at any given point. Sometimes that's going to be the case, especially if you aren't busy. Normally, everybody starts here and then they go here and then they go here. There are a few exceptions, but normally that's the way it is. If you want new clients to hire you for strategy first, then list this path very carefully and step outside of yourself and see what your website is saying. That's the first point.

Blair: I think that's a good point. Not just saying it on your website, but actually showing the path or the typical client journey. We start here and look at this, we address these things and we move on to these other things because as you were talking about our listeners sometimes just listing all these services on their website, it's a little bit like website building for SEO, like, "This thing was written for Google, what are my clients searching for?"

The other end of the spectrum is when people just talk about the strategy, we end up with these vague strategic claims like, "We develop solutions that help our clients get results," and it's meaningless. The idea of showing a map, "Hey, we start here, we move on to these things, and then we explore these other things as necessary." Not just the language, but showing it visually, I think it's really compelling. Piece of advice number one is show that strategic work on the website-- not just the strategic work, but what the relationship looks like and your advice is that relationship should encompass most of the services that you deliver.

David: Most of the time, right. With a prescribed path.

Blair: What's a solid piece of advice number two?

David: Yes, this one's almost embarrassing to say because it doesn't seem all that substantive to me, but it's worth mentioning. What are the titles of the people that clients are interacting with? An account director, what does that say? What does that mean? That's inside baseball terminology that doesn't communicate anything about strategy or thinking or approach. The titles of the people that you have, just think about how somebody's title-- what message is that sending to the client. This is also true of a new business, which isn't really the topic today, but "New business director", what? Anyway, just think about the title. That's the second one.

Blair: We have been moving for at least a decade, maybe two decades away from this homogenous world, largely defined by ad agencies, where on the delivery team you have account coordinator, account executive, account manager, supervisor, director, et cetera. Those titles were fairly standard across delivery teams of creative firms around the world for a very long time, but we're moving away from that world to a really fragmented world of highly specialized firms.

Your point here is the title should be more reflective of the strategic thinking that those delivery people bring, not a reflection of where they are in the account management hierarchy. Is that correct?

David: Yes, exactly. There are seven titles in there, and it's also true in the whole PR world. It makes sense for the person's career. It doesn't make sense for their client, they want to see something like research or insights or strategies. Probably the wishy-washy-est of all of them, but yes, that's the point.

Blair: Okay, what's the next piece of advice for getting hired for the big juicy strategic stuff?

David: Maybe 10 years ago, I would've said if somebody comes to you and they want implementation out of the gate, be kind about it and just say, "Oh, we don't do that. No, sorry. When you're ready to hire us to start upstream, we'd love to work with you, but we can't do that." I'm not sure that's really a good plan nowadays. I think there are times when you just have to do that. You have to do implementation first.

Without all of the big research and insights and strategy and so on, particularly if you are rescuing a big otherwise good client that might want to work with you, there are many instances where a great client starts with you outside of that normal approach. Then they do backup and they work with you and respect your work.

I think it's okay to take that second room stuff first, but just make it very clear that it's an exception, like, "Oh, yes, this isn't normally how we do it, but I can see why this is something we should help you with." Then explain very clearly how you normally start, what it costs, how long it takes, and say, "We like the possibilities here. We're just going to make an exception to our process and glad to do it." That's the third point is, do it sometimes, but make sure it's painted as an exception.

Blair: It's firefighting work.

David: Yes.

Blair: Client comes in and says, "We really like you guys. We've been thinking about working with you for a very long time, but we're in trouble right now. Can you just do these execution alert or tactical implementation things?" You say, "Well, that's not really the business we're in," and they say, "Please, please, please." "Okay, we'll make an exception for you. We'll help you put out these fires. Then let's agree we're going to sit down, we're going to begin at the beginning. We'll have a look at the beginning." Yes, I'm with you.

David: You can't listen to anything when a fire-- we had a fire yesterday

Blair: Oh, that's right. I saw the pictures. [laughs] You almost burned the whole neighborhood down.

David: He almost burned the whole neighborhood down. I didn't, but somebody on my property did. A lawn guy was cutting branches down and burning them. He left and went to the other side of the property. It's 61 acres and there's a 35-mile-an-hour wind and it spread, my wife saw it, and we're panicking, called the fire department, six trucks come out. It burned eight acres before we stopped it. It would've been really bad. Another three feet, it would've been really bad. If somebody had said, "Can I talk with you about what you're wearing today? It doesn't really represent who you are." "Can we do the fire first? Let's get that solved."

Blair: [laughs] Can we put out the fire? Then we can talk about all the other problems I have. Good timing on that one. We're talking about eight different pieces of advice that would help you get hired for the more strategic work as opposed to the tactical work. That's what we all want to do. We've talked about three. What's number four on your list?

David: Number four is to always pre-sell the entire relationship that you have. I just talked about in the third point about it, making it clear that that's an exception. More than that, you want to explain all the things that you could do beforehand that you would normally do beforehand, and this client decision path is sort of CDJ. Also, the things that come after, that's pretty important too because it's not always true that highly strategic stuff comes first. Sometimes it comes after.

Whenever you're doing something for a client, you want to make sure that they know where this fits in the whole picture and how you sometimes could do these other things first, and after we're done with this, maybe we'll look at this if you need it. If you don't need it, no problem. You don't want to come across selling all the time, but you want to make sure they're aware, this might lead to this, and you can help us with that. It's just having that whole circuit in mind for the client so that they understand where this fits from a perspective standpoint, that's the fourth.

Blair: It's reinforcement for something you made earlier, which is this idea of having a model or a visual model of what the journey and the relationship looks like. Somebody comes to you with something very specific. You kind of roll up this map of, "Here's how we typically work with our clients, and the thing that you want, it's right here on this map." Look at the work that comes not only before that typically but the work that comes after that typically.

Put it all in context right at the outset of the relationship. Then you want a client who goes, "Yes, that looks smart. I need to put out this fire, but after this fire's out, let's walk through this again and we'll see how much of this is relevant to us."

David: The next point, the fifth point is about just actually saying no. Like I said earlier, I don't think you should say no all the time, but I do think there are times when you should. It'd be interesting to know what you think about this. When you as an agency are supposed to say no to a new client, it feels to me like you ought to be a little bit more forceful at that. If the prospect is being somewhat hotty and belligerent and it's very clear that they just see you on a list, they just need to get something done, and they don't think of you very highly, especially if it's a small thing, you almost need to jar them a little bit.

I don't have the science behind this, but it does seem that there's certain situations where this is warranted more than others. It seems to me like it's when you are a little nervous and I guess dismayed about how somebody's thinking of you and you just need to pop up and forget about the fear you might have in not landing this account. You might even laugh, use a little bit of humor, say, "Oh, sorry. We probably did a poor job in explaining what we do. This isn't how we normally approach things. We'd love to help you here, but this is how it probably would need to start."

It's not a hard and fast rule, but there are times when you ought to say no, where you feel like you're being dismissed and you feel like this is not going to go anywhere. "I have very little hope of turning them into a great client, so I'm just going to kill it right here." A lot of it is based on instinct, and I guess you just have to develop your own way of thinking about that. Listen very carefully and keep tuning your radio a little bit better so that you know how and when to do it.

Blair: I was writing on this very topic last night using some of the language that you just used. It's really interesting. We did an earlier episode called Hard Line Soft Lines. Where do you draw a hard line, whether it's a policy, or just say, "No, we don't do that," then stop, say nothing, and see what happens? One of the words I used last night, it's a jarring halt to the conversation. You have to be judicious about when you use a technique like that and you said use your intuition, which is correct.

I would just unpack that a little bit more and say when the buying signals aren't there, all your spidey sense is going off, that all these little signs about-- "This isn't going to end well, this isn't going to be a good client," when you have this suspicion that something's not right here, that's where you might draw a hard line. In this case, your hard line of just saying, "Hey, I'm sorry, but we just don't put the cart before the horse. We don't do that type of work without first doing this upfront strategic work." Then you stop and say nothing.

It's not necessarily the end, it might be. It is a little bit of a game of chicken where you draw a hard line and see how they respond. There are times when that technique is appropriate and the mistake would be to fall in love with that technique and use it all the time. I've had clients who have made that mistake and they come off as these hardasses. Unnecessarily, they turn everything into a power play. It's a technique that's in your back pocket that might be appropriate to use from time to time.

Just like you said earlier, sometimes it makes sense to make an exception. Some listeners want to know, well, when do you make an exception and do the firefighting work? When do you draw the hard line? Correct me if I'm wrong, but your language of "trust your intuition". If you've been doing this long enough, you get a sense of, "I've seen this film, I know how it ends, so I'm going to draw a hard line."

David: Yes, and keep using the information from those instances to get your instincts more accurate. It's just a learning process.

Blair: Eight pieces of advice to help you sell that upfront strategy work right from the beginning. We're onto number six.

David: That's to be very clear that this is an exception. Of course, we've talked about that a little bit. Then get them to agree, not necessarily in writing, but get them to agree verbally to go back and do the big, hard, important, groundbreaking work to lay the foundation for better results later. "We'll put this fire out for you, but are you okay if when we're done with that, we come back and we start this process?" It's a $60,000 process and they're not signing a piece of paper, but they're saying, "Oh, yes, that makes a lot of sense. That's not only intriguing, but I think we should do that. We can probably solve this in the next three and a half weeks or something, and then let's move right into that."

You're not just telling them the things that you normally do at the beginning. You are getting them to at least provisionally agree to do that. There's nothing in writing obviously, but it's just a good way to do it. Even if it doesn't happen, if something changes, at least you've set the table, you've changed their expectations. That's that sixth point.

Blair: Okay, that makes sense. The seventh is solve the emergency, but in a bigger context.

David: Yes, and be annoying.

Blair: [laughs] The David Baker method.

David: I'm really good at this. Where you aren't just taking direction about how to solve this thing using your technical or your software development chops or whatever it is to solve this, but you keep saying, "Hey, you know what, we probably don't have time to do anything right now, but the way you're thinking about SEO here, it probably could use some adjustment," or, "The way this code is written, this is going to be really difficult to maintain. We'll go ahead and fix it." You're just slightly being annoying, not dragging your feet at all, but you're just giving them the bigger context all the time.

Maybe even asking for permission, say, "Hey, are you okay if we just keep a log? As we do this work, we want to put together some suggestions about how to make this better from a foundational standpoint. Then if this is useful to you, we can walk you through it, but we just can't do this work without doing this kind of thing. We're just going to start a log. Here if you want to look at it as we do it, fine."

This is the being annoying, moving upstream person, and you got to know how to do this so that you're not just totally annoying, but at every turn, you're just demonstrating how clearly you can do the bigger stuff. Yes, you can solve this other thing like you're doing for them now, but you're really good at the whole bigger context. That's this point.

Blair: That's a bit of a bet hedge. I really like it because the danger is if you agree to fight the fire or do the tactical implementation work with this implied agreement that later on we'll go back to the beginning, and then you go into firefighting or tactical implementation mode, and you're very good at it and you're not questioning things, you are going to be positioned as the tactical implementer, as the firefighter.

The longer you occupy this role, the less credibility you will have to go back to the beginning. What you're saying, if I understand you correctly, David, is as you're doing this implementation work, you keep pointing out, "Oh, this is like, why is this here? Why is this-- Okay, yes, fine. We'll do this, but let's put it on the list of things we're going to have to come back to."

David: Yes, exactly right.

Blair: Okay. What's your last piece of advice for selling the good stuff?

David: Last one is, I'm just coming back in case people missed it, but it's circling back to the first point about showing everything that you're doing ahead of the finished product. On your website, I know you want to show logos and you want to show websites that you built and apps and so on. You need to start sharing the messy part of it. You need to take pictures of all the brainstorming.

You need to have Slack conversations, screenshot. You need to copy emails. Not confidential information, but you need to walk people through the messy part of arriving at the final. We're just showing the final everywhere. Not only in your sales presentations, but on your website. We need to have less finished stuff and a lot more sloppy stuff that got us to the finish point. I'm just circling back and reiterating that first point essentially.

Blair: I think especially creatives, you don't fully appreciate how enamored your clients are with the working process. They want to see glimpses of the sausage being made. I remember a designer probably 20 years ago saying, "You know what the clients really want? They want to walk through our office and they want to pick through the waste bins and they want to uncrumple the pieces of paper and they want to look at the notes and the sketches." That's what they want to see. They want to see the really cool stuff.

David: Ooh, that's a great one.

Blair: As I talk about this, I think-- The Win Without Pitching manifesto came out about 13 years ago, and the designer who designed the book, Brian Sooy, he did the WWP monogram as part of the book that became the logo of the business. One day he shared with me his notes, a piece of paper where he sketched all these different variations of that monogram. He had a skull and crossbones version, and he had 40 versions. I said, "Send me that." Then I took it and I had it printed on the inside of a moleskin and sent him a bunch of copies.

I look at that and I think that is a glimpse into the creative mind of how we got to the end product. I am completely fascinated by it. As somebody who's creative through words and not through visuals, I love seeing the visual journey of the creative process, and I think we don't place enough value in how the sausage is made. I think we could do a better job of showing that off because when you just show finished products, it's like, "Yes, okay, you're finished, your outputs look the same as every other firm I'm talking to." There is something about making the journey the client will take with you visible and allowing them to see themselves in it that is really powerful, really compelling.

David: Yes because the process is where they're going to spend all this time with you. It's not the last frame in the movie that you're showing, it's all this other stuff that's going to set you apart as fun to work with, as challenging, as intriguing, as humorous. That's a really important point.

I hope people are picking that up. It's not just about how you get hired, but it's how they think of you. This is all tied together. Just getting hired for the implementation versus the strategy, there's also another thing in here about letting them see the inside of everything. I love watching those Facebook reels sometimes that show the inside of a manufacturing process. How do you make a car spring? Or how do you make a armchair? That stuff is really fascinating to me, and I think the same thing is true for clients. I hope this episode's been helpful. It's been fun to do.

Blair: Okay. It took me a few minutes to get over the metaphor of the reverse Trojan horse waiter. [laughter] If you want to call this episode the reverse Trojan horse waiter, whatever, I'm fine with it. What we've really been talking about are eight pieces of advice to help you sell the good, juicy, strategic stuff, and then if you want to sell the implementation stuff after that, rather than getting in through the implementation door and trying to swim upstream to sell the strategic stuff. Have I captured that right?

David: That's it.

Blair: Perfect.

David: All right.

Blair: Thank you, David.

David: Thank you, Blair.