Assume an Advantaged Player

Blair shares how to determine whether or not we are the advantaged player the “polite battle for control” within the game of sales, and how we can get the odds of winning the sale to be more in our favor.

Links

“Assume an Advantaged Player” article by Blair Enns on WinWithoutPitching.com

Transcript

David C. Baker: All right, Blair, today we are going to pull a concept out of your forthcoming book, The Four Conversations. This one, you've used sort of some insider coded language, Assume An Advantaged Player.

Blair Enns: There is some distinct energy missing from your voice, as you mentioned, my forthcoming amazing book.

David: Well, I'm interviewing you. [laughs]

Blair: I expected a lot more excitement.

David: I could go into my sing-songy voice. Actually, I really do love the book. We've talked about this concept before, but not really in this much depth. I really like the concept a lot. It's one of those things like, "Aargh, I don't even need to see any research." This just passes the smell test. Assume An Advantaged Player. Define what advantaged player is first, other than soccer terms, please.

Blair: An advantaged player is this idea that somebody has the advantaged. You go into any competitive sale, you should assume there is an advantaged player, a player with the advantaged. That means they might have inside information from somebody on the client side. They have an advocate working for them on the inside, working on their behalf. In some ways, they are already the favored candidate.

Maybe they've been told outright they're the favorite candidate. In the most extreme examples, the advantaged player, the fix is already in. It's basically, there's an understanding, an agreement in principle that, listen, we're going to use you. We just have to go through the motions. That's what I mean by an advantaged player. If it's not you, it's somebody else.

David: If you are not the advantaged player and you're in that conversation, but you're in a conversation with, say, let's say it's not a client either. It's a new contact. You're just one of the few or multiple people that were invited to submit for this. What questions would you ask if you're trying to figure out who the advantaged player is? A little role-playing thing in a way. What are those questions? How do you do it without offending them?

Blair: Three normal qualifying questions. The questions that you ask to determine whether or not there's a fit suitable enough to proceed. There are different frameworks for this. We use a version of BANT, which stands for Budget Authority Need Timeframe. Under the banner of authority is the idea of, are you the decision-maker? Who are the other decision-makers? What is the decision-making process? Under the banner of decision-making process, there's this question of, are you talking to other firms in addition to us or just us?

There are different ways to ask that question. It's one of the questions that you want to have multiple ways of broaching the topic. You do want to determine whether or not it's a competitive sale. When you hear, "Yes, we're talking to three other firms in addition to you," then you start asking questions like, "Well, tell me why you reached out to us?" If you hear, "Well, we Googled ad agency Houston and you came up sixth."

David: That's great news.

Blair: You are not the advantaged player. If you hear, "Oh, a board member suggested that we reach out to you," doesn't necessarily mean that you are the advantaged player, but that's a good sign. It may signal that you are the advantaged player. It may signal that you can become the advantaged player, but it's not the bad news of, "Oh, we just Googled generalist provider and you came up in the top 10.

David: Denny's near you. There's actually a firm named that, I think.

Blair: Yes, right.

David: Let's say you're having this conversation. It's pretty clear you are not the favored party or the advantaged player, but the conversation isn't going great. You're having to push, trying to get something out of them and you get a pretty clear sense that somebody else is the advantaged player. Can you stop there or should you keep navigating this discussion that's getting awkward to find out who it is?

Blair: Well, I really like the direct conversation, like so direct that it sometimes disarms the client. I can think of two occasions where I have said to a prospective client who reached out to me where I said outright, "We're the third bid, aren't we?" I just stopped. It's clear to me that we have no power in the relationship. I get a sense that there is another advantaged player. I just call it like it is and say, "We're the third bid, aren't we? You need to get a third bid and it's us."

In both times, these people have protested that, "No, no, no, you're under serious consideration. Why would you say that?" "Well, I've asked you for a few things. You seem to be unwilling to share the most basic information. There's just something about the tone and tenor of this conversation that tells me that you may have already decided who you want to work with and you're looking for bids from others."

David: Yes. Maybe we're not number three, but not sure we're number one.

Blair: We're the fourth bid?

David: Somebody's listening to this and the idea of the advantaged player, it's something they've known by instinct, but all of a sudden they're seeing a spotlight shine on it. One of their first reactions is that isn't fair. We need to find out because we shouldn't be even asked to participate in this with us not being the advantaged player. How do people react to this?

Blair: I'm not sure if there's something in the air these days, these last few years, or I'm just becoming more sensitive to it. I am encountering, at least I think I am, more people who are talking about what's fair and not fair in business and in the sales process specifically. Maybe it's just become a hot button of mine because fairness, like I wrote about in my previous book, Pricing Creativity, fairness is like beauty or value. It is in the eye of the beholder. It's not on us to decide what's fair for somebody else.

When I hear, "That's not a fair process," my point here is just that life isn't fair. If you're assuming that every prospective client is running some sort of purchasing or procurement process to hire a firm like yours and is running a fair process, you are horribly naive. Not only is it not fair, it's not even rational. The expectation, like they're going to show up all rational and they're going to claim, we've got a selection process and we've got the scoring matrix in most bureaucratic examples, et cetera, but that's just a smokescreen. It's what a friend calls a veil of legitimacy and transparency.

It's human beings making the decision. Human beings are largely irrational. The entire field of behavioral economics is built on this idea of the irrationality of human beings in decision-making. There are fields on this. We've done podcast episodes on this, the one on "Bounded Rationality." It's really naive to go into a competitive sale and to think the process is going to be fair to you or anybody else. Somebody is going to gain the advantaged. The winner will be chosen often well before they are declared. The reasons they're chosen won't be rational and they won't be fair, accept it.

David: Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the movie?

Blair: Sorry, was that a bit of a rant?

David: The objection you're getting from people who say this isn't fair, they're just observing something that they obviously must assume must be happening, right? If they get the advantaged, they wouldn't have any objection in using that, would they?

Blair: Yes, right.

David: Oh, okay.

Blair: It's not like I hear a lot of people complaining that it's not fair in the sales process, but I'm trying to strip away the naivety that the client is going to be as rational as they say they're going to be. They're not going to be rational. They're not even going to be fair. Once they decide that they want to hire somebody for whatever reason, they're going to be prone to all kinds of biases. They're going to be talking themselves into things. They're going to be giving behavioral concessions, and this is the key we'll get to in a minute, to the ones who ask for it if they're the firm that they want to work with.

David: It's sort of basic understanding, but then it just starts to feel weird when you let this drip through your consciousness and you realize all of the bad purchase decisions that I might've made. Really? Is there no logic? Are you telling me that all the hours I'm spending comparing products doesn't matter? You're not saying that. You're just saying that in the end, there's one human on the other side. They can do what they want. I guess that's the big principle. You could decide whether you want to participate in this at all, right?

Blair: Yes. Where do you think buyer's remorse comes from? It's not because, "Oh, I weighed all the criteria exactly appropriately, and it turns out I was wrong." No, there's something about, at the end of the day, the criteria lined up to support a rational decision, but there was that feeling in your gut. No, that's my person. That's my firm. They're the ones for reasons of chemistry, in air quotes, for reasons I can't explain.

That happens a lot. Let's just accept that these are humans making decisions and they're using a process. They're trying to be fair. They're trying to be rational. At the end of the day, there's going to be a firm that they want to hire. They might not even be able to articulate why they want to hire that firm, and they will treat that firm differently if the firm asks to be treated differently.

David: Basically that leads into the next section here. In our scenario, you are one of many, you found out, and you are not the advantaged player. What's the helpful generalization that you would use if that's the situation moving forward?

Blair: The helpful generalization if you are not the advantaged player?

David: Right. Exactly.

Blair: Let me just stop you here. I'm checking my notes here. You're at two ways.

David: I'm at a helpful generalization.

Blair: Oh, a helpful generalization.

David: [laughs] Oh my God.

Blair: Marcus, you should leave that in. People need to know what a shit show this podcast is behind the scenes.

David: I handed you to this spot, yes.

Blair: Listener, I wrote my notes, a helpful generalization, and I had skipped ahead. Okay, so I'm actually prone to this idea of helpful generalizations, and my book is filled with helpful generalizations. This idea that you're the advantaged player or you're not, those are really just two different endpoints on the spectrum. It's like how much advantaged, how much leverage do you have? I think it's actually really helpful for you to think in black-and-white terms.

You have the inside track. If not the chosen one, you are the one in the lead, or somebody else is in the lead. I think in reality, there will be sales and times in sales where it is a level playing field, and often that would be at the beginning. I do want you to hold this idea in mind that at some point, you're not in a race to win the business at the beginning. Let's imagine it's a level playing field. Everybody's starting from the same line, mixing sports metaphors here, but it's completely fair.

You're not in a race to win the business. The first race you're in is the race to be seen as the advantaged player. If you think of that, you keep that helpful generalization in your mind that if you're not the advantaged player somebody else is. Then keeping that objective in your mind will be a helpful tool for you because it keeps you from deluding yourself into thinking that your odds of winning are one over N, where N is the number of firms under consideration. It's really two different distributions of games here.

There are the games where you have the inside track, you are the advantaged player, and you're more likely to win than you are to lose. Then there are all the other games where you are not the advantaged player, somebody else is, and you're far less likely to win. You look at your closing ratio, and a typical firm listening to this would have a closing ratio of between 25 and 30%. That's between one in three and one in four of the proposals you write, you win.

That's actually pretty low, but that's an average, but I want you to think of it as an average of two different distributions. The one distribution is the ones where you are the advantaged player. The other distributions are the ones where you are not. In the first one, your odds of winning are significantly higher than one in two. In the second distribution, where you're not the advantaged player, your odds of winning are significantly less than one over N, where N is the number of firms under consideration.

Four firms under consideration, your odds are significantly less than 25%. If you can do a good job of discerning whether or not you are the advantaged player, your overall win ratio will look more like the first distribution, greater than one in two. You'll have a closing ratio of greater than 50% because the other ones where your odds are low, you accept that you are not the advantaged player, therefore you don't play, you don't waste your time. Does that make sense?

David: Yes. In just a minute, I want you to take it away and talk about how you can tell whether you're the advantaged player or not. If you determine that you're not the advantaged player, would you just drop out at that point? Are the odds bad enough if you know with enough certainty that you're not the advantaged player that it probably isn't worth continuing?

Blair: The textbook answer is yes. I say the textbook answer is that's where the rational player who isn't under a large amount of stress, financial stress, emotional stress, et cetera, would look at it and say, "It's not worth it. The cost of sale is too high. It's too distracting. It's too mentally painful to play these games and keep pitching business or pursuing business where it's clear somebody else is going to win."

If your deal volume is high enough, so if you're playing enough games, if you're at the table enough times, then you would do well to just quit playing the games where you are not the advantaged player. Now, the reality is in difficult times, and as of this recording, we're recording in late August of 2024. There are a lot of creative and marketing firms out there that are having difficult times. The textbook answer is in most circumstances, you should walk away from those opportunities where you're not the advantaged player. I know the reality is sometimes you have to chase everything.

David: Especially if you're just sitting around rather than continuing the process.

Blair: Yes, you go for it. It's a Hail Mary, right? I'm not saying never throw a Hail Mary pass in your career. I'm saying if you can get to that place where you become good at discerning whether or not you're the advantaged player. Your deal volume is high enough or your opportunity volume is high enough, then now you have the luxury of just not playing those long-shot games.

David: The ultimate power essentially, the ultimate leverage. The two ways to tell if you want to know for sure if you're advantaged because the odds are so much different on the advantaged side. You're saying that there are two ways to determine if you are the advantaged player. The first one is they just come out and say so.

Blair: They just tell you. They just say, "Hey, listen, David, we really want to work with you. You just have to play ball with us here. You just have to respond to the RFP. You just have to do this stuff. We've got to get three bids. We've got to do all this stuff, et cetera. We've got to run through the process. You're even going to have to meet with procurement. Whatever it is, you just got to play ball, but we're going to work with you." They come right out and say so.

David: Then the second one, if that doesn't happen, that's the preferred one, most efficient. Second one is what?

Blair: Then short of them saying so or beyond them saying so, you want them to prove it. Think of this idea of stated preference versus revealed preference. Economists talk about this a lot. Stated preferences. "Oh, this is what I like." That's the first one. The client saying, "No, we like you. We really want to work with you." Stated preferences often diverge from revealed preferences. When somebody states you as their preference, you get them to reveal it through their behavior. You get them to prove it. This is where we start asking for concessions.

David: Disrupting the pitch would be under that phrase, right? They've heard you say that before or not.

Blair: Yes. Disrupting the pitch. Well, if they let you disrupt the pitch, that's a pretty significant concession. If we talk about what type of behavioral concessions do you want to extract from the client for them to prove to you, for them to reveal to you that you are indeed the advantaged player. You start with the little things like moving the date and location of the meeting and then you progress to higher ones. We could talk about an infinite number of behavioral concessions.

They're all meaningful somewhere on the scale from somewhat meaningful to extremely meaningful. I'll just list a few more. They share information with you that they're not sharing with the other firms under consideration. That's an important sub point here is if you extract a behavioral concession from the client in a competitive sale and then they feel compelled to turn around and make the same concession to others-- the other firms they're talking to-- that is not an indicator of you being the advantaged player.

They're trying to keep the process fair. That means they don't see you as meaningfully different. Sharing information with you that they're not sharing with others, access to missing decision makers, usually senior decision makers, especially access when you're told, initially told that access is not allowed. Anything you're told that you can't get, you're not allowed to have this, whatever it is that you end up getting, that's fantastic.

That's a more meaningful concession. Then a significant one would be getting them to rethink the brief, the RFP, or the problem as they've defined it. There's a book, The Challenge of Sale. The whole book is written around that idea. The idea that in the sale itself, you should be challenging the client's assumption of what their problem is, what their solution might be. I would add their path to procuring that solution.

David: Just finding out whether you're being treated differently than other people could be a sign that you're being treated differently. This is where human conversational observational skills are so critical. This is not an intent to sort of pitch the book, but it really is conversations conducted by very intelligent people who are looking for the signs and know what those mean. Then can just seamlessly transition into the next part of the conversation.

I would imagine if somebody on the sales side, the person who's trying to get the job is really good at this. The person on the other side may not even recognize that they revealed something. Unless they recognize they revealed something, it's not going to matter. You might just say, "Hey, were you supposed to tell me that right there," and just see their reaction? There's not a formula for this. You just have to understand what you're looking for and then be pretty good at seeing it.

Blair: Yes. I would even push back on the need to be an intelligent person. I think a person of an average intelligence, but who's not swept up in the moment of the sale. Who's not carried away with excitement at the idea of what they might win? Who is discerning and who really does think through this model of advantaged player? It's me or it's somebody else. Then in that moment, rather than

trying to convince the client that you should hire us. They're actually quite discerning.

They're more like a detective, a sleuth, who's asking the right questions, trying to get a sense of, "Am I the one, is this worth it to me, or does somebody else have the inside track?" I've said before, I think sales, new business development, whatever label you use for it, it's a game, and I think it goes by the name the polite battle for control. This is a polite battle. You're kind, you're smiling, but you're thoughtful. It's a cagey back and forth. You're trying to see if the client will give you control in the sale.

If you are the advantaged player, they will grant you some control. They will give you behavioral concessions. They will allow you to determine what the next step in the sale is. If you're not the advantaged player, if you're just seen as a vendor, one in a sea of many, the client's going to dictate terms of the sale. Not just the engagement, but dictate the terms of the sale to you, and say, "Here's what we're doing next, and you can have this, you can't have that. I'm in control. If you want this business, you follow my lead."

I think early in my career, I didn't think of selling as fun, and it wasn't until I saw it as a game. I understood it is this jostling for control, and it is this sleuthing out of information. It's better played when you're less excited, and you're more thoughtful, and you're tuned in to the near-term objective of A, determining am I the advantaged player, and B, trying to become the advantaged player. Rather than just being all giddy and trying to win the business right away.

David: Tamping down your childish glee, as I think how you said that in an earlier episode.

Blair: Yes.

David: Well, this has been very interesting. I think one of the most pivoting points for me is you reminding me again about how the odds are so different. The odds are so much better if you're the advantaged player than if you aren't. Thank you, Blair.

Blair: Thanks, David.