Communication Components in Your Sales Toolbox

Blair shares an overview of all the communication tools creative firms should be using throughout the sales process.

Sketchnote by Emily Mills

Transcript

David C Baker: Blair, you came up with this topic, which I immediately thought was a really great one, because we've done more than 100 episodes now and the tendency is we find some narrow topic, and then we go really, really deep. We don't necessarily know how that slice fits in the bigger picture, the bigger context. This is one of those topics where we're going to back away from the specifics and look at the bigger arc, the bigger context of things. Unlike some of the other episodes, there'll be times when I'm going to just say, "Hey, folks. Don't forget to go look at this episode, where we go into that one thing in a lot of depth." I think I've got half a dozen or so of those references.

Today we're going to talk about the tools of communication, when and how to use them in the sale. There are so many options, like conversations, your website, marketing, presentations, graphics, proposals, contracts. How do all these things fit together and how do they unfold? If this is a dance with the client and you, what happens at what point and where do you pull back? Then, where do you say something more specific? It's more of an overarching thing to think about. I'm excited about this topic. You obviously are, too, because you put a whole long outline together for me, which is great.

Blair Enns: I don't like the ones where I end up writing a whole long outline. If we're showing how the sausage gets made here, I have some concerns about this one. In your setup, you effectively said, "There's no depth here, people." If you want to miss this one, that's fine. Take a pass.

[laughter]

I'm going to try to go deep into these topics, and you're going to try to pull me back up to a high level so we cover everything rather than getting lost down a rabbit hole.

David: Everything you need to know about selling so you don't need to buy Blair's book. That's how I'm going to retitle this thing. All of these thoughts here fit under the tools, you call them in your toolbox, which I mentioned just a minute, are conversations, website, marketing, presentations, graphics, proposals, contracts. Let's start with conversations because when we think about sales training, we think about what you say when. Let's just start with the conversation thing.

Before you dive in, I want to just call people's attention to one episode we did, which is one of my favorite ones, even though it was quite a while ago, it's called Replacing Presentations With Conversations. It's the theme that comes up a lot. In this context, talk to us about conversations and what their role is in general.

Blair: That idea of replacing presentations with conversations, it's the second proclamation of The Win Without Pitching Manifesto. It's an overall arching theme in our work at Win Without Pitching Manifesto. It's like, "Let's get out of this business where it's brief and present, where it's one-way communication at a time, where the client lobs something over to us and then we prepare a response and lob it back or present it back." We're trying to break down those conditions and create the conditions where human beings can have a conversation. Part of a conversation is, "Well, let's be honest with each other."

When you're in the sales role, in a sales conversation, you often communicate directly or indirectly the idea that you don't want to hear negative news. If there isn't a fit, if you're too expensive, or if the client doesn't like you, whatever the objection is, through your demeanor, the way you show up in the sale, the way you over-invest in the sale, the way you focus on transmitting when you should receive, you're often communicating that you're not really open to a two-way conversation.

Conversation is a recurring theme. You listed off some of the tools that we've identified here of communication tools; conversations, website, marketing; that's a big banner, presentations, graphics, proposals, contracts. There are more and we'll probably get into some more. Of the list, conversations. Man, if you could just master conversations, your dependency on all the other ones drops quite significantly. I think there's something about the way we go about new business development or selling in the creative professions that just, we embrace the tools, especially the bright, shiny, the visual tools, the marketing tools.

We embrace the presentation, the proposal aspects of the website. We want to throw a lot of information at the client. I think a lot of that information can be communicated in a conversation. Not all of it. Then, obviously, there's the issue of the information you need to get back, you need to collect. Almost all of that happens in a conversation.

David: The more you're presenting, the less information you're getting that's vital, too. I think another part of this is, we like the lack of surprises that come. If we're presenting them, we can follow a script. We're not going to be caught with our pants down, with a question that we're just not ready and we stammer about it. There's something much more relaxing about-- I'm focused on learning as much as I can about your firm, and I'll tell you anything you want to know, but really I'm interested in learning more about you. To whatever degree you want to talk about us, I'm happy to do that, but that's really what you're talking about; replacing the presentation with the conversation.

Blair: Yes, and that tone that you just modeled I think is perfect.

David: The conversation is, you can't really do the rest of it well unless you get the information that you need in the conversations. I also want to draw everybody's attention to a previous episode we also did, which is also one of my favorites; Mastering the Value Conversation. There's been some really interesting conversations on Twitter around this as well, how difficult it is to do and how you model it in the training courses. Do you want to say more about conversations? Are we good to go into what's the role of your website and marketing? Why, for goodness sake, does it take 11 months to get this right? Maybe it doesn't need to.

Blair: I'll just say, under the banner of conversations, there are a whole list of questions that you need to get answered. Maybe I'll just rattle some off. The first one is, is there a fit? Early on is like, is there a fit to the extent that we should be allocating the expensive resources of the firm like time and, particularly, time of the subject matter experts and the senior people in the firm?

Then there's some specific questions you want answer, like, what does the client need/want? Who needs to be involved? When do they need to decide? When do they need to start? Why have they set a budget? Can they afford us? What is leadership's vision of success? What are the KPIs of success? How much value can be created? I'm just rattling off 10 or 12 questions that in almost every sale, you need to get these questions answered. You don't do that by communicating in the deck, or doing a presentation and then asking, "Are there any questions," afterwards. You can only do that in the conversation. I feel like I've checked the conversation box for now. We'll probably come back to it.

David: It's not just that you need to know the answer to each one of these in order to shape the sales process moving forward. It's even more foundational than that. Do we even want to, like you said, allocate resources, because some of the way these questions are answered may indicate that, "Oh, this probably isn't a good fit." The sooner we find that out, the better so we don't waste anybody's time.

Blair: Yes, that's exactly it.

David: Website and marketing. This one is very practical because people struggle with this. If a prospect steps back and looks at a website, what are some of the questions that we're hoping to answer with the website and other marketing materials?

Blair: It's interesting. When I was preparing for this, I was thinking-- It occurred to me for maybe the first time that I used to think that we over-rely on the website, try to jam too much into that. I was thinking to myself just this morning, it's like, "I can't remember the last time I thought it. In fact, when I think more deeply about it, I think we underused the website in the sale." I think there's a whole collection of questions that the client needs to be answered, that the macro-category would be like, "Is there a fit from their point of view? Can you the agency do this? Have you done it before?

For whom have you done it before? Who have you worked for before? What's your point of view on how this should be done?" All of those questions should be answered on your website and maybe in some of your marketing, but mostly on your website so that you don't have the need to communicate any of that once you're into the sale. You think about all of the client checking the box around like, "Is there a fit? Can you do this," et cetera, all of the basics around your capabilities. They should get those answered before even the first human-to-human conversation. You should see your website as the vehicle for communicating all that.

I think we in the creative professions have built this habit of going in the sale, going into a presentation mode, and even though somewhere all of that information might reside on the website, we still feel like we need to present that, stand up in front of the room and present that in the sale. That's us giving our power away in that moment. We really should just put it all out there and assume that the client has seen it all, and then at some point ask, "Hey, have you seen it all? I know you've been to our website. Is there anything else that you need to know about us that's not on our website?"

David: The great thing about the website side of things is that it allows the prospect to dig as deep as they want, so they're not bored with this long presentation, where you're telling them things they're not interested in. They also get to explore things based on their personality profile. Somebody is going to be drawn to the inspiration of the clients you've worked for, the testimonials.

Someone else might be drawn to, "What's the process look like," or, "What's the fine print?" They can discover things on their own path. I'm going to say something, but I don't know if-- Tell me if you agree with this. Is it okay in the early stages to say, "If you have a chance or if you're curious about this, here are a couple of links that you might explore?" Point them to specific places on the website, or is that too pedantic for them?

Blair: No, it's absolutely appropriate. I think the idea is that, again, you don't want to be presenting information at them in a presentation context in the sale. The assumption is, anything that a client like this one would need to know about you is available on the website. You might put out specific links, "Hey, here's a case study we did for so and so," et cetera. We're seeing the website. I'm describing it as one of your tools of communication.

On the website itself, you've got things like your portfolio, brief case studies, content, which gets into marketing, which is very related to this. Even bios, et cetera, all of these things. There are tools on the website. I just want to point out, when I rattled off the list of questions that the client wants to get answered, we don't think about this. One of the questions is, "How good could this be? If I hired this firm, what are the possibilities? What might they do for us?"

You answer that question. It's a very important question early in the sale because, as I've talked about before, early in the buying cycle, the client overweights the possibilities of a beautiful future, and they underweight the costs or consequences of failure. Then, later on, that changes. There are two questions you're going to have to answer at some point. The first one you want to answer on your website, that question is, "How good could the future be for me, the client?" They typically do that through your portfolio and through brief case studies.

They look at the work that you've done for others, and they try on what it would be like to have work that good, and they get excited about the future. That's why really hot creative shops get invited to the table a lot because they're really good at-- Your beautiful, creative, inspiring work, in a moment when the client is overweighting the positive benefits of change and the possibilities of the future, you're the one they want. If you can't answer the second question, which needs to be answered later, you can't close the deal. The second question, the flip side of it is, how bad is this not going to be?

I'm getting ahead of myself. We'll get to that. In the website, you want to answer the question, "How good could this be? How good is this firm?"

David: We're trying to do less presentation, but every once in a while, a presentation would make sense. If so, when, what would you need to cover in it that you couldn't cover in other ways? You're trying to wean people off of presentations, where they're spending hours and hours modifying a Keynote deck, and there are still going to be some people that are addicted to that a little bit. Is there a use for it? Is it shorter when you use it? How does that fit in?

Blair: If your website and the marketing does its work, inbound inquiry, your position as the expert, the client sees you have the strengths or capabilities, this area of expertise. You have a little bit of power in the relationship. There's the human-to-human conversation. This is where, for some people, especially if you're new to these ideas, the default is to go into presentation mode right away.

As you've articulated, David, my point of view is, in the average sale, the goal is to get through the entire sale without opening up Keynote, without going into presentation at all. You get into that first conversation, it's a qualifying conversation. That's where you're vetting the lead to see if, "Is this worth? Is there a fit here? Should we be applying resources against it?" As you and I talked about in a recent podcast episode-- I think it's called How to Talk About Yourself.

David: How and When to Talk About Your Firm was the title of it.

Blair: In the qualifying conversation, even though there's information you need to gather to determine if there's a fit, the client needs to do the same thing. That's what that episode was about; letting the client check the box that says, "You can do this." Now, the point I made earlier is, you want to enable them to check that box before the conversation. You do that through your website and your marketing. As you're running through your own qualifying criteria, and most qualifying criteria is a form of BANT; budget, authority, need, timeframe, that's just the categories where you need information to determine if there's a fit suitable enough to take the next step.

In most qualifying conversations, you're collecting this information, but you should also stop and just double-check that your website and marketing has done its job. You would say to the client, and they might prompt you without you even having to ask, "Hey, I know you've been to our website. Obviously, you reached out to us, but do you have any questions about us, about our ability to do this type of work for your organization that haven't already been answered?"

This is a key point here. Do not assume that, A, you don't need to communicate anything, or more erroneously, B, that you need to, as a default, communicate everything that you're used to communicating, because I think most firms have a credentials deck kind of a standard about us presentation. I'm saying, do not go into that as a default and try to avoid it altogether. Do ask the client, "Hey, what else do you need to know about us and our ability to do this that hasn't already been answered?"

David: I want to take a slight real short detour here just to check something in my head. I believe that if somebody is lower on the power ladder, they're probably more likely to spend time on your website. Somebody higher up like, maybe a CMO, or if it's a 1,000-person firm, maybe the president or something. Is that person likely to spend time on your website?

Blair: That's a great question. Absolutely, they're not. The person you're talking to in the qualifying conversation is probably not that senior person. It's probably a little bit more junior to the senior person. If you uncover in the qualifying conversation that they are the decision-makers you need to get to, then the issue, the question becomes not is there missing information that you don't have, but is there missing information that others do not have? That's a great point.

Blair: To answer your question about never presentation, there are times when, let's say in that situation where it's, yes, my CMO or CEO, my senior decision-maker on my team doesn't actually know anything about you. Then obviously, a next step coming out of a qualifying conversation is to get to that CMO and to see if you can communicate what's needed to communicate from your point of view in a conversation.

Either that conversation or the subsequent conversation with the missing decision-maker, when you're doing this search for, "What else do you need from us," if you're getting the sense that, for whatever reason, they really haven't been able to check the box that, "Yes, these people are experts. These people can do this. I have a high degree of confidence in them." You might say, "Hey, if you want--" Note how I model this almost apologetically. "If you want, I've got this five-minute presentation on us. If you want me to run through it, I'm happy to do it."

David: So that they feel free to say no, obviously.

Blair: Yes, they feel free to say no. You might get some people who say, "Oh, yes, great. Fantastic. We were waiting for when that was going to happen." Then it's, like I've said a few times on episodes before, from time to time, the client will invite you to sell to them. What I mean by that is to convince them. "Why you? Why should we hire you?" They invite you to go into presentation mode to express your neediness, to give your power away to make sure that they have the power in the relationship.

High-power people do this just naturally without even thinking too deeply about it. You set it up almost apologetically. "If you want me to do this, I will." Then when you're doing it, your face shouldn't light up and go, "Oh, great. I finally get to present."

David: Finally.

Blair: You should keep it as conversational as possible. Try not to go into presentation mode. What I mean by that is, where you were all transmission and no reception.

David: When somebody in power asks you to step into that mode, I think it's a mistake to push back and keep asking questions. They will resent it at that point. If they've given you direction and permission, even more than permission, they've told you they'd like that, that's not the time to say, "Well, can I ask a few more? Do you agree with that?" This is something they want. They can get frustrated by you not just giving them. It needs to be brief. It needs to be interesting, but if they want it, then give it to them.

Blair: Consider it this way. You've got battling frameworks on both sides of the table. They might both be loose frameworks, but the frameworks are to get to the same question for each party. That's, "Is there a fit suitable enough to take a next step?" If the client's interrupting your framework, your questions, you gathering the information you need so that they can gather the information they need, you should respect that.

David: What role does process play or proprietary process? There's quite a difference between those two phrases. I want to draw attention to another episode that we've done in the past. It's fun to be able to look back on all these. It was called Positioning Cheats. One of those cheats was a proprietary process. If you're interested in exploring this, go back to that. We're also going to do another episode where we focus exclusively on that. As you've said multiple times, this is a valuable tool of reassurance. Can you talk about who needs to hear this, and at what point in the sale, and what role it plays and so on?

Blair: If we think of presentations and then proposals and the typical proposal deck, and I'm jumping ahead a little bit, one of the mistakes we make about both is assuming that every piece of information we want to communicate, it belongs in both. It belongs in the Keynote presentation deck and it belongs in the proposal itself. One of those pieces of information that we often feel compelled to communicate is our process, which is, and you quite adjointly made the distinction between just simply a codified process, "Here's how we do this," and then a proprietary process, "Here's how we do this," and it's novel to us. I would suggest that the ladder is simply an evolution of the former.

First, you codify, you iterate, you iterate, you iterate. At some point, you end up with something that's proprietary and quite meaningful. It's still meaningful to have a codified process, even if it's not all that different. I just view it as the beginning of the journey. I've been dismissive, and I think you have as well, at some of the attempts at this. More correctly, the way some agencies use it, you go into presentation mode and you present the codified process as something proprietary and meaningful, and you overinflate it's important, but like I've already said, I think it's important. In fact, I think you and I agree, it's probably one of the most important tools in the entire arc of the sale.

David: Yes, absolutely. People are listening to this right now and they're asking, "What's the difference between codified process and a proprietary unique process?" Let me try and define the two. A codified process is something that will vary from firm to firm in the sense that the terminology will be different, the boundaries will be a little bit different, but it's basically the same process. If you picture somebody who is either a writer, or a designer, or a software engineer or something, and they're experienced, and they go to this new firm and they're learning about this new [unintelligible 00:23:29].

If they have a whole bunch of aha moments and all of a sudden they see how work unfolds very differently because of your process, it more leans toward proprietary and not just your version of it. The more unique it is in a way that other firms absolutely do not have it, the more useful it is to talk about it even before the engagement begins because it is a defendable point of differentiation. That's the point here.

Blair: I want to challenge just a little bit of that. It's not that I don't think it's true that it's powerful to use early. It is powerful to use early, but it is most effective as a tool of reassurance used late to close. When we say-- I think in the future episode, when we go deep into this, we'll really get into it. When we say proprietary process, in what form? I make the point, I don't think it should be a presentation. Although ours is in a Keynote form. I recognize as I say this. It really should be in a visualized graphic. I think you should think about it as an infographic.

I remember you and I did a seminar five, six, seven, eight years ago, I don't remember when, Revenue 2.0, and we talked about this. We talked about codifying and visualizing your methodology. You showed yours. You showed that diagram of how you go through a total business review. I looked at the room and everybody's jaws were on their chest. It's just a beautiful, simple visual that can be communicated in one page, but within the beautiful, simple visual, you can see layers of complexity. You can see, even in your case, some science behind it. It was just this. You look at that image, you go, "Yes, this person knows what they're doing. Okay, you're hired."

Again, I said early on through your website, you want to communicate how good things could be. You do that through your portfolio and really short, inspiring case studies. "Sales up 230%." Later on, you want to communicate how bad things will not be. Forms of reassurance. We've done an episode on forms of reassurance. This proprietary process visualized simply, when it's done well, there's nothing that sops up buyer's remorse more than a really well-illustrated proprietary process. It should be an image.

David: Yes. You've done this before. You know what you're doing. The particular title of that episode was called Alternative Forms of Reassurance, if you'd like to look that up. Just because we only have a few minutes left, what's the role of testimonials? They play different roles in terms of timing and what they do for you. Just talk about that a second.

Blair: Remember this little rubric of; inspire early, reassure late. Testimonials is a form of helping relationships. Involving others to help you close the sale is one way to think about it, or help inspire change in the person that you're dealing with. An early version of how your clients can help is really brief, inspirational testimonials on your website. You think of book blurbs, like one sentence, an incomplete sentence, two sentences maybe, that's really inspiring. "Sales went up. The arrow went right up off of the sales chart." I'm being triumphant.

"I laughed. I cried. I brought up through my nose. It was much better than cats. I'm going to see it again and again." These little movie review blurbs, book blurbs, those belong on your website to get people thinking about how good things could be. Later on, to reassure, you don't show the same testimonials. That's where you would consider using references if you felt it was appropriate. I think we've talked about that before. You don't like using references. I don't either, but there's a time early in my business where I had to lean on them quite heavily.

David: Certain buyers expect them. It's hard to talk them out of it.

Blair: That's right. If a buyer expects it, you should be in a position to be able to offer some. You can have written testimonials that are more in that they're longer. They're more actual, factual, and descriptive. It would be, "Worked with this agency over multiple years. They have never let me down." Again, the purpose of this late testimonial or what I would call a reference, and this might be a reference I can't reference in writing, is to calm the nervous, late-stage client down, and let them know that if they hire your firm, everything's going to be okay.

David: The next tool we need to talk about, we're just talking about why all these little tools fit together, and at what point, and what their purpose is, is the one-page proposal. I think if we think about the one-page proposal in this context, it makes sense because we're giving them so much of the information that we would otherwise put in a proposal in other ways, which takes a lot of the pressure off of the proposal to communicate all that. This is a really deep topic that you cover a lot in the Pricing Creativity book. That's the point, that you can take some of the pressure off by covering these other things in other ways, but there are still some things left to be on this one page, right?

Blair: Yes. Think of it as a valuable constraint-driven exercise. You can only have one page to communicate your proposal. What do you do?

David: Seven-point type. That's what you do.

Blair: Yes. First thing you do is embrace the idea that you can't communicate everything. Therefore, there's information you should have communicated earlier. There's information you're going to want to communicate later in the contract, and it does not belong in the proposal. The proposal is really a conversation with one page of written support. Feel free to leave a whole bunch of stuff out and just reference it and use it as a reference guide for the conversation. All of that stuff that I give our listeners hell for cramming into your proposal, it's not like it's not valuable information that should be imparted at some point, just this is the wrong place for it.

David: We focused a lot on turning presentations into conversations, where you are learning information from the client. There's also a certain element of you needing to communicate certain things in different phases. Those phases are qualifying, value, and closing. Can we flip this around and say, "All right, there are some things we need to communicate to the client. It's not all just learning from the client." What are those things that we need to communicate to the client in those three phases; qualifying, value, and closing?

Blair: In the conversations itself, and as I said earlier, we're using the conversations to gather almost all of the information we want gathered. The exceptions would be if we're going to use a needs assessment. We're not going to get into that here. There are also some things we would communicate in the conversation. I addressed the point of just checking in with the client. "Is there more you need to know about us?" Beyond that, you just think of these three human-to-human conversations that we talked about in the episode, the four conversations, qualifying, value, and closing.

In the qualifying conversation you're vetting. One of the things you're trying to communicate subtly is the fact that we are discerning and we don't work with just everybody. In the value conversation, you're often pushing the client to explore terrain that is bigger than they initially stated. "I need X."

David: Enlarging their vision. I love that thought. "You came to us wanting to solve this and you're wondering if we can solve it." That's not the question. The question is, "How much bigger do you want to go than this?"

Blair: Oh, that's a great way to phrase that. You're trying to communicate that. When you have senior people on the client side of the table at the table, they love going there. Middle managers, maybe not so much. You're also communicating pricing guidance. Even if they've set a budget, you're trying to expand that budget if you feel it makes sense to do so based on the potential value to be created. Then, in the closing conversation, you're simply facilitating. You're putting forward multiple options on one page. You're subtly communicating that there are different ways that we can help.

"You're free to choose the right option. We're okay with any of these options that we've put in front of you." Also this idea that, "We're not over-invested in the sale. We don't have sunk costs. If there's negative feedback you need to share with us, we're okay with it. You can tell us we're not the right firm for you. You're not going to hurt our feelings. We didn't stay up all night doing this 50-page PowerPoint deck." That's some of the subtle things we're trying to communicate through the mechanism of the conversation, which is primarily about collecting information rather than communicating.

David: To summarize what we're talking about, there are six things here. Most things you want to communicate, you try to do so before the first conversation. That takes the pressure of having to spew all this stuff. They can pick up some of it through the website primarily and other ways. Second, in the conversation, do you ask as many questions as you can, not busy sort of questions, but ones that are legitimate that makes the prospect listen carefully and feel heard?

Third, you want to remember to stop at certain points and just make sure that the client doesn't need something else from you that's distracting to them. You refer to it as checking the box. You just stop at several points to just make sure that that's being done well. Fourth, win yourself from the presentation and the lengthy proposal. All this ties together because you couldn't do that unless you were seeing how the information flows at different stages and getting the important things out of the way as early as possible.

Then, fifth, sharing proprietary process late. This is more to address any fears that they might have, that you haven't done this before or that you haven't regularly come up with great results with the client. Then finally, once you obtain the expert position, do not give it back. That's one of the things that we've talked a whole lot about. It's something that you'll see woven through a whole lot of episodes. It's flipping the position from being a vendor to an expert. Once you get that, make sure you hang on to it. What else do you need to add here? I like the fact that we're wrapping a lot of many conversations into one big one.

Blair: I wouldn't add anything, David. I think that's a nice summary and we can wrap it right there.

David: Thank you, Blair.