Hard Lines, Soft Lines

Inspired by some observations of what sometimes happens to people on the journey from vendor to expert, Blair sees some newbie Win Without Pitching devotees going too far–power tripping.

Transcript

David C. Baker: Blair, this is one of those beautiful sessions where I get to embarrass you which is not that hard to do, honestly, but you set me up with this. You introduced the idea, and I've got some other things-- Trust me, I have some other things I want to say, so you go ahead and tell us what we're going to talk about, and then I have some other things I want to say. Okay?

Blair Enns: Oh, this is a no-win situation.

David: That's true. That I can agree with.

Blair: I come to you in this vulnerable moment needing to pay penance for the monsters that I have created in my professional career. You turn on me when I need you the most.

David: I am tired of people throwing your bullshit in my face, so I'm consulting with a client and they'll say, "Well, Blair says, it's like blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, something about value-based pricing, blah, blah, blah, never responding to RFPs, blah, blah, blah." I'm saying, "Is my name Blair? Why are you talking with me about this?"

Blair: The impetus for this is in the last week or so, a couple of people have publicly, in different forums, somebody on Twitter was in a negotiating situation and asking for advice and said, "I know what Blair Enns would do. He would say no." My reply was, "No, he wouldn't."

[laughter]

David: You just walked right into that. You said no, so are the people that you're going to use as examples, are they listeners to this podcast?

Blair: Other than that one tweet, there's another, I won't say where it happened, I won't give away--

David: What state, male or female?

[laughter]

Blair: It was basically a new win without pitching devotee, and was quite proud of how difficult they were being to all of their clients and creating all these new policies around things that they would do. This is the pattern, I'm calling this topic hard lines, soft lines. Win Without Pitching in a nutshell in its simplest terms is about you moving from the vendor position in your relationship with your clients and prospects to the expert practitioner position where you have more power, power to take control of the sale and the engagement to charge more, et cetera.

When we empower people to make this switch to show up differently, to be seen differently by themselves first and by their clients and prospects second, it can occasionally trigger a bit of a power trip in some individuals and they get a little too carried away, a little too absolutist about the philosophy. Often, I find out, much later, there have to be many where I never find out at all, but there have been many stories where I find out years later that this person has misapplied some of these ideas, has taken too much of a hard line and has actually impaired themselves even though they may feel better about themselves in the business. The net effect on the business, it might not even be positive, it probably is positive net but it could be so much better.

David: It's almost like they're like, "Look at what I just did, the shutdown, all the opportunity that's coming my way with this new tool I've just used." Maybe there's a little bit of room for nuance. This is a little bit like they sell more SUVs and pickup trucks per capita in Texas than any other place. This is what happens when somebody gets one of these, they drive around like they can do no wrong. It doesn't matter if there's rain or snow. It's like, "I can conquer the world," and it doesn't quite work that way.

Here's the question I'm really interested in. Is there something about the pent-up being walked on for so long that turns people into early monsters before they give themselves a dope slap and realize I need to tone it down a little bit?

Blair: Yes, that's a great way to think about it. Another way that I would phrase that is you go from years of oppression, of being the oppressed, and you're suddenly freed and you become the oppressor because you feel like it's been so hurtful to you to not have your expertise recognized and valued, to be seen as just another vendor with innumerable direct alternatives, to go from that state where the client has all the power in the relationship to now being seen as the expert, to having some power.

Some people go too far and feel like-- they won't tell the story to themselves, but this is how I see it. Now, they are going to turn the tables on their clients and they are going to treat them the way they've been treated when they were powerless, they feel drunk with power and they become a little bit oppressive. I see that. It doesn't always last. Usually, it's just a backlash to being freed and realizing that you have more power.

It's just a backlash to that, and usually, people, it kind of settles out over time, but it doesn't always. Here's-- I may have told the story before, but I was having a conversation with an agency principal a few years back, and I had worked with her firm a dozen years earlier, 10 years anyway. We were catching up, and she said, "Oh, you'd be so proud of me. I got an RFP from a Fortune 500 firm the other day and I said no." I said, "Great. Then what? Then what did you say?" She said, "Nothing. They went away." I went, "Oh, my God, what have I done?"10 years of this.

David: They went through all these seminars and what they learned was they just need to say no more.

Blair: Yes, and a lot of that is on me, especially in the early days. I think a lot of us are guilty of in our younger days, we get hold of these ideas, and we hold on to them so firmly, and it takes us a while to see the nuance. Probably at a time when I would work with her, I was more of a hardliner on many things. Now as the years go by, I see the subtlety and the nuance and the gray. A lot of that is on me, and this podcast really is about my penance and trying to write some of those wrongs. Now, I'm not claiming any legal culpabilities.

[laughter]

Blair: I would really like to clarify that right now. Right?

David: Yes.

Blair: If you want to sue me, my name is Blaire Enneses, and I live in Toronto.

David: There's hard lines and soft lines, what you're saying is, listen, these principles are really useful to learn in a black and white world, but they need to be applied with some nuance, and there are some harder and softer lines. You're going to give us next some guidelines that will help people take the purist approach and understand how to apply some nuance to it.

Blair: Yes, but it just strikes me that maybe we should talk about, for new listeners, what are we talking about when we say these principles? Some of the core one without pitching principles, I already articulated the key one, this idea that you want to occupy the expert practitioner position in the relationship where you have more power. You achieve that through a combination of positioning, through how you generate leads, and through how you conduct yourself in the sale.

Other principles just worth noting here. We advise people to, where appropriate, create obstacles in the sale for the client to overcome, or seek behavioral concessions. If you just listen to this and don't understand the nuance of it, you might get yourself into further trouble, but don't be the polite compliant rules follower. It's not the polite compliant rules followers who win.

You want to push back occasionally, where appropriate, professionally, respectfully, and you want to see if you can get the selection process changed in your favor. We've talked about this in numerous episodes. Because if you can get even a moderate concession, behavioral concession granted to you, that is a sign that you're seen as meaningfully different, and you should see that as an invitation to proceed.

Instead of blindly going into all of these competitive situations, and doing whatever the client asks of us, we are more discerning, we are more likely to say no, hard nos sometimes, and soft nos other times, and we'll talk about that. We're more likely to ask the client to do something for us in exchange.

David: Right. One of the things that has been a pretty constant theme in the episodes where I've interviewed you is that even though these concepts are somewhat pure, and need to be viewed that way, they need to be applied with some sort of consideration. You've talked a lot about how your client base is a portfolio. Some of your clients would have different arrangements than others, that's impacted by whether you have a whole group of people who would otherwise have nothing to do.

There's room for compromise, but we still keep it Northstar in front of us and we recognize the best behavior we're looking for, but it can't always be applied purely. That's how I would summarize it. I hope that's accurate.

Blair: Yes, that is accurate. I'm glad you brought up the portfolio approach to your client base. That's an idea that comes from Ron Baker, author of numerous great books on value-based pricing. The way you're using it here is just to recognize that like in a portfolio, all of your investments are different, and they balance out to your risk level. In this case, all of your clients are different, not just on the pricing domain, they're all individuals and they recognize and value your expertise to different extents.

There are different buyer types as we've talked about in a recent episode, so we don't want to take this one-size-fits-all approach to everybody. There are times when you will find yourself in a negotiation and you have to draw hard lines. That might be with procurement, it might be with the owner of the business. There are times when you find yourself in a conversation with a respectable client who really is interested in doing business with you, and is interested in this idea of fairness, but is constrained by the people they work with, or the policies they have to live with, or the budget they've been assigned. This one-size-fits-all, always saying no, always trying hard lines, creating too many policies, that will backfire. We need to find some middle ground, we need to find some nuance.

David: Every time a prospect pushes back on you should not be taken personally, like you're losing. I'm not good at this, and I'm surprised at how many times I misread signals, even when I've had the opportunity to read thousands of signals and I'm still misreading them thinking that this calls for a firmer response to stand up for myself and my policies and it's like, "No, David, that's just you getting in the way." Just go into it with maybe better expectations, giving people the benefit of the doubt and applying a little bit of nuance, and then tightening the screws if you need to?

Blair: Yes.

David: You talked about a spectrum, we have flat no to everything, "I'm in charge," and then the other is where you're the very compliant order taker. What are some of the middle ground softer forms of resistance that could actually be more appropriate for a given situation but don't just close the door?

Blair: The first one is this idea of a third way that very little in life is binary, this like yes or no? We often find ourselves in a sales situation where it's stated or implied that like, "Listen, we either do it my way or doesn't happen," and there are times when it might make sense for us to push back and say, "No, we have to do it my way or it doesn't happen," but, usually, almost always, there is a third way. There's a third way that's not necessarily a compromise, it's a way to do this that nobody has thought about.

The friend of mine, a mutual friend of ours, that introduced this idea to me, I was traveling with him recently, and we're in this dilemma. He brought these cases of wine and we're trying to go get on a small plane, the size that you used to fly like a seven-seater or something. They're saying, "No, these packages are too big," so it's like, "Okay, well, what are the options here? We can't talk them into it, it looks like maybe we have to leave them behind," and he's just completely unflappable about it all. These are packaged up in styrofoam meant to travel, he's got better taste in wine than I do.

Just keeps working through the problem, and then finally, we figured out, cut them in half because the storage space is very small on this plane, as you might recognize. Cut it in half and take it to this person down the hall who will wrap, these people who wrap things in airplanes, and just completely unflappable about it all, not for a second thinking this isn't going to work out. It's like, "No, there's a creative solution here and we're going to find it."

There's almost always a third way. Somebody once said to me, and I've quoted this before, that no is intellectually lazy and I really like that idea in a lot of contexts, sometimes no is a negotiating stance, or it's a line that you will not cross, but when you have a client who does want to do business with you, who has some of the hallmarks of being a good client, you don't need to punish them, there's no need to be a hard ass, look for a third way.

David: You don't have to win, they don't have to lose.

Blair: Right. There was a time in my life where I was like I would roll my eyes at the idea of win-win negotiations, my younger self would do that, and I still think some of the win-win negotiating guidance, I'm not a big fan of, but generally speaking, we do need to be thinking win-win when it comes to our clients, and if we're value pricing, you cannot value price if you're not in a win-win mindset. This idea of, "No, it's my way or the highway," we got to let go of that, there's always a third way. No is intellectually lazy. With a good client, find the third way.

David: I like the example used at the beginning where somebody was very proud of saying no to the opportunity for a large firm's RFP, but there was opportunity buried in there and there probably was a way to maybe nuance it and do something that wouldn't have compromised their principles, but would have been good for the client too.

Blair: Exactly.

David: What's another one?

Blair: This idea of give to get, this symbiotic relationship where I'll do something for you if you do something for me. The client asks something of you that might be overly onerous, or might be a proposal at an inappropriate time, it might be for you to get on a plane, incur some sort of hard costs or even just soft cost of time for you to do something that takes a lot of your time. You can draw a hard line on that, but with a good client, you might have to compromise a little bit. When you compromise, ask them to do something for you.

I often talk about the last piece of business I closed in my agency career. It was a Fortune 500 company, one of the world's largest retailers. I'd been working on them for a while, and at some point, it was like, "No, you're getting on a plane and coming down here and you're going to kiss the ring. I have to meet you in person before I will even put you on the consideration list."

It was not in my nature to do that and I tried to do everything but do that, because I felt it was giving some power away. Eventually, I just conceded, "Okay, this is the way this has to be." Let's get on the plane, let's go down there, let's say the polite things, let's not be too needy or too vendory. Let's just have a good human-to-human conversation and then that person can check the box and say, "Okay, I've met with them. They don't seem like serial killers. We'll consider them for projects."

David: What did you get out of that?

Blair: Out of that meeting, nothing initially. I kept working it for a few months and then, eventually, we got an opportunity to pitch on us against four other firms. I've told this story, and in the end, we weren't able to successfully derail that, but we had so clearly changed the conditions in our favor that it was pretty obvious we were highly likely to win, and we did.

David: A third one you've listed here is "We don't typically--" and then you would kind of finish that sentence. I'm gathering that part of this is to explain that we do have a policy about this, but because you're special, I'm making an exception for you, or what's behind this?

Blair: We've talked about invoking policy before. I think not enough firms invoke policy when they're pushing back. A great example of a policy that I think most firms should consider is when you are asked to submit a proposal to people you have never met, and I don't mean face-to-face, get on a plane, but had a conversation with. You can say, "As a matter of policy, we don't write proposals for people we've never met," or, "As a matter of policy, we won't consider writing a proposal until we talk to the end client." That's a place where I think you should draw a hard line of policy.

I also believe that firms should push back on RFPs when they are asked to write an RFP, but I don't think you should cite that as a policy. I think that's where you should preface your no or your resistance with the words, "We don't typically". Instead of saying, "It's our policy, we don't reply to RFPs," I would say, "We don't typically respond to RFPs." Then pause, say nothing, and create that silence that allows the client to give you some really valuable information on how that resistance, that objection has landed.

Whatever the client says next, there will be a lot of information about how much power you have in the relationship, but you're leaving the door open, a crack. If the client says, "Well, see you later then," you can say, "Well, hold on a second. From time to time we make exceptions. Let me ask you a few more questions." "We don't typically," is a much softer version than "We don't," or, "As a matter of policy, we don't".

David: It gives you a chance to explain the policy, provides more of an openness. I like that a lot. What's a positive no, which is another thing you've listed here? I'm having trouble understanding what a positive no means.

Blair: A positive no is when you say no with the enthusiasm of a yes. There are different variations on a positive no. Somebody asks you to write a proposal, you can say, "Oh, I'd be happy to write a proposal for you when it makes sense to do so. Let me ask you a few more questions." That's saying you're not getting a proposal right now until I get things checked off of my list, but it doesn't sound like a no. Another way you could respond to that is, "I'm not in the proposal writing business." I love that line. I love it a little bit too much.

[laughter]

David: I think you're inching towards that power stuff you're talking about.

Blair: This is me playing. Certainly at this point in my career, too, selling is playing. The pressure is off. I'm having fun, so I'm happy to deliver that line, but I need to be careful about modeling that language because somebody who's young and building a fledgling business, yes, maybe they can make that language work for them, but some people can't. That's one of the issues here, David, is I will state a point, a principle, some specific words, model that language, and some people are really able to onboard those words and make them work.

I don't know if it's emotional intelligence, maybe you have a theory on this, or some people are more literal than others, but some people will take those same words, say them, and I will cringe. Well, in some cases, it could be because the person saying them doesn't really have any leverage and doesn't necessarily realize that, so, for instance, they might not be a well-positioned firm, or something else that you and I have talked about a lot is how you build a business by saying yes a lot and then the latter stage, you really improve that business by saying no.

People are at different stages along that path, but if they look ahead and they listen to somebody modeling language, where they're further along, away from yes and towards no, that's such a desirable position to be in that sometimes people say, "Oh, if I just model this language, then the world will open up to me," but it's not that way. This kind of language, this kind of modeling, it's not stuff you can absorb from other people, it needs to be built really, really slowly in the trenches. When you start acting like somebody besides yourself, you'll use language that doesn't resonate as real from this human who's speaking and that's where it can be misused, I think.

David: One of the things I like about our training, we do, Win Without Pitching, so in the public workshops, it's me and a member of our coaching team. It might be Shannon Lee, it might be somebody else. I love that we will model language, and so I'll model some language in a scenario. I imagine, and I've heard this from a bunch of people, people will try to channel their inner "Blair", but then somebody else on the team with an entirely different personality and motivational makeup will model the same language-- Let's just use Shannon as the example.

Shannon is far more empathic and caring than I am, and so she can take the same principles and pretty close to the same language and deliver a different effect to the same outcome.

When you see different people with different personalities modeling the same language, something clicks in your brain and tells you, "Oh, I don't have to be either of these people, and if one of them is more aligned to my personality, I can channel them to a certain extent, but I can also find my own way to make these ideas and these words or words like them mine."

Blair: Yes. One core principle to me is it's got to be wrapped in respect. It can't come across as dismissive or unkind. It has to almost always be a reluctant line in the sand. It's like, "Oh, I wish I didn't have to say this, but I feel like I do. Here's the reason why. Let's see if we can figure out a way to get around this or something," which I don't think we want prospects to get the sense that we're haughty or arrogant or too full of ourselves. That's not the right approach either.

David: Yes, but every once in a while, you need to put a head on a pike. I told a client yesterday-- He has 60 people, so I felt like he could waste somebody every month, and I just said, "You probably need to have a public hanging in the square every month, just pick somebody at random, people will start listening to you more carefully." That's probably not great advice.

Blair: How are we still in business?

David: Are we? Maybe it's just you and I talking. I don't know. You have another soft, hard-line thing around value, talk about that a minute?

Blair: Yes, just this idea of if you stay focused on value, everybody is better off because, typically, sometimes like a lower level client person will come looking for a specific solution in a set timeframe at a set budget, but generally speaking, somebody higher up in the client organization, the reason they're talking to you is there's this issue of value creation.

As the sale goes on, we and the client, in particular, tends to get focused on all these wrong little things, the specs. The way I think about it is in the beginning, they come to you and their vision is on the horizon. They're thinking about a big, new, beautiful future, and as they get closer to buying, their vision drops, and they start to see all of the problems and the little issues around their ankles, and your job is to lift their chin and remind them of the vision and the value to be created here.

That applies to us too, so we remind them and we have to remind ourselves first, and that keeps elevating the conversation onto what we're trying to accomplish here. I'm not going to model anything on this, but what you're essentially doing is these objections come up. Sometimes you're just-- I don't want to overstate this, I don't want people to take this too literally, but sometimes you're just ignoring the objections and saying, "Hey, yes, all of these little things are true, but let's stay focused on what we're trying to accomplish here. I'm sure you will agree that once we create this value, these other things will take care of themselves, or they will have been worth it," et cetera.

Just the idea of staying focused on value, and I wanted to talk about that because when you are embracing the ideas of value-based pricing and considering-- I'm not even saying pricing based on value all the time, but you're having a value conversation and you're thinking in terms of value, you should be thinking out loud, you should be keeping the conversation focused on value. When you do that, back to the point that we made at the top, you cannot value price without being in a win-win mindset. That solves a lot of problems, just staying focused on value.

Some people think, "Oh yes, we're always focused on value," bullshit. Most people in a sale, in an agency, you get into the sale, you start thinking about value, but then you default to, "What are we going to sell them? What do we usually charge to do this?" Et cetera. We get distracted by products or services, by the prices that we usually set, by the constraints that we see, and we don't stay focused on value long enough, and that's one of the reasons why the value conversation, as we talked about in the episode dedicated to it, is-- the framework for it is simple, but it's not easy. It's not easy to stay focused on value, it's really easy to get distracted by other little things.

Rambling way of saying if we stay focused on value and we keep the client focused on value, then we will have a more nuanced conversation. We will be in a win-win mindset rather than a win-lose hard lines mindset.

David: One of the things that you wanted to talk about at some point was how this advice might be different for different people, not just a different person on the other side of the selling scenario, but also the different person selling so that what might work for some personalities might not work for some other personalities. Are there some bigger categories or buckets that we can put people in to help them think about how this applies to them or to the person on the other side of the table?

Blair: If I take what's known as the Three Needs Theory of Motivation or sometimes referred to as McClelland's Needs Theory, it's basically people are motivated by three different things, and maybe have evolved slightly, different language from McClelland over the years, but affiliation, the need to connect with others, competitive drive, the need to win versus others, and power, the need for authority and respect.

If you have high affiliation needs, and these are big sweeping generalizations I'm making, but if you have high affiliation needs, you tend to be compliant in the sale, and you don't want to push back. If your competitive drive is high, you tend to win at whatever cost, you'll do whatever is required even if that sees you giving your power away for free, but if you have high power needs as I do, so I'm in the 96 percentile of the general population--

David: For the record, I don't you.

Blair: You do, it's just not as high as mine.

David: No, no, no.

Blair: Your competitive drive is significantly higher than mine and your affiliation needs are negative.

David: Okay. Keep going.

Blair: If you have a high power needs, if you have high need for authority and respect, this win without pitching approach will really speak to you, will really resonate with you, but there's this line-- Do you remember Maxwell Smart-

David: Yes.

Blair: -from the '70s, I guess? I think it was in Black and White, it was a TV show, so he's-- it was a comedy show. He's a secret agent, and he used to have this line at the end of many episodes, "If only he had used his power for niceness instead of evilness," and I think of that a lot because somebody with high power needs who gets a hold of this win without pitching approach, they're freed from the vendor role they've played. These are the ones who start to use their new power for evilness instead of niceness. If this approach really gravitates to you, you need to be careful that you're not overdoing it.

You just need to ratchet it up a little bit, set your natural self free, and now your challenge is reigning it in, making sure you're not going too far, drawing too many hard lines, being too obstinate, using power just for the sake of using power.

David: Where does that information, where do those signals come from? Is it somebody else on your staff who winces when you say something? Is it the fact that your new business successes have completely moved to zero? Where are those signals coming from? Or is it really just paying more careful attention to yourself and listening more carefully?

Blair: That's a good question, and I think about the signals from your staff. Of course, the signals will come from everywhere, including the client, but even if you're not overdoing it, you're going from showing up for a bunch of years as the vendor and then one day coming into work with an entirely different mindset, and taking that mindset into these conversations with new prospective clients, will make people on your team uneasy. It will make the people whose affiliation needs are out of whack with their power needs. They will cringe at what I would consider to be appropriate behaviors. Don't treat every item of feedback as valid or actionable.

David: Some people might just be overreacting for the wrong reasons. How would you wrap this up with some key lessons for people?

Blair: I would just say if you identify with this high power need, when you think it's possible you might be overdoing it, if you find yourself gleefully making a list of things that you're going to say no to, if your prospects start crying on the phone in the next new business call, then you are gripping the bat a little too tightly, and you just need to relax a little bit. You're probably going into bully territory. If that's you, if you're listening to this, and you have crossed the line a little bit, you probably see it in yourself right now, just relax.

I would also say my guess is you're probably saying too much in the sale. You have all of these new policies and things that you want to communicate to the client, just say less than what you really want to. You will communicate your expertise as much through the content of the conversations, but also through just the way you conduct yourself. Just be quieter, be calmer, be more thoughtful before you speak. Don't be in a rush to put all of these objections in front of the client.

David: Maybe be more generous in some of the assumptions you're making about people on the other side, instead of reading fights into everything.

Blair: There was a time when I saw every sale as a fight on behalf of my clients. That's not a healthy way to look at it. The key word here is nuance and then this idea of win-win.

David: You made some notes here at the bottom of my notes, do you want to speak to that? Because I thought it was really profound about the role of policies in our life and how it changes when policies are implemented.

Blair: Yes. I was just thinking about this and I couldn't help but listen to some of the sales calls that I've never heard, just picturing how some of my clients are selling. I was just thinking that we're navigating a very nuanced world and policies, what they do for us is they project our hopes in an ideal world. "This is the way we want the world to work. This would be a fair world."

Each application of a policy in a world that isn't perfect is just a starting place, and we have to decide really carefully in each case where we want to deviate. We're not the Russian army here, trying to subjugate somebody who wants to work with us. What a crazy idea that is? We assume this is somebody that wants to work with you, understand that they've been on the selling receiving end from 20 agencies over the years who they don't quite get it and now you're using new language, and maybe you're standing out from the sector. They understand the way the normal sector is. Give them time to adapt to what you're talking about.

To me, selling is such a beautiful dance where there's so much give and take. It's not memorizing all of your policies and then spewing them out one by one and then realizing that somebody's crying on the other end. No, it's really about a lot of give and take and a lot of nuance that's driven by some principle positions that matter to you but they're not life and death.

They're more, "This is where I would like things to be." We're in a nuanced world, let's treat people with respect and not take these principles we've learned and say, "Oh, damn, and I am so tired of getting trodden on in this world. Next time I get a chance to sell to somebody, this is what I'm going to say, then I'm going to see how that just cuts their legs out from under them because they deserve it." That's not what we're trying to do.

David: Yes. "The next client is going to pay for all of the bad clients."

Blair: [laughs] We are trying to land new business here. Let's remember that. Shifting a little bit towards our terms, but it's not going to happen overnight. It's not fair to try to turn a shitty client into a good one either. If they're not a good client, they're not going to be receptive to some of these messages. Just let them be somebody else's shitty client.

David: This has been good. Thank you, Blair.

Blair: Thanks, David.