Myth of “I Just Need More Opportunities to Get in Front of Prospects”

David draws a picture for Blair about the implications of this statement he hears almost all of his clients and prospects say about being able to close new business.

David sees this:

And wishes he saw more of this:

Transcript

Blair Enns: David, were you ever a fan of the Gonzo journalist, Hunter S. Thompson?

David Baker: Not at the time, but I sure have enjoyed reading some of his stuff since then. I think I like the darkness he brings to--

Blair: Of course you do.

[laughter]

David: It's just that he's a simpatico. It's like, "Oh, yes, everything is bad." No. Why in the world are you asking? What is that have to do with this topic?

Blair: Because I think there's a scene in Where The Buffalo Roam, and it certainly comes up in his writings where he would have this deadline, whether he's writing for Rolling Stone, or he's writing a book, and the editor would be pacing, waiting to hear from him. It was the early days of the fax machine. I think they even called it a Mojo, which might have been different than a fax machine. Then at the last minute, he would start faxing in just his note, scribbles on a notebook, and cocktail napkins and the editor would have to put it together in an article.

David: You still haven't explained.

Blair: [laughs] I'm looking at these drawings that you emailed me and said, "All right, here's what I want to talk about." It's like, "Okay, Hunter."

David: You seem to need some visual aids from time to time so I thought I would just move beyond the word.

Blair: Let's see how if we can stretch these two drawings out into 30 minutes. What's the topic?

David: The topic, I hear this from almost every one of my clients, even prospects, where we have a nice chat, but we don't end up working together. They say something that sounds like this, "I really just need more opportunities. If we get in front of a potential client, we are really good at closing that opportunity." In that is buried all kinds of assumptions about they're ignoring the impact of positioning or lead generation how there may be overstating their ability to sell. I must be weird, because I don't think I'm a very good salesperson but most people I talk with who run the firms that you and I work with, they believe they're really good salespeople and what they need is just more opportunities to do that. Maybe that's right. You agree with them?

Blair: No. I'm with you, I see the pattern everywhere. In fact, the last job I had when I left Agency World, and I launched Win Without Pitching initially as a consulting practice, I was working for an agency and the owner said to me, "While you're launching getting your consulting practice off the ground, why don't you continue to do new business for me?" We struck a deal, so I did that for the first year I was out here while I was getting the consulting practice off the ground. He said, "Hey, I want to pay you. I'm really good at closing, I just need more opportunity. I'm going to pay you based on the meetings you get me." I said, "I don't think that's a good idea." I gave him my reasons, and we'll talk about those reasons. I'm sure they'll come up.

In the end, he was insistent so I agreed. I remember it was $600. I got $600. I think it was $600 for every meeting I got him. Then there was some bonuses when he would close the business. I think it was three months in, I gotten him all these meetings, and he didn't close any and I said to him, "So is it--" I made a lot of money. Misaligned incentives, right?

[laughter]

Okay, you want meetings, I'll get you meetings. How's it going closing those stupid meetings?

[laughter]

David: $600 for a meeting, and I'll give you $100 bonus if the person is alive in that meeting.

[laughter]

Blair: I have so many stories of agency owners who have entered into similar agreements with either individual business development people, or outsource business development organizations, and I'm sure we'll get into those. But I'm with you. I see the pattern everywhere and I don't know if it is something in the nature of creative people or entrepreneurs. Everybody tends to think they are good closer, but the stats, anytime I crack those open in any of our clients' businesses, it's most firms, it's pretty clear, you're not a good closer. I think a good closing ratio is about one-third of good meaningful opportunities.

I think that's a pretty good ratio. Again, this is largely anecdotal, you might actually have some data around this because I'm not the data scientist, you are, but I think the typical firms closing ratio is way below that.

David: Yes. All I have is anecdotal data too. I would have said one in four so we're pretty close there. If you flip that thing around and say, "Okay, now what I'm doing in this meeting, I'm going to treat it thoughtfully, respectfully, seriously, but I'm looking to see if this is one of the three that I won't close out of the four." As opposed to, "Is this the one I can close?" It's just a completely different mindset.

Anyway, so to finish this anecdote, I was on the phone before this recording today with a client in Chicago. He was just asking me how do we prepare for these podcasts. I said, "Oh, I'll show you an example." I pulled up this email and shared my screen on Zoom. He just started laughing and I said, "What's up, Mike?" He said, "I say this exact thing all the time" He read the headline, "I really just need more opportunities, if I get in front of potential clients, we're really good at closing." I hope there's enough to talk about here today. I do think that enough people will identify with this to at least give us a chance to talk about why I think this is a bad perspective.

Blair: Now, this is the part where we talk about a diagram in a podcast.

David: Oh, man. It's good.

Blair: When people do believe this statement, and you and I have just agreed, we hear it a lot and we think it's almost always false, or it's almost always overstated. When they do believe this, what kind of problems does it create?

David: The first problem that it really creates is minimizing the role of all the things that come before the closing process. For me, that's things like positioning, obviously, your lead generation plan and so on. If you minimize the role that those have, then you try to increase the volume of your leads so that you can close more opportunity without necessarily increasing the quality of those. I'm totally fine with that ratio that you gave of closing one and three. The way to make you more effective, I think, is not to raise the ratio to two and three but to give you more appropriate opportunities. I don't want to speak for you here and you may not even agree with this, but I really feel like the better job you do in positioning a lead generation the easier selling is, because there's never any thought of trying to convince somebody or tell yourself that this is a good fit, because you've already done all of that pre work.

That's the big disadvantage in this is that you just don't take the first part of this seriously. In fact, you may just say you don't even need to be involved in that, that you're the principal and so you step in at the sales close opportunity, but somebody else is shaping what your firm stands for, and how you'll see those opportunities and so on. That's the first big one.

Blair: All that other work goes undone or gets delegated to others, and then you the owner ride in on the white horse at the last moment to close the deal.

David: Then make all kinds of promises that other people are just rolling their eyes as you're making. Then you've impressed the prospect at this point but then you disappear again, and there's a bait and switch and then somebody else comes in. It's the way things were done in the past that we didn't really blink an eye. But we still have some of that out there. This notion that "I just need more opportunities, I'm really good", it also dismisses the training and the business that you're in. You have a built-in incentive for people not to believe this. I believe with all of my heart though, that people really do need to think carefully about selling. The main thing in my mind about that is to really change the whole focus to make sure that you're facilitating a great fit, and you're stepping away from any feeling of persuasion at this point.

Blair: If I put this in the Win Without Pitching framework, and we did an episode on this, The Four Conversations of the Sale. This idea that there are four linear, discreet conversations, and you need to understand, where am I in the sale? What conversation is this? What's the objective of this conversation? What framework do I use to navigate to this objective?

The first conversation is the probative conversation where you prove your expertise and you move in the mind of the client from vendor to expert practitioner. That encompasses positioning a lead gen. The second conversation is the qualifying conversation where you qualify the lead to see if there's an opportunity there. That's a standard sales conversation. Then there's the value conversation where you endeavor to uncover the value that you might create. Followed by the closing conversation, and what you're saying here and what I see as well is so many principals in particular of the firm, they put all the chips on the last conversation. They make the bet on the closing conversation. They over-invest in that closing conversation.

They show up over invested in the sale, but they underinvested in the earlier conversations. It's like, let's put all of our effort into that last conversation. Our point and the point you're making here is that you know what, those preceding conversations, whether you think of them as conversations or not, but that work that needs to be done in advance, the positioning, the taking your value proposition to the marketplace, and then the careful vetting that should happen in the sale before you close. That's all really important work. When you handle that work well, closing becomes easy. Somebody who says, "I just need more opportunities. Get me in front of people I'm really good at closing." That's almost always somebody who has not done that early work, and they're continuing to overweight that last conversation.

David: Yes. That last statement you said is so critical. Those folks tended to not put the hard work in at the beginning as well, and they're also relying on techniques that smack of persuasion as opposed to helping.

Blair: You also make the case about it leads to over-promising. Do you want to unpack that a bit? I mean, if I'm understanding your chicken scratch properly here.

David: [laughs] What I mean by that is they get to this point and they want more of these. "Here they are. I finally have the opportunity I've been craving. I can't let this getaway." That prompts them to say some silly things in the moment that are just really not going to be true and it sets up the client relationship to fail quicker than it needs to because these closing opportunities are so important to the person that they can't waste them. That's the second big challenge here is that if they feel like they just need more opportunities, then every opportunity they do get is going to be viewed as precious. They will tend to compromise because they're afraid they won't get another one for a while.

The whole approach was a new business in my mind is we have to have this belief, and it needs to be true as well, not just a belief, that we can afford to waste some opportunity. Because if we have the approach that we must hang on to every opportunity, then we do all kinds of really stupid things. Mainly what we do is we over-promise at that point, and that shows up in financial performance at affirm.

If you look all across the world, the US where I am, Canada where you are, we don't have any monopoly on this notion of constantly underpricing our work in order to close it, then constantly over-servicing our work in order to get paid. That all stems from not understanding the sales process well enough and preparing so that we're free to walk away from an opportunity that isn't a good fit as opposed to holding onto it even when we know in our hearts that it's not a great one.

Blair: Yes. We all know what it's like to watch somebody clutch something too dearly. Afraid to let go. You're saying it shows up in pricing in the sale and discounting in particular. Then over-promising or over-delivering once you're into the engagement?

David: Over promising and then delivering even more than what you've promised. Yes, That's what I see happening.

Blair: Very often the agency owner who says "I just need more opportunities, et cetera. I'm a really good closer," They end up hiring an outsourced business development firm, outsourced lead generation. I think we've talked about this topic before. I don't think either you or I are big fans of that approach, but I know I see a time and a place for it. You see that pattern of going to outsource business development firms to pile volume onto these closing opportunities and what are the implications of that?

David: I do still see it happening. I don't see it happening quite as much, but there are more than a hundred people combined at the firms that are doing this for firms in our space. It's still a pretty big thing. Let's say I was running one of those firms and I had a digital or creative or marketing firm or design firm, whatever, call me and say, "Hey, I'd like to hire you to set appointments for me." One of the first questions I'm going to ask them is, "Talk to me about your positioning." I'm doing this for lots of firms. I'm setting appointments for lots of firms. Who am I going to approach? Who's going to warm up to the idea of have a meeting with you? Talk to me about your positioning.

Blair: Yes. What is it that I'm selling and who am I selling it to?

David: Yes.

Blair: They're going to want to hear really good answers to those two questions.

David: Right. Now, they're probably still going to take this project, even if you don't give them great answers, but they're not going to be as excited about it. Where I see the appointment setting working well, it's not very often, but where it seems to work really well is if the firm is already tightly positioned, we know exactly who our prospect base is, that set of prospects, and the firm just doesn't have the time to do it, but it's very established and it's really a matter of doing something specific. In that case, I've seen firms, I can give you specific names, I'm not going to now, but I can give you specific names of where that has worked year over year over year. The firm will typically pay seven to $10,000 a month. It's a minimum commitment of usually a year. Sometimes it'll get talked down to six or nine months like that.

The rest of the firms that use those services are usually excited the first couple of months because they get a couple of decent meetings and they get it off their plate and they feel like they're doing something by hiring another firm, but they hardly ever renew that contract, and they usually try to get out of it early because it just wasn't a good match in the first place.

It's an attempt to do something that's legitimate that is, "We need to pay attention to our new business efforts more seriously than we have," but the solution itself is usually not the right solution. You feel like you're delegating to somebody else. It's like saying, "I really want to get married. I'm so busy. I just don't have the time to go through the dating process, decide who I want. I'll just have my parents do it for me." That works in some countries, but it's not something we would usually consider.

I think new business and hiring, those are the two things that are the lifeblood of your business. I'm not going to hire a firm to do this, but if you believe honestly that you're great at sales and the only thing that's missing is opportunities to talk to prospects, then I can see why you would be tempted to hire a firm like this. I just don't think it works very well. The other place it does work would be if you're a really large firm and it's a very traditional new business process and you know that, and you're willing to play the RFP game, God bless your soul, then that could work as well.

Blair: If I think of the best firms that do this, and again, I'm not a big fan of this model, but the best, when you hire them and you say to them, "I just need more leads. I'm pretty good at closing." They'll ask you those questions. "What are we selling and who are we selling to?" Then they'll do an inventory of all your other new business assets. Do you have any reputation? Do you have any awareness out there? Have you already built a list? If you don't have any of those things in place, increasingly, they're going to push you to develop those things for that model to work. You end up doing all of the work that you're trying to run away from. It does feel like pushing a boulder up a hill. I think the purpose of us jumping on this statement that we hear a lot is just to say to people, if you find yourself saying that comment, "I just need more opportunities. I'm really good at closing," Maybe, trust us as a couple of people who've heard dozens, maybe more than a hundred people, say this, that it's almost universally untrue, and it's almost universally a sign that you are ignoring other work to be done on the business development front that actually makes closing easier.

David: Yes. If you go this appointment, setting route, you're going to find yourself in some very demoralizing conversations where the other person on the other end is not nearly as interested as you wish they were. I don't know how relevant this is to this discussion, but I can't help but thinking again, how we have this mistaken belief that the whole new business process is so fragile. It just takes somebody who's really good at all of those final closing conditions to make this happen. Instead of thinking, "no, if it's meant to happen, it probably is meant to happen."

You want somebody on the other end of the conversation who already wants to work with you for some reason, and this closing, not using your language, but using their language, the people that say "I just need more closing opportunities", that's not really the kind of conversation you need to have. If the prospect already wants to work with you. You're talking about different things. There's less of the pressure and so on. Yes, I'll admit I'll freely admit maybe there's not 35 minutes of things to discuss when we talk about this. I just really want people to rethink this idea that they just need more opportunities to close.

I think they need different opportunities and I'd like to see them concentrate. It's a zero-sum game. The more you concentrate on positioning the lead generation then the less you have to be all stressed out about each closing conversation because there is not the same pressure on it. It's a different thing, you're really exploring fit in a relaxed way and you're figuring out how you can help them. You're the one that knows all of this stuff, I've learned this from you, but people aren't-- At least once a week at least I hear somebody say this to me almost verbatim. It feels like there must be some book that everybody read and I don't know it yet but that must be the title or something.

Blair: [chuckles] Maybe there is. I probably have it in my bookshelf somewhere. You're describing two different scenarios. In one scenario where it is I just need more closing opportunities, you have the classic sales scenario where it's "I need more victims, I need more fresh meat, I need more people who invite me into their office and let me plug in the PowerPoint presentation and talk them into hiring me", versus the other scenario where two discerning professionals are having an open conversation discussing the merits of doing business together.

David: Right. And if you're are drawn to part B then concentrate on positioning lead gen and ways to facilitate a sale that are human and helpful. That's the nirvana that I'm aiming for.

Blair: That's great, let's end it right there. That was a beautiful summary. All right, thanks for this David.

David: Thank you, Blair.