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How to Sell Like an Expert with Blair Enns
103 Plays1 month ago
In this special episode, I sit down with Blair Enns—founder of Win Without Pitching, author of the industry-shifting book of the same name, and co-host of the hugely popular 2Bobs podcast. Blair’s newest book, The Four Conversations, breaks down the critical discussions every business should master for success: the Probative Conversation (positioning and marketing), the Qualifying Conversation (maintaining the expert position), the Value Conversation (pricing a client’s desired future state), and the Closing Conversation (helping the client select and commit).
We go deep into each of these four conversations—what they are, why they matter, and how mastering them can transform client relationships and profitability.
Along the way, Blair shares insights from his decades of experience helping creative businesses win smarter. Whether you’re running a production company, leading a sales team, or navigating growth, this episode is packed with practical wisdom and thought-provoking ideas you can put into practice today.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Crossing the Axis'
00:00:06
Speaker
You're listening to Crossing the Axis, the podcast that explores the commercial side of film production with your host, James Kebles.
00:00:24
Speaker
Welcome listeners and thank you for tuning in to the show.
Personal Growth in Sales
00:00:27
Speaker
Today's conversation is best introduced by Line. I've come to reflect on a lot these days. It states, I'm slowly becoming the person I should have been a long time ago. While this sentiment resonates across many parts of my life,
00:00:39
Speaker
It feels especially relevant to my approach to sales. For years, I did what most of us do. I followed my friendly instincts, leaned on enthusiasm, focused on building broad networks, and if I'm being honest, tried to persuade a little too hard.
Influence of 'Win Without Pitching Manifesto'
00:00:53
Speaker
It worked just enough to feel like progress, but then I found the Win Without Pitching Manifesto by Blair Enz. It was a wake-up call, 12 simple proclamations that completely flipped how I thought about sales. Principles like saying no to RFPs, talking about money early,
00:01:10
Speaker
and being specialized. These ideas were radical to me and total eye-openers. But more than the tactics, what really struck me was how the book stripped the slimy sleaze factor out of sales. Suddenly, I wasn't a slick persuader trying to win a deal. It shifted me to think more like a strategist or a guide. I became someone helping clients identify value, offering clarity, and solving real problems. I learned to deeply care. And the best part, the more I practiced, the better the results.
00:01:39
Speaker
Over the years, I've become a full-on Blair-Ends convert, I devour the Two Bobs podcast, I've studied the book Pricing Creativity, and eventually, I even went through the Win Without Pitching training program. That's where I really understood how to put the books to practice and learned to replace my hunches with discipline, guesswork with frameworks, and my anxiety with confidence. It was liberating.
00:02:02
Speaker
I no longer felt I needed to be the smartest person in the room. In fact, the more I acted like I didn't understand the room, the more clients trusted to let me lead them. Like thousands of agency owners and creative leaders around the world, I've been profoundly influenced by Blair's work. And that's why I'm thrilled to have Blair joining me today.
Guest Introduction: Blair Enz
00:02:18
Speaker
If you've followed Blair over the years, you already know he doesn't settle for the status quo. He's Canadian. So naturally he pulls a little inspiration from Wayne Gretzky and as he says, skates to where the puck is going, not to where it's been. It's with this forward looking approach to selling expertise that Blair's released a new book called The Four Conversations. And I can't wait to dig into it with him. So without further ado, Blair ends. Welcome to the show. Thank you, James. It's great to see you again.
00:02:43
Speaker
Congratulations on releasing another the book. Thank you. I was nine months pregnant with that one for two years. It's such a painful process to produce, give birth to a book, and I still have not recovered. I'm happy that it's out there in the world. It's not yet crawling, but I'm happy to be done my part. Is is happy how you would describe your current emotional state on the spectrum of releasing a book?
00:03:05
Speaker
I look forward to the day when I'm happy that the book is out there. I'm just kind of relieved and done. it's a pain It's the most painful thing I do is write books, the most painful and the most rewarding, and I'm waiting for the rewarding part to hit.
00:03:21
Speaker
Well, I'm very excited to dive into it. I recognize a lot of the book and I want to talk all about the details of it. But first I shared in the intro here kind of my aha moment in sales and marketing and the whole idea of selling. What was your aha moment that shifted your approach to sales and marketing?
Pivotal Sales Moment
00:03:39
Speaker
Well, I do remember the time I'm running a small office of a regional office of a larger agency and my boss is in town visiting me on a sales call and it's going well. And the prospective client says, okay, this is great. You want to come back? How about you come back with some ideas? He wanted some free creative concepts. And my boss said, sure. At the same time, I said no. I said, we never pitch. Like that was the line. And same time, my boss said no. And I forget how the meeting ended, but afterwards my boss, the agency president said to me, he said, Hey, I don't mind your approach. I'm okay with it. I just appreciate if you'd let me know beforehand. But I didn't know in that moment, I was going to be so fed up with being asked yet again to give my thinking away for free. So that was a moment. That's when I started to push back.
00:04:25
Speaker
I didn't really understand kind of the power dynamics i didn't understand how much power i leverage that i had but i didn't i knew i thought you know we're better than this we shouldn't have to do this our work is so good yeah so that was a moment and then when i finally somebody i went through sales training i'm a woman named paulina malley had a program in vancouver called the revenue builder and that same boss put me through the sales training program.
00:04:46
Speaker
he called me one day and said hey i hope you don't mind i signed you up for sales training i thought oh great i'm mature enough i can accept the fact that i'm in sales now let's go through training and then what i learned was it was a revelation to me and the the first thing i learned was it's not my job to talk people into things.
Shift from Selling to Helping
00:05:01
Speaker
ah A lot of us have an aversion to sales because we've all been on the bad side of some horrible selling practices and we know what bad selling looks like and we don't a lot of us just don't want anything to do with it. But as soon as you understand that it's not your job to talk people into things it's your job to look for people that you can help and to be open and honest and direct and pragmatic about whether or not there's a fit here, whether or not you can help keep their best interests at heart. Don't say yes to all the things that clients will reflectively or prospects will reflectively ask you to do in the sale. You don't have to fulfill every request. You have some power here. You strip that stuff away and really at the core, it's really just simple. It's adults having a conversation and we're all very good at conversations until the context is sales. Then for some reason,
00:05:51
Speaker
It all goes at the window which is be ourselves and say what we're thinking in a few other key principles and we can show up as the experts we are and it's actually quite easy but i i think we're all tainted by this idea of what the what a classic sales person looks and sounds like always brilliant you have the answer to every question your.
00:06:11
Speaker
You're not really listening to what the client saying because you're thinking of what you need to say next if you just let go of all of that like i often say and maybe you heard me say this in training if there's one thing i could do for you if i could wave my magic wand i would just reach into you and pull out every idea that you have about what it means to sell and then i would say.
00:06:31
Speaker
You're pretty good at what you do. Go have a conversation, see if it makes sense to do business with this person. If you think it does, come up with the appropriate next step. It's really that simple. I'm so glad that you mentioned the training as being this, perhaps a pivot point for you, because like I said in the intro, that was a pivot point for me. I'd already read a lot of your material and knew you quite well before I did the training, but going through the training changed it. And my understanding of it, and certainly the the the rigor you put people through in the training gets that practice in that's needed.
00:07:01
Speaker
Is this book that you've written a replacement for the training? Because I recognize a lot of the training principles that I have gone through with you in the book. And so is this a new way for people to get the training without going through the training? It really is our training program in a book. And so there was no small amount of trepidation about, does it make sense for me to put this out there into the world?
00:07:24
Speaker
A lot of other authors trainers consultants etc who have a methodology of grappled with the same thing and put it out there and i think almost everybody would agree afterwards that it's the right thing to do. What are the things that it does for me is in twelve hours of training there's a little bit too much of me talking delivering principles.
00:07:42
Speaker
And so one of the things this book will do is it's not a requirement for people to read it beforehand but if they choose to read it beforehand then they can get more out of the training we can do more exercises more practicing rather than downloading of information so there's some people who will never never go through training they'll never pay for training but they'll pay thirty dollars for a book.
00:08:05
Speaker
I'm okay empowering that. I imagine there are going to be some small firms where the owner reads this book and and says to all his team, all right, everybody read this book, we're doing this. We're now selling the wind without pitching away or we're going to use the four conversations model. And then it's okay, did you read the book? ah Yeah, yeah, i'm going to read I read the book.
00:08:24
Speaker
You didn't really read the book. So it's designed to do a lot of things just to codify our approach, put it out there in the world, reach a lot more people, obviously drive people to the training business. It will, to your point, there's some people who read it who won't need training. And for so others, it will be the validation that this is what they want to be trained on. And I'm okay with, with both.
00:08:43
Speaker
Is there a target person that you have in your mind when you wrote the book is it a owner in the creative space is it broader than that what are you thinking about. Yeah it's a great question so my first book which you reference in your opening the win without pitching manifesto published in two thousand and ten when i wrote that i was writing it to a designer and i i just saw this designer in my mind's eye and it was a woman for whatever reason and maybe she had a couple of staff or maybe not like solo designer or small firm and i'm fond of saying you heard me say it in training the target is not the market the target is that at which you aim the market is the broader area you're happy to hit some aiming for the designer knowing that i'm going to hit larger firms in the creative profession advertising design marketing digital etc and also knowing that there's an even broader market of other professionals.
00:09:32
Speaker
14 years later that book still sells very well it sold over a hundred thousand copies which is i'm pretty happy with for a niche book you know written to a designer and. There are, we've trained law firms and accounting firms and engineering firms and other professionals. So that was the that was the target audience. And I don't remember your cohort cohort when you you were going through training, but they're always outliers. So our value proposition was sales training for creative professionals. In a room full of 20 people in a workshop, there might be two or three outliers.
00:10:04
Speaker
who aren't creative professionals. And as the years have gone by, two or three has turned into five or six, seven or eight. So when I wrote the new book, The Four Conversations, a new model for selling expertise, I purposefully broadened this out. I wanted to write the book for the broader market. um I just got back from doing a speech to a bunch of consulting engineers. Did a speech to a bunch of accountants the other day. I did ad agency owners yesterday. So the audience is anybody who sees themselves as an expert first, either an advisor, a consultant, or a practitioner, an engineer, a designer.
00:10:43
Speaker
So they're the expert first, and that's their first job. Their second job that they have to do if they want to be able to do their first job is to sell that expertise. So it's really expert advisors and practitioners who also have to sell their expertise. This book is written for them.
00:11:01
Speaker
So let's break down these four conversations. All right, so I will remind you from your training, James. Do you want me to do it? Yeah, do. The first is the probative conversation.
The Probative Conversation
00:11:14
Speaker
Do you remember the objective of the probative conversation?
00:11:17
Speaker
Great question when i think of the property of conversation i think of it as marketing in my mind that's how i decide i think it's marketing its position to use your words the words that i use often when i think about this i call it a value proposition like that's how i can get into it like what is the value proposition and then how are you displaying that. And so you basically try to get other people to see your value, what you do and vet them away or to you one or the other based on not even talking to them. Is that right? yeah Very good. So the probative conversation is the first conversation. It's the most different from the other three because it happens without you present. It is a conversation that happens through your agents of essentially your reputation, your thought leadership and those people who refer business to you. So your best clients out there.
00:12:03
Speaker
the conversations that are being had about you and kind of on behalf and through through the material that you marketing material that you put out in the world so it really is a function of your strategy where are you going to play and how are you going to win your positioning how do you position yourself relative to your most direct competitors and then your marketing.
00:12:20
Speaker
How do you prove your expertise in the public domain so that you can drive inbound queries with you being seen as the expert and across the entire model. So this is ah the subtitle is a new model for selling expertise. And I say in the book, all models are wrong. Some are useful. So I'm not making a claim that the model is right. I am making a claim that it's probably useful to you across the entire model. There's this dichotomy of you can either be seen as.
00:12:45
Speaker
A vendor or the expert and the goal is for you to be seen as the expert and you sell from the experts high ground and if you can gain that high ground then you can let go of any preconceived ideas of salesperson you that salesperson you persona can just kind of wash away expert you.
00:13:02
Speaker
You're already there, you're already fully formed, you're already very good at what you do. You can step forward and you can use this pretty simple model to navigate through the sale. Now, it works when you're seen as the expert. So the probe of conversation is all about getting you seen as the expert before the first person to person conversation. So it's a effectively building reputation in the marketplace. And again, through positioning, through strategy, and through the marketing that you do, you drive an inbound inquiry,
00:13:32
Speaker
with you already in the expert position. So a vendor has lots of direct competitors and has no power in the buy-sell relationship. The expert is seen as meaningfully different and the client is willing to let the expert drive, driving the engagement and driving the sale. And a big part of the model, as you'll recall, is if you don't drive in the sale, you won't be allowed to drive in the engagement. So you're testing in the sale, does this person see me as the expert or do they see me as just in another vendor?
00:14:02
Speaker
what do you see as best and worst practices in this first conversation? Well, the worst practice is it doesn't happen. So let's take strategy and positioning and combine them into one and and basically say, so this is, you have to decide what business you're in, how are you going to be different? And different usually means some aspect of specializing. And then once, and I have some frameworks for how to do that or how to think through it in the book, And then once you're specialized, now you need to take that message to the marketplace and you effectively need to prove your specialism or your specialist expertise in the world so that you can build reputation. And, you know, increasingly that means putting content out into the world of various forms. So you're, you're putting your content out, but you're not.
00:14:50
Speaker
you know it's It's a little bit, this is an old topic and it's there's this conflict here where you know the book is called One Without Pitching. You're not solving the first book in the name of the business. You're not solving problems for free. But you are putting content out there that people can take and apply to their own business. And you have to accept that that's part of the way that you get found and you build reputation. And then the moment somebody asks you to apply that thinking to their business, that's when you charge.
00:15:16
Speaker
When people are putting out this content or sharing their expertise, I've always kind of driven people to not think about their expertise from their point of view, but to think about their expert expertise in the application of their client's market from which they work in so that they get a potential client who's seeing the content and seeing that they understand what this client's going through. They are even perhaps offering a solve for what their client is going through or an inspiration for what the client's are going through. So you're not talking about yourself. You're talking about yourself in the context of your client's market and what they work in. Do I have that right? Yeah, you absolutely have that right. So I'll, I'll be on a sales call with somebody and they'll say something about their situation. And I'll think, Oh yeah, that's, I hear that a lot, but I've never written about that. I'm going to write about that. Or something will come up in training as it often does a great conversation somebody says i got this specific situation that i haven't thought deeply about before so we have a conversation about it and whatever my answer is that's usually the beginning of. I will think through it more thoroughly by writing about it.
00:16:21
Speaker
not naming names or anything, by writing you know roughly a thousand words on it, I will actually formulate, I will formalize my thinking on the situation, and then I'll put it out there in the world, knowing that if one person has talked about this issue, others others are feeling it as well.
00:16:38
Speaker
One thing that I have asked people to do to try to inspire something within this probative conversation is to just go on LinkedIn and start reading about your potential clients until you get triggered. Either triggered good or triggered bad. You get triggered. And ideally, you get a little pissed off. And whatever emotion you felt, that's it. Right there. Tap into that. That is what you need to do. That's a little trick that I've kind of taught people. This is how you start thinking about writing. Get triggered.
00:17:08
Speaker
ah And LinkedIn is a great place to get triggered. Yeah. It's no Twitter, but okay. So let's move on to the next conversation.
The Qualifying Conversation
00:17:18
Speaker
The qualifying conversation. Talk to me about that one. Yeah. So this is the first person to person conversation. Ideally it's, um, an inbound inquiry comes to you with you in the expert position, but that it's not always the case might be outbound and outbound lead. They've never heard of you before. It might be an inbound lead where you just one in a sea of many, you're one of four on a consideration list.
00:17:38
Speaker
The qualifying conversation is the vetting conversation. This is where you vet the lead to determine if there's a fit and what the next step is. So if you if we think of it as a vetting conversation, recognize that both parties are vetting each other. But if you've handled the probative conversation well, and again, I say that glibly, like it's a quick conversation, that is the product of a lot of work and a bunch of time. You build this reputation. So if the inbound inquiry comes to you and they already see you as the expert, they've already largely qualified you.
00:18:08
Speaker
Now you have to qualify them. So you have a framework for qualifying them and it's, the framework's pretty simple. It's not rocket surgery. You just think about the types of clients you want to do business with the types of clients you'd rather not do business with the ones you absolutely will not do business with. And then what are the questions you need answered to determine whether or not there's a good fit here, whether or not you should waste your time on this opportunity.
00:18:35
Speaker
So you make a list of those questions and you simply ask them in the qualifying conversation. This is the simple version of it. And then there there's a framework for how you organize your questions. Again, it's not rocket surgery. It's pretty simple. But one of the keys to the qualifying conversation is if I think that how I was taught to sell to the extent that I was taught at all my first job, how it was modeled to me, I was taught to lean on passion and enthusiasm.
00:18:57
Speaker
So I see a lot of people getting so excited in a qualifying conversation. You should be like your doctor. You go to a new doctor for the first time. It's like, who are you? Why are you here? What's wrong? Can I help you? Yeah. And a list of questions. And a lot of these questions are somewhat diagnostic in their nature, not all of them. Some of them are just the nature of the organization. and um But some are diagnostic. Where does it hurt? What's going on? Why did you why did you reach out to me? What's your timeframe? What's your budget? Who else is involved? Like these questions. And you should be asked, your tone should be one of discernment.
00:19:27
Speaker
So it's not childlike glee. I'm so happy we're so, and oh, I'd love to do business with you. There's a place for that kind of sort of, there's a place for enthusiasm. It's not in the qualifying conversation. I'm not saying be impolite or cold. I'm just saying, don't allow yourself to get whipped into a frenzy about an opportunity that end up might end up being a big waste of your time.
00:19:48
Speaker
and it might not make sense for you to pursue. So be pragmatic, be discerning, use your framework, whatever it is, to ask whatever questions you need answered, and then decide qualified in or out. This is a good fit for us or it isn't. And then say to the client, hey, I think this is a pretty good fit here, would you agree?
00:20:04
Speaker
And the client might say, well, I don't know. I don't know anything about you. I have my own questions. Oh, of course. Go ahead. Ask your questions. Now we're qualifying each other at the end of this conversation. We're two adults. We will have an open conversation about, do we both believe there's a suitable enough fit to take a next step?
00:20:21
Speaker
One of the best pieces of advice I've ever received from you is when you're dealing with a potential client and they're being cagey about the budget and they're not giving you a number. Okay. That's fair. If I say $200,000, how does that feel? And you just anchor a number. Of course you anchor the number where your value is for the job. And then they say, Oh, oh, well that would be a little high. A hundred thousand. Is that where we are? That one might be a little bit better. Yeah, maybe, but.
00:20:46
Speaker
Okay. So are we talking about 75 to a hundred thousand? Would that be a fair enough range to be thinking about? Yeah, we could probably get, but maybe if it was really good, we could, you know, like it's just remarkable how well that technique works. So thank you for sharing that. And then at the other end is like, okay, was there a number you were hoping I would hit? Well, I kind of want to see what you can do for 10 grand.
00:21:06
Speaker
Okay, so we've got on the high end, 75 to 100 on the low end, you want to, I'll show you what we can do for 10. If we get there, unless you have an objection and you know, it doesn't make sense for you to be doing $10,000 proposals, but just to illustrate that, you know, a range is fine at this point, starting at 200, 175. Now we're, we end up at 75 to 10. Now we have a range and it started with an uncomfortable number.
00:21:30
Speaker
So you've determined there's a good fit, so you move into your value conversation. Let's talk about this, you know, this, you painted a vision of success, what success looks like as part of the qualifying conversation. What are the metrics? What's the value of hitting these metrics? If we could help you hit these metrics, create this value, what would you be willing to pay? And then you have this 200, 175, 10, 10 to 75. And then it's okay, well, let me go away and brainstorm with my team. I'll come back with some different ways that we can work with you at different price points in that range. So you come back and say, all right, there are three different ways we could do this. At the high end, I said, you were calling that last conversation, I said, would you spend 200? You said, i not 200. And I said, what about 100? You said, not 100. And I said, what about 75? And you said, yeah maybe, maybe.
00:22:12
Speaker
And then at a low end, you said you wanted to see what we could do for 10. So I got three different ways of we could work together. Let me start with the most expensive one. It's priced at $70,000. So pricing guidance should always get better. 200, 175. Oh, it's only 70. Meanwhile, the budget's 10. And now this is the closing conversation. I've got three different ways a we could work together. Now the closing conversation isn't necessarily as final as that the name might sound to some people. You know, if you think of, um,
00:22:40
Speaker
how most businesses do this most creative businesses once you produce a proposal it's like pushing all the chips in on one square and it's one lengthy thing. And it's a take it or leave it. And here's what we're going to do. Here's the price and here are all the guesses we've made. And here's all the rationale. Here's the reasons why you should hire us. and And it's like, Oh my God, it's all come down to this. But in our closing conversation, it's, Hey, recap the last conversation. So when we last talked, you said you wanted these things to be true. This much value. These are the key metrics. We had this discussion around price. All right. I've got three different ways we can work with you.
00:23:14
Speaker
ah three different price points let me walk you through each of them will have a conversation about which of these if any makes the most sense and after you do that the client might say okay i'll take the middle option or they might choose one or it might be. The next step in the ongoing conversation which is like okay well this is kinda like this one but i like some elements of this can we look figure this out can we can you get me some more information on this etc.
00:23:36
Speaker
You're looking for a verbal commit in a closing conversation. And then once you have a verbal commit, you have to move quickly because momentum late in the game is really important. Buyers are more sets in. um You want to keep people positive, keep them focused, thinking about the outcomes.
00:23:51
Speaker
That's how it all works together, the four conversations. The first one happens without you present. The three person to person ones are qualifying.
Understanding the Value Conversation
00:24:00
Speaker
Yeah, qualified in, vetted. This is a good one for us. Value conversation. How much value could we create for you here? What would be worth to you if we could help you create that value? Okay, we've got some pricing guidance. Here are three different ways we can help you create that value.
00:24:13
Speaker
A really big number that you weren't expecting initially. And then here's what we can do for your paltry budget. Doesn't look so good, does it? I have this other one in the middle. It's only 25 grand. It's only two and a half times your budget. But think about hitting those goals. Yeah. Where in this process do you prescribe sending a treatment? Nowhere. Interesting. Why is that? Well, I've just, we're we're modeling through this conversation.
00:24:41
Speaker
And I've just said to you, all right, I'll come back to you with three different ways we could do this. And I come back and I say, oh, the most expensive one is the most elaborate solution. We're going to do all these things, et cetera. And you know, we could talk a long time about what things you include in your most expensive option. And this is really where you think creatively and expansively, like you arrived at the number 200, 175, based on the value to be created, not based on what you think it would cost you.
00:25:06
Speaker
You might, if you're thinking from a place of cost plus, you might look at the project and think, well, this is only $20,000 project. But you go back and brief the team and say, okay, we could create all this value. Maybe it's half a million dollars in value. Maybe it's a million, two million in value. I want to know what can we do for $75,000? And the team goes, well, we couldn't spend $75,000 to do this. And you would say,
00:25:28
Speaker
This is a brainstorming exercise what's the highest degree of certainty that we could. Deliver to the client that this value will indeed be created think beyond anything we've done before you have an extra fifty grand what can you do with that fifty grand to make sure that this client gets the value that they're seeking. And they come up with something really interesting and different and then it's okay what can we do for ten grand oh not much.
00:25:55
Speaker
Okay. That's fine. I don't care if it's not much. What can we do profitably for 10 grand? Well, here's what we can do. Okay. Now let's come up with something in the middle. And then in the proposal, you go to the client here. There's different ways that we could work together at different price points. And when it comes to treatment that you should get paid to do a treatment, you should get paid for that. So that might be a first step. Like the cheap option might be, if you want to take this one step at a time, you want to see the treatment first for X dollars, we'll do the treatment. And then once you see the treatment, then we could talk about various levels of.
00:26:25
Speaker
our involvement to help make this happen, et cetera. So you've presented the options. You have gotten them to take a bigger swing than what their budget and thinking was originally at. And they want to go down that path of bigger than what they were anticipating. And they ask for some development of that. Is that where you said, okay, well, we'd be happy to do this treatment for you. We'd be happy to do that. It'll be $10,000. We'll have it done for you in one week. Yes, sign here, pay here, we'll get going. And you know, if you have to, so if you're coming from a place where your clients are expect to know you, everybody does the treatment for free. I would suggest that you, if you really believe the power dynamics are not in your favor,
00:27:09
Speaker
and you can't push back on this i would suggest that you guarantee that first phase of the treatment so instead of pitching it for free get the client to pay for it now they're emotionally invested they're financially invested there mostly invested now they're working with you and then when you come up with the treatment share the treatment and just say to them listen first step is we go to treatment you you want us to come up with the treatment Well, you have to pay us to do that. Now I understand you're taking some risks because you don't really know what you're buying until you see the treatment. We'll basically waive that risk. We'll remove that risk for you and say the first fee to deliver treatment. We'll guarantee that you pay it. But at the end, if we deliver something that you're not thrilled with, you're not happy with, we'll have a conversation about it. We'll rework it. We'll come back. If after reworking, it's still not a good fit for you. If you decide then that, Oh, we can't do this. We're not the right firm for you.
00:27:56
Speaker
then you fire us, we'll give you your money back. So I would strongly prefer that level of guarantee over you pitching it. Because what's to stop them from getting three or four people to do different treatments? In all of this framework and these four conversations, where do you think people make the biggest mistakes?
00:28:13
Speaker
When i think of results so there's all kinds of like soft benefits confidence like having a new setup learning to love selling all these wonderful things that you would call the soft benefits of going through this training in particular but the two common hard benefits are your closing ratio should go up and your average proposal value should go up probably in reverse order like the first thing that happens is you start like your average proposal value goes up. And it's like, if it doesn't go up, if you're not using, if you're not pricing this way, if you're not doing proposals this way, it's just the lowest hanging fruit on the profit tree. So that's the first thing that happens. And the second thing that happens is the, your closing ratio goes up. I mean, to just think of the simple math or more complex reasons why this is true. But the simple math is that if you are putting one option proposals in front of your client, here's what we propose to do. Here's the price.
00:29:04
Speaker
I consider that a take it or leave it proposal. There are two possible outcomes, 50% of which are positive. Yes, we'll take it. 50% of which are negative. No, we'll hire somebody else.
Presenting Multi-Option Proposals
00:29:14
Speaker
As soon as you put three options in front of your client, there are now four possible outcomes, 75% of which are positive. Yes, yes, yes. And 25% are negative. Like the odds just move in your favor. And that's not even the best reason to do this. But it's if you're not doing it, it's just, I've talked about this so long, it's called the curse of knowledge. I've explained it to you and other people. I feel like I've explained it to the world. It's not my idea, but I feel like I've explained it to the world. And I am surprised when I encounter people who are not doing this. You want to make more money? Yes. Everybody wants to make more. And you are not putting forward multi-option proposals? No. Are you stupid? You just don't know that. Have we not had this conversation? Well, the truth is they're not stupid. And we haven't had this conversation. I just feel like I've had the this conversation with the whole world. It's so, just stop what you're doing.
00:30:02
Speaker
your next proposal, go to multiple options and say, Hey, there are different ways we can do this at different price points. Well, there's a lot of people listening to this that are thinking, I already have these clients. I've already have a way of doing business with them. This sounds impossible. And one of the advice is a piece of advice that I've heard from you before that I've used. And that is it just starts with the next client option. You know, just the way I've approached this is you're not necessarily retroactively applying these things.
00:30:28
Speaker
to the client that you've had forever, you might start introducing elements of it. But the real key is to apply it the first thing out. I remember I did training with you and after the training out, we got a request coming in and we kind of didn't want the job. And but, you know, money's money. So kind of did, but kind of didn't. And I went, this is the one that we're going to put. We're going to go buy the book. And it was remarkable. We had no emotion in it. We did it strictly by the recipe and it worked. And I was like, I can't believe this.
00:30:56
Speaker
um And it changed how we moved forward from there on out. that's That's what I want people to hear when they're thinking about they can't do this because of whatever clients they have currently and all that. My line is um you reinvent your firm one new client at a time.
00:31:13
Speaker
right so it's a lot easier to do it with new clients and is you just illustrated it's it's easiest to do with clients we don't care like and a new prospect i don't know whatever we lose this one man that's when you behave as you should behave in all of your engagements i guess in all your sales calls but as you also pointed out correctly there are elements of this that you can introduce to your existing clients so you think of a client who um you've already scoped in price the jobs.
00:31:39
Speaker
ah certain way and they wouldn't they wouldn't want you to come to them with a new way well the great thing about ah three option proposal is you can still have the old way as an option it's the client's choice and you can say hey we've been doing this a little bit differently with some of our other clients so i want to put some options in front of you that are a little bit more creative and different than how we work together historically.
00:32:01
Speaker
There's still the option to do it the way we've always done it with you, but let me walk you through the different options. you know What's the worst that could happen? The client says, well, that's interesting, but no, I want to do it the old way. Blair, you this I hope people read this book. I hope people get this book. I hope that they are smart enough to know that they should also be doing the training with this book because that will reinforce it even more.
00:32:22
Speaker
I'm curious, is there a methodology that you prescribed to before that evolved now and where do you see it evolving further? Where's the puck going Blair?
00:32:34
Speaker
Hockey season. ah What's evolved so far is that my own hard edges have been knocked off as the years go by, so I'm more um like there are textbook answers to how you be should behave in certain situations, but there's also the reality.
00:32:47
Speaker
I think a three option proposal i first saw i had a client years ago i saw this one page option proposal. and and Oh my god this is incredible where did you learn to do this and it was like a tim williams tim williams is a pricing consultant i think very highly of he's been out there teaching that one page option proposal a lot longer than i have been.
00:33:05
Speaker
I started adopting it and teaching it i realize oh a three option proposal gives you more leeway in the sale like i used to say prior to your three option proposal you set up a meeting with the decision makers you get to the meeting senior decision maker isn't there leave reschedule the meeting so that's a bit of a hard ass approach to selling and now i think yeah. No you go ahead and have the meeting with the miss without the missing decision maker and then um the beauty of the one page proposal or at least part of the beauty of it is it's really just that. Speaking points for a conversation so if the client says hey can i take this proposal to run it past missing decision maker the answer is well you could there's not a lot on that one page.
00:33:46
Speaker
It's really kind of speaking points for the conversation that we just had so why don't we just have that conversation again with so and so present and maybe you won't get that so i think how i've evolved is a little bit more accepting of the reality of.
00:33:59
Speaker
All kinds of different scenarios come up and you don't have to be so entrenched in all these things. I love creating systems. I don't like being bound by rules or even laws, quite frankly. So I have never met a law that didn't deserve to be broken from time. It says that son of a cop.
00:34:20
Speaker
um So, yeah, i I think, you know, frameworks, this is a book of frameworks. Frameworks are, you know, tools for navigating a conversation. They're not laws. They're not scripts. It's that middle ground between free a free-for-all and a scripted sales conversation. They're both horrible. You go in just leaning on intuition with having no tools versus going in completely scripted. This is the middle ground. There's something in it for everybody. So what's changed for me is just flexibility on that front.
00:34:51
Speaker
What's changing in the future i don't know beyond i obviously the tools are getting better the research tools proposal creation tools are about to get better analysis of sales calls are getting better right if you record your sales calls and i think a lot of this remains to be seen.
00:35:07
Speaker
How are all these tools gonna shake out? I mean, in the video production space, man, is there's so much changing so so fast right now. Five years ago at dinner, a friend of mine who is a client, he owns an engineering firm, he said, engineering is gonna be one of the first professions disrupted by AI, and I'm going to be the one to do it. And he's he's doing it. it's not They wouldn't say they're disrupted yet, but his technology allows high school students to do the engineering, allows suppliers to do the engineering. Now, it's only a certain part of structural engineering right now, but it's not long before it's a large part of it. And then it's other aspects of engineering. So I was talking to some architects the other day and they were asking for some advice on you know what the future looks like. And I said, well, if you take the entire value stack in the built environment from the developer
00:35:55
Speaker
the architect the engineer the material suppliers etc and there are others that i'm missing the entire stack the lines between those rolls those jobs are getting blurred and ai is going to let people at one place in the stack do work at other places in the stack.
00:36:16
Speaker
And i think that is true across video production that's just true across almost anything there's a part of what you do that you think of this is really where i add the value that that the tools are gonna let somebody else in the stack do that so you do have to think ahead to what is our who owns the client relationship that's a big one.
00:36:35
Speaker
What troubles me about video production is a lot of these businesses, they most of their clients are agencies.
Gratitude and Closing Remarks
00:36:42
Speaker
And if you're not going direct to client, you really should be. And I think everybody knows that. I'm not saying anything you don't know. I think it's worth mentioning again though, just like, you know, you think you've said something a billion times, but they need to hear it again. It's absolutely true. It's an interesting time to be alive and in business, isn't it? It is, it is. Blair, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing all of your wisdom with the listeners here. I've enjoyed it tremendously. You have really offered so much to the world of advertising and making us all smarter. So thank you very much for doing that. James, it's been my pleasure and it really is great to see you again and to hear your success in applying these principles in your own business. and Thanks for the conversation. I appreciate it. And if folks want to check you out, what's the best place you would have them go to? Winwithoutpitching.com. All right, there you go. Talk to you later. Thanks. Bye.
00:37:35
Speaker
Thank you for listening to Crossing the Axis with James Keblis. If you're interested in joining the conversation or have a topic you'd like covered, please drop a note at keblis.com. That's K-E-B-L-A-S dot com.