If you’re lead generation is working well then you get to see the buying processes of other businesses.
From an email with one line requesting a quote, to long multi-stage engagements with lots of rules and a pitch at the end (they invented the longer word ‘procurement’ for those).
You may have noticed, that they all suck.
People want:
- A beauty contest where they judge the best colour scheme but ignore the best problem solving
- Work up front that solves the problem before the agency gets paid
- A price with zero context around it
Even the better processes select an agency based on a set of activities that aren’t representative of the work you are going to do.
There’s hardly ever an attempt to simulate the feedback loops, relationships and compromises that actually make or break a project.
It’s focussed on the happy path. And that’s natural, the prospect is excited and the agency is in good vibes only mode, trying to close the deal.
It’s hard be authentic you have to sugar-coat what it takes to deliver a great project
And it’s hard to show what you can really do without giving away work.
Why the process exists
You can’t just pick an agency by looking at their website.
We are testing how two companies will work together and combine their ideas to create something that neither of them could have done on their own.
For your agency it’s a chance to stand out from the crowd and to check you get a positive response.
It’s a chemistry experiment. And you you need to bring the innovation and collaboration that you talk about on your website into the lab.
So why are these processes set up to be so one-way?
Are you part of the problem?
Rather than just complaining about this, what are you going to do differently? After all, you are involved in 100x as many sales processes as the buyer. You’re the subject matter expert here.
When there’s a problem you are a part of then you are part of the problem.
Are you testing to see how the relationship will really work? Or, at this point are in a different imaginary world of slide decks and Google Docs inhabited by your sales team (or you with your sales hat on).
When the project starts, your slide animation game isn’t going to be required.
Your ability to run compellingly though a case study won’t be needed.
You’re just contributing to the theatre.
Going back to our chemistry experiment. You are throwing in a PDF into the test tube, and wonder why you don’t see a reaction.
Of course some of this is necessary. I’m asking if you can do more.
You have permission to design this process
Most of us let the prospect dictate the process. The more sophisticated the buyer the more process there will be.
They will be open to a different way if you have a different way to offer.
Even when they have a hard set of rules you can suggest additions and adaptions.
Sometimes these requests will be rejected in the interests of fairness; often in larger procurement processes, especially those involving tax payers money.
Outside of these, any other reluctance to adapt should be seen as a red flag. Why wouldn’t someone that’s excited to work with you want to engage with your way of selling?
So what should you do?
Don’t just promise value, but show value.
The aim should be to bring forward some of the benefits of the project into the sales process.
Now this might have raised an alarm. Showing value before anyone has committed to paying for anything sounds like spec work.
It’s also very hard to know, at this stage, what would be valuable, if you start making assumptions you risk putting them off with work that doesn’t land.
You need to do some discovery first to learn about the problem they want to solve.
And so discovery is exactly what you should be doing in the sales process.
Learning is valuable to you and your client. It also doesn’t involve any of your own ideas and can be left temptingly unfinished.
Come up with a workshop.
My tactic was to facilitate a pre-sales workshop.
You choose the amount of time you invest here but sometimes you will want to give a bit more love if you’re excited about the prospect. You can run this solo or bring other people from your team in. Designers and thinkers are best. People that are great at bouncing ideas and being curious.
From the client you should get as many decision makers along as you can. Go beyond the team managing the purchase and find out who else in their business this work is valuable to.
Now dig into the specifics of the problem the client is coming to you with. This workshop makes sense:
- To you, because are going to hear the pain points that your proposal needs to address and you’ll have enough info to suggest specific tactics and approaches they haven’t thought of yet
- To them, because this is going to give them clarity on their problem and start to untangle the strategy they need
Now the only ideas you’re giving away are ones that have come from the client. You have now positioned yourself as the person who moved them nearer.
Some example exercises
What your discovery looks like will depend on what your agency does.
Branding and aesthetic design
The Style Continuum exercise involves placing opposing concepts on a line, such as formal versus playful or traditional versus modern. Visual examples are provided for reference, and clients are asked to indicate where they sit.
This helps establish their design preferences and builds a language around how they describe what they see; a huge challenge when discussing design.
Marketing
For the Marketing Channel exercise, we review of all potential channels, using cards on a table based on the list from the excellent marketing book Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares (not to be confused with the entrepreneurial operating system book of the same name).
During this exercise, we evaluate past successes and failures, and work together to identify what channels they want to start using, which ones they should stop, and which existing channels need optimisation.
This gives you a picture of their current beliefs around channels so you know which to show off about and which advice will land flat because they need more time for you to influence things.
UX and strategy
Persona Building workshop, guide clients through creating lightweight customer profiles, understanding their key pain points and goals, and mapping out the customer journey to identify existing solutions. This approach helps establish a picture of the target audience and their needs that most prospects won’t have seen before.
These assumptions show you thinking and you can point out how the further research you are proposing will turn these into something they can build their growth around.
These exercises are designed to provide something the client could take away but that isn’t enough in itself to solve any of their problems.
They are a channel for the prospect telling you deal winning info.
What’s your version?
Whether it’s the ideas above or something more specific to your services, find a way you can show value without giving away your ideas and show you’re truly collaborative whilst also testing the chemistry with the client.
There’s a simple success metric for this activity. Everyone of those sessions should end with the prospect looking at the ideas generated and saying “please send me this”.
And you should send it, along with a juicy proposal to help fix.