This episode runs 26 min. 52 sec.

David and Josh discuss key marketing takeaways from the book, Art’s Principles: 50 years of hard-learned lessons in building a world-class professional services firm by Art Gensler.

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Mentioned in This Episode 150: Gensler on Marketing

Learn business skills even if you’ll never run your own firm

Culture is what people do when management isn’t looking

Culture is the daily repetition of what works that becomes a habit

Inviting life partners in share in state-of-the-firm meetings

 

The no dirty dishes in the sink policy 

Everyone is a marketer. Everyone should market, sell, and collect payment

Open a new market with a project. Grow with your clients. Land and expand

No project is too small for a great client

 

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by:

 

We Want to Hear From You

Let us know what you think about this episode. Should we do more interviews? Or, would you prefer just Josh and David (no guests)? Or should we get rid of Josh and David altogether? Use the form on our homepage to let us know.

 

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TBD

This episode runs 29 min.

As A/E/C marketers, we spend time developing a vision for our firm, but often neglect creating one for ourselves. David interviews A/E/C marketing consultant Bill Strong, FSMPS to discover the why and how of personal visioning.

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Questions Answered in This Episode 149: Bill Strong, FSMPS, on Personal Visioning.

 

Intro – quick story of how Bill landed in A/E/C marketing and career milestones
Why this topic?
Who should do personal visioning?
How frequently?
How do you prepare for this visioning?
Recommended process?
What format?
What is immediate follow-up?
Do you actually share this with others?
How to stay on track?

 

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by: 

  

 

We Want to Hear From You

 

 Let us know what you think about this episode. Should we do more interviews? Or, would you prefer just Josh and David (no guests)? Or should we get rid of Josh and David altogether? Use the form on our homepage to let us know.

 

 

Subscribe to our Podcast

 

 To subscribe to the PSM podcast in iTunes – click here

 

  

Read the Episode

 

Announcer: Welcome to PSM, the Professional Services Marketing podcast. It’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Hi, I’m David Lecours, and I’m joined by special guest Bill Strong to talk about personal visioning. Welcome to the show, Bill.

Bill Strong: Thank you.

David Lecours: Before we learn more about Bill, I just want to remind our listeners that our underwriting sponsor is SMPS, who reminds us that business is transformed through marketing leadership. We’re very fortunate to have a fellow of SMPS named Bill Strong on our show today.

Announcer: This is PSM. It’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Okay, so, Bill, what I would love for you to share with our listeners is a quick story of how you landed in AEC marketing, and maybe some career milestones that bring you up to speed in terms of where you are today.

Bill Strong: Sure, yeah. Actually, I landed in the AEC world because when I was five years old, trust me, five years old, I told my parents I wanted to be an architect. They were surprised. But I kept that dream all the way through grade school, high school, and went to college and got my Bachelors of Architecture for five years. To me, landing in the AEC world was a dream from when I was a kid, I have to admit. But I have to admit also what happened to me. You want a milestone.

David Lecours: Yes.

Bill Strong: Literally about six years after working … I got out of college, I had three or four firms clamoring to hire me.

David Lecours: I’m sure.

Bill Strong: Which was exciting. Exciting, but five, six years after I worked for two or three different firms, it hit me like a ton of bricks. I wasn’t that good of an architect.

David Lecours: Oh, no. Even as a child prodigy?

Bill Strong: Yes. Yes. It was shocking. I really had to deal with that early on. I really wasn’t a creative design type, and I wasn’t technically geared towards the technical world, either. I had to really figure out what to do. This is the late 70s when SMPS was only on the east coast, basically. There was no … There weren’t too many role models other than being an architect in an architectural firm. That’s honestly where I was hit with a ton of bricks that I had to start … I didn’t call it visioning then. I didn’t think about it as personal visioning, but that was the beginning of this whole topic for me, hit in the face with what am I going to do now, because I don’t want to leave architecture.

David Lecours: Right.

Bill Strong: I really didn’t want to. But I knew I wasn’t good.

David Lecours: Then did you transition into a marketing role at one of the firms you were working at?

Bill Strong: No. I actually started talking to other people, started to do my visioning that you’re talking about, trying to figure out my strengths and weaknesses. I was very active in the American Institute of Architects. This is in the Midwest. I was in Kansas City, Missouri at the time. A lot of my friends who went to school with me were shocked when I told them that I really need to alter somehow. I was fortunate. A larger firm actually started talking to me about a role at their architecture firm that was different and unusual. It wasn’t called marketing then, I have to admit.

David Lecours: Yeah.

Bill Strong: But they wanted to grow, and they asked me to join them to help them work on mergers, acquisitions, transitioning to other firms, and folding them into their organization. Plus help them do better in interviews, so-

David Lecours: Right, right.

Bill Strong: I kind of fell into marketing, if you want to know the truth. But at the same time, when I did this early visioning I really looked at my strengths and weaknesses, and it wasn’t design or technical, but it was people skills, it was networking, it was getting out there and getting to know people. I had no trouble walking into parties and just saying hello. That was part of my early deciding what I’m going to do with my future. This job really … I was there for about nine years, and helped them grow the firm from a one architecture office to 12 around the United States. That was really pretty fulfilling, I have to admit.

David Lecours: Right. I know you’ve worked in a couple different roles as marketing director, chief marketing officer, and now as I understand it, you’re out on your own as a consultant. Is that right?

Bill Strong: Yes. Yes. Yeah, I did move from Kansas City to Seattle and joined a firm there, and specifically looked for a firm that wanted someone to come in with a more business twist, who wanted to really work on the business side of the firm versus be on the boards. I fortunately found a firm. I was there 25 years and retired from them, and knew that I couldn’t stop working. So I am now consulting with architects, and some engineers, and some construction firms on the business side, helping them with strategic planning, or growing, or diversifying, or marketing.

David Lecours: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Bill Strong: Or training.

David Lecours: But you mentioned you had no trouble walking into a room and getting to know people. I can attest to that personally because I got to meet you at a conference, and you are super likable and easy to get to know and talk to. I’ve wanted to have you on this show for a while, and I was trying to decide … You have so many skills. I was like well, what are we going to talk about? You and I talked a little bit about what topic, because I like to have a narrow topic, and you brought up this idea of personal visioning. Maybe tell our audience a little bit more about why you think this topic’s so important.

Bill Strong: Well, I believe it’s really important not only because I had to do it, I had to force myself six years out of school to decide what I wanted to do, but I’ve continued to do it ever since. Every firm that we work for, us marketing people within the AEC, every firm we work for does visioning. They do strategic planning. They create … Well, I shouldn’t say every firm because some firms don’t. But they should.

David Lecours: Yeah.

Bill Strong: All great firms create visions, and missions, and values, and goals, and sometimes for a five year stretch, sometimes for three, sometimes for ten. It all depends. But they craft their future. If great firms do it and they succeed, why the heck shouldn’t we as individuals do it so we can succeed? That’s why I think we should do it.

David Lecours: Yeah. No, it makes sense. Should everybody be doing this? We’re focused on AEC marketers, but I don’t know, do you have an opinion about everybody in the firm, should they be undertaking this kind of exercise?

Bill Strong: I do, I really do because it forces you to take a hard and honest look at yourself, and I believe there are some people in a technical staff in our firms that really should be doing it too, and taking a hard look, and really deciding … Just because the path in most firms is, “Well, you have to be a principal to be successful.” Maybe that’s not necessarily true for everybody. If they found what they really loved and could excel at, and if it isn’t being a principal, or if it isn’t being a marketing director because you absolutely love doing proposals, well let’s find that niche and let’s grow in that area only. I think everybody should be doing it. Honesty with ourselves is powerful as far as I’m concerned.

David Lecours: Right. I know this term visioning and vision gets thrown out a lot. You hear things like vision boards and stuff like that. Maybe before we get too much deeper into this, maybe just some real practical, or … my concrete example of some aspect of visioning that we’re talking about, just so we can marry the word visioning to what our expectation is.

Bill Strong: Okay. Well, let’s see. You said practical, so in my mind, we should do it just like we do for our firms. Most of us, if you’re involved in strategic planning, if you’re not, you do some planning ahead of time. You realize, well, we need to have a retreat, and we need to do this, or we need to do that. They plan ahead, and they pick a place to go away from the office. They’re gone for two days, three days, whatever it is, and they prepare ahead of time whether it’s get a facilitator or not, or do a lot of research or not. But they prepare and they predetermine what they need to accomplish by the end of their retreat, what are the outcomes they want. I think that we need to do the same kind of thing for a personal retreat. There are some real live items that we need to prepare for ahead of time, and processes that we need to follow. Everybody’s heard of a SWOT, strength, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Our firms do that. Well, we need to do those kinds of things for our own personal visioning also.

David Lecours: Yeah.

Bill Strong: That fully answered your question, but there’s others, I know.

David Lecours: Yeah, yeah. I guess when I think of it, I just think of visioning as what do you want to be in, let’s say three years. What is this future vision of yourself? Whether that’s giving yourself a title, or maybe there are certain responsibilities, or certain things you want to learn, it’s looking ahead and identifying all right, that’s where I want to end up, so that you could take steps to get there.

Bill Strong: Exactly. And you need to put together goals, and objectives, and an action plan in order to get there. Yeah. Over the years, I honestly have done it about every five years, literally. Maybe it was six, one. But I’ve done it about every five years. There was times when … As I said, I was with the firm for 25 years, and there were times when other people that I got to know just because I was out there, some people wanted to convince me to come over to their firm. They enticed me with a lot of things, but I needed to really … Maybe that visioning was all about do I want to stay where I am, and if I do, what do I want to do next where I am? Or do I want to move? I had to really think about that.

Bill Strong: But there are other times in my five year plans where I said to myself I really want to be involved, I really want to be a principal, and this is a little bit unusual for architectural firms to have someone in a business role to be a principal in the firm at that time when I was doing it. That was my five year goal, was okay, what do I need to do to become a principal at my firm.

David Lecours: Right.

Bill Strong: So yes, you need to have a big picture goal for the end of the five years, whatever it is. If I want to be the best proposal manager in the world, that’s my five year goal.

David Lecours: Right. You answered my next question, which is great, because I was curious how frequently should somebody do this. I think it’s obvious that if you do this every five years, you’re coming up with a five year plan. Then at the end of those-

Bill Strong: Exactly.

David Lecours: Yeah, okay.

Bill Strong: Yeah, yeah.

David Lecours: Captain Obvious, here.

Bill Strong: No, no.

David Lecours: You started to mention a couple things like how to prepare for this visioning. Is there anything else you want to elaborate on that?

Bill Strong: Well, I do a little bit because I think if you have this big picture idea, all right, I want to become a … I’m a marketing manager now, but I want to become a marketing director or whatever. So, you not only do research, what is the difference between a marketing director and a manager? But I think really need to go and talk to others, talk to your mentors that you’ve had, talk to some marketing directors out there within your city that are really good at what they do, and you recognize that they’re good at what they do. Have some honest conversations with them and find out what are the traits and skills that they had to learn. What have they found out about themselves? What do they wish they would have done five years earlier to be prepared for this role, etc.? You do need to do some honest searching, research, and talking to other people, and learning about them. Buy a book on marketing directors if you need to. But really learn about it so you can be honest with yourself. That’s part of preparation.

David Lecours: I would be remiss if I didn’t say that SMPS has a lot of great resources on their website about defining what these roles are, and what the typical expectations are in terms of job responsibilities. That’s a-

Bill Strong: You bet. You bet.

David Lecours: A great place. But I love that you said find people that you admire and use them as inspiration. Whether or not they become a formal mentor or not, just the idea of having somebody out there that you’re like, yeah, I want to be that person, in your own way, in five years is fantastic because it shows that it’s possible. Yeah, and I love it. Yeah.

Bill Strong: Yeah. You’ve got to take that information, because to me that’s part of the … If you have a two day retreat for yourself, that’s what I usually did, went away for a weekend, left the other half and kids at home, and literally went away. I had to then really take the information I’d learned from other people, and do my own strengths and weaknesses chart, and compare it to those traits and skills. What do I have that fit into those traits and skills that I learned from these other ideal mentors or ideal people out there? What don’t I have? I had to be honest with myself and start … Okay, well how am I going to gain in those traits and skills that I need to gain? Yeah, it’s a real hard look every single time, at yourself. It’s important to talk to others ahead of time.

David Lecours: You mentioned strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. Sometimes it’s hard to be objective about yourself. I’m imagining that I could get some really good input from my wife about what my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are going to be. Does it make sense to bring somebody else involved in the process?

Bill Strong: I wouldn’t bring them, but I would actually spend time with them ahead of time. That’s why I would research and talk to other people. So yes, your spouse is very much … your significant other is very much a part of that. But bringing them might pull you away from actually really working hard and being honest with yourself.

David Lecours: Yeah, no. Right.

Bill Strong: Even if it is a spouse. And you’ve got to really do that and look closely. But when it’s done, you’re going to come back to your spouse and say, “Here’s what I decided. Give me some feedback.” That’s follow up.

David Lecours: What do you think?

Bill Strong: That’s part of follow up [crosstalk 00:15:30].

David Lecours: Right.

Bill Strong: Anyway. So-

David Lecours: Yeah.

Bill Strong: The other thing you really have to do too, ahead of time and then during your retreat, is think about the firm that you’re with and what’s the … In strategic planning we call it what’s the situational analysis, shall we say. You’re trying to figure out where’s our firm headed, and is there more work in the healthcare area, and what are the trends that we need to … Well, you do the same thing … Where am I? Where is the firm? Has the firm ever had a marketing director before? Do they even understand what it is themselves? What are the firms needs and strategic goals, and how will you, as becoming a marketing director, fit into the firm’s strategic goals and direction that they want to create? You have to do that while you’re gone, also, and somebody else being there might not really understand that side of the firm, etc., and they might impede you from getting to those honest answers, also.

David Lecours: Sure. That alignment, I think, is key, right?

Bill Strong: It is.

David Lecours: So taking the firm’s goals, and then aligning yours. Maybe the exercise tells you, hey, my goals and visioning isn’t in alignment with the firm, and maybe this is a time for me to do a little research and find out is there a firm out there that is more aligned. Sometimes there may not be, and you may realize hey, I’ve got it pretty good here. Maybe I should just tweak a thing or two.

Bill Strong: Yeah, yeah. If I’m going to go back and basically convince the existing principals that I need to be a marketing director, or I need to be a principal in the firm, I’ve got to make sure it aligns with their goals and their strategic plan in the long run, also. Otherwise, I’ll be barking up the … whatever, a tree that won’t respond.

David Lecours: Yeah, yeah. You may have mentioned this already, but I am curious if there’s anything else about a recommended process. I know going away is really important, but other than that, a process for getting this done. What should somebody do?

Bill Strong: Yeah, well, I … To me, if you’ve done some research, and you’ve talked to some people, a lot of times the first thing I do is really just review all that information I’ve gathered, because maybe it’s been a couple months of gathering information. Maybe I got a bunch of information from SMPS, a book on leadership, or whatever, and I read it all, and I took notes. Well, my first step is really to review everything I’ve gathered and what I’ve done, and then I actually state out loud what I would like to be. Five years from now, I want to be a principal in the firm, or five years from now, I want to be the marketing director. Then I start to really work on, okay, well let’s start with my SWOT. Let’s start with my strengths and weaknesses.

Bill Strong: In firm retreats, you might have a facilitator up in front of a big pad, and they’re writing everything down, and they’re filling the room with sheets or whatever. I have to admit, it’s just me. I do a lot of journaling, so I have this journal and I’m just putting all this stuff, and each page would be one of these things, or maybe my strengths are one page, my weaknesses on another, etc. That’s when I really start to dig into me and what I have to offer this firm. I think I mentioned all of them, but the process needs to … Midway the second day, it needs to … because you’ve already done the situational analysis, and you’ve already figured out whether you … this goal of yours could or could not fit into your firm.

Bill Strong: Then you start … You need to really re-identify your big five year goal, but what are the three to five sub goals that will lead you there, and the priority or the step, the right steps to get there. What’s the first thing to do? That’s your first goal. What’s the second thing to do? Then have objectives underneath each one of those also so it leads you to an action step process because you need to have that by the end of the second day if you’re gone for two day, or three days. You’ve got to have that. You’ve got to have the big goal, the three to five secondary goals, and the objectives, and then the action plan.

David Lecours: In terms of format, are we really talking about a written document, or is there a visual component to it? As a designer, I’m always thinking visual, but maybe that’s not the way to go.

Bill Strong: Well, no. It’s totally up to you and what you’re like. I do believe … I do journaling, like I said, so I have this book and everything with all this stuff in it, multiple pages. But I do believe in order to make sure that you’re going to do something about it, or … which my follow up is to share it with other people. You’ve got to get down to one page, whether that’s one 8 1/2 by 11 page, or is that one infographic, 11 by 17, that really has a visual impact. But it’s got to be easy to share with other people, and easy for you to look at once a month or so, to be able to say, “Hey, I’m keeping on track, here,” or, “Uh oh, I better get my rear in gear here.” So to me, all that journaling has got to get down to a one page kind of a thing. That’s important to me, the format.

David Lecours: I think there’s something about synthesizing down to a single page that also forces you to prioritize a little bit. You may have really lofty goals and want to do a lot of things, but five years is a finite period of time and you want to be realistic that there’s other demands on your time. There’s something good about that in that it forces you to really prioritize and narrow it down. Then hey, if you accomplish all those things in three years, then hey, you can add some more. But I’d rather see people get things done. I like that idea of having it all on a single page. Quick reference. You could put it up in your office. You could put it up in some private place that forces you to look at it frequently. I love it.

Bill Strong: Yeah. Having sub goals, and objectives, and action plans, you literally can just start checking some things off and visually you’re seeing, yeah, I am getting something done. You don’t want to have it so lofty that you can’t get anything done. That’s really defeatist and you don’t need that. You’ve got to have some … not simple, but some easier things on the list, too, that you can go, “Yes, I got that done.” It gives you the momentum to keep going.

David Lecours: All right, so you’ve got this one pager. That’s the deliverable to yourself. What’s the immediate follow up after that?

Bill Strong: Well, to me it’s sharing. I have to admit, it is sharing. You’re going to come back and share it with your spouse, and I would too. But I really want to come back and share it with any existing mentors I have, or any of the people that I researched with that I want to continue as a mentor. I need to come back and share it with them. On top of that, and you’re going to … I’m sure the audience is going to gasp at this. But I think we need to come back and share it with our boss.

David Lecours: Oh, wow.

Bill Strong: With your boss. The direct boss, or the CEO of the company, or whatever. But I think we need to come back and share it with the boss. Not in a threatening way, or not in any way except for I have created my own vision, and I want to see myself as a marketing director five years from now. I just want you to know that that’s my goal and this is where I’m headed, and I have a five step plan to get there, and I’ll share the whole thing with you. But I want you to know that this is where I want to go, and I want your support to get there. I think that’s really, really important because they will actually push you, also, along the way.

Bill Strong: Then I have, sometimes in the past, I didn’t early on, but after I was doing this quite a bit, because I had people working for me at that second … the firm I stayed for 25 years. So I shared it with some of my own marketing managers and marketing coordinators. I shared with them what my five year plan and goal was also. Especially towards the end. I did one when I was 60 years old because I knew I was going to retire from [inaudible 00:24:04] at 63, and so … or my firm. I shared it with them, definitely, about what my goal was to become a consultant, and how I was going to do things in the firm my last three years that will help me propel myself into my consulting, also, which was interesting.

Bill Strong: I think that’s really important, is to share with other people. And identify help, then. When I share with this mentor, I want your help in this area. When I share with that mentor, I want this help in your area. When I share it with my boss, I want your help in this area, etc. That’s a powerful aspect of this visioning in my mind.

David Lecours: I can imagine if somebody came to me with this type of thing, I would be really impressed, and I would want to reward them in some way for taking the initiative and saying, “This is where I want to go.”

Bill Strong: Exactly.

David Lecours: Even if they’re not there … and I love how you said you don’t say it in a bragging way or a threatening way. I think communicating this with humility, saying, “Hey, look. I know I’m not there, but I also know that this is the path and these are the steps that I’m going to take that are going to help get me there. Is there anything from your perspective that you would see-

Bill Strong: Exactly.

David Lecours: Yeah. So not only are you sharing it up, but I think … within the organization, but you’re also sharing with people that might work for you so that they can support you and help you to get to where you want to go.

Bill Strong: Exactly. That’s where I also wanted it to be included in my performance reviews.

David Lecours: Right.

Bill Strong: That’s where I would ask my boss to also help me through those. I would review some of those in the performance review. So yeah, it’s very active.

David Lecours: Five years is kind of a long time in today’s world where we want everything tomorrow. How do you stay on track during this period to making sure that you’re fulfilling your goals?

Bill Strong: Yeah. Well the one page summary helps, I have to admit. My other half helped push me along, I have to admit. Hey, did you get to that area yet, or where are you now on such and such? So that helped. But I really kept it, especially since I did share it, I actually kept it hanging on the … it wasn’t a bulletin board, but right next to my work desk, right there so I actually looked at it. But I did specifically take time. I just happen to be an early person, so I was always at work by 6:30 in the morning or something.

David Lecours: Right.

Bill Strong: Architecture firms, people don’t usually show up until 9:30.

David Lecours: No.

Bill Strong: There were … Once a month on a Friday morning, I literally took about … Oh, it depends. 30 minutes, sometimes an hour to actually just sit there and see where am I, what have I done, what haven’t I done. Uh oh, why am I not facing this goal or this objective? What’s holding me back? So I had to do a little bit of honesty and searching then. I did it once a month on Friday mornings for about a half hour to an hour, and really checked in on myself. You could do it more or less. Once a month was enough for me, and if I really started to see some issues, then quarterly I would have to really dig in a little bit deeper and really figure out what’s going on and why I’m not getting where I want to go.

David Lecours: Right, right.

Bill Strong: That’s how I did it. The one page summary, or infographic, or whatever, really helped me keep on track, and it was right there in front of me every day.

David Lecours: So, listeners, you may be doing this. You may not be doing this. We’d love to hear from you. If you go over to PSM.show and drop us a line about some suggestions about visioning, what’s worked for you, what hasn’t. Man, Bill, this has been super helpful. I’m inspired. I feel like I need to plan my own personal retreat and start doing some of this visioning because if you don’t vision, it’s just, you know, it’s not going to happen. Seems like we all want to control our own destinies, and not just let circumstance dictate for us.

Bill Strong: Sure. That’s true. There’s times you might get in your car and you’re going to go away for a vacation, and you just want to wing it, and you want to just see where you end up. But there’s other times that you really want to plan ahead and know you’re going to be in this part of the world at this time. If you don’t plan it, you never know where you’re going to end up, so I believe in planning ahead of time.

David Lecours: Awesome. Where can our listeners find out more about you or your consulting services?

Bill Strong: I do have a website, BillStrongConsulting.com. But my email, if anybody wanted to contact me also to ask some questions, is Bill.Strong, S-T-R-O-N-G, at live, L-I-V-E, dot com.

David Lecours: Awesome, and we’ll post those links in the show notes over at PSM.show.

Bill Strong: Perfect. Wonderful. Well, thank you, David, for-

David Lecours: Yeah. Thank you.

Bill Strong: Allowing me to rant and rave.

David Lecours: Absolutely. So that’s it for this episode of PSM Show on personal visioning with Bill Strong. Big thanks to Bill and to our sponsor, SMPS. We told you where to get in touch with us, PSM.show, and we will talk to you next time.

 

 

 

This episode runs 29 min. 48 sec.

Are you considering launching your own podcast? Well, not so fast… Did you know most podcasters never release more than a few episodes? Wouldn’t you like to avoid those pitfalls for your own show? Josh and David unpack the things you should think through before you ever hit record on your first episode.

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Mentioned in This Episode 148: Are You Ready To Podcast?

How do you know if you are ready to start a podcast?

How did we start PSM.show?

Why are you starting a podcast?

Who will listen? Larger email database. Grow an audience first.

How? Upload 4-5 episodes at your launch.

 

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by:

 

We Want to Hear From You

Let us know what you think about this episode. Should we do more interviews? Or, would you prefer just Josh and David (no guests)? Or should we get rid of Josh and David altogether? Use the form on our homepage to let us know.

 

Subscribe to our Podcast

To subscribe to the PSM podcast in iTunes – click here

 

Read the Episode

Announcer: Welcome to PSM, the Professional Services Marketing podcast. It’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Hey Josh, are you ready to podcast?

Josh Miles: Am I ever.

David Lecours: No, no. That’s going to be our topic today.

Josh Miles: Oh, right. We’re supposed to talk about are you ready to podcast.

David Lecours: Yeah, because I think some of our audience might be thinking, “Gosh, our firm should have a podcast as a marketing tool, as a content marketing channel.” And so let’s address that today.

Josh Miles: Well, I think for fear of this maybe being a little too meta, is having a podcast about are you ready to podcast? But maybe you could tell our audience about our underwriting sponsor. Maybe that’s a good segue.

David Lecours: Yeah. We’ve been fortunate to have SMPS step up to be our underwriting sponsor, and SMPS has a vision of business transformed through marketing leadership. You can go to smps.org to find out much, much more.

Announcer: This is PSM. It’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Josh, so I know that you’re sort of cheating on me and you have another podcast, and I’m okay with that. But what I’m curious is … and you started that before we started this together … I’m curious how, back then, did you know you were ready to start a podcast?

Josh Miles: Yes. I will admit I’m seeing other podcast guests on the side, David. I’m sorry. Sorry if I hurt you.

David Lecours: That happens.

Josh Miles: Well, yeah. This was a couple of years ago. It was probably early 2015, and I got a wild hair and I ordered all the gear and the microphone and the mixer, and I was listening to podcasts, and I was crazy about them, and I wanted to do my own. So I hired this guy named Tim to come in to help us out with digital marketing. And I was like, “Tim, this is gonna be your first project. We’re going to launch a podcast.”

Josh Miles: And he said no.

David Lecours: Was he an employee?

Josh Miles: He was an employee. And then he qualified that no, which is why I didn’t kick him out. And the reality is he was right. He said, “It’s not that you aren’t technically ready to launch your podcast, but we don’t have the right structure in place to do this yet.”

Josh Miles: So he talked me through lots of things that I think might be helpful to our listeners if they’re thinking about launching a podcast and they want it to be successful as well.

David Lecours: Yeah. So I think that is great fodder for a conversation, because yeah, just because you have the tools, just because you have a paintbrush, it does not make you Picasso.

Josh Miles: Just because you’re in a garage doesn’t make you a car.

David Lecours: Yeah.

Josh Miles: Is my favorite version of that. [inaudible 00:02:59]

David Lecours: There are a lot of things that need to be thought through in terms of what should be in place. Yeah, so let’s talk about some of those things. What are some of the things that Tim knew about that you clearly did not in your zeal to get going on starting a podcast?

Josh Miles: Yeah. Well one of the things that I think he was most correct about was he said, “Look, we’ve got relatively modest email database, and wouldn’t it be great if we had a larger, a much larger email database to send this show out to to really drive subscribers?”

Josh Miles: Because if you want to ever hit Apple’s radar as a new and noteworthy show or, or really start to grow that audience, you have to grow an audience first and then send them to the podcast, because it’s really difficult for a new show to get attention if it’s not already getting attention. So it’s kind of this the self-fulfilling prophecy.

Josh Miles: So we spent the next year really building up our blog, which drove email subscribers, which built up our list almost 10x what it had been the year before. So we waited literally almost a whole year to launch this show, which that wasn’t the only thing that he recommended, but that was definitely one of the big game changers I think that we put in place.

David Lecours: Yeah. And I think it’s also really key to make sure that this is part of your overall strategy in terms of how does this fit within all the other different things that you are doing. So if you have this digital marketing strategy and you’re writing and speaking, how does podcasting fit within that so that ideally they’re working together and somewhat synergistically.

David Lecours: For example, you may ask to interview a podcast guest, do it using audio, then take that audio file and have it transcribed, use some of that, but also ask some maybe follow-on questions to create a print piece that would end up on your website as well so the podcast isn’t going to live in isolation. So thinking about how it integrates in with all the other marketing initiatives that you’re doing.

Josh Miles: Yeah. Or even to take that a step further back the other way is, like we did with our episode with Seth Godin, I interviewed him on video. So then we had also the video to be able to share on YouTube in addition to just the audio and then the transcribed bit. So yeah, all of those pieces working together I think are really important from the concept of people like to subscribe to the medium that they like. Some people want video, some people want audio, some people want to read the blog posts, some people want to hold it in their hand. And being able to provide those options I think is pretty key.

David Lecours: I think it would be beneficial before you start up a podcast to write a positioning statement just for that podcast. A traditional positioning statement format is we do x for y. And so if you were to say that x being services and y being the audience and say, “Hey, we cover x for y,” and sort of list out a couple topics that you think you would want to speak to.

David Lecours: You could also start in the other direction. You could start with identifying an audience. Let’s say you’re an architecture firm and you do higher education. So you know your audience is college and university administrators, and you might do some polling or you might listen to our last episode on client feedback and and ask them what their pain points are and develop a list of things that would eventually be topics.

David Lecours: But having a real clear … and I think for podcasting the narrower the better. I don’t think you should try to develop a podcast that is actually for all your prospective clients, unless you only work maybe in one very narrow vertical industry. Because the beauty of podcasting is that it’s not a broadcast medium. In my mind, it’s a very narrow cast medium, and it’s a place for like-minded people to geek out on specific topics.

Josh Miles: That’s a great point, and reminds me of the fact that you and I are really just the adopted parents of the PSM show and our friends over at Image 3 who started this show had two parallel podcasts that were topically very similar, but one of them was PSM show, as you see it now, their version of it, and then the other one was all about marketing in schools, so it was all education-related marketing where they covered lots of the same news stories, lots of the same topics, but it was to that very separate audience instead of, in my head, back in the day I probably would have tried to just do one podcast that was a general marketing thing and try to hit everybody with the same hammer.

David Lecours: For sure. And so maybe it makes sense to just remind listeners. if you didn’t hear our episode, I think it’s like 101, but we’ll put that in the show notes, about how Josh and I started … sorry, episode 102 … about how we adopted this show and, so when we did adopt it, it was from this firm out of Australia, and they decided to narrow their focus to just on school marketing and we decided to take it over. And at that time, as the name of the podcast indicates, it was professional services marketing. So we adopted it and we decided to run for.

David Lecours: The good thing is that they had 100 already in the can in the archive of iTunes, so we weren’t starting from scratch. We probably alienated some of their loyal audience because we didn’t have Australian accents and their are other hosts did, and they sounded so much better.

Josh Miles: Frankly, I’m sad about that too.

David Lecours: Yeah. I wish I had an Australian accent too. I would have been much more popular in school.

David Lecours: But anyway, we took it over and we adopted it, and then, I don’t know, 10 or 15 episodes in, we decided to narrow our positioning to the AEC industry rather than all professional services, because that was what we knew best and that’s where our audience was mostly coming from and asking questions about.

Josh Miles: Yeah. And as far as I know, they’re still continuing on with their education podcast that obviously wasn’t my space. I was a subscriber to PSM show long before we took over the podcast.

David Lecours: That’s right. You were a guest on it.

Josh Miles: Yeah. I had actually [crosstalk 00:10:01].

David Lecours: And that’s how the relationship got started. Yeah.

Josh Miles: Yeah. It doesn’t matter how long the internet is around or how long we can do things, but when you actually connect and talk live on an interview with somebody who’s literally on the other side of the planet, that continues to blow my mind. And I hope I never lose the wonder that that is possible today. It’s pretty amazing.

David Lecours: Yeah. And I think one of the benefits of podcasts is it is this intimate medium where you’re listening by yourself with your headphones on or in your car, and it’s a pretty uninterrupted medium. You don’t have a lot of advertising interruptions or other things getting in your way like email when you’re listening. So it can be super effective. For storytelling it can be a little longer form, which is really nice, and you hear somebody’s voice right in your years. So hopefully that’s pleasant for you, our audience, right now.

Josh Miles: Right.

Josh Miles: So I think the other thing related to the positioning statement that you mentioned is this idea of almost creating your podcast for an audience of one. So for instance, maybe our audience of one is a woman named Jen who’s a marketing director at an engineering firm, and she’s got challenges with she’s regularly doing proposals and she’s trying to help her firm stand out and she’s trying to win the right kinds of work, and she’s dealing with all the crazy things happening in our marketing industry and has a firm that’s traditional and maybe they’re experimenting with new things. So you start to picture who this person is and what they’re dealing with, and maybe some of you listening say, “Holy cow, that is me. My name is Jen.”

David Lecours: If, so write to us, psm.show.

Josh Miles: But I think that idea helps you to have … it’s sort of like when you are on stage and you look out to an audience in a particular section, everybody in that section feels like you’re looking at them, staring into their soul. When you have that target of one, it starts to have that ripple effect with your audience, I think.

Josh Miles: The takeaway here is thinking about not only what the positioning is, but also who you’re speaking to, I think are the keys to helping you find not only your content, but also the voice or the tone of the show.

David Lecours: And I’ve even heard of people going as far as making a cutout and taping that to their computer screen or wherever their podcast studio is set up. So they’re literally looking and talking at somebody with eyeballs. Granted, it’s a static cutout, but at least it’s a little more human than just looking at a screen. So yeah, that can be … and I’ve also heard of people interviewing using the video component, not actually even showing the video, but just having the visual connection of somebody through a screencast to help improve the audio.

Josh Miles: You know, David, I do have the little cutout of you over my monitor here.

David Lecours: Thanks. I see your little circle in my Skype window there too.

Josh Miles: It’s just your profile pic. Sorry.

David Lecours: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Josh Miles: I get confused sometimes.

David Lecours: Right. Right. Okay.

David Lecours: So we’ve talked a little about why … Are there some practical things that somebody should do? What I’ve heard is that when you launch, you should pre-launch with four to five episodes already in place, so that if somebody likes one, they can listen to another one, they can refer friends to listen to one, and then the chances of Apple and iTunes taking you more seriously are greater. Maybe you’ve heard some other tips.

Josh Miles: Yeah. That was one of the recommendations from our now famous Tim was to launch with a stockpile of episodes. And I think with our other show, we launched with maybe six or seven, and at the time that seemed like a Herculean task of getting six or seven in the can and then not doing anything with them. That felt really weird until launch day.

Josh Miles: But if I had it to do over, I would just have as many as possible, like maybe a whole season’s worth or maybe 12 or something, so that you can launch with a bit of a stockpile, and then you can continue to schedule out so that when you go right back into production mode immediately, you’re not already behind the gun.

Josh Miles: We talked about statistics a little bit two episodes ago. This is a made up statistic as well, but I think there’s something like 90% of podcasts only have five episodes or less. Meaning most people quit, most people do not stick with it. There just a bazillion that launch every day. But I think having that stockpile, having some that are ready to go into that regular schedule after you do your launch week or launch month allows you to get back into a rhythm and not feel like you’re already at a loss.

David Lecours: One thing, Josh, you and I have talked about before is how nice it is to have a podcast partner. And with your other show, you’re a solo guest, and so every episode falls squarely on your shoulders. And correct me if I’m wrong, but that’s an interview format, right? Every show is an interview.

Josh Miles: Yeah. Almost every show. I’ve done one or two monologues, but it’s been mostly interviews. And then of course I am the host of all of the interviews. So if I’m not recording them or editing them, they’re not getting done.

David Lecours: Yeah. What we’ve talked about is how nice it is to … we alternate between interviewing each other or having episodes where we don’t have a guest, it’s just you and I, and then also we go out and individually interview guests, and just distributing the load among two people, we have decided to publish every other week, which we think is a good frequency for our guests. But yeah, just having that, because otherwise …

David Lecours: Set yourself up and set expectations with your audience for something that’s sustainable for you. So yeah, of course it’d be great, put out an episode every week, but if it’s just you and you don’t have a partner, don’t set yourself up to fail.

Josh Miles: Yeah. And I think we’ve, we’ve shared this before as well, but typically when David and I hop on and do one of these conversations, we knock out two at once. So when we’re in that rhythm of David and I speak and then one of us interviews someone, and then David and I speak and someone interviews someone, we are effectively covering two months of the show just by one recording session for a little over an hour, and then each of us have homework to go out and do one more that month, which covers us again for two months after we’ve gone and done the thing just once. So that definitely makes it a lot more sustainable, a lot less stressful and totally manageable.

David Lecours: One thing we also do is a running list. We share an Evernote file that has possible future topics. If we were probably more on top of it, we would have an editorial calendar, which is what we would recommend to think through, like let’s say you are a marketing director and there are certain things that are going to happen at certain times in the year, where you get spikes in seasonal type of business, and you want to think through what topics you’re going to … so if you were to plan out over the next 12 months, and let’s say you’re putting out an episode every other week, you’ve got 26 slots and you probably want to think through when certain episodes air versus other ones, and you plan accordingly. And if you’re having interview guests, that helps you also think through when a particular guest would be more relevant for a certain time of year.

Josh Miles: The other thing that I might preach, but I’m maybe poor at practice, is the promotion of the episode itself, which is-

David Lecours: Oh yeah, marketing your marketing.

Josh Miles: Yeah, exactly. Especially when you have a guest on, by giving them heads up in advance that the show is going live next week, and then the day before send them links and send them even some sort of outline or even sample Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook copy and images that they can use, and then continue to promote it after it goes live.

Josh Miles: On the flip side, my typical is if David is promoted it, I’ll share what he promoted, or if I promote it, I usually do it once or maybe touch it on two social networks, and then I go back to work and I forget that it’s okay to promote these things more than once because you’re really gonna likely see different traffic and different people that you’ll reach with each of those posts.

David Lecours: For sure. I think it’s also highly beneficial to establish a standalone website for your particular show. For ours, yes it’s hosted on iTunes and some of the other podcast players, but we like to have this central repository that we use to send people to in all the social networks. So whenever we’re promoting the show, we have a standalone website with its own URL for the show.

David Lecours: I think it could, if your firm had a podcast, it could probably live in a subdomain. It certainly, if it had its own URL, it looks a little more polished or professional. But anyway, having a place on a website where you can post your inventory of past episodes, so you can allow people to go and find past episodes, and then also a place where they can get in contact to you to give you feedback, to suggest future episodes, and yeah, so there’s this marketing hub of where you send the episodes to and where you send prospective listeners to.

Josh Miles: Yeah, and there’s probably a huge strategy around many of the podcast podcatchers, as some people refer them to your podcast players. I know iTunes in particular, it’s always great to get ratings and reviews inside of the podcast app itself, which is maybe a prime opportunity for me to remind our listeners if you’ve not given the PSM show rating or review, we would appreciate that. And it’s a great place to give us how many stars and a little bit of feedback, and allows others to see what someone thinks of the show.

David Lecours: Yes, absolutely.

David Lecours: So what else about podcasts, Josh? I know you spoke about this recently. Were there any other tidbits or tips that you shared?

Josh Miles: Well, I think maybe in lieu of getting into specifics on gear, if anybody wants to geek out on that, I’m happy to talk about that later. Or maybe we could do a future episode that’s just about super nerd talk for podcasting. Might lose half of our audience for that.

Josh Miles: But I think the bigger idea here is if you’re a a gearhead or you’re obsessed with that kind of stuff, you could spend years trying to test out different microphones and understanding what kind of gear that you need. And I think the lesson here is not to let this idea of launching a perfect show get in the way of putting out a really good one and putting out really good content. Because no matter how much you practice or how ready you think you are, you’re going to go back and listen to that first episode at some point in the future and you’re going to cringe a little. It doesn’t matter how great you think your gear is or what you like about your sound or your intro music, you’re going to go, “Yeah, it’s so much better now. Why was this one so bad?”

Josh Miles: I think the lesson here is just get after it and go do a show.

David Lecours: Yes, absolutely. And hopefully you’ll be improving and moving in an upward trajectory, not going in the other direction.

Josh Miles: Yeah. And I think the bottom line is it doesn’t matter where you start, you’re gonna improve all the time. So if it’s really good or just kind of good or just okay, your next five are going to be better and better and better.

David Lecours: And so Josh, maybe we should share like prep-wise, what we do for episodes. Would that be helpful do you think?

Josh Miles: Yeah. I think when I was initially starting out with my other show, I had this flow chart, this whole process graphic that I had to create, and it was really because I’ve never done this before, I need to think through all the pieces. So for me it was really helpful to have that visual.

Josh Miles: Of course, for our show, we’re not quite that OCD about it. But yeah, do you want to a little bit about what it looks like?

David Lecours: Yeah. So usually we’ll reach out to each other via Slack. We set up a separate private Slack channel, and we’ll throw out a topic and come to an agreement, and then we’ll start to put some notes in Evernote about that topic. And then one of us will take the lead and organize those and develop some questions. So we have a loose outline. We don’t always follow it and we don’t always … aren’t meticulous about outlining the entire show, but we have a direction and a premise for the show, and then we’ll improvise and go off in different directions. But it’s nice to have something visual to look at just to keep us on track. And so hopefully our audience will think there’s a logical sequence to what we’re talking about, rather than just completely winging it.

David Lecours: So that’s an episode between Josh and I, and maybe you can talk about how that might differ from when you do an interview.

Josh Miles: Yeah. I think similarly, as the things that carry over on both of those examples are that we have a pretty consistent intro and outro we have started experimenting with, and maybe the audience can let us know if they like this better, with a less formal intro, since our music and our Australian carry over intro says the name of the show, we felt like it was a little redundant to remind you that you’re still listening to the same thing from five seconds previous.

Josh Miles: And then our closing, we have a standard thing that we say as well. And I think that’s almost like watching a sitcom and it’s always the same music and it’s always the same little montage before the show starts, and it reminds you of the implied promise of what you’re about to experience.

Josh Miles: So on the interview shows, again on my other show, I tend to ask the same questions over and over and over. So it’s a similar process with repeated questions as they’re appropriate for the guest, but we have really different conversations and a really different tone based on who the guest is. And then for PSM, we’re a little bit more open ended with that, where if we have a proposal coach on versus a software person or other kind of consultant, we’re gonna dial in those questions just to their experience to see how it relates to professional services marketers.

David Lecours: One of the things I do is I’ll come up with a couple of questions that I’d like to ask a guest, but they know their topic way better than I do. And so I asked what are the questions you’d like me to ask so that you can really shine and demonstrate your expertise. And usually that’s where I get some questions as well.

David Lecours: It really shouldn’t sound like a script. It needs to sound more like a conversation. So I think the key is to, as the interviewer, have transitions, and if you need to recap things or ask a follow-on question, so it’s not just like question, answer, question. That gets a little bit dull.

Josh Miles: I tend to not go in order either. Just based on the tone of the last answer, if they say something about advice, then I might follow up that with, “Okay, so what is your favorite piece of advice that you’ve received?”

Josh Miles: And then they talk about a mentor, and I say, “Well, in addition to your mentor, who are some of your heroes or people that you look up to?”

Josh Miles: It becomes a really natural conversation flow, even though, again, kind of hitting a lot of the same questions, but it feels natural at that point and not super scripted.

David Lecours: Yeah.

David Lecours: So back to our original question, are you ready to start a podcast? We think most of you are ready. You don’t have to publish it. Maybe you just do a dry run where you do a recording and you mock it up, pretend to do it. And maybe it’s so good you just save that recording and that becomes your first of five episodes that you launch at once.

David Lecours: But I’m guessing that you’ll be better at it than you think you are, you’ll get better at it as you go, and you can really come up with something that’s compelling and meaningful for your audience and that helps sway them that you’re a leader in your industry.

Josh Miles: Yeah. And I think if I can just leave you with one parting thought, again, if this is something you think you’re mentally or emotionally ready to do and you’re just worried about all the technical aspects, those are really great things to outsource. There’s this beautiful thing called Google. I think if you search long enough for consultants who help launch podcasts or go to Craigslist or Fiverr or whatever, I’m sure there’s lots of job boards out there who have people who are hungry to help set up and launch podcasts. So don’t let that be the thing that gets in your way.

Josh Miles: Again, don’t let the gear or the technical stuff be the thing that slows you down.

David Lecours: Absolutely. Yeah. We have a professional editor that edits these shows. Thank you, Jen. She does a great job.

Josh Miles: Pretty amazing.

David Lecours: We do some of the things ourselves, but you certainly could outsource the website part. We do outsource the transcription. There are people out there that are experts at these things, and don’t be afraid to hire them, because it’s what they do.

Josh Miles: All right.

David Lecours: Well, I think that about brings us to an end, David. Anything else to add?

Josh Miles: Yeah, absolutely. No, I think we’re good.

Josh Miles: So yeah, if you guys have any questions or comments, suggestions, maybe you have a future guest that you’d like us to interview, please contact us at psm.show. As we mentioned, we have our own website for this show. Scroll down and you can drop us a line. And so that’s it for this episode on podcasting from Josh Miles and myself, and much thanks to our sponsor SMPS. We will see you next time.

This episode runs 43 min.

Your A/E/C firm has been shortlisted for a presentation interview with the prospective client. What can you do to increase your odds of winning the project? David interviews presentation expert Carol Doscher of Graceworks to answer this question and more. 

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Questions Answered in This Episode 147: Carol Doscher on Presentation Interviews

 

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Read the Episode

Announcer: Welcome to PSM, the Professional Services Marketing Podcast. It’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Hello. I’m David Lecours, and today I’m joined by a special guest, Carol Doscher, to talk about presentation interviews. Welcome to the show, Carol.

Carol Doscher: Thank you. I’m delighted to be here.

David Lecours: Now, before we learn more about Carol and her business and what she does, I want to remind our listeners that our title sponsor is SMPS, business transformed through marketing leadership. You can find out more about SMPS at SMPS.org.

Announcer: This is PSM. It’s insight applied.

David Lecours: Now Carol, we met probably I don’t know, five, seven years at a conference that we were both presenting at.

Carol Doscher: Oh yes. I remember being incredibly impressed by you.

David Lecours: Oh, well thank you. And you’ve been on my radar for someone to have as a guest, so I would love for you to give our audience a little background on yourself, and how you got to found GraceWorks and what you guys are doing.

Carol Doscher: Okay. Great, thank you David. I always think it’s helpful for listeners to have a sense of context as to where I’m coming from. My background is that I was an actress and a singer. I did that professionally in New York for about 10 years but then I wanted to talk to real people about real things, so I turned a corner and strangely, via the world of a racquet ball league, I met an architect and I ended up in the AEC world, I ended up marketing architectural and construction management services for about 6-7 years.

Carol Doscher: Of course, during that time I had a chance to work with people on their presentations and their communications, and honestly I saw the suffering that happened. My heart went out to them, I offered a few suggestions, the smiles started to show up on the faces, the sweat started to dry up a little bit. Anyway, life goes on, and I can’t believe it but this October, GraceWorks is going to be 24 years old.

David Lecours: Wow, congratulations.

Carol Doscher: Thanks. We’ve been having a ball. Again, to put a little bit in context, we work about I’d say 85-90% within the AEC industry, and we work nationally and internationally. Our headquarters are here in New York which is where I am right now. We have an office in Atlanta, headed by Jennifer Hebblethwaite, who is our senior VP, and amazing. We have an office in Cleveland, Ohio. Joe Massey is in there, and we have Judy Straalsund who is stationed out in Portland, Oregon. Basically, we have lots of trainers and we get in our suitcases and we go. So there you go.

David Lecours: Sounds great. It’s just so interesting how these concentric circles of your passions, like you were an actress and interested in presenting, and singing, and then you started working in AEC, and the convergence of those two things is the presentation interview. Our premise today for the show is that an AEC firm has been shortlisted for a presentation interview, and I think all of our audience can relate to this. We’re going to get into some tips and techniques and best practices for how to do this, because you’re the expert, and that’s why you’re here.

Carol Doscher: That’s kind. That is where our heartbeat. We love to help the people feel comfortable in their own skins, and win more work.

David Lecours: Yeah, and really it’s such a great exercise because it is very tangible and it’s very measurable. You either win the work or you don’t, right?

Carol Doscher: Yeah, exactly.

David Lecours: I kind of always like to start anything with why, and I think the first question is why does a client even hold a presentation interview? What’s the point?

Carol Doscher: Yeah. That is interesting, because it’s expensive, right?

David Lecours: Sure.

Carol Doscher: It’s an expensive exercise. Some of our clients will go, “Well, it’s because they have to,” you know?

David Lecours: Right.

Carol Doscher: Sometimes it’s required, but overall, I believe that if there are … The reason is if there are humans involved, it’s about making a human connection with the audience on an intellectual and an emotional level. I mean, they’ve received your book, they’ve received your proposal, and I believe they’ve been intellectually convinced that, “Okay, these people, this firm can do the work.” But who are these people? Behind the written word, is there are a relationship? Can we create that relationship?

Carol Doscher: There was a study that SMPS funded a few years ago, or several years ago now, but I believe it still stands strong, and it’s called getting from the shortlist to the contract. They did this study, they asked the clients, “What are you looking for when you hire?” These clients, they came back loud and clear. Three things they care about. Trust, commitment, chemistry. That’s what they said.

Carol Doscher: What I love about that, you know David, anytime you are having a one on one or you have face time with another person, you can absolutely create that stuff if you know what you’re doing. That’s what drives our work and how we love to help our clients prepare for these interviews, is how do you do that? I want to share one more thing that really came up, just actually recently about, you’re saying why are they doing it? What’s the point and what are they looking for?

Carol Doscher: I’m going to say the word energy. Because it was very curious, I was working with a client recently, helping them to prepare for a specific presentation. The previous week that same firm had presented to the same client on a different project. They did not win, and they got a debrief, and the client said, “Okay, this is what we were looking for” and they started with energy. They said, “We want energetic presenters.” Then they went on and gave them a few more facts and more details about the project, and they ended the debrief by coming back to, “You know, we really wanted energetic presenters.”

Carol Doscher: I have to say that struck me and that’s why I wanted to mention it here. Energy is a big deal, it totally creates, what do you call that, an experience?

David Lecours: Sure.

Carol Doscher: That experience that they have with that team. All right, so and body language will help all of that stuff. Okay, that’s about [crosstalk 00:06:24].

David Lecours: Yeah. So in terms of energy, I guess probably what they want to get, I mean it’s not just energy in a vacuum, it’s this energetic enthusiasm about working on the project, right? Don’t you think the client kind of wants to hear that you want it and communicate that excitement about the project?

Carol Doscher: Totally. When we coach shortlist interviews, and I mean yes, we do general training and we do shortlist interviews, so again, context. But when we coach these things, and our clients win, and they get a debrief from their client, “Why did you hire us?” Just what you say, David, these three things come back. The enthusiasm of the team, they showed that energy, that enthusiasm, they cared about it.

Carol Doscher: They talked about what the client cares about, and they came off and they demonstrated teamwork. Those three things consistently come back. This energy, and also I’ll say one more thing about this energy thing, because I think it’s huge. If you think about it, any audience, two things are happening. Everyone is potentially distracted, all the time, aren’t we? We’re overloaded with stuff.

Carol Doscher: I look at it and the panelists come in, and unfortunately, because of the history of time, there’s certain practices that go on, kind of what I call me, forgive me, but [inaudible 00:07:52], tired, boring presentations, right?

David Lecours: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Carol Doscher: These certain things go on. That’s what the panelists either consciously or maybe even subconsciously, that’s what they’re used to.

David Lecours: They expect it, yeah.

Carol Doscher: When a team brings energy that is focused on being helpful, and really meeting the clients’ needs, it completely helps them. I get comments from the listeners, “I couldn’t not watch you.”

David Lecours: Wow.

Carol Doscher: I love the double negative, right?

David Lecours: Yeah.

Carol Doscher: But I’m compelled to stay with you, that creates an experience and that experience I have to tell you, that wins work.

David Lecours: Yeah. That’s cool. I can hear the body language in your voice. You’re smacking your hand.

Carol Doscher: I am.

David Lecours: I love it.

Carol Doscher: If it’s distracting, I’m sorry.

David Lecours: No, no. It’s great. It’s what you do and teach and coach.

Carol Doscher: It actually is. Even though we’re talking shortlist interviews, I have now come to actually telling our clients, “Okay, we call this bring your presentations to life, but actually it’s every time you open your mouth training.”

David Lecours: Exactly.

Carol Doscher: It’s literally the same principle, so I’m using body language here on the phone.

David Lecours: Yeah, so what people learn today and what people learn in your training, it’s applicable way beyond in my mind, just the presentation interview, but we’re going to stay focused.

Carol Doscher: Okay, we’re going to stay focused.

David Lecours: My questions are going to be in somewhat sequential order, as if somebody’s going through the process. We talked about why, I’m going to ask some questions about preparation, I’m going to ask some questions about I’m calling it game day, in other words the actual presentation, and then a question or so about the after. Let’s start with preparation. How far in advance should a team start to think about this? Obviously there’s some limitations in terms of when they find out they’ve been shortlisted, or maybe not. Maybe they should be planning way ahead of that. I don’t know. You tell me.

Carol Doscher: Okay. A couple of things come to my mind. One is the firms that I learn win more work are the ones who have done the best research. Now, that is pre-presentation. That’s pre-proposal, but early work, doing the research, finding out what the client cares about, our metaphor is splinters, but who cares? I mean, it’s really what do they care about? What’s making them nervous? That sets the team up.

Carol Doscher: I would say early [crosstalk 00:10:17] … But here’s the thing, in terms of the presentation itself, try to avoid the crunch mode. That is what I’m getting at. The comfort and the confidence of the presenters themselves, because they are your front line, right? Their comfort and confidence, and their ability to be nimble and flexible in that meeting, is directly related to how much they avoid the crunch.

Carol Doscher: I basically want to encourage, start sooner. Whatever sooner is. I know at different times, sooner.

David Lecours: I’m guessing that leadership, depending on the firm of course, will want to be involved in some way and when I say leadership, I’m assuming people that actually aren’t involved in the presentation, but they may want to shape it. I would love to get your feedback on that, how to handle that.

Carol Doscher: I love that you asked that question. I do. Because it’s huge. Huge. All right. It’s also I think one of the biggest struggles in the AEC industry, and perhaps in other industries as well. Leaders are busy, and they’re pulled in so many different directions. So, often we hear of leadership coming in, like the day before, or even sometimes the morning of the presentation.

David Lecours: Oh man.

Carol Doscher: Coming in and they have wisdom. Great, great wisdom, right? And they when we change things. So then what happens is the confidence of the presenters just goes down the tubes, right? So to avoid that-

David Lecours: They’re serving two audiences. They’re trying to please the leader and then they’re trying to make the actual presentation.

Carol Doscher: That’s phenomenally true. That doubles up on the stress. So, we have a wonderful process that we believe in, and we do some research, but get that kickoff meeting. A way to really target this is to get leadership, whether they’re presenting on the presentation themselves, or other leaders in the firm. Get them there, get their voices heard early. That is a game changer for your teams. The other thing that it does is that if everyone is at that kickoff meeting, leadership, leadership, right? And all the presenters, it helps the presenters already start to be able to take ownership of their stories, and that’s going to build their confidence. Confidence is huge, as you know.

David Lecours: Right, sure.

Carol Doscher: I couldn’t agree with you more. Okay. If I go on too long, you just tell me.

David Lecours: No, no, that’s great. To help build that confidence, I’m guessing that some form of a coach is effective, and the two scenarios I’m imagining is an external consultant, a paid consultant, like you and I are, or an internal marketing director. Either way, what do you see the role of this coach should be?

Carol Doscher: Okay. I see two different things. One is, and I’m going to hold off on external versus internal for a moment.

David Lecours: Yeah, yeah, sure.

Carol Doscher: I see marketing support, people who really help to support the process, drive the process, get the rehearsals and the meetings on the people’s calendars, help to support the creation, not the technical creation of say the PowerPoint show or the graphics or visuals, right?

David Lecours: Yep.

Carol Doscher: Then you’ve got that’s huge, to have that strong, have the leadership, if you will, anoint them, give them the authority to be able to drive that is huge. Because it takes the pressure off of the presenters themselves. They’re busy doing other projects and they just have their own job. They have, sorry, their other projects, but also their own work on the presentation, putting together their stories and being able to speak with authenticity, right?

Carol Doscher: So, getting the marketing support. Then you have coaches. Now, I think there are people who are naturally wired to be a coach, period. So, coaching, the delivery takes honestly in my opinion, takes a deft hand to be able to coach the presenters to be able to speak with that authentic voice and confidence. So, sometimes there are people who are great coaches, and sometimes people are more gifted at other tasks. Does that make sense?

David Lecours: Yeah, absolutely.

Carol Doscher: Okay. Do you want me to talk about external versus internal, or?

David Lecours: Yeah, that was going to be my next question. I recognize my own bias as an outside consultant, I recognize that you’re an outside consultant, but I imagine there may be some pros and cons of working with a paid outside coach, and you would know best how to address those.

Carol Doscher: Okay, so this is how we see it. Most of all, I want our teams and our clients to succeed. I want them to be comfortable, I want them to win more work, I want them to be able to take this process that we may teach them and do it all on their own. We’re trying to coach ourselves out of a job. That’s really when we get hired. That’s my vision. I want the training to be right and I want it to stick, right?

Carol Doscher: How we figure out how we get it to stick is A, if they’ve got oh please, we’re surrounded by really smart marketing staff, right? And directors, and coordinators, and all these people. Should we be hired? I believe it’s weird, an internal person can be saying XYZ, right? But we know that nobody listens to their mama. That’s the way we talk about it at GraceWorks.

David Lecours: So true, yeah.

Carol Doscher: You can say the most brilliant thing and you may be an employee, get a W2, and forgive me, you don’t know anything. You hire a consultant, David, I’m sure you’ve experienced this. You come in, right? Say the same thing and like, “Oh, my gosh, that is just so smart.” Now, I don’t think life should be that way, but it just is.

David Lecours: It just is, yeah.

Carol Doscher: It just is. And also an outside person has a little more, we can get away with saying some things that maybe someone who was closer to the situation might not be able to broach.

David Lecours: Right, there’s no political repercussions. You can really give the unvarnished truth.

Carol Doscher: Oh, exactly. So, this is how we see it. We come in, we’re able to speak and the marketing staff and the coaches that are internal are absolutely a part of that experience. Everybody experiences it together, the messages have been sent, we’ve created a team, and now those internal people are set free. If the leadership gives them authority, boom, there it is.

David Lecours: Yeah. No, that makes total sense. Okay, so we’re still in preparation mode, and there’s a couple aspects of how this presentation gets put together. You mentioned the visuals part, there’s also the verbal part, so thinking more about the verbal part, I’m a bit of a control freak. I think details really matter and so it’s typical. I’m imagining there’s some marketing directors that are tempted to script everything out for each presenter. How do you respond to that kind of scenario if it exists?

Carol Doscher: Yeah. David, I love your questions. I just do. I just do. Okay. Because I think you’re hitting upon some real sticklers and some game changing concepts, and ideas. Okay, so I believe your strongest presenter is going to be someone who is absolutely comfortable in their own skin, is speaking about stuff they know and they own, and they feel strongly about.

Carol Doscher: The stronger someone feels about what their topic is, the more comfortable they are, and because live communication is contagious, the more comfortable the audience will be, and they will meet the clients’ needs. So, how do we get there? All right. Here’s the deal. In my book, it’s never a script. Yay. Right? Here’s the thing. Nobody, at least I don’t want to say nobody, because I’m sure there’s someone out there who can, right?

Carol Doscher: Actors learn how to take a script, and make it their own, but that’s not the situation that we’re dealing with in the interview, right?

David Lecours: Yeah.

Carol Doscher: So really presenters, we really can’t deliver somebody else’s words or even somebody else’s great ideas. That’s the truth. It needs to come from the person. It needs to come from within. And also, you have the other issue of there are people, there are presenters who are really strong in language and they love words, and they love to write. We’re all wired differently, based upon our nature, our DNA and our nurture, we’re all wired in different ways we like to think.

Carol Doscher: Some people are language people and they write to love those scripts, but when I ask them, “Well how did that go when you presented it?” They go, “Well, not well because I forget, and then I get all over myself, I start to criticize myself because I forgot my words” and it’s downhill spiral, right? People who are really prone to write scripts, strangely enough, the best thing they can do is not write the script.

Carol Doscher: Literally don’t write it, and they should develop their stories by speaking them out loud, and visualizing what you’re talking about, and using their bodies. Now, I know that sounds insane, okay? It sounds opposite, but it actually sets the people free, and after they’ve talked through their story, they talk it out loud, “Oh, I’ve talked about the grass, I’ve talked about the barn, and I’ve talked about the highway. Oh, that’s the right order of that story” and then they can take a little pen and they write down their bullets. Long, barn, and highway. [crosstalk 00:20:24].

David Lecours: Interesting. So say it before you write it, as the way to craft it. Interesting, I like that.

Carol Doscher: Exactly. I’ve watched it set people free and what happens is left brain is where most of language lives for people, for most people. Left brain is also where the inner critic, the critical mind is, and having a critical mind in life is good because it helps you make judgment, right?

David Lecours: Yeah.

Carol Doscher: But when it comes to communicating, you want to hush that inner critic. That’s why you want to really restrict people who are prone to write, because it’ll kick up their inner critic. Does that make sense?

David Lecours: Yeah. No, absolutely. I’m guessing the client wants to see some cohesion of the team and you’ve got like maybe three or four different presenters. I guess should there be some sort of thread that goes through? Again, maybe it’s the control thing, I’m just worried you set these people free, they do three super individual, I don’t know, expressions, and I’m feeling like now they’re not a team. Am I missing something?

Carol Doscher: Okay. I have a couple things to say about team, and I’m hoping I’m going to remember both. Well, at the beginning of the preparation process, the full team and leadership and anybody who has intel on the project should come together and come together and create an agenda, an overall story that everyone agrees upon. Everybody has voice upon.

David Lecours: Okay, cool.

Carol Doscher: So there is, and the agenda in my opinion, needs to be 100% focused on the listener, on the client, and what they care about. The tendency to do the we-we show, [inaudible 00:22:15], is not good. It’s all over the place. We want to create the you-you show. Everybody needs to be onboard with what is the overall story. Each of the presenters are telling a piece of the story but it’s all part of one story, okay? Each part, there’s pieces and places for. Does that make sense?

David Lecours: Yes.

Carol Doscher: All right. The other thing, I’m just going to throw this in here, if I may?

David Lecours: Sure.

Carol Doscher: A client is looking at the team and basically they’re going, “Who are you? Who are you to me? Who are you to each other? How does this team function?” In my opinion, there are four ways that the client will walk away knowing how that works. One is the person’s project title, not their internal title, project title. But even those titles, that’s loose, because firms call people different things.

Carol Doscher: But number two, the content that that person talks about, when they talk about it, and how long they talk about it. If you put all four of those pieces in place, as you structure the presentation, the client will experience the team. The other thing about teamwork is as I mentioned before, that’s one of the things that clients … “Why did we hire you? You proved that you were a team.” Talk is cheap, don’t tell me you’re a team. “I’ve worked with David for 15 years.” Great, you and I could have fought like cats and dogs, right? Talking doesn’t mean anything, but demonstrating teamwork.

Carol Doscher: The fastest way, and it’s really an easy way to demonstrate teamwork is in the handoffs that you give one to the other. Is it okay if I share this right now?

David Lecours: Yeah, no. I love this, the transitions part. I hope you talk about the thing where you introduce the next person, what you call-

Carol Doscher: Yes.

David Lecours: Okay, cool.

Carol Doscher: Exactly. Okay, so here is what usually happens, right? Well now I’m going to let David explain his process for working with a client. Oh, great, who died and made me queen? I’m going to let you do that. Wow, how dictatorial of me, right? Or I could say, “Now David’s going to do da, da, da, da, da, da,” right?

David Lecours: Right.

Carol Doscher: I’m talking about you in the third person.

David Lecours: Like as if I’m not even there.

Carol Doscher: Exactly. You’re in the other room. Okay, here’s the easy switch. Everybody, don’t talk about each other in the third person. Talk directly to each other. “David, what are you happy to say?” “David, I’m done, what’s on your mind?”

David Lecours: I can see you turning your body, too, right? To face me.

Carol Doscher: Exactly. And actually it’s not formal. You don’t want to be formal. You want to just be like a human, and if you behave with each other like you do in the office, now they experience the team, and that wins work.

David Lecours: Yeah. I use this quote, “Formality is banality.”

Carol Doscher: I’ll have to write that down.

David Lecours: Yeah. Those silly formalities are so annoying. Yeah, you mentioned them earlier, expectations about, “Now is the time that I’m going to present Carol. Carol, here’s the presentation stick” or I don’t know, whatever [crosstalk 00:25:35]-

Carol Doscher: You know what I would say? I say, “Thank you David.” Don’t thank anybody unless you really mean it. But I have to tell you, we had a client who we’d done some training, they drank the Kool-Aid, they went in, they did a presentation, they won the job, great. The next week, the project team was having lunch in a restaurant and the project manager for the client was in the same restaurant. Got up out of their chair, came over to the table and said, “That was a great presentation and by the way, thank you for not saying, ‘I’m going to let so and so talk about.’ Thank you for not saying that.”

David Lecours: Right, interesting.

Carol Doscher: I couldn’t believe that someone actually could articulate that kind of … Isn’t that great?

David Lecours: Yeah, that is great. Okay, so final question in terms of preparation, curious if you have tips about how to rehearse?

Carol Doscher: Yes.

David Lecours: I figured you did.

Carol Doscher: I’m sorry, David. I cut you off.

David Lecours: No, that’s it. Short and sweet.

Carol Doscher: Here are three tips. Number one, practice out loud. Thinking about what you’re going to share is about as effective as thinking about going to the gym.

David Lecours: Yeah, [crosstalk 00:26:57] works out.

Carol Doscher: It’s actually bad for you, because it makes you mental. It makes you intellectual, it makes you heady. It does not bring you, it doesn’t, it’s actually bad practice. [inaudible 00:27:09] practice. Practice out loud, but don’t practice in front of a mirror. That’s weird.

Carol Doscher: Also, it could make you self-conscious and no, you don’t want to be self-conscious. You want to be conscious of your listeners. Here’s a game changer. Oh, it’s going to be wonderful. Practice without your graphics.

David Lecours: Interesting. Now why?

Carol Doscher: Why? Because not singling out architects, because honestly, it’s not just architects, but we love our slides. Don’t we love our slides?

David Lecours: I know where you’re going. Yes, we do.

Carol Doscher: We love our slides. We do. There is an umbilical cord that has us attached to our slides and it is deep, and it is multilevel. It is a hard habit to break, but here’s the thing. Think about this. An audience is jealous for the attention of the speaker. [inaudible 00:28:10] that, right?

David Lecours: Yeah.

Carol Doscher: You want that speaker to deliver stuff to you that matters to you, you want them to care about you and meeting your needs. I think that’s basic. Would you agree with me?

David Lecours: Yeah, absolutely.

Carol Doscher: Anytime that a presenter is talking to anything other than the people, like the slides, or the notes, or the air, you’re shooting yourselves in the foot. Because trust, commitment, and chemistry happens when people are connecting with people. Here’s the rule of thumb from our perspective. To make a human connection, talk with a human. Don’t talk to inanimate objects.

Carol Doscher: But I’ll tell you, that’s a hard habit to break to get away from talking with the slides, and of your listeners are going to go, “But my story’s on my slide and I have to show them stuff.” That’s when you practice without them, you’re visualizing your story out front, I’m just going to drop this out here and I’m hoping somebody can get this. All of your stories, no matter what they are, projects, whatever, should live in front of you as you face the audience. It’s like you’re talking with your family in the backyard about a project that you’re working on and you’re all excited about it, and you don’t have a PowerPoint slide, and you don’t have a piece of paper to draw it.

Carol Doscher: You’re just literally mapping it out for them in front of you. When you do that, that is a party for your listeners, and your clients will love you for it. Have I lost the audience there, David?

David Lecours: No. I get it. It’s painting the picture with words so that the slides will only enhance it if you have, support it, yeah.

Carol Doscher: Exactly. And you visualize it. The slides are like icing on the cake.

David Lecours: Exactly.

Carol Doscher: Practice without your graphics. That’s it.

David Lecours: In terms of this rehearsal, everybody together and should you do it in the sequence that it’s going to actually happen?

Carol Doscher: Yes, for sure. After everybody has gone and they’ve created that agenda, we all agree upon it, we go home and we create our stories and we dig deep. We find our personal positive passion, we create our bulleted notes, we talk them out loud at home, we come together as a group, and actually do what I like to do the ugly rehearsal. It’s a game changer.

Carol Doscher: You sit around the table, you do not have any graphics or slides, I know that sounds insane but it’s good. You actually do the presentation, you don’t talk about it. “Well David, you’re going to talk about that and I’m going to talk about” … No. That’s not this rehearsal. That’s the kickoff meeting. You’re discussing it. You actually do the presentation, you don’t stop or interrupt anybody, you take notes if you have something to say afterwards, and you ballpark time it.

Carol Doscher: Let me tell you, those rules, do the ugly rehearsal like that, it ramps up the confidence of the presenters in spades, it saves you a whole lot of time as a team, you’ve got your story, and then it’s easy breezy putting graphics to what that story is.

David Lecours: Excellent. I feel so prepared.

Carol Doscher: You’re so dear.

David Lecours: Let’s transition to game day, right? We’ve done all the prep work, the hard work. I mean, it’s all hard work and each phase is important, but now we’re moving to the actual presenter. I’ve heard and I’ve read things that you’ve written about, you believe that the presenter’s job is to help the client not be a great presenter. I wonder if you can say a little more about that.

Carol Doscher: Right. Yes, I believe that in any kind of communication, but as a presenter, your single task as a presenter should be to help the listener get the message. That should be your intent. That’s a very different intent than, “Well, I have to make a presentation” or, “I have to get my points across. I have to cover these bullets. I have to deliver these slides.” Very different intent.

Carol Doscher: Helping is serving. Helping is focusing on the other person’s needs, and seeking wholeheartedly to meet them. When people grab hold to this, “Wow, all I have to do is help my listener get it,” it changes everything. Their nerves take a dive bomb because you’re focusing on the listener. The listener’s needs are being meet because they are being paid attention to. We like to blow up this intent to help the listener from yes, from a speaker to a listener, that’s my intent, but let’s blow it up to a more strategic level.

Carol Doscher: We like to call it the decision sieve. If you, as you prepare a presentation funnel, every decision you make through, “Well, will it help the listener?” You will always get the right answer. For example, “Well, what are we going to talk about? What’s the content?” Well, what’s going to help the listener make a wise decision? Who actually should be going to this presentation? Well, what’s going to help the listener? Who is going to help the listener get comfortable with this team? Are we going to use graphics and what kind? Well, what’s going to help the listener catch the vision for this project? Are we going to practice? Well, what’s going to help the listener?

David Lecours: What’s going to help the listener? All right, I’m getting it.

Carol Doscher: Got the idea? Okay. That’s it.

David Lecours: Yeah, no that’s good. A lot of the firms that we work, whether they’re architecture, engineering, or constructional, a lot of what they do is very technical and sometimes the client is pretty technically savvy. But I’m seeing this continuum of technical versus emotionally compelling, and there’s a need to marry those. Are there any techniques that you can offer presenters for making technical information more interesting?

Carol Doscher: Yes. Well, I’m going to have to say the word trust. I’m going to start with that. Because most people, most presenters feel like they need to be professional, they need to be correct, right? They need to be appropriate. I’m not saying people shouldn’t be appropriate but they need to be professional. And especially people who are maybe going to deliver a lot of technical information, they may have a little more of a gifting on the left side of their brains which is more analytical, fact based, logical, sequential, and they want to put in all those details.

Carol Doscher: We like to tell them trust and let your inner geek fly. We love the geek, right? The reason I say trust is because that’s going to be hard for them do that. They’re going to say, “What? Doesn’t work,” right? But I have to tell you, it’s kind of like go ahead and get geeky. “What do you love about being a project manager?” “Quite honestly, what I love most of all is when I actually finish the task and I get to check it off. Nothing makes my day happier than boom, did it, check it off,” right?

Carol Doscher: That sounds a little geeky, right? But guess what? You’ve got a project manager who can get things done. People have to be encouraged and they have to try it and then get applauded, but it really is about, I’ll just say this. I’ll never forget this, Jennifer and I worked with a young woman and she was literally on fire about building codes. I know that sounds, that’s weird, right?

David Lecours: Right, it’s an oxymoron.

Carol Doscher: But she got up and gave the most heartfelt, woohoo, passionate, she got all geeky about building codes, right? We all remember her, and the whole place was, they stood up and gave her a standing O. One last thing I want to share about this, this is really good, this [inaudible 00:36:11]. Gosh, about 21 years ago, when we first started GraceWorks, a client called us in to take a look at their presentation. I went in, oh, it was big, bad, and boring. It was.

Carol Doscher: It was a highway job, construction firm, there was a rock blast part of this job, right? There was a geologist on the team who was going to take care of the rock blast. Plus he’s already probably sat there for like three hours waiting for his turn to talk. What we do with our consultants, right? Okay, so got to be his turn, you know what he said? He literally, I’m quoting him, “I love rocks. I can’t wait to get my hands on those rocks.”

Carol Doscher: This guy, David, he lit up the room. No joke. Then he went and got all geeky and told every little ticky detail about those rocks. I remember it 21 years later. Speak and let them know how you feel about what you’re talking about first, and then you can [inaudible 00:37:11]. Hopefully that helps somebody.

David Lecours: Yeah, yeah, no. That’s good. If I could summarize, it’s not what you talk about, it doesn’t matter. It’s the way you talk about it and-

Carol Doscher: That’s right.

David Lecours: … it’s the passion, and I guess what I’m hearing you say is you can talk about the most technical thing in the world and if you’re enthusiastic and excited about it, it’s infectious, and the audience will feel that.

Carol Doscher: It absolutely is. Live communication requires both the intellect and the emotion for the message to reach the listener. It just does.

David Lecours: No, absolutely. You mentioned that the handoff part, are there any other things in the moment, on game day, that the team can do to help demonstrate teamwork?

Carol Doscher: Oh, okay. Yes, I’m glad you asked that. You have to be conscious about this. Every team member, whether they are speaking or especially when they are not speaking, when they’re not speaking at the moment, they need to be actively listening to the speaker, in the present moment. Let me tell you, that actually takes more concentration than getting up and doing your portion of it. Because it is-

David Lecours: Yes, you’ve probably heard it before, so yeah.

Carol Doscher: Exactly. Hopefully you have, because you practiced, right?

David Lecours: Right.

Carol Doscher: When everybody really listens in the present moment, it creates a presence with your team that literally jumps out at the client. They don’t know what it is, they just know life has entered the room. It also sets you up for real handoffs, and pop ins, and in the moment, getting, “Oh, boom, there it is.” You practice to be spontaneous. You don’t get self-indulgent. Still have to stay faithful to your plan, but there’s still room for a certain amount of flexibility, right? Listening is huge. And the other thing that they should do, what can really help them, is ahead of the time, either as a team or if you need to, go into the restroom and you need to, what I like to say, shake, wiggle, dance, and sing.

Carol Doscher: That’s popping this in there at this point, but to get your heart rate up for about 30 seconds is going to deal with your adrenalin, it activates your right brain, where all the communication skills live, and it’s going to make you a much better presenter.

David Lecours: Yeah, that’s the point. All right, so we’ve covered prep, we’ve covered game day, just one final question about what happens after the presentation. I’m curious, you mentioned that SMPS study. Any other insight on what makes a team successful or maybe is there some suggestion about follow-up or recap what you said? Should you deliver handouts? I’m just trying to think post-delivery behavior and habits there.

Carol Doscher: Okay. Well, I do think one, you have to be aware that you, as long as you’re in the room, you are, and I’m not going to say the word on stage, because I don’t look at this, even though I’m from the theater, I don’t look at this as a performance at all, but you are visible. How you communicate with the panel and how you communicate with each other demonstrates how you’re going to be to work with.

Carol Doscher: You need to be mindful of that. I definitely would give handouts at the end. I would not give them at the beginning. Because you want to help your listeners stay focused on you. That’s where their needs are going to be met. That’s where you’re making a human connection. You want to do whatever you can do to help them stay focused on you in the present moment, okay?

Carol Doscher: I want to also just pop this in if I might. On that note to help them stay focused on you, your visuals, you want to really simplify your visuals, and just lead with this principle. Help your listeners focus on one thing at a time. Don’t put them in conflict by putting up busy slide and keep talking. They won’t know what to do. Animate those graphics, one thing at a time. That’s the principle. I think … I don’t know.

David Lecours: Yeah. I always tell clients, slides are free. If you’ve got seven points to make, you need to have at least seven slides, not seven bullet points. Just make individual.

Carol Doscher: It’s an interesting concept. Some people think, “Well, we have too many slides.” Well no. Words make a presentation long, not clicks. I don’t ever, there’s no logic to me to say how long do you spend on a slide? That doesn’t make sense. What is my story? Story drives graphics, I’m a big believer in that.

David Lecours: Absolutely. Well Carol, this has been excellent.

Carol Doscher: Oh, so kind.

David Lecours: I think there’s so much good stuff that if our listeners want to improve their presentation interviews, they just need to listen this a couple of times, or maybe even take this episode into their principle and have them listen as well. Where can people find you out there on the web, or if they want to learn more about you or your firm, GraceWorks?

Carol Doscher: Okay, thank you. First of all, I really hope that this has been helpful. If there’s anything confusing, I do hope you’ll reach out to us, because I know talking about presentations, some of it’s visual. Anyway, I hope it’s helpful. Find us at www.GraceWorksInc.com. That’s our website. Should I give the phone number? I don’t know whether we do that.

David Lecours: Yeah, sure.

Carol Doscher: Okay. Our office phone number is 212-724-1541.

David Lecours: All right.

Carol Doscher: And GraceWorksInc.com, and it’s been a joy. David, you’re such a gracious, you’re a wonderful host. Thank you.

David Lecours: Well, thanks. All right, so that’s it for this episode of PSM Show, focused on presentation interviews. Big thanks to Carol and to our sponsor, SMPS. If you, our listeners, have any questions or comments, we always love hearing from you. Reach out to us at PMS.show, and drop us a note. From Carol Doscher and myself, best wishes and win your next presentation interview.

 

This episode runs 28 min.

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Mentioned in This Episode 146: Client Feedback

Two Forms of Feedback
Survey – pros/cons
Interview – pros/cons

When to Get Feedback
Most people do it after projects are complete, problems
Most people do it as a stand alone event, problems
Better to start at beginning of project (establish what the client values, baggage)
Better to do a check-in mid-project (course correction)
Build feedback into your client agreements (both accountable)
Common proposal question: describe your client satisfaction process

What Not to Ask
Vague questions – how are we doing on this project?
Vision questions – What should we be doing for you in the future?
It’s not your clients job to do your visionary thinking

What to Ask
Net Promoter Score, developed by Bain & Co.
How likely is it that you would recommend our firm to a friend or colleague? 1-10
9-10 are promoters
0-6 are detractors
7-8 are passives
NPS = % of promoter – (minus) % of detractors

Follow up with an open ended question for elaboration. Why?
What service do you wish we offered to help you today?
Instead of “How did we do on delivering X?”
Rate on a scale from 1–5 how we did on delivering X. Then follow up with why?

Best Practices
Use a non-biased third party for interviews (hire a consultant).
Sample Size: 5–10 interviewees gets you a surprisingly lot of information
Ask same questions to all interviewees, but allow for interviewer to go off script
First ssk clients by email or phone if they would be willing to participate
Ask for a 20 minute interview. This will be about 8–10 questions
Make the interviewee introduction to the interviewer. Let the interviewer schedule the interviews.
Tell clients the information will be presented as a group, no individual attribution.
Thank participants…  

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Announcer: Welcome to PSM, the Professional Services Marketing podcast. It’s insight applied.

Josh Miles: Hey, David, I hear you want some feedback today.

David Lecours: Well, actually, Josh, I was thinking our audience should get some feedback from their clients. So, today’s topic is client feedback.

Josh Miles: Well, while we’re at it, PSM Show is underwritten by SMPS, whose vision is business transformed through marketing leadership. Visit SMPS.org to learn more.

Announcer: This is PSM, it’s insight applied.

David Lecours: So I was at a presentation last week, Josh, and somebody put up this slide about client experience, and I don’t have a source for this, but let’s just assume it’s true.

Josh Miles: I hear that 87% of statistics are made up on the spot.

David Lecours: That’s right. I like the quote, “If you torture statistics long enough, you can get them to confess to just about anything.” But this one said 80% of firms believe they provide a great client experience. Yet, only eight percent of those clients believe the experience is great.

Josh Miles: Something is amiss.

David Lecours: Something is amiss and we need to close this gap and I think that some form of client feedback is a way to help us close this gap to know where we really stand. So I think this tool for our audience could be very beneficial.

Josh Miles: So, isn’t this like the most uncomfortable thing possible is to look somebody in the eye or look someone in their inbox and ask them what they think about you?

David Lecours: Yeah, it is and it’s hard and I have to say I’m a little bit biased on that question because as a third-party consultant, I always recommend to clients to work with a third-party because of the reason you just described. It’s really hard to ask and it’s really hard for the client to look you in the eye and tell you what they really think and what they believe. I think it’s nice to have some form of intermediary to soften the blow and ask the questions in a way that will elicit a real candid response.

Josh Miles: What would you recommend, like what’s the practical way or the method in which they could go get this feedback?

David Lecours: Yeah. So I’m thinking of there’s kind of two main ones but maybe something else will come to mind. I think a survey is one of those and I think client interviews is the second way to do it. Each kind of has some pros and cons. If we think about survey first, I think one of the pros about survey is that you can get a much larger sample size. Once you spend the time, and I don’t want to underestimate the time and thinking it takes to come up with a great survey, deploying that across a lot of clients is not going to cause you a lot of extra time. The downside of that is that because it’s so easy, we get a little bit inundated with surveys. Every time I go and have my car worked on, I get a survey. Every time I almost do anything and-

Josh Miles: Hotel stays.

David Lecours: Right. So unless I have a very personal connection to the person asking for the survey, I rarely do them. And I think that that’s probably true. So I think there’s a little bit of, not a little bit, there’s a resistance to doing these surveys. There’s things that people do to try to incent you, a chance to win an Amazon gift card. No, thanks. Ten or twenty dollars, no thanks. So I almost think it’s a bit of an insult when they try to bribe you with that. I don’t know. Any other sort of pros and cons that you can think of related to the survey approach?

Josh Miles: Do you feel like the bribery method, as you put it, do you feel like that feels as negative when it’s someone you already have a relationship with? Or does it feel worse if you already have a relationship?

David Lecours: Yeah, I think it almost feels worse and it’s sort of awkward. You’re offering to pay a client, not pay, but give some sort of gift or spiff or something, to somebody who is also paying you for your services. It just gets a little murky and messy. Yeah, it feels awkward to me. Yeah, I think it’s too big of an ask.

Josh Miles: Yeah, I feel like those, the ones I’m most likely to want to fill out are the brands that I already have a really good opinion of.

David Lecours: Yes.

Josh Miles: I suppose if I had a really lousy, like a zero or one experience, then that would be fine. That would drive me to fill it out but anything in the middle I’m kind of indifferent.

David Lecours: Right. And so what surveys are really good at is gathering information to answer the what type of questions. What do you think about this? But they’re not real great about the sort of why. So if somebody rates you a 5 out of 10, okay. But the follow on question of why is so critical and that’s where I think something like an interview really shines because in a personal interview you have this ability to sort of listen for nuance, to ask follow on questions, to drill down, to sort of go off script that you don’t have in a survey. And so that’s one of the reasons I’m more of a fan of interviews.

Josh Miles: I think even part of that could be asking the tell me about your experience question first before you rate it. So what happened and how was it? And describe the good or bad thing that happened and then in the end say, “Overall, how would you rate it?” And then to me that kind of warms up the question a little better.

David Lecours: I like that a lot. Yeah, so it’s key to make sure you have some open-ended questions if you are doing a survey to just let the person flow and not restrict them to sort of very prescribed answers.

Josh Miles: So, what do you think about like timing? When should our clients be reaching out? Is this start of the project, middle of the project, after the project’s been dead for three months?

David Lecours: Right. So usually what happens is someone in marketing gets excited to do this. They go to a presentation like I did recently and it’s like, “We got to do client feedback.” All right. We’re going to do this and we’re going to survey all the clients that we’ve worked with for the last three to five years. And the problem with that is, I don’t know about you, but as I get older it’s really difficult to remember what I did last week versus a project that I worked on two and a half years ago. So, even if you were to get feedback from somebody at the end of a project, the problem is that that project’s already done and if you’ve screwed it up, in a lot of cases it’s damage that can’t be fixed. So I think waiting until the project’s done or waiting ’til a year or two later is a standalone event is problematic.

David Lecours: I would much rather see firms and recommend that they, at the beginning of a project, obviously you can’t ask them how you did. But what you could do is sort of establish these ground rules to determine what the values that you both share on a successful project and project management are because in your mind, as the service provider, you may think you know what’s important to deliver on but … One of the things I always do with clients is ask them about their past baggage. And I say, “The last time you hired a creative consultant, what was that like for you?” Because they may have had an experience where the person, I don’t know, showed up for meetings five minutes late and that just drove the client crazy. “What was it like working with those? And what are some things that the consultant you worked with in the past did well? And what are some things that could be improved upon?” So I think establishing kind of what you’re going to measure in the beginning is a really great way to work with the client.

David Lecours: And then if possible, I think it’s more beneficial to get client feedback in the middle of a project because then it gives you the opportunity, as you could probably imagine, to course correct if something’s not going well and hopefully get you an opportunity to save the project or save the relationship if things aren’t going well. And if things are going well, great, keep doing those. I’m a big fan of positive psychology, not just focus on what’s going wrong, but try to identify the things that are going right and build on those.

Josh Miles: Yeah. And maybe if there are findings from that particular project, most firms would have multiple clients, multiple projects going on in parallel. You don’t wait until one project finishes to take on a new client. So there may be things that you identify from this client’s feedback to go, “Oh, if they think that then I wonder if these other guys are thinking that too.” And something that you can really use to improve the entire client experience.

David Lecours: For sure. That extrapolating, what’s working for one client is a very high chance it’s going to work for others as well. I love that. And I think it’s probably worthwhile to build some sort of client feedback expectation into your client agreement. So in addition to the deliverables and whatever is in your contract, I think you should include something about client feedback. I think it sends a message that you care about it and it then makes both parties accountable. It makes you accountable to deliver on that and then it sets the expectation with the client that you’re going to follow up on that. And so I think it would be great to actually include that from the beginning because what I’m hearing a lot right now is that NRFPs or when perspective clients are looking at different professional service firms, one of the questions is often describe your client satisfaction process. And so if you have a process in place that you can incorporate into your agreement in the beginning, then I think it’s going to make your proposal and you as a potential service provider much more effective.

Josh Miles: Have you seen any sort of client directed processes? Or I’ve seen clients direct just about every other-

David Lecours: Aspect.

Josh Miles: Stage of the process but I haven’t heard of this yet so I’m just curious if you’ve come across this with any of your consulting clients.

David Lecours: I haven’t but it seems like it’s on the future and on the horizon. Like the one real sort of common tool that a lot of people use is Net Promoter Score, which is a little different in that it’s more about would you recommend the firm to a friend or colleague less so much about like project satisfaction or performance. But I imagine on the horizon there’s going to be something that clients ask to be used especially in these long projects that our AEC firm audience is involved in because there’s so many different phases and keeping the project on track is so essential.

Josh Miles: I was always a sort of my … What do you call that? The cringey secret show that I always like to watch back in the day was the What Not to Wear. So I’m curious the parallel to this is what not to ask. What should we avoid when we’re talking to our client about our performance?

David Lecours: So, whether it’s a survey or an interview, I think sort of super vague questions. I think open-ended questions are okay but something as like vague as how are we doing on this project, the answer’s probably going to be fine, okay, good. That just isn’t super effective.

Josh Miles: How’s it going?

David Lecours: Right, yeah. Exactly, right. When somebody says that to you when they come up, it’s like, “I don’t know. Do you want the truth?”

Josh Miles: I’m pretty sure you don’t.

David Lecours: The other type of question that I found not very effective are questions where you’re asking the client to look, or the interviewee to sort of look out into the future and almost like do your work for you. A question like, “What should we be doing for you in the future?” And that one reminds me of this sort of often quoted Henry Ford quote, which was if … Before Henry Ford invented the automobile, if he had done like a focus group and asked everybody, “What do you want in the future?” And keep in mind this was the time when horse-drawn buggies was what Ford was producing. If he had done this focus group, people would’ve said they want faster horses. So the idea is that true innovation requires visionary thinking and it’s not really the client’s job to tell you what to do out into the future. I think you can ask things about what could we do better going forward but in terms of like asking clients for sort of visionary answers is a little bit outside the realm and not appropriate.

Josh Miles: Yeah. That makes sense. What else would they not want to ask?

David Lecours: I don’t know.

Josh Miles: We have exhausted the list-

David Lecours: Exhausted the list of things not to ask. I just think being intentional and meaningful about developing your questions. Don’t ask a standard set of questions for every client. I think definitely customize them to find out the things that you really want to know about that particular engagement.

Josh Miles: Yeah, or maybe one other that I was thinking of is maybe not asking leading questions so that you’re implying the answer that you’re trying to get to. Don’t you think we’re doing a great job?

David Lecours: Right, right. For sure. So maybe it makes sense to sort of think about what we should ask next and I think, I had mentioned the Net Promoter Score as an effective tool. And those of our audience that aren’t familiar with that, it’s one question developed by a guy at Bain & Company, and the question is, “How likely are you to recommend our firm to a friend or client?” And you ask on a scale from 1 to 10. And when people answer either 9 or 10, they’re considered promoters. If they answer anywhere from zero to six, they’re considered detractors. And anywhere seven or eight are passives. And you develop the Net Promoter Score by taking the percentage of those who identified you as a promoter and subtract those who identified you as a detractor and you end up with a score that ends up being on a scale from, I think it’d be from like negative 100 to 100. So, anyway something like that is good. I do think-

Josh Miles: And you know these when you get that email that says please answer this one question about your experience and it’s how likely are you to recommend 1 through 10 that’s the dead give away that they are tracking their Net Promoter Score.

David Lecours: So anytime you can follow up the question, let’s say you ask somebody for a rating like, “How did we do? Judge us from one to five on our ability to communicate be it, well, just communicate about the project or how’s our communication. And then have the ability to ask a follow up so why did you give us a four because that’s when you start to get the really juicy information about what the things that can be improved or not improved. I always love the question of like what service do you wish we offered that could help you with some issue that you’re working on today. So not so much like what should we be doing in the future but more about like today you’ve got a set of challenges, maybe there’s something that we could be doing or do you wished we offered, maybe it’s something you’re getting from somebody else and they’re not doing a great job, what could we do?

Josh Miles: That also reminds me one of the podcasts that I used to listen to frequently that I haven’t checked on in a long time, one of their co-hosts would say he would get the most insights by reading through the iTunes comments of people who had given them a two or three star rating. So the one star ratings were like this is horrible, not worth my time. If you’re feeling sad and you want to cry a little, that might check that box. The ones that give you five star ratings that say this is the most amazing thing ever, it’s those two and three star reviews that give you insights of things that maybe you want to improve or maybe you don’t but at least you know what that middle of the road person who’s like a little bit on the detractor side, you might learn something from that.

David Lecours: Yeah, because you can never sway that sort of one or five person. They’ve already sort of made up their mind, they’re kind of very definitive. But you’re right, the sort of sweet spot is those twos and threes where you can, yeah, potentially sway them or find out how you can be doing a better job.

Josh Miles: Yeah. I like this one I used to ask a variation of this from our clients. We’d do this interview thing which was, “What else do you wish that X, Y, Z firm would do? So if you like them, you appreciate them, is there another step or a parallel or kind of related thing that you’d love to see them offer as well?” Because I think that gives you some interesting insights as well.

David Lecours: Yeah. I have sort of a traditional last question that I often ask when I’m doing the interviewing and that is, “What didn’t I ask you that you’ve been really dying to answer?” Because, typically, people have things that they want to say and when you sort of put them in a box of only being able to answer the questions that you have, you’re kind of restricting them. So I really do like to have that opportunity at the end to really open-end it and some people say, “No, no, that’s it. You’ve captured it,” or some people do say, “Yeah. I’ve been wanting to tell you about this.”

Josh Miles: Yeah, it’s that classic like once your primary care physician puts their hand on the door, you’re like, “Hey, I just wondered-

David Lecours: Yeah, exactly.

Josh Miles: Like, “No, I’m good, I’m good. Oh wait, just one more thing. But no, I don’t have anymore questions but okay just this one question.”

David Lecours: One more thing like the famous Steve Jobs presentations he used to do for Apple.

Josh Miles: Right. One more thing. We miss Steve.

David Lecours: Yeah. Well, so I have some best practices I’d like to share that mostly these relate to more kind of the interview side because, as you’ve probably gathered, I tend to favor the personal interview aspect. One is that you don’t need as big a sample size as you probably think you do like, Josh, you had mentioned earlier typically something that applies to one client will apply to almost all of your clients. And while all your clients think they’re really unique, I think you can get away with interviewing 5 to 10 people and that may sound surprising but it takes a good amount of time to schedule, to interview, to analyze the responses. And so to help, I guess, keep costs down for hiring an outside third-party, I think a smaller sample size will get you what you need without having to do too many more than that. And clients usually find that a little bit surprising but then when they start to see the responses they say, “Yeah, you know there’s some definite patterns that we started to see over and over again here.”

Josh Miles: Yeah, we saw that a lot just from a brand interview standpoint when you’re trying to get a vibe for what that client relationship was. After you did about 10 of those interviews, you could almost complete their sentences for them.

David Lecours: Yeah, exactly. And so I do think having a set of common questions that the interviewer would use, but please allow that interviewer to go off script if something really juicy starts to come up because that’s where you’re going to get really valuable information. Nice to have common sets so you can compare one to the next to the next, but again, don’t be so strict with them that you don’t allow them to vary it a bit.

Josh Miles: So, when you do these do you go out in person and hang out in the office and interview the client? Or what’s that look like?

David Lecours: Yeah, so typically because our clients have clients all over the country it’s just not practical. I certainly love to do interviews in person because you get the nonverbal communication. And you just form a better connection with them but rarely is that an option just from logistics, to sort of fly in a bunch of clients to the same place is going to send the budget way beyond what it should be. So, yeah, usually in terms of like sequencing, let’s say I’m doing the interviewing on behalf of a client, I’ll have the client either email or phone the interviewee to ask them are they willing to be interviewed. And I give them a script, I give them words that they can use and customize, but something to the effect of, “You’re one of our best clients. We really value your opinion. Would you be willing to talk to David for 20 minutes? He’ll follow up with you if you’re willing.” And then if the person says yes, like I said I’ll follow up to schedule the interview and complete it.

David Lecours: But there’s no way that I, as the interviewer, could just reach out to these people cold because they don’t know who I am and they’d be like, “Yeah, whatever.” And so the introduction … And ask for permission has to come from my client.

Josh Miles: Yeah, that’s especially nice to have that warm introduction as the consultant so you’re not, feel like you’re annoying their client without permission.

David Lecours: Exactly, yeah. And so I typically tell them to ask for a 20 minute interview because I feel like that is not too big of an ask, often they’ll go longer but I found that if people agree to a 20 minute, and I do when I’m interviewing keep a real good tabs on the clock and at 20 minutes, I’ll say, “Hey, I promised to get this done in 20 minutes. We can wrap up now. Or I do have a couple other questions.” And I leave it very open-ended. I don’t sort of try to persuade them because yeah, some people just have things to do and I get it. But often, they’ll say, “No, this is very interesting. I’m enjoying talking to you,” and will let me go for another 5 or 10 minutes. I definitely don’t push beyond 30, I think that starts to get uncomfortable.

David Lecours: And so within a 20 minute interview, I can get in about eight good questions typically. If it’s 30, we can probably get in maybe 10 to 12. And so yeah, you really got to think through what these questions are going to be and again I’ll allow for the opportunity to improvise. And the other kind of key thing is to sort of tell the person that you’re interviewing that you’re not quoting them directly. So you may present, I’ll say, “I’m going to be presenting what we talk about as a group with all the other people that I’m interviewing but I’m not asking you to individually attribute what you say.” In other words, I’m not looking for a testimonial. I’m not going to say, “Josh Miles said this and this about you,” because then I think you don’t get as candid of answers as possible. Now sometimes the person I’m interviewing will describe some story or give some like detail that allows the client to pretty quickly figure out who it is but that’s up to them. If they want to be so descriptive that it’s obvious, then that’s up to them.

Josh Miles: And then anything else that you’d include in your best practices list?

David Lecours: Yeah, I think you should be nice and if you’re the client and you’ve worked with a third-party, you should be the one that follows up to thank the participant for allowing themself to be interviewed. And that might be an area where you might send them a small gift or maybe offer to take them to lunch, it might just be another opportunity to sort of gain a touch point, a connection, with that client because hopefully they’ll have a project going forward in the future.

Josh Miles: Yeah, I think at least my perspective is even if a client is not having the best experience, just the fact that they have been asked at this point sometimes the flattery or the thought of that makes them develop a little more affinity towards the firm just by virtue of having been identified as someone that their feedback matters.

David Lecours: Yeah. We all like to be valued. If you’re asking somebody for their feedback, it says we value your opinion.

Josh Miles: Just don’t offer David a free Amazon gift card.

David Lecours: That’s right. That’s right. All right, Josh, I think we’ve exhausted this one. My feedback is we should wrap this up. What do you think?

Josh Miles: I agree. Can I have an Amazon gift card?

David Lecours: Yeah. I’ll send you a survey. All right. Our audience, hey, if you guys have any questions or comments, we’d love to hear it. If you have suggestions for future guests or topics that you want Josh and I to talk about, write to us at PSM Show. We have a really cool little website that’s got all our past episodes and if you want to share this podcast with a friend or a colleague that’s probably the best place to send them. And you can find our episodes on most of the popular audio podcast deliverers, like iTunes and the like. And so that’s it for this episode of PSM Show. Of course, we again want to thank our underwriting sponsor, SMPS. And that’s it for Josh Miles and myself. I’m David Lecours, we’ll see you next time.

This episode runs 39 min. 55 sec.

Why do clients make the decisions they do? Is it logic, emotion, or something deeper? Josh and JonRobert Tartaglione discuss the neuroscience of client behavior.

Subscribe to PMS Show on iTunes

 

Production of PSM Show is underwritten by:

 

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Let us know what you think about this episode. Should we do more interviews? Or, would you prefer just Josh and David (no guests)? Or should we get rid of Josh and David altogether? Use the form on our homepage to let us know.

 

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Read the Episode

Speaker 1: Welcome to PSM, the Professional Services Marketing podcast: It’s Insight Applied.

Josh Miles: Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of PSM Show, the podcast for AEC marketers. My name’s Josh Miles and I’m joined today by the genius behind the latest SMPS foundation white paper, JonRobert Tartaglione. Today we’re talking about behavioral science and how you can use John Robert’s powers for good in your firm, and frankly, whatever else he wants to talk about. So thanks again to our underwriting sponsor, SMPS. Head over to SMPS.org/buildbusiness to see all about Build Business 2019 in Washington, DC from July 31st through August 2nd, 2019. See you there.

Speaker 1: This is PSM: It’s Insight Applied.

Josh Miles: John Robert. Hey man, it’s great to have you on the show. Welcome to PSM.

JonRobert T.: Hey Josh, thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Josh Miles: Well, hey, so I have a few burning questions that I want to ask you about, and maybe this one’s an easy one. So in the Shakespeare category of questions, what’s behind the name of Influence 51?

JonRobert T.: I’ve gotten this question a lot now, so I’ll give you the truthful answer, and then I’ll give you the answer that one day I want to develop. The truthful answer is that I wanted… What I do takes a lot of different shapes depending on the organization, the domain, and so I wanted to come up with something that was at least indicative, to some degree, of what I do. And so influence was just the word that would happen to work for me. The 51 was quite frankly just because I’ve always liked the number 51. There’s nothing special behind it. There’s no personal significance whatsoever.

JonRobert T.: The domain influence.com was taken, and so Influence 51 you want to just happened to work for me. But obviously, that’s not nearly as enticing as people want it to be. I feel like people are always disappointed by the answer. And so I want to cultivate some sort of mystique around it, and so I’m working on developing a much more interesting explanation for the name.

Josh Miles: I appreciate that.

JonRobert T.: Of course.

Josh Miles: Maybe there’s, I don’t know, a baseball player or somebody that you could-

JonRobert T.: There we go. [crosstalk 00:02:42]. My dad was a Yankees fan, Bernie Williams at 51. So I’ve dedicated my entire business to Bernie Williams, is what it comes down to.

Josh Miles: The greatest of all time, Bernie Williams.

JonRobert T.: There we go.

Josh Miles: Well, for our listeners who maybe are not familiar with you or have not yet checked out your white paper that you did for SMPS, give us a little bit of the pitch of what Influence 51 is and what your role is.

JonRobert T.: Sure. So basically, who I am, which will give a nice explanation to what Influence 51 is, as it really is an extension of me and my interests. I’m trained as a psychologist and behavioral scientists, and essentially what I do in that capacity is I work with different organizations, and I teach them… At its core, I teach them about people. I teach them about how human beings make decisions, how their attitudes are shaped and changed and how you can moderate their behavior.

JonRobert T.: So at core, all I do is teach people about people, but more specifically, I teach different organizations how they can apply psychology and behavioral science to be more effective. And so Influence 51 is really all about helping organizations understand how they can use really simple psychological techniques to better market their products, to create more effective sales strategies, to be more consistently effective in business development efforts, et cetera.

Josh Miles: I’ve always been a big fan of the sales psychology stuff for just the human interaction and the, I guess neuroscience, is maybe the right word for it. But my family is less keen that I like to test these things on them first, and my wife is on to me. So when she sees me approaching something differently, she’s like, “Are you testing a technique on me again?” It’s really good. I love the silent response for, “Where do you want to go for dinner?” Because nobody likes silence. So there’s [crosstalk 00:05:04].

JonRobert T.: Yes. That is true.

Josh Miles: They’ll fill it in, so you don’t have to play the game.

JonRobert T.: That’s right.

Josh Miles: Well, you asked me where I want to go, but that’s probably because you have somewhere you want go. So, let’s maybe jump into some of the practical concepts from the white paper.

JonRobert T.: Sure.

Josh Miles: I won’t ask you to recount all of those because obviously it’s all in the research, but one in particular that I thought was interesting was, if I’m using the right word, I think it was anchoring. So you’ve got a high and a low, can you talk a little bit through that concept and how that might be worked into professional services sales or business development situation?

JonRobert T.: Yeah, absolutely. So anchoring is… The human brain operates on these things we call biases and heuristics. And in a sense, what they really are, they are kind of these mental shortcuts our brain uses to try to make decisions that find this equilibrium between being pretty accurate but also pretty efficient. And so anchoring is one of these by biases and heuristics that we use. And essentially, what an anchoring bias is it’s picking a piece of information and using it as a reference point.

JonRobert T.: And so anchoring has this really peculiar feature. The way it manifests itself is really interesting. So there was a study done in one of the first or most interesting studies on anchoring. What they did is back over a decade ago now, they went into classrooms and what they would do is they had the students do something pretty simple. They said, “We want you to take the last two digits of your social security number, and we want you to write it down as a numeric value.” And so I will not make the mistake of saying my social security number here.

JonRobert T.: However, the last two digits of my social security number are 02. And so I would write down $2. Whereas someone whose last two digits were 84 would write $84 on a piece of paper. And so after they had these individuals do this very simple task, they then presented them with items that they were putting up for auction. And they asked them, “How much would you be willing to pay for these items?” And one of the items happened to be this wireless keyboard and mouse. And at this point in time, it was interesting because there wasn’t really an established market for this kind of new technology. And so the price could have been anywhere between $30 all the way up to maybe $100.

JonRobert T.: But they asked these individuals, “How much are you willing to pay for this?” And what they found was that the bottom 20% of the social security numbers were willing to pay like $20 for this keyboard and mouse combo, whereas individuals who had the top 20% of the numeric values for their social security numbers were willing to pay like $57 for the same exact keyboard and mouse. And if obviously you look at it, it became quickly a rational thing or so it seems, and it can manifest… it’s often in an rational way. But really what’s happening is the brain looks for reference points.

JonRobert T.: The brain relies on comparisons. Human beings rely on comparison. And so what was happening is they were basically providing them with an arbitrary reference point, and you get anchored to that particular number, and then to decide on subsequent values, we’re basically tethered to that to some degree. And so people will go… they’ll anchor to something and go a little bit higher, or a little bit lower, but they’ll stay right around that value.

JonRobert T.: And so it’s interesting when you talk about how can you leverage this and use this in an organizational context, I’ll give a really simple example, and then we can talk about AEC specifically. But a really simple example is if you go into a restaurant and you’re looking down a menu, you read a menu from top to bottom. So if you’re looking on a menu and the first wine you see the $20 bottle of wine, that becomes your anchor. That’s the figure that you use to judge all other numbers again.

JonRobert T.: And so if the next bottle of wine is a $50 bottle of wine, it seems expensive. And so a really simple fix. When I work with restaurant clients, for instance, a really simple fix is to have a high anchor at the top so that’s everything that’s evaluated subsequently will look less expensive by comparison. And so you just switch that $20 bottle of wine with $100 bottle of wine, and then that second $50 bottle of wine now all of a sudden looks more reasonable by comparison because you’ve created this higher anchor.

JonRobert T.: And so with AEC firms, a lot of it if you’re creating marketing materials or you’re responding to an RFP, it’s about how you structure your pricing. What are the anchors that you’re providing, these first figures that you’re providing, and are you selecting them strategically?

Josh Miles: In your example, that happened back to back, right? They wrote down the number, and then they were asked the question about what they would value, that wireless keyboard mouse combo, right?

JonRobert T.: That’s correct.

Josh Miles: So maybe different than the menu example, would it be helpful to get clients to talk about big numbers before… Maybe unrelated, is there some value to get them talking about their last $20 million building or their last $50 million bridge or whatever, and then you go-

JonRobert T.: Yeah.

Josh Miles: … through and say, “And here’s our pricing.”

JonRobert T.: Yeah, you’re absolutely correct. And what you’re getting to too is you’re alluding to another phenomenon, which is this phenomenon of priming an [inaudible 00:11:13]. There’s a really famous study that I cite often where it was a study done in Canada, and what they were doing was they were basically going up to individuals and were asking them two questions, but they varied the order in which they asked the questions. So for half of the participants, they would go off and say, “On a scale of one to 10, how happy are you in general?” People would answer, maybe a seven or an eight.

JonRobert T.: The second question I’d ask is, “On a scale of one to 10, how successful have you been romantically in the past month?” And people would answer that question. When they’re asking that order, there’s almost no correlation. Of course, when you reverse the order and say, “Hey, how successful have you been romantically in the past month?” If someone gives a two to that question, they then tend to give a very low response for, how happy are you in general.

JonRobert T.: Now of course, their happiness is not being unilaterally dictated by their romantic success. They could have been very professionally successful that month, they could have had… whatever happened to them, see a lot of friends or family. But what you’re doing is you’re priming them. You’re getting them to think about a very particular thing at that moment in time, and that ends up having a very large influence on their subsequent judgments.

JonRobert T.: And so what you’re getting at talking to these individuals and having them bring up high priced projects that they’ve worked on, you’re priming them, you’re creating an anchor for them about what they have done in the past and by doing so, something that you’re about to propose that might be otherwise seen as a little bit pricey might not seem so pricey by comparison.

Josh Miles: I’m not under the expectation that you’re going to have an answer for this, but I know a lot of our members at SMPS have the problem of they’re in a competitive pitch situation or they are part of some RFP shortlist, so they have to go in and present and… Let’s pretend just for the sake of argument that these firms have not had a really deep relationship with a client in the past, and there’s not a previous working situation. And it frequently feels like either it comes down to the dollar number or it comes down to just being able to get some know, like and trust factor across. Is there anything that you would recommend from your research that might help for what sometimes feels like either just a hard quantitative question or… frequently is probably a strong qualitative thing too. Is the vibe right? Do they feel right? Anything in your research that you think would aid in those kinds of situations?

JonRobert T.: Yeah. If it comes down to these hard quantitative calculation… because I think you’re naive if you believe that money doesn’t matter at all. There are some psychologists who will make arguments that it’s really not about that, it’s about how they feel about you. And I think that’s a bit extreme. What I will say is when comes down to the figures that you’re presenting, it’s not a simple… $10,000 as we’ve kind of gone over in the anchoring example, $10,000 is not $10,000 is not $10,000. What I mean by that is these numbers are not context independent.

JonRobert T.: $10,000 can seem much more or much less desirable depending on the choice environment that you place it in. And so understanding, first and foremost, that if it is going to come down to a purely financial decision, you can still influence that decision based upon how you structure your choices and ultimately, how you frame that amount of money. Do you frame this as this is an investment, and if you work with us, you’re going to be saving $300 a month, or do you frame it as this is an investment, and if you didn’t go with us, you went with our competitor, ultimately you’d be losing $300 a month.

JonRobert T.: Because we also know that those two things are not the same. People respond very differently depending on whether something’s framed as a loss or a gain. In terms of the other side of this coin, where is it more of this intangible likability or trust factor or just this gut feeling-

Josh Miles: Is it like a charisma thing?

JonRobert T.: Charisma. And honestly, that’s… This is a bit disheartening, I suppose. When I work with trial lawyers, some of the work we do is helping them understand how moral decision making works, how people arrive at moral decisions, how empathy operates and how you can maximize empathy, etc. Etc. But truthfully, one of the things that we concentrate on most is helping them understand how they can maximize their perceptions of likeability and competence. So there are these two dimensions, they usually call them warmth and competence in the literature.

JonRobert T.: Warmth and competence are things that are automatically and instantaneously evaluated by every individual that you come into contact with. And so it’s just this natural process where whenever we see someone, we make these very quick judgments about how warm or cold they are and how competent or incompetent they are. And basically, this has evolutionary roots because with the warmth portion of it, you’re trying to decide, is this person a friend or foe? And the competence is, if they are a friend, how useful of a friend will they be? And if they are a foe, how dangerous of a foe will they be?

JonRobert T.: And so these two dimensions really make sense from an evolutionary standpoint. But what we find, which again and this gets back to the more disheartening portion of it, is we find that people like trial lawyers, even though we’d like to believe that should be the content of their arguments that plays the major role and these jury decisions, we find that things like warmth and likeability and competence, these things that are independent of the actual of the arguments themselves play massively influential role in their ultimate success.

JonRobert T.: And it’s very, very similar when you’re making a pitch in front of a group that’s deciding, for instance, on an RFP, making an RFP decision. It gets down to one of those things where when I explain to people this difference or this dichotomy between emotion and reason, if you will, it’s not that one is necessarily greater than the other. But if someone finds your pitch compelling from a rational standpoint, but doesn’t like you, they might not go with you.

JonRobert T.: But if someone happens to like you very much, the human brain is fantastic at figuring out ways to rationalize that liking. And so-

Josh Miles: Isn’t that interesting?

JonRobert T.: … if someone emotionally resonates with you, if you can tell a story that really works for them, something that really evokes something in them, they will figure out ways to justify that good feeling, and that makes their job a lot easier.

Josh Miles: I’m just thinking back to every time I’ve ever bought software as a service online, they always have… or frequently we’ll have this good, better, best framing on their pricing. So you want half a Gig a month, it’s $20, you want a Gig a month, it’s $30, and if you want unlimited, it’s a hundred or something like that. So in your research, should that be the other way around? Should they lead with that $100 thing on the left hand side?

JonRobert T.: There’s a few things to consider there. Number one is… You’re hitting at this idea of should they anchor with the best, because it would make the other ones look better by comparison?

Josh Miles: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

JonRobert T.: I think there’s certainly an argument that could be made that, that they should lead with the best. I think people who create these websites are more just going with the societal idea of you start with number three, then two, then one. But from a psychological standpoint, if we look at things like anchoring, then it would probably make more sense for them to lead with the highest one because then the second highest one would look better by comparison.

JonRobert T.: But another thing to consider when you look at these good, better, best type options is understanding that really savvy organizations, what they’re doing is they’re including options that they don’t actually think people will buy. They’re doing it because it makes other options look better by comparison. And so for instance, with what you just described, those companies might not want or might not anticipate you buying the best option, but they know that you’ll be more likely to buy the third best option if they only had good and better.

JonRobert T.: So if they only had good and better available, you’re more likely to buy good than you would be if they have good, better, best. Because now all of a sudden, even though it’s the same price for the better one, it looks more reasonable because the best one is there as well. And so what we would do is we would call that best option a decoy option. It’s not designed to sell, it’s designed to make the second best option look more reasonable.

Josh Miles: Is there a law of diminishing returns for a number of options? At some point is it just analysis paralysis or would four or five options make it better?

JonRobert T.: That’s a great question. So as a general rule, more is not always better, and that’s something that people have to come to terms with. I think that a lot of people are under the misguided impression that the more options I present someone with, the happier they’re going to be because there’ll be able to find just the right one. And while that sounds nice and perhaps even a little romantic, it’s simply not that easy. And what we find in psychology is that there’s not really this linear relationship where the more options you add happiness increases in step with it.

JonRobert T.: What we find is that it’s much more of this kind of parabolic relationship where you get to a certain point where adding more choices actually makes people less happy and less likely to engage. And you hit on this idea of analysis paralysis, and the way I’ll describe it to people is like if you ever go into… If your a partner tells you, “Hey, go in the grocery store and just buy me some cereal. I’m in the mood for cereal.” You go into the cereal aisle, and there are 9 million options for cereal. Your [inaudible 00:22:50] is absolutely overwhelming.

JonRobert T.: And so a lot of us will just say, “You know what? Forget about it. I’m going to just go and grab some chips or a candy bar. They can pick up the cereal later.” And they won’t even engage in that decision making. And a lot of people when they hear this, they’re like, “Yeah, but that’s such a trivial decision.” If it was more important, people would take the time. But in a study that was done with over 800,000 employees, what they found was they actually found giving people options for these kinds of mutual funds that they could invest in, many of which the company would kind of match their investment, for every 10 fund options that were added, every 10 additional funds, actually decreased overall participation by 2%.

Josh Miles: That’s crazy.

JonRobert T.: People were quite literally leaving money on the table because they felt overwhelmed by how many choices there were. And and so a good rule of thumb for individuals who are creating these kind of choice environments is you want to keep every choice set between about five to seven items that the most, because that’s what we can process and hold in our short term memory.

Josh Miles: Is there anything similar to that when you have maybe a more customizable solution? Like, is this something where a firm might say, “Well, we can do whatever you want. So everything’s in play here, but here are the two things that we’d recommend,” or do you go into it and say, “It’s custom. What do you want?”

JonRobert T.: That’s a really great question. There’s nothing wrong with customizability. I loved being able to customize something. I think a lot of people really like to be able to customize something to a degree. And what I mean when I say to a degree is there’s this phenomenon, I guess you would say, or theory called the optimal distinctiveness theory where people want to be different up to a point. So they want to be able to distinguish themselves from people, but they don’t want to be so different they become an outcast.

JonRobert T.: And so a great example of this, if you look at something like when people buy iPhone or when iPods just came out, they allowed people to do things like customize the color of the iPod they got, or you can customize the case and you can… There are certain things that allowed them an opportunity to show off their individuality, to show off their creativity and allow these individuals to make their choices. But they’re not letting them build the entire phone by scratch. They’re not letting them build the entire iPod by scratch.

JonRobert T.: What’s important to understand is that people want the ability to customize. But if you just say, “Hey, we can do whatever you want,” that’s not really helpful for a lot of people. What’s often more helpful is to say, “Hey, here are a few designs that you can work off of. A few examples designs, but know that we can change the color, we can change the layout, we can change all these different things.” But you want to be able to give them some sort of blueprint to begin with. Otherwise, the thought of just getting started from square one is too daunting for some.

Josh Miles: Switching gears a little bit, I was checking out your website, and I saw that you have the five principles that your company is based on. And I wanted to maybe explore two of those with you if you don’t mind.

JonRobert T.: Yeah.

Josh Miles: Your principle one is, the human brain is not a computer. And while that is a very straightforward statement, I’m just curious what that principle really implies and how that impacts your research.

JonRobert T.: Yeah. That’s a really important one to understand because I think a lot of people when they’re starting off and they’re creating an influence strategy… now what that strategy might be will vary. Whether again, that’s a different marketing campaign, or a sales strategy, or a business development effort. Ultimately, the goal is to influence the way someone chooses or the way someone thinks. And so the problem is, is when people are trying to anticipate the effectiveness of their strategies, oftentimes, they have this folk believe that the human brain acts like a computer.

JonRobert T.: And what I mean by that is that it processes information as a computer does. And so if you provided with enough logic, enough undeniable facts and figures and statistics, it will inevitably come back with a favorable outcome. In reality, the human brain doesn’t really operate like that. So if the human brain operated like a computer, you can kind of think of it like a scientist, meaning that it would take every single piece of information, it would evaluate every piece of information impartially and objectively as possible, and come to a decision based on nothing but the facts that were presented to it.

JonRobert T.: In reality, the human brain operates much more like a trial lawyer. And what I mean by that is we’re getting back to the primacy of emotions too where the human brain has a particular feeling about certain things, a good feeling or a bad feeling. And once they get that feeling, they try to justify it by selectively choosing data and choosing evidence that will allow them to justify that intuitive feeling rather than going with the thing that is most logically compelling. And so it’s really important to understand something like the primacy of emotion and decision making and how much of a role that has.

JonRobert T.: One of the ways that Jonathan Haidt has described, and other psychologists have described it in different ways, the duality of the brain, but Jonathan Haidt is really compelling. He describes it like an elephant and a rider. And what he means by that is if you’ve ever ridden on an elephant, they tell you, “Oh, you’re in control, you can turn left, turn right.” You’re not in control of that animal. No matter what they tell you, you are not in control of that animal.

JonRobert T.: Well, it’s interesting what ends up happening is you’ll be riding along and the elephant will start veering left, and you’ll look to the left and say, “You know what? I probably want to go that way anyway.” And then the later on, the elephant starts meandering to the right and you’re like, “You know what actually, this is the better direction.” And the way Jonathan Haidt describes it is in this scenario, the elephant is emotion and you as the rider are rationality.

JonRobert T.: And so the rationality, our rationality is very often subservient to our emotions. We use our rationality as a way to justify our emotional reactions. And this happens a lot when we make decisions. We have a good feeling about someone or a bad feeling about someone. From a metaphorical standpoint, our elephant leans one way or leans the other, and we go about figuring out ways we can justify that good or bad feelings using the facts at hand.

Josh Miles: So that’s really similar to this concept I heard Seth Goden recently on a podcast talking about this rational act or concept. When people refer to, well, Washington has decided or Moscow has decided, it’s not that literally the entire country was in concert over the decision, there were lots of things that went into this that factored into it and ultimately, this was the decision, and that frequently, people are the same way. Like logically, that you shouldn’t do this, but sometimes in the moment, fear or pain or something else causes you to respond entirely differently. So-

JonRobert T.: Absolutely.

Josh Miles: … I think it’s an interesting parallel.

JonRobert T.: Yeah, absolutely.

Josh Miles: So, one of the other principals that I thought was interesting… Again, this is straight forward to say out loud, but I’m just curious, your perspective on this is your principle number four, is state of mind matters. So how does that come into play?

JonRobert T.: Yeah. So state of mind is… it’s a really important thing. I’ll stop for a moment just… These five principles, really what these five principles is… influence is a complex, multifaceted topic that I wanted to figure out a way to synthesize what are the most important things to understand about how influence works, which is just these five principles. Principle number four is the idea that state of mind matters. It’s getting to this idea that it’s not always about the content that you’re delivering, but when you happen to be delivering that content.

JonRobert T.: So the way I describe it to people to get an intuitive appreciation of how this works is I’ll say, imagine that you wake up on Friday morning, you’re late, you hit the snooze a few too many times. So you rush out to work, you grab a Granola bar on your way, and you get into work. Your first meeting has already started. That meeting’s supposed to end at 10:30 but it stretched into 11:15. And then all of a sudden, right before you’re about to go out to lunch, you’ve got a few fires that you have to put out, so you work through lunch. And then all of a sudden, the client comes back to you and says, “Hey, that thing we needed on Monday, now we need it by the end of the day today.”

JonRobert T.: So all of a sudden, it’s six o’clock at night on a Friday, you’ve been in nothing but a Granola bar all day, you are a little pissed off, and all of a sudden someone walks into your office and says, “Hey, would you like a piece of pie?” What’s your response to that? And your response that, and everyone’s response to that’s is, “Of course. Of course I want that piece of pie. That sounds amazing. Thank you so much.”

Josh Miles: Yeah, I deserve it. Think of all the things I’ve been through.

JonRobert T.: Exactly. I deserve it, I earned it, I don’t care about calories right now. It’s been a stressful day. I haven’t eaten since 9:00 AM. Whatever it may be, people are going to eat that pie. Okay? It’s a very compelling offer. But then I say, imagine that morale has been low for the past few weeks. You guys lost a few bids that you really thought you were going to secure, someone left the company who was really a linchpin of the team from a cohesion standpoint, people are just in a bad place. You’re trying to figure out ways you can boost morale.

JonRobert T.: The county fair reach out and says, “Let me take them all to the county fair. We’ll take a half day on Friday, we’ll take them to the county fair.” You go to the county fair, you guys are playing all the fair games, people having a pretty good time and all of a sudden, they start goading you into entering the pie eating contest. And you resist, and you say, “No, no, no. I’m not going to do that.” But eventually, you’re like, “You know what, you should just acquiesce. It’ll make them happy, you’ll eat some free pie.”

JonRobert T.: So you enter the pie eating contest. To your surprise, come in third place, you eat like two and a half pies in like 10 minutes. You won the respect of your colleagues through your gluttony, everyone’s very excited for you and right as you’re walking off the stage, someone comes up to you with is, “Hey, would you like a piece of pie?” What do you say? Of course the answer at this point is a very indignant, no, I do not want a piece of pie.

JonRobert T.: But what’s interesting about this is when we take a step back is we realized it’s the same exact offer, it’s the same content, the same piece of pie in both situations. But depending on when that offer is made makes a very big difference in how it is received, whether it’s received favorably or unfavorably. And so principal four, this idea of state of mind matters, it talks about two things. One is timing, and the other is priming, which I alluded to. We spoke a little bit about earlier with the questions about your dating life and then your happiness.

JonRobert T.: Really the crux of priming is to understand that you can bring about, intentionally, emotional states or different concepts or feelings or beliefs into people’s minds that can influence the way they make decisions later on in the conversation. And that’s really what priming is. Priming is about bringing concepts to the forefront of people’s minds, and therefore temporarily altering their state of mind to do something that’s more receptive or less receptive at the time.

Josh Miles: Very interesting. So this is not a setup, I don’t know the answer to this question. I’m just curious. But if say a firm is listening and they think, is that guy for hire? Like, will he consult, will he come coach us? Is that a thing? And what does that look like if it is?

JonRobert T.: So I am for hire. Schedule per meeting, I will have them work with my colleagues to understand my schedule because they’re better than I. As I’m sure it’s probably evident at this point, I’m fortunate enough to be making a living doing something that I find really fascinating, which is just teaching people about these concepts that I just personally love talking about. They just all so happen to have immense value and utility in a business setting.

JonRobert T.: If you understand something that’s incredibly, incredibly simple from a psychologist point of view, like loss aversion, a firm that doesn’t understand loss aversion and how it works, going from no understanding to an understanding of loss of aversion, even though from a psychological standpoint, it’s quite a simple concept, is a massive return on investment when you understand from a strategy standpoint what you can do and how you can tweak your messaging.

JonRobert T.: And so, yeah. The way I work with firms is… There is a variety of different things that I’ve done in the past. There’s things like presentations and keynotes, and those are fantastic ways to familiarize your firm in one [inaudible 00:37:18] swoop with these concepts. But what I really love is the strategy. I really love sitting down and helping them understand like, hey, who or what is our target? Who are our competitors? Let’s analyze the competitive landscape, and let’s bring all that we know about human beings and human nature to bear, to optimize our chances of creating a strategy that’s going to win us this work. And the strategy is really building that strategy and working collaboratively with an organization, with a team, that’s something that I find fascinating.

Josh Miles: Well, hey, I find lots of this fascinating. And I’m really tempted to ask you to unpack what loss aversion is at this point, but I think maybe that’s the good tease for somebody who’s interested in reaching out to you to learn more. So we’ll just leave that there. We’ll leave everyone’s appetite whetted, if that’s even a word. And maybe you can tell us a little bit more about how to track you down online and to connect with you later.

JonRobert T.: Yeah. Absolutely. If you’re interested, any questions, especially about partnership opportunities, you can contact us at partnerships@influence51, that’s just 51.com. That’s partnerships@influence51.com. And Josh, as a special treat to your listeners, I’ll also give my personal email, but I’ll ask you guys not to distribute it to widely. It’s just ceo@influence51.com. And so if you guys have any quick questions about some of the content discussed or any ways that I can provide a little bit of brief help to your firm, just reach out, and I’m happy to do what I can.

Josh Miles: Awesome. Well, this has been a pleasure, and I think… Thank you so much for joining us today, JonRobert.

JonRobert T.: Absolutely. Happy to be there.

Josh Miles: So guys, that brings us to the end of another episode of PSM Show. Thanks again to our underwriting sponsor, SMPS. Head over to smps.org/buildbusiness to see all about Build Business 2019 in Washington, DC from July 31st through August 2nd, 2019. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for future guests, please head over to psm.show and drop us a line. That’s all from myself, Josh Miles, for this episode of PSM Show. So this is Josh and JonRobert, and of course, David Lecours is back in the corner saying goodbye. We’ll see you guys next time.