I used to run team-building programmes. At the end I always reminded participants of something I had learned from attending workshops that had been rich in emotion. It was always wise to think ahead to what was going to happen when you got back to the real world and encountered the important people in your life. I rather wish I had taken that advice more seriously when coming back from the Like Minds conference in Exeter on Friday evening.
To be fair I had tried to. Taking advantage of advance booking and a Railcard, I had decided to upgrade to First Class for the journey to and from Paddington. The country that invented railways considers it an appropriate mode of travel for the majority of its citizens to spend a couple of hours auditioning for the role of a battery hen. But I didn’t want to round off three highly-charged days that way. I thought a bit more physical space would buy me the mental space I needed.
In stark contrast to the rest of the train, the First Class compartments on the journey back were sparsely populated and quiet. There was none of the loud business conversation that had characterised the journey down. Suddenly hungry, I ordered a burger with outrageously rich toppings. Eating this, drinking a paper cup of undistinguished coffee, and scanning a crumpled copy of The Times, started the process of coming down from the previous three days.
Each day of the conference had followed a similar routine. In the morning, a plenary session lasting a couple of hours featured short inspirational presentations. These were followed by a variety of informal lunchtime talks held in various nearby restaurants. From two in the afternoon, there were three or four breakout sessions to choose from.
Called immersives and held in the function rooms of Exeter hotels, the breakout sessions featured opportunities to learn practical stuff that could be applied on Monday morning. These were followed by yet more inspirational presentations, before the conference broke up for the day and those who had the energy and inclination went on to eat, drink and socialise.
I experienced the plenary sessions and the vibrancy and warmth of the company in the evenings, but I didn’t get the opportunity to do much more because I had volunteered myself to run a series of three linked immersives.
Earlier in the year, I was encouraged to think about contributing to the LikeMinds conference by Will Rowan, Joanne Jacobs and Andrew Gerrard, who had participated in the 2010 12boxes beta group. I began to sketch out some ideas for a condensed version of our 12boxes in 12-hours programme that could be stripped across the conference in three linked immersive sessions. Participants would have to commit to all three – a big commitment when there was so much else of interest on offer.
The process would be intensive, with just over five hours contact time, but I hoped that the forty-eight hours between the beginning of the first and the end of the last sessions would allow people to subconsciously internalise the 12boxes process. By the time Drew Ellis asked if I would like to contribute to the conference, I was in a position to offer him something to which he was able to say yes straight away.
The title was to be Creative Business Development. Partly this was because business development really is a creative process, and partly because it was aimed at people for whom creativity was an important part of their offering. In particular, there were three issues it was intended to address. The first was that creative people often do far too much work for clients before they get paid.
The second is that they often pitch for work on the strength of their ideas, giving away their intellectual property for nothing so that the client tends to take it for granted, and focuses on issues such as daily rates, which have nothing to do with real value.
Finally, creative work is often an expression of an individual’s personality. When it comes to negotiating fees, few people like the idea of ‘selling themselves’. They need to put some psychological distance between themselves and the value they are delivering. The question should not be, “What am I worth?” but “What is the value to the client of what I can achieve for them?”
When I came to sit through the first morning of the conference, it was clear that the plenary presentations were expertly curated and of a very high standard. Our immersive session had not only to match this, but by the end of the week we needed our participants to have a new perspective and skills that could be applied to good effect. In the short time available we had to enable them to engage with and absorb some challenging material.
To make this happen I needed to be mentally prepared. As soon as the morning plenary ended, I went straight to the venue, skipping the lunchtime talks to give me time to get myself into the zone. The staff at the St Olaves Hotel could not have been more friendly, helpful and welcoming. While I went through my notes and got the room ready before the participants arrived, they provided me with an oasis of calm and a delicious light lunch.
After the first session, I knew that we had a hit on our hands. Tweets about our immersive were very positive. Conference word of mouth reflected this. Our strategy of giving a questionnaire to the participants near the start had achieved the engagement we wanted.
But it got better. On the second evening at dinner someone turned to one of our participants, Jay Blake of Ichthus Video and asked, “What is 12boxes?” Without missing a beat, he immediately replied, “12boxes is a framework for conversations that generate profits.” My jaw dropped. I’d been trying to think of a concise way of saying that for over two years. Out of the mouths of customers comes your elevator pitch!
Our third afternoon found little groups of participants scattered through the hotel, trying out their technique. Sometimes it can be difficult to get role-plays going, but Bracken Vernon-Jelier of Crossways Communications helped to cut through that by telling how the evening before she had already enlisted the help of a relative who had role-played a customer. She had been pleasantly surprised by how much she knew how to do.
At the end of the final session, people said they had learned a great deal and they were very satisfied with the outcome. The only negative seemed to be that they would have liked to spend longer. From our point of view, the limited time frame had forced us into trying out some new approaches, and it was clear that these had worked. The Like Minds conference had enabled us to hot-house the development of our offering with some terrific people and see just how much could be achieved in a limited timescale.
But there was more. The Like Minds conference is of the right scale to generate a real sense of community. On a personal level it was wonderful to spend time with the funny, inspirational, well-informed, highly-professional and totally unpretentious people that Scott Gould and Drew Ellis had attracted to Exeter. More than once I found myself helpless with laughter in the company of people I had only just met. And it couldn’t all have been down to the Martinis they bought me.
Which brings me back to the re-entry problem. My intention had been to use the train journey to bring myself gently back down. But you can’t sit through an afternoon of successive presentations from Chris Moss, James Whatley, Rupert Turnbull and Luke Johnson and then contemplate dozing. I had to leave my seat and walk back down the train for a few words with fellow Like Minds participants with whom I’d been spending such convivial evenings.
Sitting among the huddled masses in coach E were a couple of guys with whom I had been having a rolling conversation for the past 24 hours which badly needed to reach an ‘agreed next action’. Just when I had thought we had reached a point in the 12boxes story where we could freeze our development and focus on scaling up, something in the way I had described 12boxes to them over a drink in the bar had convinced them we should seriously consider working together to embed 12boxes in… Well, perhaps we’d best leave talking about that for another time.
I stood in the aisle of coach E, getting in people’s way. No doubt we were having the kind of business conversation that I had been overhearing on the way down, which was probably the last thing our travelling companions wanted to be exposed to on a Friday night. The conversation continued way past Reading. When the train finally reached Paddington, and I went through the barrier to meet the loved one who had stayed late at the office and crossed town just to make me feel welcome on my return, I was not really the person I should have been.
So next year at Like Minds, and I am sure there will be a next year, I will take more care to manage my return journey so that when I get back I can give the same quality of attention to the person I love, that I had given to the people I had met in Exeter.
Perhaps I could pack a DVD of the Wizard of Oz, and start watching the final reel as the train leaves Reading.
This year, 12boxes will be running a series of three linked ‘immersives’ at Like Minds for creative business owners, managers, business developers and freelancers.
‘Creative Business Development‘ will enable attendees to improve the value and profitability of business relationships by offering a totally new perspective on how to get clients to recognise the true value of creative input.
The six-hour programme, included free in the price of the conference registration, is divided into three easily digestible daily instalments so that participants will be still be able to hear Like Minds keynote speakers and panelists from around the world and attend the lunch time talks taking place in restaurants and cafés across the city. Places are strictly limited.
According to Malcolm Sleath, Founding Director of 12boxes, who will be running the immersives, many people in creative industries find themselves doing too much work before starting to charge the client. He says, “They also lower the value of their work by giving away solutions to client problems in advance. People also find it difficult to value their personal contribution when quoting for a job.”
He has designed the programme to help people avoid these problems and develop more profitable business by guiding clients to understand the true value of their professional service or creative input. “12boxes is a conversational approach that is a million miles away from being an off-putting sales pitch.”
Like Minds 2011 is one of the leading UK digital conferences, combining thought-leading speakers and insights with application-centred workshops and focused networking. It takes place on the 19th, 20th and 21st October, in Exeter, Devon.
Hundreds of creative companies and digital brands are expected to attend the event, which usually sells out.
Download details of ‘Creative Business Development’ (PDF) and register now for Like Minds 2011.
How join.me enables 12boxes to deliver client-centred business development coaching to professionals
Although there will always be clients who want a face-to-face meeting, there are many who need distance coaching. A client living in Aberdeen stills expects the same level of support if they move to work in Saudi Arabia. When I am in Tokyo, I need to be able to support clients in London. Sometimes, even when we are geographically close, the client needs a quick consultation and there is no time to set up a meeting.
Fortunately, distance coaching in 12boxes works well because the session is about talking through an opportunity and reaching conclusions that will be tested in conversation with the client. These are recorded in a table that fits easily onto an A4 document. The bottom half of the document, which is where all the preparatory thinking is set out, fits easily into most displays. So a combination of a voice line and a screen sharing program provides all the facilities we need.
Ever since it was launched, my screen sharing program of choice has been join.me. It is very easy to use, and has the advantage of being free. (It comes from the ‘logmein’ people, and I already subscribe to one of their other excellent products, so I feel no pang of conscience about using it regularly.)
Using join.me could not be simpler. Everyone starts with the same screen and a simple choice. You either share your screen or join someone else’s. When we first started using join.me, I would host the session. It seemed the polite and professional thing to do. I would type what the coaching client was telling me into the 12boxes table on my screen. At the end of the session, join.me enabled me to offer the person I was coaching the resulting Word document and they would download it. It worked well without a hitch. However, without realising it, I was denying my client a major learning opportunity.
This penny dropped the other week. The person I was coaching had filled in a 12boxes template in advance of the coaching session and wanted to show it to me. It was obviously much easier for them to host the join.me session so I could see what they had done. But it turned out that doing it this way round had another advantage. As we began to discuss the opportunity, I got them to do a ‘save as’ and invited them to revise the document for themselves. Instead of them suggesting amendments for me to edit and ‘helpfully’ put into my own words, they started editing the document as soon as the thought hit them.
To use a ‘driving instruction’ analogy, they were firmly in the driving seat and I was observing. This allowed them to work with 12boxes in much the same way that they would have if they were by themselves. They were in control, and when something didn’t seem right, they were usually the first to correct it. At all times the document remained theirs.
From my point of view the session was more relaxed. I had less to do physically and had more time to consider carefully any comments that I made. The client knew they had produced the end result, and it was expressed in words that they would naturally use with the client. All of this made for a sound ‘learner centred’ approach.
So now, because join.me is so easy to use, there is no need for me to play host and set up the connection on behalf of my coaching client. Whenever I can, I ask the client to host the join.me session. The client clicks the share icon, and allows the downloaded app to install. After a second or two they give me a nine number code, and I type it into the ‘join’ box on my browser screen. From that point on, I can see what they are doing, and we focus on the task in hand, hardly giving the technology another thought.
Many screen sharing applications have an implicit ‘broadcasting’ approach built in. This inevitably colours the nature of the interaction. Even though join.me does allow me to offer the client control of my screen, it would still be my screen and editing it is not the same experience for the client as they get when they are working on their own computer. Allowing them to host join.me sends a clear message that they are in control. The resulting discussion then becomes truly ‘client centred’ and experience suggests the lessons learned are more easily be transferred into the real world.
The first public viewing of “12boxes in 2 hours”, took place on Tuesday evening March 1st at Club Quarters, the London home of LikeMinds.
The launch session was attended by marketing professionals, account managers, and senior managers across several disciplines engaged in business transformation. Previous participants included partners in national and international law firms and well known figures in social media.
The event introduces professionals to the 12boxes value conversation and the ideas that make it work. The programme and the follow-on ‘learning set’ had been previewed and tested in Q4 of 2010, and valuable feedback from participants was incorporated into the public programme.
Malcolm Sleath, the developer of the value conversation, and Founding Director of 12boxes Ltd, said, “The aim of the session is to show people that delivering quality work and service is necessary, but not sufficient, to achieve the high levels of client satisfaction required to build a profitable business based on expertise.
“Service providers have a choice. They can do their best and hope they get the outcome they desire, or they can engage the client in a conversation at the outset that focuses everyone’s mind on the value being delivered.
“Long-term client engagement is driven by the client’s perception of value. If that is established at the beginning, the outcome is much more likely to be repeat business, referrals and rewards.”
Comments gleaned from the feedback sheets at the end of the session included, “Brilliant event and hugely inspiring”; “Insightful, instructive, informative”; “I expect to utilise this tool in many conversations at different levels”; “Interesting, informative and thought provoking”.
Details of the next 12boxes in 2 hours event.
The other day I had a call from a potential client that I hadn’t heard from in a few weeks.
My contact told me that he had been talking with colleagues. A shared view had emerged about the potential value 12boxes could bring to the business. He said it was an ‘instinctive understanding’.
The interesting thing was the difference between my reaction and the reaction of the colleague who introduced me to the client in the first place.
I was pleased. But if you had been in the room when I took the call, you would have seen no obvious expressions of delight. No punching the air or anything like that. It was more like quiet satisfaction.
When I told my colleague, the email she sent in reply indicated that she was pleased too, but she couldn’t help commenting that she thought they had been procrastinating.
I think she wonders why I am still bothering with them.
This is because the latest conversation was one of several we have had with the client over a few months. A couple of times we went to them. Occasionally we talked on the phone. Once they came to visit me at the Like Minds Club in London – and so on.
Three or four senior people have been involved – one of whom I haven’t met. I know each of them has had pressing short-term issues to deal with while they have been going through a company reorganisation.
So when my client contact told me that in mid-June they would like to run the small workshop we had been discussing, I knew this was not exactly a spur of the moment decision.
It might sound arrogant, but I am convinced that we can do a great deal to help them achieve a major strategic shift in the way they relate to their clients. It requires a step change. It won’t naturally evolve from what they are doing now. If we can make that happen, it will help them to achieve the payoff envisaged when several smaller units were acquired and merged to form the present company several years ago.
If all goes well, the workshop could be the beginning of a sustained long-term relationship.
My colleague, on the other hand, wanted to get her hands on the reorganisation. In other words, she wanted to ‘sort them out’. If she had her way, we would have in the company several months ago, surveys would have been done, recommendations produced and workshops run.
My view is that would have been useful short-term business, but that by now we would have finished and been out of the door. And, if I am honest, I don’t think the client’s reorganisation would have been any better or quicker.
I have learned to be a tortoise. My colleague is a hare. We each have our uses. Which are you?
If you would like to know more about the 12boxes approach to nurturing client relationships, there is an evening workshop in London next week.
Many approaches to building a profitable practice focus on controlling costs, maintaining the proportion of time earning fees (utilisation) and so on. Of course it is essential to manage each of these things – failure to do so will result in having no practice at all. They are necessary, but not sufficient.
To achieve sustainable profitability and growth, individuals and firms offering professional services and expertise need to achieve the ‘three Rs’: repeat business, referrals and realistic rewards from fees.
Most professional service firms act on the assumption that if they achieve client satisfaction the three Rs will naturally follow. But ‘satisfied’ clients are not enough. There is evidence that clients have to be ‘highly satisfied’ before they will deliver the three Rs.
Not only that, client satisfaction does not automatically follow from good work and good service; it depends on how the client perceives value – and every client is different in that respect. For example, it is easy for us to assume that if we offer to help people improve their business development skills the only important outputs are increased sales and profitability. But everyone offers that don’t they? The following testimonial from a participant in our pilot programme for 12boxes in 12 hours shows that it is not only money that drives people…
From what Joanne is saying, it seems that professional life is just as much about enjoying a rich learning experience as it is about doing the work and making money. This may well be the source of the energy and drive that has resulted in her being one of the most influential people in her field.
What drives your clients? What is the spark that will ignite interest in what you do and provide the energy which they bring to your professional relationship?
If you would like to explore how you can relate to your clients in a way that taps into what they really value, you might like to find out more about the 12boxes value conversation in a workshop to be held in central London on the evening of March 1st – just a week away. More about ’12boxes in 2 hours’.
Later this afternoon, I’m off to a networking event run by Business Link London. You might think it would be small time and not worth going to, but one I went to earlier in the year resulted in a very enjoyable business association that will be keeping me quite busy during the next few months. You can’t argue with that.
Although Business Link are at pains to point out that networking is not about selling, it hasn’t stopped them from introducing silly gimmicks like ‘speed networking’ which to my mind simply encourages people to spout ‘elevator pitches’ at one another. To any normal human being they are artificial and stressful, and quite against anything I understand networking to be about. I hope to find an escape route from that ordeal.
Many people come to networking events expecting to connect with people who are looking for their services right there and then. But this is short sighted. The best referrals often come by people referring you to others in their network. Even when you have directly connected with someone, the third party endorsement will count for more. (I have recent direct experience of this in more than one networking group.)
Andy Lopata is an expert in networking. This video is the most concise guide to getting quality third party referrals that I have come across. It explains what networking is really meant to do and where it scores over cold calling.
If you want to talk through how you can communicate your value proposition in the course of a conversation, get in touch and I’ll be happy to offer some suggestions that will get you started.
Let’s talk about how you introduce yourself at a networking event.
To close a sale you first have to open it. That’s the theme of my latest Q&A at Top-Consultant.com. People often talk about closing deals, but in a complex sale like consultancy closing is not the critical element. The real obstacle to going ahead may be something that has been overlooked at an earlier stage of the buying process.
For a detailed description of the situation read the original article. Here, I’m going to summarise the situation in terms of 12boxes.
The aim of the proposal is to prompt the client to express the desire to implement the solution. This buying effect is represented by the yellow box.
If you are not familiar with the 12boxes framework, the left hand column is about the client’s perception of their situation. The middle column is about their perception of the problems associated with it. The right hand column is about their perception of the solution. Reading from the bottom of each column, the sequence follows the AIDA sequence: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
The diagram on the left shows what the consultant in the article thinks should have happened. He has submitted a proposal and hoped it would prompt the client to express the desire to implement his solution. (This buying effect is represented by the yellow box.) But the client seems to be reluctant to give the go-ahead.
A proposal rarely creates the desire for a solution on its own. The client should have expressed the desire to solve the problem and demonstrated clear interest in the solution before the consultant agreed to write the proposal. The proposal reassures the client by addressing the issues that would otherwise inhibit them from going ahead.
The client has not expressed the desire to change their situation, represented here by the red box.
It is easy to be seduced into writing a proposal. Partly this is because clients think the proposal will somehow give them all the information they need to make a decision. But many proposals are written prematurely, before clients are ready for them. This is because the client may need to shift their perception of the situation before they can fully grasp what the proposal is about.
In our Q&A example, at least one of the directors has not really been convinced that their organisation’s current productivity can be changed for the better. This means that they are not ready to express the desire to change their situation.
Before they he can do so, the reluctant director may need to be exposed to similar organisations where productivity improvements have been achieved. Such exposure will not convince him that the solution will work in his own organisation, but it will show him that ‘things can be different’. The result will probably be a set of questions that can be translated into criteria for purchase, which the proposal should address.
Find out how you can use the 12boxes interactive approach to building a more profitable practice.
