“In the sale, your job is not to convince, you have no business trying to convince anyone of anything ever.” Blair Enns said these words from a stage in Memphis at a conference I was attending almost 15 years ago. It was the first time I’d heard him speak. At that moment, after he said
Why do agencies get themselves into these situations where they feel they have to take work on onerous terms, where they have to put up with procurement’s powerplay moves and where they have no power to affect price?
I bet I can guess your Why. What I mean is, if you are one of the millions of people who have been moved by Simon Sinek to “find your Why”, as articulated in his TEDx talk and book Start With Why, I’m pretty sure I can guess what that Why is. With only subtle
There is a period in everyone’s development, I believe, where they choose to be dismissive of New Year’s resolutions. If that’s you now, you’ll get over it. New Year’s resolutions are a perfectly valid mechanism for helping to drive change in one’s career, business or life, but most of them fail to achieve such change,
Confidence is not evenly distributed in the world. I recognize that I probably have more than is merited, but I’ve been at the other end of the spectrum, too, having once worked for someone who seemed to actively undermine the confidence of her subordinates as a means of building her own. I quickly discovered that
Blair offers seven mindsets that any seller of expertise needs to master so that they can behave like the expert in the sales cycle.
David and Blair take turns asking each other questions about what they each would do differently if they were going to start a new firm today based on what they know now.
Blair gives David some homework to identify patterns in the principals of creative practices who are successful and have that “je ne sais quoi.”
Blair leads a discussion on how clients tend to take mental shortcuts in making business decisions, and how we can nudge clients without manipulating them to make a decision that is in their best interest.
A mainstay of some agency new business conferences is a few highly coveted clients on the stage lecturing the agency audience on what they want from their agency partners that they’re not getting. While it would be foolish to dismiss these client entreaties out of hand, it would be just as foolish, I believe, to give them what they want.
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