DBA Members’ Forum | January Summary

• Blair frames the sales process as a sample of the engagement to follow; how you behave throughout the sales process sets up conditions for doing your best work and making the most money.
• There are only two roles agencies can occupy in client/agency relationships: vendor or expert.
• The goal is to occupy the expert role and a key way to achieve this is by building your reputation through strategy, positioning (relative to your competition) and marketing – put content out there to be judged by people. 
• While it is possible to move from a vendor to an expert after you’ve been appointed – it might be difficult. Use Blair’s ‘one client at a time’ approach and frame how you’d like to work more expansively and creatively, but still giving them the option to work in the way you’ve always worked. See each client as an opportunity to move to working in this way.
• Using multi-option proposals with different price points is crucial for increasing closing ratios and proposal values. Anchor high.
• The value conversation framework (uncovering your client’s desired future state, KPIs, value of hitting KPIs, pricing guidance) is a game-changing skill for transforming your financial fortunes. Plus, do this well and you’ll have the foundations for your effectiveness case studies.
• We had a conversation on the role of business owners in sales and Blair raised that this role shouldn’t be offloaded too quickly – qualifying conversations could be conducted by someone else, but the value and closing conversations should be typically handled by owners.
• He suggested you should only outsource the sales function when you (the owner) have a process you can pass on to ensure success. 
• For all the detail on how to navigate each of the four conversations, the frameworks and principles you need to embody, you can buy Blair’s book on Amazon. 

Coming up

There was much, much more covered in the hour. Our next meeting will be back in the regular slot on Monday 3 February, 4-5pm GMT.