How to out-pitch your competition

00:00I'm telling you, Alex, and I'm sure you know this even from your own business, it's just so hard to say no when that RFP or RFQ comes floating into email. And from the highest level, that's where you got to start. You're listening to the Growth Manifesto podcast, where we host in-depth interviews with business leaders, authors, industry experts, and entrepreneurs with a singular focus around business growth. At the end of each podcast, we want you to walk away inspired, to think bigger, and to have actionable takeaways you can apply to improve your business.

00:34Each episode is like a masterclass on a key topic, so make sure to browse the episodes to find the topics that are most relevant to your biggest business challenges today. This podcast is brought to you by Web Profits, a digital growth consultancy that helps challenge your brands drive growth in a complex and fragmented digital landscape. You can find out more about Web Profits at webprofits.io. Now, let's get into it. This is Alex Kleanthus, and today we're talking with Bob Wisner, who's a managing partner

01:05at the Artemis Partnership. He's the author of the book, Winning is Better, and he's also known as the pitch doctor because of his approach to winning pitches. He's advised on over 400 transactions in the last 25 years, and his clients include companies like KPMG, JPMorgan Chase, plus Deloitte, and top firms in advertising, accounting, architecture, engineering, consulting, law, and investment banking. Today, we'll be talking about his approach to pitching less and winning more deals and how to outpitch your competition. Just quickly, before we get started, make sure to go ahead and hit that subscribe button so you get the latest episodes as soon as they're released. Now, let's get into it. And welcome, Bob.

01:36Thank you, Alex. I'm delighted to be here. Yeah, and I am very interested in this conversation because a lot of the information which I have read in your book and the strategies and so on is something that I can use every day. So, you know, on one side of it, this is for the listeners on the other side, you know, I'm trying to understand how you pitch less and win more. So with that being said, let's get straight into it. And at a high level, what's your approach to pitching less and winning more? Well, first of all, it's a great and a very important question.

02:10I believe it or not, what it takes more than anything else is courage. um we in who specialize in growth and business development who have firms that want to get bigger um we tend to want to chase everything now there could be a lot of different reasons for that some of which are very practical um but at the end of the day a lot of what you're pursuing is not going to have a high probability of turning into a win no matter what you do And as we would view it, you didn't belong in that pursuit.

02:44So you need to just have the intestinal fortitude to say, we're going to be much, much more selective about what we pursue. We're going to take on opportunities that we think we both deserve to be in. We're going to pursue them with great intensity. We're going to show the prospect that we really, really are the right firm for them because we truly understand their business. and thus convert a higher percentage of them. But I'm telling you, Alex, and I'm sure you know this, even from your own business, it's just so hard to say no

03:17when that RFP or RFQ comes floating into email. And from the highest level, that's where you got to start. So you talk about having courage, right? And I think that's a really great place to start. In your book, you talk about strategic growth, right? And I think this kind of aligns a little bit with what you're saying, right? Is like, it's that you don't want to take every opportunity that comes your way, but there's a tension between selecting which pitches, which kind of opportunities you put your time into and sales and revenue targets,

03:51right? Because there's always this thing. And then there's pandemics in between wars. There's all this kind of uncertainty across the marketplace, right? And so then how do you think about strategic opportunities? Let's start there because I think this kind of helps the listeners to kind of understand how to have more courage in the areas that matter? Yeah, we think that a strategic opportunity meets three criteria. First of all, it allows you to do the work that you want to do. All of us are capable of doing a lot of different things. Some of that is work that's right in our

04:24wheelhouse. We really love doing it. It enhances our reputation. It makes us more attractive to employees, it makes us more attractive to new business, it earns more money. We're also capable of doing work that doesn't meet those criteria, but we can do it. You know, it's nothing that is terribly exciting, but it certainly could perhaps keep the lights on. A strategic opportunity, first of all, focuses on work that we really, really want to do. Second criteria is it comes

04:56from a client that we really want to work with. There may be clients that have money to spend. That's attractive, but their reputation may be less than stellar. They might burn and churn their vendors. They might not have any more work to offer after the initial project. Is that somebody really worth taking the time and energy to pursue? The third, which may be more surprising than the other two, is it work that will be profitable for you?

05:29Now you talk about the pandemic and you talk about revenue shortfalls that many, many businesses are experiencing. We're all in favor of being opportunistic, especially if it'll keep the lights on, if it'll keep people employed. That said, a good part of your business development effort still has to be targeting work that is profitable for you, not just revenue generating, but profit. Revenue can easily be eaten up into very, very slim

06:00profit margins, which means you don't have much money to reinvest in your business. When you're chasing after profit, now you have money to reinvest in the business, to reinvest in people, to reinvest in resources, in marketing, in compensation and benefits, things that propel your business, energize your people, and allow your business to now grow year on year because you've enhanced your resources. Not just one, a project, but actually set yourself

06:32up for future success. So strategic growth meets those three criteria. It's work you want to do, from clients you want to work with, and profit that you really want to make. so you really need to know those three areas right and so you know i think step one is to know what clients to work with and what is the best kind of work that's going to kind of help your team succeed help the company succeed and make everybody happy with the work that they're doing right and so and every company will know those types of clients right they know the ones

07:04that are the best that pay and that are profitable right and so the goal is to create some personas around those specific types of opportunities and to go out for them? Is that the lens which you're saying is like, we need to understand now, this is the type of client that we want to get that fits into those three criteria. So all the leads that come in and all the outbound activities that go out, they have to fit within that persona profile. Is that the way to think about it? I'm trying to summarize it for me, for the listeners, just to understand that I've got it.

07:36If that makes sense. Yep, you've got it. And think of it this way, Alex, If you have a strategy, but you don't execute it, then what good was having a strategy? So you build a strategy that includes in it, as you described, the kinds of clients and the kinds of projects you want to have in your organization. Now you have to go out and you have to pursue them. You can't just wait for them to send you an RFQ or an RFP, which is unfortunately the way too many firms that we come across operate.

08:10If there's a company you want to be working with and a project you want to handle, you need to formulate a mechanism by which you reach into that company. You identify yourself as a potentially valuable resource and you engage in conversations with them, even if they have no interest in putting a project up for bid. by by getting into that position with them you could perhaps encourage them to give you some work that they weren't otherwise thinking they were going to give out or by the time they do

08:43have an rfq or rfp to issue you're the top dog you're the favorite in that company so it definitely requires a discipline to execute against that strategy in order for this to to prove itself out you talk about the roi of pitching which i thought was really interesting right i'd like to ask you about it but it's a formula like is it something which we can talk about or is it something for the book because i'm just really interested in like just the concept behind the roi of pitching

09:14because i think there's a lot of organizations who just include pitching as part of their process but they don't actually calculate the cost of it and you know just from your book i saw well it could actually be unprofitable so what's at least the thinking behind the roi of pitching i can certainly talk about it conceptually without giving away too much because we love to sell a book or two as a result of conversation. Here's what it comes down to. In many organizations, business development is an expense. It's an expense line. So you have the amount of money

09:46you've spent on your business development teams. You may have money you've spent on meetings, money on travel, out-of-pocket expenses for materials and proposals and so on. What very, very few companies actually do is look at the investment that they made on any one specific pitch and see if that investment turned into enough revenue, or actually in our case,

10:17enough profit to justify that investment. So you may be pursuing 30 different opportunities over the course of a measured time period. Your investment in those 30, which would include man hours as well as out-of-pocket costs, could be such that if you had reallocated that investment to 20 and not 30, and instead of winning, let's say, 5 out of 30, you won 8 out of 20,

10:52you would actually realize a higher ROI on that business development effort. Your expense line in your P&L might not have changed. It might even have gone up a little bit because we do believe in the concept of intensity and effort. But it wouldn't have gone up by magnums. It would have just gone up by a few percentage points. Nevertheless, your amount of wins went up and the profit that you generate for your company went up. So that's what we mean by ROI. It's are you able to measure the profit that comes in for your new business and compare it to the real cost, including manpower, of pursuing those specific opportunities.

11:36And then calculating the profit on those to the cost. And so what I just heard you say, and I'm just going to clarify just for myself and for listeners, is that you might not spend less on pitching, but you're increasing the intensity of the pitch, which should then, and because assuming that, so now there's a strategic selection of the opportunities which you go for, they're worth more profit to the company. So the ROI is higher. Right. And so is that correct?

12:07First of all, that kind of summary, which I said that that is accurate. I'm going to keep doing this for the whole episode just to make sure that I get it. Cause I think if I have a question, potentially the listeners will have the same question. And so then you talk about then the intensity of the pitch, which is really interesting. Right. And the book has frameworks and pitch squads and pitch team leaders and all this type of stuff. So, so get the book to be clear, but, you know, just in terms of the, the, the intensity of the pitch,

12:38can you talk about kind of high level thinking behind it? Because I thought it was taken to another level in terms of, I understand how this approach can win more pitches. Yes, it comes not from anything that we necessarily identify, but it comes from what the buyers perceive. A decision maker on a corporate side, let's talk B2B pitching, and they're reviewing initially in the initial round, they might be reviewing 25 or 30 submissions of RFQs or RFPs,

13:15And they may come down to five finalists who go through a pitch process, or they call it an interview, or they call it a meeting. The buyer can tell who applied effort and care and passion and energy and intensity to that pursuit. they can certainly tell in comparison to the other guys who didn't, who went through a kind of an automated process, who churned out generic materials, who gave them pro forma kind of approaches.

13:54They can tell the difference between people who just answered the questions in the RFP and didn't go any further from those who took a deeper dive into the real issues and challenges facing that prospect and chose to address them in addition to the core requirements of the RFP. So the buyers can tell who had intensity and who didn't. And as your listeners have to agree,

14:26that's gotta make a big difference and who they're going to select. So we think that there's just such a lack of understanding around how buyers make decisions and the role of these factors that ladder up to intensity that the firm that chooses to acknowledge it and adjust their business development practices in order to express it is going to have a huge advantage in competitive pitches. Now I'm starting to get excited because I've got a few different questions all coming to

15:00me at the same time. So I'm going to try and structure them in a good order for the listeners. You talk about the difference between sales and business development. This is something in the book, right? And I'll really like your definition of it, or I guess kind of how you explained it. So are you able to just quickly just explain kind of how you see the difference between sales and biz dev sure um we'd actually think that's that's maybe one of the simplest concepts in the book um sales is a transaction um when you're when you're practicing sales what you're doing is your drive

15:34is you're following a very well-defined process usually a shorter one designed to get to a close the seller and the buyer know their roles they know why they're there the the seller is trying to close a deal, the buyer is trying to acquire a benefit as a result of the deal. And you're kind of in this dance and everybody sort of knows what the steps and what the moves are. But there's no question that the end result is the handing over of money in some form from the buyer to the seller.

16:11David Pérez, Ph.D.: Business development is not a transaction. It's not driving to a transaction. Yes, it's driving to revenue for the developer, but the relationship is different. The relationship between the business developer and the buyer now is one that comes through a client-centric series of events in which the business development team is continually bringing value to the conversation,

16:44is continually making the buying organization or the buyers themselves smarter, wiser, maybe more excited, maybe more aware. And there aren't necessarily specific steps, although we think there are specific activities associated with business development. But we're not driving to a close. we're driving to an inevitable agreement that I, the buyer, really do have this problem.

17:19And you, the business developer, really offer me something that I didn't think I could get, which is a solution to it. So net result in both cases is revenue, as I said. But the roles that buyers and sellers play in these two different scenarios are entirely different. And they're likely to lead to very different kinds of outcomes. Thank you for that. You talk about business development positioning. Now, this is taking this concept, which you just explained,

17:51and then kind of adding a positioning level on top of it. And you talk about the integration between kind of sales and marketing and how all this should progress the relationship, right? And so I thought that was a really good topic because a lot of sales or business development people will try to do the nurturing, but they're coming at it from a sales perspective, right? And so it's like they're saying, oh, well, he just said I should do that. So I'll kind of just half do it and then the buyers can tell, right?

18:22So what's the mindset around the value adding and the business development positioning that you talk about in your book? Yeah, we ultimately, and let's go back to one of your first questions. Let's look at it from a high level. We're trying to reframe the business development organization's approach to business development to get it away from being self-centric, firm-centric, to being prospect-centric.

18:58um positioning is is just one reflection or pre-positioning which which is positioning before the rfp is a reflection of making that pivot too much marketing information that goes out right now um both at both because marketing departments are thinking this way and because um business developers are thinking this way is about how wonderful we the firm are. Look at our products,

19:30look at our process, look at our people, look at our case studies. It's all about us, us, us, us, us, us, us. Buyers don't care about that. And even if they did, even if they did, even if they did they cannot differentiate among competing firms on that criteria alone as easily as the competing firms think they can so i'm a a consulting firm and i put out my

20:01the biographies of my people and my client list and all those great things about myself and i think that that makes me stand out from the crowd the buyer gets that and it looks exactly like 17 other submissions that they've gotten. So this idea of bringing value is, it comes from the premise that we want all communication from the business development side to be directed at what matters to the client, not what that particular firm is proud of

20:40or thinks is important. So you got to have insights on the business. You got to have a point of view and a perspective. You have to challenge the buyer to think differently about what's possible or what's wrong, what's broken. All of those things are elements of a positioning that become buyer-centric and not seller-centric. Great answers. I'm loving this. It seems like it's a whole strategic approach. Obviously,

21:15it starts with the selection by selecting the kinds of companies which give you the most amount of profit and happiness in the company. It's a type of client kind of who you want to work with. Part one, then the deals which you need to select need to be like, well, the companies which you need to select have to have the potential to spend enough, you know, with you to be able to support this investment right because this is an investment of understanding the client the person within the company like their needs the decision making unit and so on

21:48and because then like you're spending a lot of time actually I guess like what's the word like engaging uh with them right and so you talk about pitching less and winning more but it sounds like at the beginning of the like not the funnel because I hate that word but at the start there's a lot more, I guess, potential clients that it's starting with. Is that correct? Like, okay. Yeah, please. I'm trying to put it into a question right now where it's like,

22:19I'm trying to figure out like how much of that, I guess, is basically required in the beginning to close these deals, right? Because it's obviously pitching less to win more, but there's a starting point. Well, pitching less to win more is actually, maybe it's more of an ending point because it starts with as you're just referring to alex it starts with a a more holistic consideration of just where is our value what do we actually do

22:50that the world would would want more of or the world would would embrace um let's identify our strengths first. Let's look at our successes. Let's kind of break them down. Not just that, we helped sell a beer, but what's the problem that that beer company had? Is it possible that other companies have similar problems that have nothing to do with beer, but could really relate

23:25to having that challenge, that difficulty. We may find at the beginning, and this is very frequently the case when we do this strategic work with our clients, that there's more companies that you could be targeting than you thought there were. Because you don't have to limit yourself only if you have beer experience, only to other beverages or other spirits. You can go in dozens of different directions if you're smart about identifying what the problem is that you solve.

23:58So we would actually start broader by recognizing the fact that the strengths that we have and the issues that we address so effectively might be experienced by a multitude of prospects. Now, though, we have to factor in the other things. We can't pitch everybody. We couldn't do that before. We're certainly not going to do it now. So what are the criteria that we're now going to apply that will help us select from this now longer list only those now here's where your small number comes in only those fewer companies that we actually want to put energy into.

24:36Now for that, we have models around how do you qualify? How do you identify from a marketing standpoint, the easier targets to be not necessarily easy to get to, but easier to be convinced, easier to be persuaded? Where is your network? Where can you get referrals? Who can you meet easily? So there's a bunch of criteria that we could help and that any company has to go through. to now I go from a longer list now down to a shorter list

25:09so that you now can be in a position to pitch less and win more. And are these qualification ideas inside the book or are they part of the engagement that you provide at the Artemis Partnership? We give sample criteria in the book, kind of a thought starter for any company. but every company is going to have to build criteria that they are most comfortable with because that criteria is designed not to let more opportunities in, but to keep more opportunities

25:45out. So we would highly recommend that you work with a consultant who has an objective point of view about what you're really capable of pursuing, what you really should be pursuing, so that you, the company, can be more comfortable that you've got the right criteria. And then when opportunities do not make it through your filter, you can actually applaud that because you know it was a good decision

26:16as opposed to being uncomfortable because you had to say no. And I'm seeing how it all starts to fit together. From the shortlist that got through the criteria And now you know, okay, so these are the organizations or the opportunities or the prospects, which I am now going to start to invest my time into, right? To create the business development positioning. What's your expectation of the close rate, let's call it, from the number of opportunities which have gotten through the qualification stage to actually to win the deal or to start the relationship in some way?

26:55If that makes sense. Yeah, really interesting question. I would say that my expectation is that you will have industry best close rates if you do that. Now, it depends on the industry. If your industry best is 25%, 35% or 40% would be phenomenal. That being said, it's been our experience with our own clients that close rates get up into the 60% and 70% range. They're not unusual. If I were a financial advisor, I would say your results may vary.

27:29Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. But that would be where we would hope to see our clients get to. Now, in order to do that, it isn't just the pitch less, win more. Let's be really clear about that. Strategically, that's what you want to do. But now you have to look at how are you executing that pitch? How are you representing intensity in your pursuit? Now your activities, your messaging, your behaviors become so important. It's a great start to have a strategic growth plan. It will go for naught if you cannot execute it well. And perhaps, you know, for that, you might also need somebody to guide you through that execution of it.

28:20Yeah. This is very high value information right now. So thank you for sharing all this so far. Can we jump to a couple more points out of the book? Because it's just, I think there's a really interesting concept. So I think number one, you've talked about the pursuit process and the pursuit team, right? So when there's an actual opportunity, now you kind of increase the intensity of

28:50everything which you're doing. So are you able to just quickly explain to what you talk about in terms of the pursuit process? The pursuit process has at its foundation, the goal of learning more about the decision makers and influencers on the prospect side than any of competitors can possibly learn. So your pursuit team has to be activated to do just that. They

29:20not just go through LinkedIn or go through Google to see what's in the news. If they're a publicly traded company, of course, there'd be a lot of information available on them. But really do your networking and your homework and try to understand what the individuals, where they came from and and what they care about. So on the one hand, your team has to be dedicated to really getting a much deeper understanding of who they're pursuing as people. Secondly, you have to work really hard

29:53to get face time with them. And as you mentioned earlier, Alex, that's where your alignment between marketing and business development is so important. Your marketing content creates the desire on the part of the decision makers to want to meet with you if the marketing content is well-written and well-designed. So get that marketing content out in front of them. Now, this means your business development team has to take charge of that. It can't just be a newsletter or a blog post that only 30% of your

30:29readers will open. You have to send it directly to people and follow it up two, three, four times to make sure they see it and get their reaction to it. If you're doing this well, you can turn a high percentage of those into meetings. Now, when you get a meeting with somebody, first of all, it has to be a priority. You can't just not do the meeting because I have to do my other work. And you have to plan it. You have to be smart about it so that that meeting is more than just, let's show you our credentials deck

30:59and ask you a few, you know, how much money do you have to spend questions, but actually get to know you, understand your business issues, your business challenges and opportunities, and share with you our insights, share with you some perspectives so that we make you smarter as a result. This again is your business development team has to put the time in to do that. So the process, and this by the way, is another reason why it's pitch less. you can't do this too often and have the bandwidth for it so with fewer opportunities

31:35you can take the same 100 hours a year that a professional devotes to business development and instead of devoting it to 25 pursuits of four hours each devoted to to 10 pursuits of 10 hours each. And now you're starting to really get deep into getting to know the decision makers, presenting your value, advancing your case with them, moving yourself up to the top of the heap

32:10of potential options. And that's where you get the win rates that are as high as we think they ought to be. Thank you again. As part of that then, so you have these meetings and now they invite you to pitch, right? And, you know, so part of what you talk about in the book is that there are four considerations or four areas of consideration that will help you to win the pitch. The solution, the fact that you understand them, the chemistry and politics, right? And it seems like most

32:40pitchers focus on the solution, but there's three other areas which most people don't even considered. So it does seem like this pre-positioning, I guess, or this preparation before the pitch will kind of handle the other three that's outside of the solution. So are you able to just quickly speak about the parts of a pitch that the majority of companies, they don't even think about, and then they don't actually win the deals? Yeah. Well, first of all, you're absolutely right about those four elements and they have to be

33:12um identified and leveraged well before the actual pitch if you if by pitch you mean a presentation presentation sorry at the end of the presentation yes yeah of course no no i just want to make sure that we're in the same place in the timeline yes um if you don't have it totally identified and initially leveraged by the time you get to the pitch you've got no chance of winning anyway So it doesn't matter what you do in the pitch. You might as well just show up in clown costumes and do a song and dance.

33:46Don't tell anybody that Artemis recommended that, by the way, as a pitch strategy. So all of your intensity up front before the actual pitch is dedicated to, first of all, identifying the factors that qualify as understanding chemistry and politics. knowing what messaging you need to deliver so that you get, let's call it the best score that's possible in those areas. Then when you construct your final pitch, you're able to place all of

34:18those elements into the actual presentation in the right order. One of the most serious mistakes that pitch teams make in competitive bids is they wait too long to deliver something of interest. They go through an opening 10, 15 minutes, 20 minutes of pro forma stuff. Let's introduce the team. Let's show you a bit about our company. Here's our credentials and our processes and our cases.

34:53Here's what you told us you're looking for. This was in the RFP. And it's decision makers. They're going to hear this five times. The exact same thing. Five times. You want to win a pitch and really show that you've captured all these elements from those four components that you mentioned, Alex. Then that's what you start. You start with those four components. You start out in the first 10 minutes with here's what we understand about what really, really matters to you.

35:25Here's our take on your issue, your problem, your opportunity. Here's a sampling of what the solution might look like. When you understand what this is, what these elements are, you can actually graft the final presentation so that it reflects those and it gets there quickly. And then you get decision makers sitting in the boardroom, real or virtual, like um i guess in australia you have bobblehead dolls you know for for sports celebrities you know

36:02and that's what they'll look like because in the first seven eight nine ten minutes their heads will be bobbing up and down um like bobblehead dolls and you've got them one at that point and it all comes down to to understanding their challenges their business and the individuals within the team and the politics between the individuals and then obviously having a chemistry that they like you and your team, right? Which will come from them thinking that you understand them

36:32and that you've done the research. And basically, like it's almost like they need to think that you understand them a lot better than everyone else, plus they like you more because of it and they can see how far that you've gone. And everyone, I'm sure everyone is going to love that. Is that the mindset around it? That's exactly the mindset around it. You know, an interesting exercise, thought exercise for your listeners is to do this. Think of the feedback that you've gotten after successful pitches and unsuccessful pitches.

37:07If you've lost a pitch, I'll wager that the feedback you got were things like, it was very close. It came down to price. your solution didn't quite fit our criteria of what we were looking for. Please try again next time. So it's very rational. It's not meant to hurt your feelings. It's frankly not very useful. Now, think of the feedback that you get when you win.

37:40What are they telling you? We loved your passion. We loved your dedication. You really got us. You really understood us. We felt a good connection with you. We were energized by the interactions we had with you. These are different for a reason. You didn't get feedback initially when you lost that we didn't feel any passion. We didn't feel any devotion. You know, we didn't like you very much.

38:12Maybe if they did tell you that, by the way, that would be awesome because you could do something with it. But there's a reason why passion and chemistry and so on comes up as feedback. And that's because it really mattered. They didn't tell you that, well, you had the better solution. They believed you had the better solution, but the reason they thought you had the better solution is because they liked you, because you understood them, because you showed passion and intensity. So, you know, all these things come together.

38:46everything we talk about in the book. Yes, an organization can use a specific chapter alone to probably improve some of their results. But the best outcomes you get is when you fit all these pieces together, as you've been alluding to, and that turns into a thing of beauty. And that's where it requires courage because the courage is not let's look at a chapter and let's just pass the sales team, what the biz dev team, hey, just do this now on top of everything else, but don't change anything. And now let's just do more. Now it's actually about thinking more,

39:20planning more and making choices of what not to do. Cause it's easy to think of all the things to do, but I think it's choices of what not to do, which is your qualification criteria. So yeah, I can see how it does take courage because even just thinking about all the changes that a company would need to make from, from the marketing to the first engagement, to the biz dev team to the production team to the research processes like it's an investment not of a different like it's not a lot more money but it's a lot more focus which means you're

39:54excluding a lot and that exclusion I think is the biggest challenge I think for lots of business leaders and so what would you say to that how do you get more courage if I'm listening now I'm thinking, man, everything he's saying is great. I really want to do it, but oh, my, my gut doesn't feel right. I've got all these pressures going on, you know? So what do you say to people like that? Which is probably the majority of people, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. Have a drink, you know, chill out and let's, let's talk about this

40:26with or without the adult beverage. But let's talk about your goals. What do you really want accomplish? How important is it for you to grow your revenue? Very important, of course. Well, how important is it for you to grow your profit? Have you thought about that? How important is it for you to have an energized workforce, to have clients who are culturally aligned with you, who your people enjoy working for and don't consider it to be drudgery? How difficult is it for you to pull together a business development team when an opportunity comes up? Wouldn't it be

41:00better if people were falling over each other and elbowing each other out of the way to be part of business development um you know let's let's talk about what's really important to you besides just the results of pitching and let's see how we can make that happen with a smarter pitch strategy because that's that's what it's designed to do it's not designed to make things less effective for you is designed to make things more effective for you now we're also at artemis

41:33we live in the real world alex and there's a reason why you have to be opportunistic and there's a reason why you have to chase low-hanging fruit what we want you to do it ultimately and this will fit majority of companies is we want you to have a balance don't be 100 opportunistic or or 100% about chasing. Gee, I had an ad agency that came to me a couple of weeks ago. I asked them what their,

42:04I asked the owner of the agency, what his objectives were for wanting to work with us. And he said, I want to get more RFPs. And I said, well, you came to the wrong place. It's about less RFPs that are worth more. Yeah, because that's a word. That's not what we believe in. So, but I understand why you might need to have some activity going, maybe all the time because it does keep the lights on. I just want you to have a balance, minimally have a balance. I want there to be some effort against strategic accounts

42:35that do not take away, let me rephrase that, some effort against strategic accounts that are a priority so that you don't put too much emphasis on opportunistic or reactive or tactical accounts. I hope I said that right. because they actually both can coexist, at least in the near term. Longer term, though, the most successful organizations devote 80 to 100% of their energy to being strategic about their pursuits.

43:07And ultimately, they have the best results. I'm sure that all the listeners of this podcast understand the value of strategy versus tactical. And so I think this kind of fits that mindset. So for the Artemis partnership, look, sounds like this can be a pretty daunting process. So having a consultant like yourself can actually help. So what kind of companies are most kind of suited to working with the Artemis partnership? We seem to have a really good fit with professional services.

43:42So these could be architecture, public accounting, law, advertising, engineering, construction, of course, management, consulting, all different forms of consulting, executive recruiters. These are organizations where the, let me, I'll call them, and I don't mean any offense by this, the tradesmen, the craftsmen, like the lawyers and the architects, are also charged with responsibility of developing new business.

44:14whether it's going out and finding opportunities, whether it's growing their current client relationships, or whether they're just invited in to be part of a team because there might be a business development role that's fulfilled by someone who's full-time. Those kinds of people love working with us because we understand them. Nearly all Artemis people came from that environment. We know the challenges of trying to add what they call selling on top of the performing of their expertise.

44:54And we're able to break it down. And that's the reason why we, by the way, that we differentiate between sales and business development. We're able to turn them away from being salesmen, turn them into business developers, allow them to use the expertise that got them to be successful at their craft and engage in it in a business development way. So those are a really well-matched client set for us.

45:26And is there a certain size organization in terms of either staff count or the revenue or the value of a deal? Is there any qualification which people should be hearing about now before they contact you to make sure that you follow the same process, I'm assuming, right? Yeah. Again, a very good question. We tend to look at the value of the deals, the value of the important deals as a qualifier for somebody who would want to work with us. How much is that?

45:59they would they did recognize the upside okay but how much is the starting point just for you um to be like yeah okay i can work with you um i well because there are different ways of working with us there are different kinds of starting points but minimally we're looking at low six figures for that would represent a good deal for somebody to win um now we've worked on on bids that are upwards of 35 billion with a B dollars. The more, the higher the value of the bid,

46:34the easier it is for the company to rationalize the cost of using us. That being said, the $35 billion bids come around once every five years. The $300,000 bids, you know, come around 15 times a year. So a company that pursues smaller projects would want to, should want to work with us as much as the one that pursues larger ones.

47:05If you're pursuing opportunities under a hundred thousand dollars then you're almost certainly in a highly transactional environment, high churn environment that's driven largely by price. And our principles will be more difficult for you to align with. They'll still work, but it just might be a greater mental block against wanting to make those kinds of changes.

47:37Fantastic. And for the people that are interested, what's the best way to contact you? They can contact me through LinkedIn. It's probably the easiest way. You can also speak through my email, which is bob.wiesner, spelled W-I-E-S-N-E-R, at artemispartnership.us. We are, by the way, a global organization. So I have partners for EMEA and for Asia Pacific.

48:09And if an organization is located in Asia-Pac, would like to work with Artemis, let me know, and I'll put them in touch with our managing partner for Asia Pacific and get the relationship going that way. Fantastic. And just to wrap it up, the book, I mean, it's called Winning is Better. And we just touched on a few things today, but there's stuff in the book around proposals and how to structure a proposal and how to structure a presentation and how to actually conduct the research and some frameworks that are involved

48:40like in the whole process and stories to help you actually contextualize it a lot better. So I highly recommend that you purchase the bullet. If you're interested in closing these larger B2B deals, this is an ideal book for that. And it's available on amazon.com or .com.au or whatever country that you're in. Bob, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing this information. I'm sure this is extremely valuable in today's challenging economic environment where there's so many people all competing for, feels like fewer dollars,

49:12but maybe there's just more competitors now. So, so there's definitely more competitors now. Yes. Yeah. And so these kinds of thinking is super important, right? Because you can't just keep doing these transactional approaches anymore. You know, you got to build relationships and they're harder now when you're doing it through, through zoom than when you could go in person, have a cup of coffee, but that doesn't mean the relationship doesn't, doesn't count. It just means that it's harder to establish it. And the ones that make the effort to are going to come out ahead. So Alex, thank you very much.

49:42This was really fun. I'm delighted to have the opportunity to do this. Thanks so much, Bob. And we'll talk soon. Thanks for listening to the Growth Manifesto podcast. If you enjoyed the episode, please give us a five-star rating on iTunes. For more episodes, please visit growthmanifesto.com forward slash podcast. And if you need help driving growth for your company, please get in touch with us at webprofits.io.