2bobs - With David C. Baker And Blair Enns

Blair wants creative firms to quit viewing in-house resources as the enemy and demonstrates how the arrangements between the two can be mutually beneficial.   LINKS 2Bobs Episode 2: Say What You Think 2Bobs Episode 57: There are NOT Seven Reasons Why Clients Hire You

David and Blair each share a list of things that they wish agency principals would do more of to take their firms to the next level of success.   Links   "The Problem of Standards" by David Maister 2001

Blair and David work on clarifying things by coming up with only six reasons why businesses hire creative firms.

Blair and David share the places they find good ideas that they turn into content, the best of which end up being incorporated into their services.   Read the transcript ➝

David finds Blair's thoughts fascinating on how far agencies should service or pursue clients geographically, and whether or not the location of a firm should be a factor.

David gives Blair four practical reasons for sales people to hand off new business to the account person before the deal is closed instead of after.

David gets into Blair's head to get his 10 basic negotiating tips that he has worked with clients on over the years.   LINKS “10 Negotiating Tips” (with 5 bonus tips) “Selling in One Lesson,” 2Bobs episode 49 Buying Less for Less: How to avoid the Marketing Procurement dilemma, by Gerry Preece Negotiating with Backbone: Eight Sales Strategies to Defend Your Price and Value, by Reed K. Holden   TRANSCRIPT DAVID C. BAKER: Blair, today we are going to talk about 10 really interesting ways you can get your spouse to go ... Wait, I haven't, quit laughing. I haven't - BLAIR ENNS: I'm out. DAVID: How to get your spouse to go to the place for dinner that you want to go to. BLAIR: Okay. DAVID: How's that? BLAIR: Sure. What kind of trouble could we possibly get into? DAVID: Yeah, that would be a really stupid pod ... No. What we're talking about are some negotiating tips that you've thought about over many years. You've polled, you've tested, you've researched. You've worked with clients on. You've consolidated them in

After having discussed positioning in multiple previous episodes, David puts together in this one episode the seven most common mistakes firms make when positioning themselves.

David asks Blair about using "after action reviews" following sales calls, and the two key questions that should be asked as a part of that debriefing process.   LINKS Episode #15 - The Best Learning Method Ever Devised: After Action Reviews, from The Soul of Enterprise Podcast with Ron Baker and Ed Kless   TRANSCRIPT DAVID C. BAKER: Blair, today we are going to talk about debriefing after a new business call. Not after just a business call, but a new business call, right? So how did this topic come to your mind? What got you thinking about this? BLAIR ENNS: I'm a fan of Ron Baker and Ed Kless' podcast, The Soul of Enterprise. They had a podcast way back when and they made the comment that they see the after action review as the most powerful ... I'm gonna get this wrong, but is the most powerful knowledge tool ever invented. DAVID: Wow. BLAIR: That's a big statement. But we were using after action reviews in our business. And we still use them. There's various forms of them. Their origin actually came out of

Blair asks David to make some predictions about the new year, and then they discuss some ways that businesses can prepare for and react to (God forbid) an economic downturn.   TRANSCRIPT BLAIR ENNS: David, predict the future. Coming year, the year ahead ... It doesn't matter when people are listening to this or when we've recorded it, but in the year ahead is it going to be a year of abundance or is it batten the hatches, we've got trouble? DAVID C. BAKER: I think it'll probably be right in the middle. I think it'll be- BLAIR: Oh, come on. Make a guess. DAVID: Oh, no but that is a real prediction. BLAIR: Don't you love driving through these small towns and rural parts of whatever country and you see these fortune tellers that read the cards or whatever? And they're all in these shitty little offices. I'm just wondering, how does that work? DAVID: How come they're not in palaces? BLAIR: Yeah. Right. Or the 49th floor of some high rise condominium. DAVID: You talk with your clients, a lot of them every week, an

Blair describes to David how he was able to distill his Win Without Pitching approach into a simple formula: P=db/D Power = desirability / Desire   Links Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics by Henry Hazlitt Economics in One Lesson Wikipedia page Henry Hazlitt Wikipedia page The Win Without Pitching Manifesto by Blair Enns   Transcript DAVID C. BAKER: Blair, We are going to talk about selling in one lesson. BLAIR ENNS: I know why you're laughing. DAVID: I'm laughing because you're constantly pretending that people need to hear all kinds of lessons, but if really is selling is just in one lesson, then doesn't that sort of undermine, anyway, let's just go on. I'm sorry, I'm just trying too hard here. BLAIR: Yeah. DAVID: So selling in one lesson. But what's interesting about this is that you have a formula, and I think we probably need to put this formula in the show notes, right? Because just being able to picture this as a, so tell us the formula and then where thi

After touching on the topic of risk in many other episodes of this podcast, David and Blair finally take a full episode to discuss at length the role of risk in entrepreneurship.   LINKS "Confessions of a Recovering Consultant" by Blair Enns Hyman P. Minsky Archive Twitter exchange with Jonathan Stark on risk Strategic Coach program with Dan Sullivan "A Mission With No Exit" by Blair Enns Peter Drucker   TRANSCRIPT BLAIR ENNS: David, what's the riskiest thing you've ever done? DAVID BAKER: I've always wanted to have a really long pregnant pause right after you start something, because you're always telling me I can regain the power with silence. The biggest risk I've taken was probably telling my wife about the risks I was going to take. BLAIR: Yeah, right. Wow. Hands up, everybody. DAVID: She's only told me there was one thing I could not do and it's so illogical. She says I cannot jump out of an airplane. She doesn't terrify flying, or race, or whatever, but I can't jump out, which seems so illogical. So, a

Blair gets David to admit that he was kind of wrong about open book management being just a fad when he originally wrote about it almost two decades ago, and David offers ways that it can actually benefit both employees and clients when used appropriately.   Links Financial Management of a Marketing Firm by David C. Baker   TRANSCRIPT BLAIR ENNS: David, today we're going to talk about open book management. How does that sound to you? DAVID C. BAKER: Sounds like you think you're in charge. Why don't you say, "Can we talk about that?" BLAIR: Well, let me assert control. David, would it be okay with you if we talked about open book management? DAVID: Great idea. I like that idea. Let's do that. BLAIR: Okay, fantastic. I just happen to have an article here that you wrote. I've actually just pulled it out of your book, Financial Management of a Marketing Firm. We don't talk about that. We should do some podcasts on that book, because that's a book that every principal of a creative firm should have on their desk o

Blair and David analyze and then look beyond the requests for reassurance potential clients make during the late stage of a sale to address their underlying motivations.   LINKS “Transtheoretical Model” (Prochaska & DiClemente, 1983; Prochaska, DiClemente, & Norcross, 1992)   TRANSCRIPT DAVID C. BAKER: Blair, today I want to ask you about something that I've heard you talk about for many years and it's this notion of alternative forms of reassurance. BLAIR ENNS: Yeah. DAVID: We used to do this event together and we did it for like 10 years running. BLAIR: You mean that one where I carried the both of us. DAVID: Yeah. That's the one, right. Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely the one. I remember listening particularly attentively to this one section that you used to talk about because it was a new concept to me, but I was also really fascinated by it and I thought, mainly I thought the title was just perfect and you called it something like the alternative forms of reassurance and as I recall at a certain po

David disagrees with Blair (sort of) on his model for growing existing accounts in the post-AOR era, and then offers his list of 6 ideas on the topic.   Links The Peter principle The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson Tony Mikes   Transcript DAVID C. BAKER: Today Blair, we are coming to you live from the ReCourses Woodworking Shop, where so far I have done no woodworking, but a whole lot of podcast recording. Maybe I need to take my saws up to my office or something, but I can wander because I'm on like a corded mic and I can just look at my stuff. If you start to bore me, I just read the manuals for my saws and it's really fun. Is that okay with you? BLAIR ENNS:Yeah. I'll hear the table saw fire up in the background, right? DAVID: You know you need to start to get more interesting at that point. BLAIR: You know you're retreating further and further from civilization and identifying more and more with machinery and animals. DAVID: And the rest of the world thanks me for this. BLAIR: All right.

Blair remembers what it was like when he was an account person himself, and David shares five ways firms can treat their account people better.   LINKS “How to Drive Your Employees Bat Sh*t Crazy” 2Bobs episode   TRANSCRIPT BLAIR ENNS: David, we're talking today about how to disrespect people. This is your topic idea. DAVID C. BAKER: Yeah, I get so many requests from people that want help with this, and they naturally ask me. Right? BLAIR: Yeah. Of course they do. DAVID: "Who'd be really an expert at this? Ah, David, yeah, he could help us with this." BLAIR: Yeah. The topic is, best ways to disrespect account people. Why this topic? DAVID: I see so many firms disrespecting account people. I mean, they're obviously not doing it intentionally, but when you look at how they're treated, and how they're brought into workflow and all this stuff, it's pretty obvious that they could do things a little bit better, and so when I talk through it with them, their eyes light up, and they see, "Oh, there's another way to

Blair offers seven mindsets that any seller of expertise needs to master so that they can behave like the expert in the sales cycle.   Links "The Jedi Mindset" by Blair Enns McClelland's Human Motivation Theory, also known as Three Needs Theory, Acquired Needs Theory, Motivational Needs Theory, and Learned Needs Theory   Transcript DAVID C. BAKER: Good morning, Blair. You are in London. I'm in Nashville. BLAIR ENNS: Yeah, it's my afternoon, and it's your seven AM. DAVID: And don't tell me you've gotten a lot more done today already, because that's just a time change thing. Has nothing to do with productivity. Today we're going to talk about the seven masteries of the rainmaker, choke, choke. BLAIR: You're choking on the word rainmaker, are you? DAVID: Well, a little bit. I'm also, it's like seven. How come it's not six or eight? Seven sounds quite biblically, almost like we need to take an offering at the end of this or something. BLAIR: Let's do that. DAVID: I'm more choking on the idea of the rainmaker. Do

LINKS "The Great Convergence Is Upon Us" by Blair Enns "CRM: The Train Coming At You" by Blair Enns AltGroup.net website "Eight Gauges on Your Agency Dashboard" by David C. Baker The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success by William Thorndike "Rising From the Ashes: A New Agency Model" by Blair Enns   TRANSCRIPTION DAVID C. BAKER: Blair today we're going to start over. Both you and I are going to start over. We're going to pretend to start over anyway, and the topic is If I Were Starting a Firm Now. In other words this is a firm that you and I work with, and the folks who listen to this podcast generally. If I were starting a firm like that now, what would I do differently? We're going way back in time because I ran a firm ... you worked at multiple firms, and I started and ran a firm for six years. My goodness, I would do so many things differently. If we talked about this 10 years ago, the answers would be different. If we talked about it 10 years from now, t

Blair gives David some homework to identify patterns in the principals of creative practices who are successful and have that "je ne sais quoi."   LINKS 2Bobs Episode 28 - "Positioning Cheats" Start With Why by Simon Sinek "Top 10 Podcasts Agency Owners Listen To" by Daniel de la Cruz Crucial Conversations - Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler   TRANSCRIPT DAVID C. BAKER: Blair today, we are going to catch up with the rest of the world. I can't even say that with a straight face. We're only 80 years, 90 years behind. We're going to talk about the X-Factor. Okay. And the first time that phrase was used was in 1930, and we're just now getting ready to talk about it.  BLAIR ENNS: You've actually done homework. That's not fair. DAVID: Well, a little bit.  BLAIR: You went and looked up the first use of the word X-Factor... But hold on - you have to explain who used it. What was the context?  DAVID: Well, it was like in the urban dictionary, so it'

Blair interviews David on what each of the three levels of success in running a creative firm looks like.   Links 2Bobs Episode 39 - "Replacing Presentations With Conversations" The Win Without Pitching Manifesto, by Blair Enns The Business of Expertise: How Entrepreneurial Experts Convert Insight to Impact + Wealth, by David C. Baker Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You,by John Warrillow Pricing Creativity: A Guide to Profit Beyond the Billable Hour, by Blair Enns 2Bobs Episode 31 - "Mastering the Value Conversation"   TRANSCRIPT BLAIR ENNS: David, it's been a while. DAVID C. BAKER: Has it? I haven't missed you all that much. Have you missed me? BLAIR: Since we've last recorded a podcast, I was listening to one that aired recently and it was talking about my first book is in its fourth printing. It's now going into its fifth printing and I realized that it just aired and we recorded that over a year ago. So if Marcus is digging into a backlog that far, that means we haven't been to