Cracking the Code of Boutique Consultancy Growth with John Godfrey

Michael Lander (00:01.764)
John, thanks ever so much for joining me on Hig or the B2B Sells for Podcast.

John Godfrey (00:06.452)
Great to be here.

Michael Lander (00:22.284)
And John, we genuinely go back, wow, to the Attender Days, I think. How many years ago was that?

John Godfrey (00:24.432)
Okay.

Got to be 20, maybe plus.

Michael Lander (00:31.076)
20 years, exactly. And it's turned into now a great friendship as well as being business kind of colleagues as well, which is fantastic. just tell the audience basically who are you, what do you do, and something unusual about yourself.

John Godfrey (00:38.1)
See you later.

John Godfrey (00:48.008)
Brilliant, happy to. I'm John Godfrey. I'm commercial director at Red Badger, independent London based digital consultancy. We build generally complicated things in complex places. They tend to be digital products that interact with millions of customers. They tend to generate new, quite sizable revenue and value streams for big banks, large retail, global media. I've been in the digital product change world.

generally working for Legacy Enterprises, introducing new technologies and been doing that for 20 plus years. Started my career at the Bank of England and then very quickly came out of Enterprise and been on the supply side agency consultancy ever since. I guess something unusual is a few years ago, I had a pretty poor experience with my own schooling and education.

And a few years ago, that kind of led me to be involved in some state comprehensive education. I founded or co-founded a London secondary school, one of the biggest in the country that went on to then become part of a multi-academy trust that has now three secondary schools, teaching school hubs, research schools. And I led that trustee group as chair of trustees. I've now exited that, but it was a 10 year journey of building that school and that trust.

Michael Lander (02:08.75)
Wow.

John Godfrey (02:12.84)
been fabulous.

Michael Lander (02:12.996)
That's amazing, John. That's really amazing. It's very rare that you get to be in position of building something that basically supports the next generation. So that's fantastic.

John Godfrey (02:22.824)
Definitely the sense of volunteering all the way through, it gives such an extension of comfort zone that it's supported everything I've done professionally. The contribution level pays back a thousand fold in what you get from doing that stuff. So highly recommended.

Michael Lander (02:43.364)
Brilliant. And John, on the work front, whenever I've got a business development, how might this work? How can I generate better quality relationships with potential prospects? You're my go-to person. You always have been because you've been in business development and sales through and through ever since I've known you. And so this podcast, we're going to focus on the one big topic, which is around

nurturing versus business development, sorry, networking versus business development. And what's the big difference in terms of generating new business? How does it work? So do you want to just like kick off, John, with like, why do you kind of think of that as a topic? What does it mean? What's the difference between those two different types of approaches?

John Godfrey (03:34.098)
Yeah, I think it's the question at the heart of anyone in consultancy or agency services selling. Generally founders and super seniors will be leading that activity. And for the most part, I think everyone will be familiar with the founder to a certain size tends to come from high credibility trusted advisor relationships.

where your work and the quality of your work and the value you add is very well understood by the people that you're speaking to, your prospects. And we're all trying to solve, everybody wants to move from that place, which we all know is unscalable, we all know leads to feast and famine, while you're building, prospecting, you're not delivering, and as soon as you win something, you're delivering it. And we've all lived that kind of lumpy life.

Michael Lander (04:27.288)
And that's where I live every day of my life. That's what I do every day of my life.

John Godfrey (04:30.9)
And I think that's true for pretty much every agency consultancy founder up to a certain size. And it's pretty common that it's stays there. The crossing the agency scale chasm, which is how do I build a repeatable, scalable, predictable pipeline generating machine? While I'm doing all of this work, which is go win the work, know, kill the carry and drag it back to the village to eat for that week is

Michael Lander (04:42.776)
It is.

Michael Lander (04:55.416)
Yes.

Michael Lander (04:59.63)
That's right.

John Godfrey (05:00.476)
really tough work. So we all face that as our challenge. And that's been true for the decades I've been involved in it and isn't changing anytime soon. So we all face the same problem. I think in terms of how I've approached solving for that problem, it's the heart of what I do today. It's been true for everything I've been doing. There are a couple of myths in it. think myth one, and it takes years to understand this.

Myth one is the little black book myth. And I think that's lived forever in sales. think a little black book can work in certain domains, say for instance, a very specialist enterprise SaaS product, YouTube, something like HR management systems. And if you were a PeopleSoft salesperson who moves to work day, your black book is going to be valuable if those prospects like them.

Michael Lander (05:32.546)
Right, yes, definitely. Yep.

Michael Lander (05:56.12)
Yeah. And it was called, it was called the Black Book because it was genuinely, I remember this at KPMG, I had a, you had a book and it had a black front and back, a black front and back, and then it had lying paper inside. It was very thin and very small and you carried it in your pocket. That was, that's why it was called that. It was. It was.

John Godfrey (06:12.326)
Absolutely. And that was the mobile Rolodex. So it used to be the Rolodex on the desk and then it became the file effect and then the little black book. So that's very definitely true. And there is an element of truth still in the network is important. So in consulting sales, so my specialism, we think of every individual that you will ever sell to is not being sold to by you. They're buying at the

point they need. So you can never sell, you can only be bought.

Michael Lander (06:47.204)
So, do you to just dig into that? This is really important. What, expand, just say it again and expand on it.

John Godfrey (06:53.99)
Yeah. So we believe that no one in your network and no one outside of your network, people that you don't know, but could become customers is ever going to be sold to. You can't pick up the phone and say, Hey, feature benefit. I did this. Have you got this problem? Hey, if you've got this problem, here's why I've got the thingy ready to buy. Because consultancy and value

Michael Lander (07:13.87)
Yeah.

John Godfrey (07:23.162)
services value is bought at the point of need and there's no way of you knowing that point of need. So even if you have propositions that you can take to market as a reason to engage, they might not be the problem that the prospect's facing. So you're then in the issue of, well, I'd love to be in a conversation with this person that might have a problem that I can help save, but you're one of a million people.

Michael Lander (07:34.873)
Yes.

John Godfrey (07:47.956)
you're swimming in a red ocean, you've got no credibility, they don't know who you are. And even if they know who you are, do you have a trusted advisor type relationship where you genuinely can pick up the phone, unpack a problem domain, they know what your value set is and they buy. So even in that really mature where it's true, they know you, you know them, it's true that you have high credibility, they've worked with you in the past, perhaps it's true that they genuinely trust you and will pick up the phone.

Michael Lander (07:56.057)
Yes.

John Godfrey (08:16.248)
Even in that environment, the only time they buy from you is when they have a problem that they think you can help with. And at that point, they buy. But that is not you selling, that's them buying from you.

Michael Lander (08:28.612)
So, a couple of points, I think. At any one time of 100 people that you're prospecting with, 95 of them are not in the market to buy at any one time.

John Godfrey (08:43.06)
I'd make it even more kind of pointy than that is that I would make a really key distinction between there's a network of people that you are connected to. And let's say they are the hundred of those hundred 95 of them, you might not be truly trusted advisory, or maybe 80 of them and you truly trust and 20 you are. Yeah, they're in your network.

Michael Lander (08:56.92)
Yes.

Michael Lander (09:04.405)
And you won't be. They'll be in your network. Yes, exactly.

John Godfrey (09:10.42)
You could definitely pick up the phone to them and they would answer, they would respond to an email, they'd come for a coffee or a beer. So they're definitely some way in that path. But as to your point, then 95 % of them are not in the market to buy. So how do you nurture becomes a question around your network requires consistent nurture. And that depends on you adding value even when they're not buying.

Michael Lander (09:37.305)
Yes.

John Godfrey (09:37.406)
So can you be an advisor? And if you think about it, I mean, your experience, you've worked with some of the largest consulting in the world, the partner level is that. I pick up a board member, picks up the phone on a Sunday night because they face a difficult week. So that, I think, is the network.

Michael Lander (09:42.392)
Yeah. Exactly. It is. That's your job.

Michael Lander (09:53.442)
Yeah. Yeah. Or they're going through a restructuring and they reach out and say, Mike, I've got a plan. Can you just run your eye over it and see if I've missed anything? And then you're in a very, very trusted space. That's very rare territory.

John Godfrey (10:09.49)
Yeah. Yeah. So they are very rare, but truly the thing that we all live for. That's the network that you want, the trusted advisor relationship that's most valuable to you. People bringing their problem to you and the problem is one that you are very well qualified to fix. So that's the ideal. But the little black book fallacy is the

Michael Lander (10:29.795)
Yes.

John Godfrey (10:35.852)
anyone you could recruit into your agency has that network of trusted advisor relationships and they're all at a position where they can buy and that is simply never true.

Michael Lander (10:46.722)
Yes. Not true. They normally have one or two clients who are ready to kind of maybe buy and in the interview process they're the ones that tempt you because they're big clients and after they've closed one of those deals because two never do, they're stuck. They're stuck with now what well where's the next opportunity and they're like it will take time. Give me time.

John Godfrey (11:06.91)
I think that's a nine-walk.

Michael Lander (11:15.266)
And that goes on for months if not years. And then eventually you go, it's not worked.

John Godfrey (11:17.758)
There's a very familiar path. And if you look at all the people, I guess we both know who are senior multi-decade consulting leaders who are Rainmaker revenue generators, their experiences are that the revenue that they've

generated has come from relationships that have been nurtured over years. mean, genuinely seven, eight, nine years of talking discussion without revenue before something happens, the trigger event, a change of ownership or they move and suddenly it works. So yeah, decades, exactly that. So that's the consulting world.

Michael Lander (11:47.32)
decades.

Michael Lander (11:57.408)
Exactly. Yeah.

And that makes it a very high barrier to entry. I, a junior partner coming in at the age of 30 to get to the level of the senior partner that's at 50. That's not just an experience learning your craft thing. That's a, you can't accelerate, it's really hard to accelerate your way into trusted advisor status with.

50 potential clients. It's really hard to accelerate that.

John Godfrey (12:32.786)
You definitely can't. There's something I picked up, funnily enough, I mentioned the schools experience. There's something I picked up there where I spent five years chairing a committee around the build of the schools. So a very big budget committee for a build that involved the NHS, multiple entities in the NHS, multiple entities in the department for education and their funding streams, multiple entities in the school that we were building.

providing. Now I chaired the steering committee for that across five years and by the end of that process somebody had said to me that there was zero ability to replace five years in that room and that was true. It was just the knowledge base was such that I carried with me all the experience of every decision that had been made, all the dynamics of the room, all the way through and that was simply unrecognisable.

Michael Lander (13:19.139)
Yes.

John Godfrey (13:29.14)
You had to be in the room for those five years for that to be true. And so that I think is part of the consulting.

Michael Lander (13:33.911)
And John.

trust. What happened in those five years, I suspect, if I observed, is you built trust with each other over those five years and then odd things that went wrong just got resolved easily because you all trust each other.

John Godfrey (13:51.38)
I mean, you've nailed the ability to have the difficult conversation and the left field conversation, both become incredibly easy because the trust is there. Because the trust banking account, which always works as a deposit withdrawal with every individual, that you've got a very large deposit base to draw on. Which means after those five years, I am able to pick up the phone to any of those people that were in

Michael Lander (14:07.864)
Yeah, it does.

John Godfrey (14:20.564)
the journey with me and we can have a discussion about something completely different because we've been through that place. So we've, we've talked so much about the network thing, which I guess many people are familiar with. big question becomes, well, how do you replicate that or build, well build a biz dev where, hold on a minute, I don't have the network. How do I do it from cold? And that is the heart of it, I guess. So

Michael Lander (14:25.379)
Yes.

Michael Lander (14:35.97)
What's the alternative? Yeah.

Michael Lander (14:44.718)
Brilliant.

John Godfrey (14:48.082)
I don't have the answer and I suspect everyone knows there is no silver bullet. That's the first job one is recognizing that there is no single answer and every consultancy and every agency is different. So a few principles that I guess I've learned on the way. Number one, it's taken me many years to really accept and understand the truth of this is I think it is genuinely unique for every agency or consultancy.

Michael Lander (14:50.211)
Bye bye.

John Godfrey (15:15.174)
I don't think there is a blueprint that's replicable. I there are principles, but I do think you have to figure it out for your business. And so that is tricky because it is different across technology, creative, business services, and then who you sell to, what good work for you is. So number one, I guess is that. Number two is a really useful framework that I picked up from our CEO founder.

around very simple one that you're probably familiar with. We're trying to move prospects from, they're not aware of us, we're not aware of them. They're complete unknowns, totally cold. And we're trying to move them to a place where we can contract for some services and value. And through that process, oversimplifying, you move them from unaware to aware, you move from awareness to credibility. And it's only once you're credible in their eyes that you can move towards that trusted advisor.

So you become trusted. It's only when trusted that an opportunity, a real valid opportunity emerges in which they will buy from you. So awareness through credibility, through trusted advisor to deal. And so...

Michael Lander (16:24.92)
Yes.

Michael Lander (16:30.018)
And going back John to that principle of just remind people, effectively you can't sell to anyone. They have to be in a position that they're ready to buy from you. Is that correct?

John Godfrey (16:39.998)
Correct. So the progression in software sales and in B2B lower ticket sales, you think in terms of funnels and progression and conversion rates. So you might say out of this many unaware, how many can we move to awareness and engagement from engagement? How many can we move to credibility and from there to trusted and from there to deal from trusted to opportunity?

You can only observe what that percentage might be in your market in any one year. Because that's to your point, Mike, around, you know, only 5 % might be ready in any one year. It'll be different for different sectors, but you can't, you're not in control of being the readiness to buy at that end. I guess the distinction between network selling and new vis development then sits in where you focus attention and what you do across that boundary.

So from the progression from unaware to we're shaping a deal together, the network tends to focus in the trusted advisor to we're shaping a deal space. So you can pick up the phone to a trusted advisor and say, Hey, you know about this new thing, agentic AI. Can I come and talk to you about it? And let's just see if it's something there because you've got the advisor relationship, you get the opportunity to go and have the conversation.

Michael Lander (17:56.76)
Right. Yeah.

Michael Lander (18:07.134)
the board were talking about it and the person that's been given the action is your counterparty trusted advisor they go I'll talk to John so I've got the action to solve this John's talked about this let me let me go and pick John's brains

John Godfrey (18:21.94)
So that is the inbound to you in network, but I think even in the network outbound, if you're Mike and you're talking, you've got an advice and you've got the relationship. You can pick up the phone and say, Hey, are you looking at a gentle J.I.? What do you think? What are your thoughts for 25? We're thinking about building out this consulting proposition. Can I come and run it by you? So you get that opportunity.

Michael Lander (18:31.267)
Yes.

Exactly. Yep.

Michael Lander (18:43.95)
which is precisely what I did, yeah, literally the last like two or three months. That's precisely what I've been talking about with people who trust me. And they're like, yeah, absolutely open to that conversation, Mike, definitely.

John Godfrey (18:48.009)
Yeah.

I

John Godfrey (18:55.282)
And I think they need to and there are 100 things that you could take to them. It's what's the hot topic? What's this like guys? What's going to be most important to them this year? What's on their agenda? When you don't have that relationship, so they're not going to know who you are, you pick up the phone and talk to Genticode AI, you're one of 100 people that are picking up the phone saying, hey, can I come and talk to you about a Genticode AI? And that stuff is not going to work. So that's in a principle.

Michael Lander (19:17.336)
That's right.

John Godfrey (19:24.242)
too, is if you take the things that work for network in a mature relationship and try and apply them for cold outreach, they won't work. And it will take you a long time thinking they will before you discover that they don't. And so this is my journey now. So I'm sharing some of my pain is the immediate next step is, well, I know what I'll do. If that won't work, I'll take the very well trodden definitely does work.

Michael Lander (19:26.948)
Yep.

Michael Lander (19:40.962)
Okay.

John Godfrey (19:53.24)
marketing funnel approach. So I'll build some thought leadership content. Definitely that that's my sticky flyer paper. I'll build that as a great surface area and I'll drive organic and inorganic traffic. So I'll pay for pay to click, I'll drive some organic traffic through blogging and promotion and social promotion. I'll do and all of that will drive on to digital funnels. I'm going to be really

Michael Lander (19:55.404)
Yes. Content, thought, yeah, thought leadership. Right, great. Okay. Yep.

Michael Lander (20:13.112)
Yeah. I'll run some webinars, I'll do some breakfast.

John Godfrey (20:22.024)
professional around shaping and they will create MQLs, marketing qualified leads that will turn into SQLs and I'll track their progression and sales qualified leads. And that will be my deal flow. And my experience is you can spend a lot of money, time and attention doing that and equally fail and not generate. Yeah.

Michael Lander (20:41.38)
my god, this is getting depressing, John. It's getting depress- I hope there's a route out of this at some point, but I'm with you. No, no, no, no. I'm with you, John. I'm with you. It's almost like if you- It's where you start and you can't avoid it. It'd be like saying, don't use LinkedIn because it doesn't work. It's like, well, that's not entirely true, but that's not going to solve-

John Godfrey (20:51.548)
with finding a way. Yeah.

John Godfrey (21:08.028)
Yeah.

Michael Lander (21:10.372)
and I well know after three years of trying this on a very proactive basis, it is not going to generate leads for you. Being on LinkedIn and writing posts every day. A lot of people on LinkedIn say it does. For my type of sale at C-suite level, I've had two or three deals in three years, which were generally inbound. It's very rare.

John Godfrey (21:33.204)
I think there is a kind of piece of acceptance that boutique consultants need to take on board, which is we are not Bain, we're not McKinsey, we're not Accenture. We don't have the brand reach. We're not in the mind, we're unknown. And because we're unknown, inbound will not happen until you get famous in a niche. So you can generate inbound.

But to generate inbound successfully, you really have to do it in the way that there is plenty of other people better qualified for this, but that's find a niche and execute. for me, the classic in my space was 11FS. So back 10 years ago, digital banking absolutely doubled down, massive social presence, real personality led agency, but said, if you're building a digital bank, there was only one consultancy that understood it.

Michael Lander (22:13.4)
So.

John Godfrey (22:30.748)
and that was 11X. And so they built a brilliant presence around exactly that. So you can do it that way. Blair Enns is great in our world. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. super niche and then very high quality content and promoted to a very specific audience is the way to do that. And then time, you have the incubation is still fairly, fairly sizable. So that's

Michael Lander (22:35.788)
And Blair runs is a good example in the agency world. Yeah.

Michael Lander (22:57.358)
So, that doesn't work.

John Godfrey (22:59.058)
So the big build it and they will come as a marketing cathedral. That's not right. So then our mind changed to, well, if it's true that we need a trusted advisor relationship in order to be bought, how might we, so a classic product thinking question, how might we build a trusted advisor relationship from scratch? So there are some obvious shortcuts and these are...

obvious and for those that are doing it, go, yeah, everyone knows that bit. For those that aren't, treat it seriously, which is partners. Partners is a route to market and partnerships can take many forms for our kind of consulting. Partnering with progressive technology has a real advantage for us. So we partner with, for instance, Adyen. Adyen are one of the largest

They're like a stripe across Europe and the rest of the world. So Stripe are a trillion in payments processing, about 2.8 million customers. AddIn are the same, a trillion in payments processing, about 8,000 customers. So they're an enterprise grade, very high quality, really progressive technology with banking licenses across the world as an acquiring bank and a issuing bank. So AddIn have a

Michael Lander (24:06.232)
Whoa!

John Godfrey (24:19.55)
progressive go-to-market, very strong technology, but fundamentally they supply payment services. They're not a consultancy. And they are doing increasingly progressive work in payments as a platform and the idea of embedded finance. And that's our world. We do a lot in retail, we do a lot in finance, embedded finance becomes a natural home for us. We partner with Adin and we invest heavily in it. So two years of building relationships with their account management teams, with their...

what they call their pillar, which is their platforms business with their partner organization, and with our consultants investing in understanding their platform and helping our customers understand it and deploy it. And over that time, what that takes us to is a place where we're now a trusted partner of Addiance. So we've become by proxy, a trusted partner of their prospects. So what that does is it accelerates our route to trusted advisor.

Michael Lander (25:11.522)
Yes. Exactly.

John Godfrey (25:18.458)
in the markets they're operating in. But we had to invest in and choose that. that's kind of the shortcut one is yeah, partners are truly valuable if you can pick the right ones. If we chose to partner with them.

Michael Lander (25:30.094)
Yep. So they have to, John, just on that point, so for the listener, so if I'm playing back, if I've heard it right, that partner that you pick has to have the same ICP as you. They have to be complementary in offering, otherwise you eat each other's lunch, and that never works. So no overlap. And they have to, that ICP has to be at the same level.

John Godfrey (25:43.294)
Same ICP.

John Godfrey (25:48.83)
You don't overlap. Valuable to each other.

Michael Lander (25:59.052)
of person in that organization so that if you're selling to CIOs they have to be selling to CIOs as well.

John Godfrey (26:07.324)
I think all of that is true. And then I would add an extra qualifier that I think is a bit more nuanced, but really important is aligned to where their partner maturity curve is. So what I mean by that is if you partner with a Salesforce or a Microsoft or an Amazon AWS, then you're partnering as one of 10,000 partners and a very mature partnering organization on the enterprise side.

Michael Lander (26:32.185)
Yes.

John Godfrey (26:36.404)
So if I want to partner with Salesforce, I've probably got a nine month partner onboarding process, a level of commitment. And I'm not saying don't because there's some real value in being a Salesforce partner. You get the badge on your door. You probably get access to AI funding for building out prototypes, et cetera, et cetera. But recognize that you are one of 10,000 partners. If I partner with a startup with great tech,

Michael Lander (26:59.982)
Yes.

John Godfrey (27:04.446)
but they've got nothing, their founder is still their chief salesperson, then that partnership, I'm going to find it hard to get their attention because they're really stretched. I'm probably more mature than they are. And so you're kind of looking for maturity alignment. And so for us with Adyen, if we're partnering with Adyen, we don't tend to partner for their pure payments proposition to global retailers, for instance, because

Michael Lander (27:14.084)
Exactly. Yeah.

John Godfrey (27:31.238)
All the tier one providers already have payment practices and partner with Adyen for that work. We are much more in the pioneering Adyen for platforms. Are we trying to build an embedded finance proposition, which is currently unknown? That's sweet spot for Red Badger. It's also sweet spot for Adyen's future growth. So their partner program is exactly the level of maturity that gives us some confidence that we can partner well.

And so that I think is a really important part of thinking about your partner landscape. So committing to a partner landscape is one route. The other thing we found, and this was luck.

Michael Lander (28:10.19)
So John, just one quick pause on that. So for the listeners, in my view, rarely works, if you're an SEO agency and you partner with other SEO agencies trying to exchange leads because that one does this and this one does that, it rarely, rarely works. You get the odd opportunity, but you spend an awful lot of effort on gin and tonic without actually an awful lot of return.

John Godfrey (28:29.172)
It's a great, great point.

I'd say just don't do it with where the competitive overlap is high, just don't do it. Where there is the potential. So for us, for instance, it might be a tier one consultancy who is now doing as they all are more digital build, then they might lean on, there's definitely a world where

They've got a client relationship that is based in strategy and business operations and target operating models. And they are beginning to have some digital maturity, but they're not truly living and breathing digital design and build as we do. And we can supplement much larger teams with a very high capability, high competence, high velocity pioneering team. So we might provide seven heads in a

100 head plus consulting engagement where we're doing one part of it. So you might see us in a hundred million transformation program where a few million is the new customer digital build that can work well for a business like us. But to your point, never where the competitive overlap is, is high. You'll just go around in circles. Yep. Partnerships. Yep. And

Michael Lander (29:50.55)
Exactly. So that's point one. So partnerships with non-competing propositions. Okay.

John Godfrey (29:58.982)
And then building on partnerships, so luck, not judgment. What we discovered in pursuing partnerships was that find the right one where that point I made around their maturity level, where they are in the maturity curve for their partnering, get the right ones, then you can partner on the go-to-market. So this is where you can activate cold new market working with a partner. And the classic is,

If we try and put on an event as Red Badger, say we say we're going to do an embedded finance event. It's a Red Badger event and we go to market with all of that promotion work to build an audience. And we want that as a cold audience and we have a good speaker and a good venue. That's hard. They are hard yards. We can fill a room, but it's really challenging. If we do that in partnership with Adyen, we borrow their brand. We co-brand it.

Michael Lander (30:43.832)
Yeah.

John Godfrey (30:57.332)
We borrow their account managers and their outreach, and we borrow some of their marketing capability. So we are genuinely co-developing the go-to market. That room is not half as easy to fill. It's like 25 % of it. It's just there's some real synergy in doing it together. And what tends to happen, we've been very successful with.

is then we would have an Adian senior exec, we'd have one of their customers, plus Red Badger and one of our customers, all as a panel, and that room becomes much easier to fill. And so we use partners not just as direct prospecting, but using co-marketing, co-account, we think of it as kind of market activation. And we've done this now with joint white papers, with joint events. One of the things that again,

Michael Lander (31:33.134)
Okay.

Michael Lander (31:38.83)
co-marketing.

Michael Lander (31:44.942)
Mm-hmm.

John Godfrey (31:50.672)
emerged rather than being planned for, is then doing internal partner events as part of that work. So a good, for instance, I'm sticking with Adian because it's the one that we've matured the best. We ended up running roundtables for the Adian account managers and other engaged customer success. So we could describe what the intent of the outward facing event was. so that

motivated the joint partnership. And so that was a very valuable kind of learning as our practice. So how to build with them is invest in that. And all of that you're borrowing credibility and trusted advisor status and accelerating it. So, okay, so very quickly. Yeah.

Michael Lander (32:35.712)
Exactly. Okay. So I'm conscious of time, John. So we're at 32 minutes. I want to want to carry on. And I do want to carry on because this is actually really, valuable. What's the next thing in the kind of list of things?

John Godfrey (32:45.652)
So there, I'm kind of moving earlier in the cycle, you're then saying, okay, so who's your target audience and how do you reach them? And so haven't sold fully for this finding your target audience should be pretty straightforward. It's your ICP and your buyer types for us, it sponsors buyers and influencers to the three different levels. You do need messaging and content and a point of view to activate.

Michael Lander (33:13.678)
You do?

John Godfrey (33:14.202)
And then it's about moving towards account-based marketing. the idea, yeah, the idea of creating a generic outreach email, sending it to the thousand of those contacts and having any kind of response just simply isn't working. But if you can say, hey, I see you're connected to so-and-so, did you know we've worked with Adin, we've done this over here, would you be interested in this over here? And when the would you be interested is,

Michael Lander (33:18.926)
So ABM, right.

Michael Lander (33:28.312)
Pointless.

John Godfrey (33:42.258)
would you like to be a panelist joining this person and this person, you get some real power. So a great example, again, one that I'm willing to share here is another partner of ours is a technology business who have an e-com platform, they're called Scale. They grew out of Germany in the about you business, which is larger than ASOS equivalent. They're like a massive influencer fashion brand, just been acquired by Zalanda in Germany.

They're hugely important, high grade brand. They have a technology they now resell as an econ platform. We've engaged with them as a partner in the UK. They've won Manchester United. They've won Harrods as their first UK brands. We're becoming a really important partner of theirs. they, one of their founders, the About You founder is a guy called Tarek Muller. And Tarek is very famous as a young entrepreneur who built a multi

billion fashion empire. think he's in his early thirties now. we've now had Tarek agree to be a speaker at a fast fashion event. And with that, we've got connections into the ASOS ex-CEO of ASOS is Nick. So we've now got Nick and Tarek in as our speakers for the next event. So we'll be working with scale.

Michael Lander (35:00.868)
which is a huge draw, massive draw.

John Godfrey (35:02.958)
massive draw, we have scale and their reach, have Red Badger and our reach in retail, we work with people like Selfridges and Levi's and some big global brands. We've now got the elements for a really powerful draw around that event. And so we'll follow the same path, but we won't just take that out and spray and pray for audience. We'll think who are our target, our perfect audience for that event.

And then we'll run a VIP dinner or lunch with the Meet the Speakers invite only and we'll do a much larger influencer level event and we'll maximize that and we'll build a campaign plan around it and direct outreach based on would you like to meet your peers and these people to hear about the future of retail. And so that's doing, these are all hard jobs, right? Nothing I've said here is easy and it's very easy to talk about in a quick conversation. The execution is where it really hurts.

Michael Lander (35:32.514)
Invite only exactly. Yeah.

Michael Lander (35:48.132)
Very good.

John Godfrey (35:59.4)
So you have work to do, but this is working for us, this model.

Michael Lander (36:04.036)
I'm going to say the point here is this is evidence-based. This is a story about a business that's very successful, has grown really successfully, has gone through lots of, you know, tribulation trials as all agencies have. But you've got an engine and a discipline and a methodology for how do I build new business based upon evidence that we've tried lots of different things.

John Godfrey (36:18.269)
as we all have.

Michael Lander (36:33.868)
Certain things work, certain things don't. So, John, because I'm very conscious of your time actually, just summarize for me. If you were an agency out there and you were, say, a 50 person agency and you were, you know, you're the founder CEO, you are in growth mode, but your new business team is really struggling to, you know, find the opportunities and to convert the ones that you get rather than becoming the bronze and silver

medal winner, which a lot of them do, how do you win the deal? What would your advice be about creating pipeline now? What are the two or three things you'd say they've got to focus on these big things and invest time in these two or three big things? What would your advice be?

John Godfrey (37:21.852)
Two, I think there's a piece that's post creating pipeline, but still influences creation. And that is the Blair Ends and the Mike Lander negotiation piece. absolutely niche down, know who you're for. So there's definitely a positioning piece. So know your position and don't be afraid of niching. In fact, it's essential that you niche and that will then drive creating pipeline. So if you know your niche,

Michael Lander (37:39.042)
Right. Yep.

Michael Lander (37:49.698)
Right. Number one, knees down. Yeah.

John Godfrey (37:51.75)
you know niche down and then you know your ICP, you know your biotype. Number two is be creative or be interesting. So be interested and be interesting. It's that classic, don't bore people. know, don't be boring, don't bore people, don't hang with boring people. And that idea of you need to be interesting to that niche, to that target.

And you can choose the most creative way to be interesting. That might be events, might be content, might be invite onto your podcast, might be invite to be a panel, might be meet peers, might be sending a individual Tony's chocolate bar wrapped in a QR code that pops a experience that's just for that. Your workout, what's right for your brand and positioning, but you need to find and be creative in being interesting. And that could there be.

partners, there will be other people that that target audience is already engaged with. Can you borrow the halo effect kind of credibility from them? So that's where I'd be starting. And then choose one of those things and execute it. It's very easy to put 20 things on the wall and decide that, yeah, all of these things, we'd love to do all of that. You have to pick the red thread through one of them.

Michael Lander (39:12.728)
Exactly.

John Godfrey (39:17.628)
And then it's about experimenting. that one work? No. What do I do next? Learn from it. Do the next one. Another really good example of that is a good friend of mine runs a business out of Oslo called Kesler and they're building the product management. For those that don't know, there's a thing called Digital Product Passports in fashion that's coming. It's part of the EU green deal. So every individual fashion item

will require its own individual code and a product passport that describes its provenance and its manufacture and its recyclability. That is mandated for 2026. All major brands are already responding to it. So there's a piece of technology required. For instance, H produced three billion garments a year. So we now need technology that tracks three billion data items and events in their lifecycle. So that needs to be built.

Michael Lander (40:02.084)
Hey.

Michael Lander (40:08.472)
Bye!

John Godfrey (40:10.836)
This friend of mine is building out that technology in the go-to market. He started with simple podcast series so an educate series of 12 always partners all who knew different part from the regulators to the Technology providers to the label is to the brands themselves built that as his content presence last year He's then recognized from that. There's some real interest. He's turned that into a road show called fashion 360

where he's taken the three most engaged partners and they literally tour the European capitals. UK is behind where the EU are. They're touring the European capitals with an educate series, but done in person, which just means it says we're in Stockholm, we're in Oslo, we're in Amsterdam. It lets his team do the outreach around that specific thing. He's recording it all with video and then publishes all of that as content and has built a community of interest.

being educated about the digital product passport. I think it's a genius way. took a lot of planning, but effectively it was one person originally, Emir Saisley, who's now built the team around him that's doing that level of outreach. So that's the model that I

Michael Lander (41:12.707)
Yes.

Michael Lander (41:20.867)
Amazing.

John, it's been really, I it would be, it's been brilliant. Really, really good based upon, there's no BS in this. You've tried all sorts. You've been there, bought the t-shirt, probably made the t-shirt. And you've come out with like, three or four things that people can practically try, but they're not for the faint-hearted. think what you said to me is this takes time. Pick one or two, niche down on those, focus on them and make them work.

John Godfrey (41:28.404)
Thanks.

John Godfrey (41:54.13)
Yeah, I think all of that straight. So the lever if you like for the thing to leave with people, particularly founders is everything we've been talking about here. I know that in the back of your mind, you're thinking, yeah, I could hire that person to do that. And the danger, the one thing I'd put in your mind there is I've looked for people like that my entire career, and they're fundamentally unicorns.

Michael Lander (42:10.368)
Hmm

John Godfrey (42:20.232)
So they're the other founders because what you're trying to hire for in a sales or commercial leader is you think again, oversimplifying, but there is the opening part of a prospecting. There's the shaping part and the closing part. Shaping is consulting. We all love shaping. We're drawing boxes on walls, right? We love it. So consulting, we're the shapers. Closing is relatively straightforward in consulting because once you've shaped

accurately, you've got a trusted relationship, it's just a commercial deal and your negotiating stuff helps with that. And so what you're really looking for is openers, but you try and hire the opener, shaper, closer in one head, and that person is the unicorn. So I'd say, don't look for that. If you're hiring, don't try and hire the person.

can do everything we've been describing. Hire the opener, the person who does like being at a conference, does like picking up the phone to a partner, does like thinking about how am I going to get this person on LinkedIn to respond to me. Hire for that person and you figure the rest out and you backfill shaping and closing later.

Michael Lander (43:28.772)
John, it's been brilliant. Thanks ever so much for joining me. Really, really enjoyable.

John Godfrey (43:33.338)
Excellent. Really enjoyed it. Always top topic. We're at redbadger.com. I mean, it's such a good brand name. Just look for Red Badger in digital, you'll find us. Yeah, we're here to help. build new propositions or help shape existing propositions, take them to new markets or refresh what you've got already. if there's if any of your clients or anyone you know is looking for that kind of stuff, they're a good answer.

Michael Lander (43:36.379)
Joe, where can people find out more about you? And Red Bad Joe.

Michael Lander (43:44.375)
It's brilliant.

Michael Lander (44:02.616)
John, thanks ever so much for joining me. Talk to you soon. Cheers. Bye bye. And we're out. So let me just stop the recording, just to make sure.

John Godfrey (44:05.044)
Thanks mate, see you soon. Bye.