Crafting Winning Pitches That Truly Connect with Freia Muehlenbein

Michael Lander (00:28.463)
Thanks ever so much for joining me on Higgle, the B2B Cell Club podcast.

Freia (00:43.94)
Mike, thank you for having me.

Michael Lander (00:46.063)
And this is, we're on seventh of Jan. So you're my second podcast recording of the year. So yeah, so I think it's a great way to start the year talking to some new people, having some great conversations all about sales and commercial aspects. So before, why don't we just let you introduce yourself? So who are you? What do you do? And something unusual about yourself.

Freia (00:51.545)
Wow.

Freia (01:08.514)
Yeah, sure. So my name is Freya. I run my own business called Be Right based in Leeds. I'm an agency growth consultant. essentially my work is always focused on growth, whether it's you are stuck at a certain level, your financial performance isn't where it needs to be, or you are growing, but you want to grow even more. So I basically go into agencies and figure out what the blockers are. So I speak to teams, I look into all aspects of the agency from

new biz operations, teams, client services, structures, finances, and present back what's going on and how to fix it essentially. So that's my day to day job.

Michael Lander (01:50.529)
And we're obviously we're going to talk all around growth in this podcast, particularly around the kind of revenue growth, rather than the profit growth, but definitely around revenue growth. something... Is that gone?

Freia (01:54.968)
Yes.

Freia (02:00.236)
Yeah, so yeah, most of my work at some point will touch on pitching, pitching at newbies because you can't get around it if you want to grow or if you're stuck. So yes.

Michael Lander (02:05.879)
Exactly. Nope.

Definitely not. So something unusual about yourself?

Freia (02:13.476)
An interesting fact is always a bit difficult, but I think some people find it interesting that I am German and British. So I've got citizenship in both countries. I came over to the UK in 2008 to finish my master's degree, fell in love and stayed. So I'm a typical expat staying for love. And a couple of years ago, I went through the dreaded process of becoming a citizen. So I had to do the life in the UK test.

Michael Lander (02:33.529)
Brilliant.

Michael Lander (02:40.64)
my word.

Freia (02:43.556)
which is great if you want to do pub quizzes, you gain a lot of knowledge for that. But yeah, that's maybe an interesting fact about myself.

Michael Lander (02:43.692)
Wow.

Michael Lander (02:47.375)
Brilliant.

Very good, excellent. And we could have a whole podcast, I guess, on cultural integration and cultural differences and what you found. But let's not go into that because we're to talk about growth instead. so questions we kind of like thought about in advance. So do you to just talk about, from your perspective, client insights on agency pitches and what do clients truly want as opposed to what agencies think they want?

Freia (02:57.954)
Yeah.

Yes.

Freia (03:18.53)
Yes, so I guess just for a bit of context, so for the last six-ish years, I've collected post-pitch feedback on behalf of agencies. And in that time, a lot has changed. Obviously, we had COVID, we had the economy changing, had cost of living crisis, all sorts of things, plus technological advances, AI, better data. So I think for context, for any agency, it's important to understand what

environment they are in now, because what I'm seeing is that a lot has changed in the environment, but the agency pitch hasn't changed. And that's a big problem. So I think the first thing that I always say to my clients is,

Michael Lander (03:57.911)
Exactly. Yep.

And it hasn't changed probably for, so from my perspective, yeah, from my perspective, I've seen my client for a long time. The same in consulting. Consultants are still pitching the same way they pitched 20, 30 years ago, which doesn't adapt to, as you say, the current context of what clients really want and how they really operate.

Freia (04:06.092)
A long time.

Freia (04:24.74)
Exactly. Yeah. And just to go back, I've only been in the industry for 15 years, but even in that time, when I was still agency side, we had to change our pitch multiple times to adjust to the changing environment and to the advancements in the market. So one of my biggest eye-opener when I was agency side was when we worked with a consultant who ripped our pitch deck apart and said, this is not going to work. And our pitch close rate was

pretty poor at the time and it should have been much better considering how good we were as an agency, but we just didn't know how to put it across and how to position it. So I think understanding the context of the changing market is the first thing. It's a mature market. No matter what agency you are, it's a mature market because whether you're digital, PR, creative, tech, dev, we're all pretty much the same. It's leveled out. Tech advancements, AI. So again, understanding how that

Michael Lander (05:02.563)
Exactly.

Freia (05:24.42)
plays into the pitch. So for brands, actually, it's really hard to pick an agency because we're all the same. That's the first thing to understand is no one's really standing out unless you're very, very different. Yeah.

Michael Lander (05:35.631)
So that's a common topic, by the way. across all of the podcasts last year, one of my themes that I started to kind of pick up on was differentiation. It's actually incredibly hard now to tell one agency from the other. Like it's really, really hard because no one ever wins on methodology, ever. You're never gonna win a pitch because you've got the best methodology in the world, ever. So how do you stand out? we've got great people.

Freia (05:51.672)
Yeah, that's it.

Freia (05:56.802)
Exactly that.

Yes. And that's exactly it. this is, yeah. And that's exactly it. And what you just said there is the main problem. And that's the main feedback theme that I get in post-pitch feedback calls is yes, the technical implementation and the tactics are fine, but then all the other five agencies in the pitch can do it just the same way. So what is it that makes you different? So I think again,

Michael Lander (06:04.621)
Well, everyone's got great people.

Michael Lander (06:25.443)
They're all fine as well. Exactly.

Freia (06:29.878)
understanding what the client is really looking for, the pressures that they're under, know, teams are getting squeezed in-house. There are a lot of decision makers hiding in the background in the pitch scenario that we often don't know and they kind of pop up later on and we haven't tailored anything to them. So I think the first step really is, or the first pattern of pitch feedback or common theme is...

Michael Lander (06:41.615)
They're off.

Michael Lander (06:45.166)
They do.

Freia (06:54.86)
We don't know the context that this client is in, the context that we are in, in a changing market, mature market where everyone's the same. So we're churning out a pitch deck, hasn't changed for years, is a creds deck, essentially a deck about us as the agency and not about our client. That's the first thing that gets criticized.

Michael Lander (07:09.753)
So let's just like, so all this, so it was really interesting because you actually interview clients where the agency has failed to win. So your data is very specific to real pitches that actually happened where they haven't won. So I've got a theory. So let's see if the theory, as we start to have the podcast kind of expert, it's not a particularly complex theory, but it's something relatively simple, but very hard to do.

Freia (07:24.217)
Yes.

Go on.

Michael Lander (07:39.329)
What makes you stand out is the experience you give to the client in the actual in-person meeting. The proposal, whether it's an RFP or a consultant pitch, whatever it might be, as long as it's competitive, your proposal is just an order qualifier. Are you qualified to basically do the work? That's not how you win. That's basically getting you into the room. So once there's three agencies in the room, well, all that's left is the experience you give the client.

in that moment for an hour and a half that makes you stand out.

Freia (08:13.422)
Yes. Yeah, I agree with that. And I would probably add it's the actual pitch, but also all the steps you've taken before that to have to actually create the wind themes and to build the trust and to build the relationship. And again, that's often where it falls down. in the, yeah. And in the pitch feedback calls quite often. brands tell me which agency has won.

Michael Lander (08:24.715)
Exactly.

Trust. Trust.

Freia (08:35.47)
which is always quite surprising, but actually every single time they tell me, yeah, was this agency over here. So I can really dig into, well, tell me what they've done differently. And it is often that they've nailed it at every stage. So they were in close communication constantly throughout the pitch. They've known all the stakeholders. They've really, they've done their research. They fully understand, well, this bit that I'm supposed to do, for example, digital, how does that fit into the bigger picture of

Michael Lander (08:40.591)
Brilliant.

Michael Lander (08:51.491)
Yeah. Yeah, they've done their research. They've looked at LinkedIn.

Freia (09:03.332)
creating revenue for this client or this brand and who else is creating revenue that I need to understand the context of? Yeah.

Michael Lander (09:06.115)
Exactly.

Michael Lander (09:11.823)
So Freya, so talk to me about this bit. so normally I let my guests speak most of the time, but this is a really fascinating topic. And I do a lot of this with my clients as well, as you know. Value creation. I talked to a lot of agencies about, have you articulated the value that you're gonna create for your client? And they're like, well, we're a creative agency, so that's really hard. I'm like, well, that's just an excuse. If the CFO is not in the meeting,

Freia (09:18.66)
you

Freia (09:30.05)
Yeah. Yeah.

Freia (09:37.25)
Yeah, I agree.

Michael Lander (09:43.018)
and there's three agencies and someone's gonna recommend spending a million dollars with an agency. And the CFO says, well, which one's gonna generate five million for us? If two out of the three couldn't tell you, but it was a brilliant piece of creative work and the third one was good piece of creative work, but they knew exactly what the route was to revenue increase. Yes, it will change, but they had a roadmap. Well, who's gonna win? It's no surprise at all.

Freia (09:59.79)
Mm-hmm.

Freia (10:09.75)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I totally agree. it's 100 % what you just said. And again, in the pitch feedback calls, ROI and value creation is one of the big things that comes through. So if you, again, if you compare five pitches, but one of them had an outline of, here are your top five strategic priorities that we think you need to go after. Here's how we're gonna do that. And this is the type of financial...

Michael Lander (10:11.914)
What's your experience of that value creation bit?

Michael Lander (10:33.412)
Yeah.

Freia (10:38.528)
output or ROI that we know based on our experience, data, insights, good tools, good data. Here's what we think we can generate. But a lot of agencies are shying away from that and they think, well, I can't promise ROI though. But you can use your best logic. can show, and this is where again, the market comes into play. Data is so advanced now that if we don't use it in the pitch to forecast some kind of financial return,

Michael Lander (10:49.249)
Exactly.

Michael Lander (10:55.619)
But you're not promising, are you? Yeah.

Freia (11:08.728)
I wouldn't buy that. If I was the client, I wouldn't buy it.

Michael Lander (11:10.339)
wouldn't. If it you and me on the stakeholder buying panel and I was in procurement and you were the CMO and the agency had no idea at all what the range was of revenue uplift or profit increase based upon a million of spend, after the pitch we'd sit down and go, they were brilliant, they were very creative, but we can't buy them, we're gonna get fired. Because they had no roadmap to value.

Freia (11:18.488)
Mm-hmm.

Freia (11:36.258)
Yeah, exactly that. Yeah. Yeah. I've got an example where I've supported someone with like pitch, pitch doctoring, essentially like figuring out how to, how to win a pitch. And it was that kind of 1 million example. So it's one of my clients, they're not a creative agency, but they're a software and app development agency. Same, same thing, really same principle of how to, how you win a pitch. And historically they would go into the pitch with a written

Michael Lander (11:46.009)
Yes.

Michael Lander (11:50.914)
Right.

Michael Lander (11:55.567)
Brilliant, great example.

Freia (12:04.834)
technical outline of how the software would be made or how the app would be made. And that's that's their pitch. So I looked at all of their previous. Yeah.

Michael Lander (12:08.685)
Right. I'm sorry. No, no, just, just hang on. Just pause. Sorry. Say that again. So they're pitching to win a million dollars piece of work. I'm not ridiculing anyone here at all, but I'm highlighting they're looking at it from their own perspective, not from the client's perspective.

Freia (12:17.889)
So

Freia (12:21.388)
Yeah. No, of course.

Freia (12:28.034)
Yes. Yes. So in their previous pictures and hence why their close rate was low, it was a written proposal of the technical elements of the software and how it will be made. They would send that out.

Michael Lander (12:34.521)
So, so poor.

Yeah. And they were probably brilliant. They were probably very, very good, technically. Like, really good.

Freia (12:42.97)
absolutely. Yes. So we turned around, they had an opportunity for what they thought was going to be around a million pound in software development. And we didn't want to fall into that trap again. So we did what I call like a war room where we got together and we figured out how do we win this? And it turns out we didn't know very much about the client.

Michael Lander (12:57.465)
Yeah, that's right. Yep.

So, Freya, do you want me to just explain war rooms to the listeners? Because some people might not know what they are.

Freia (13:08.888)
Yes, so a war room is you basically essentially get together with your pitch team, with the people that can win this pitch as a team. And you put everything on a whiteboard, wherever you want on a piece of paper to say, what do we know about this client that will help us win? This is not a technical audit or some kind of SEO audit. This is who is involved, who are the stakeholders, their pain points, the financial value we need to create to win this.

What does the CMO want? does the CFO want? All of that and then you make that into a narrative in your presentation that will win you this pitch. yes, and with this particular client, it turned out at the end that we were dealing with one of two brothers and there was also a father involved in a massive family business.

Michael Lander (13:44.471)
Exactly. And that's the win theme. Yeah.

Freia (13:58.84)
And the father was very concerned about spending money because he was looking after the financial security of that business. So the whole pitch and building up to the pitch became about financial ROI. So when is this piece of software going to pay for itself and make the company much more money than it does now to secure the financial future of the family and building a relationship with this brother, father.

yeah, stakeholder group. Whereas previously they would have just said, okay, here's how we build the software. Do you want to buy it? So they won this deal for just over a million pounds because they really went in and built a relationship with the brothers and the dad. And they've spent days and days forecasting and using data to say, this is when this piece of software will pay itself back and make you more money.

Michael Lander (14:31.819)
Exactly. Yeah, yeah, we're brilliant at what we do. Yeah, exactly.

Michael Lander (14:52.877)
And thinking about risk and talking to the client about risk, where are the risks and how do we mitigate those risks? So I did one for a client 18 months ago. I still know the client very, very well now. It was a really big deal. And same thing, a multimillion dollar deal. I think it was an 18 month sales cycle. In fact, for the agency, it was a three or four year sales cycle. But same thing, it takes time to go through who the stakeholders are, to build relationships.

Freia (14:58.744)
Yep. Yep.

Michael Lander (15:22.841)
to work out what their issues are. Everyone's got different agendas. How are you gonna create value? How do you create different pricing models? It takes time, but you've got to think it through.

Freia (15:31.244)
It does. Yes. And I think that's the key theme for any work that I do with my clients. And I'm sure you're the same is to move them away from the supplier mindset. So supplier pitch of I'm a creative agency. Here's what I can do for you creatively. I'm a PI agency. Here's the type of PI I can do for you away from that and towards strategic partnership, value creation ROI, stakeholder relationships.

And I'm not just in the pitch, but also in the day-to-day because upselling to your client also requires that mindset of, I'm not your supplier. I'm not here for you to tell me what I should do next week. I'm here to use my data and my experience and my insights to keep growing your financial value as a business. So I think it's a bigger mindset and the agencies that are pitching as a supplier are also often delivering work as a supplier as opposed to a strategic partner.

Michael Lander (16:17.549)
Exactly.

Freia (16:29.134)
So it's a bigger problem than just fixing a pitch. It's a company-wide issue.

Michael Lander (16:32.716)
It is.

So there's a few themes coming out now, of like we're at about kind of 15 minutes or so into the recording. So if I'm right, just to kind of feedback, to see if I've got the kind of right messages, value creation, critical, and that's thinking about value from the customer's perspective, stakeholder engagement, stakeholder management, whether it's RFP driven or whether it's consultative sale driven, you need to understand who the stakeholders are. Experience on the day when you're actually in the room.

an engaging experience. And I would say the other thing that we haven't mentioned, but something I've seen quite a lot is the ability to problem solve on the day is talk about the big issues that you've researched, talk about those as an industry level and how other companies are facing similar problems. Talk about what we find that other companies face and how they resolve those issues. And dynamically problem solving with the client.

Freia (17:26.308)
Yes.

Michael Lander (17:35.385)
The client doesn't care what the answer is in that session. They care about your ability to think it through and your confidence to think it through.

Freia (17:40.836)
Yeah. But I mean, if every pitch was like that, it would be amazing. But unfortunately, the client doesn't even speak in the pitch. It's just the agency. So we're filling the whole hour, hour, hour and a half that we have available with just bombarding them with information. Quite often, 50 slides on audits and analytics that no one needs to hear when we should leave.

Michael Lander (17:51.961)
But yeah.

Freia (18:09.38)
20, 30 % of the time just speaking to the client, just having a chat. Are we on the right track? What do you think? What are we missing? But that never happened.

Michael Lander (18:14.051)
Now, so Freya, here's a question for you then when you're pitching to your clients, when you're trying to win work, yeah, as I do as well, we both pitch for work, over a series of interventions that you've had before you actually get a piece of work, in my experience, there's normally one thing that they say, you keep saying this thing and that thing's really important to us.

Just dig into that a bit more. But there's always something that they remember. Amongst all of the stuff we've gone through, over maybe five meetings and maybe 30 slides and 20 emails, there'll be something, one big thing that they go, that's why I need you. It's not 30 things, it's normally one big thing. Is that what you find?

Freia (18:55.844)
Yeah.

Freia (19:06.276)
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Because you're probably the same, but when clients come to me, they just know that the numbers aren't right. The agency isn't working in the way. So they don't know why, but when you listen objectively, it's quite clear from the first couple of conversations what the problem probably is. And that will become the narrative. And yes, you would do other things around that, but that's the big thing that you can go with and that you can pitch essentially. Yeah, absolutely.

Michael Lander (19:15.031)
Exactly. They don't know the problem is. No.

Michael Lander (19:24.248)
It is.

Michael Lander (19:28.781)
Yes, of course.

Michael Lander (19:36.111)
Because they've got to go and talk to their bosses and their investors and shareholders and friends. They need a little story they can tell about what the problem is and why they've brought you in to fix it. And it has to become that simple. So we could talk for a long time on this. And I will be probably coming back to you in the future also about client insights. Have you written, just out of interest, have you written a thought leadership paper around all of the interviews you've done anonymized?

Freia (19:47.768)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Michael Lander (20:05.901)
and aggregated the themes. Because the listeners would be fascinated. you should write it, yes!

Freia (20:07.62)
No, I haven't, I haven't yet. And I know this is something I need to be doing. I use those insights in pretty much every talk I do about pitching. I haven't written them into an actual downloadable paper or anything like that. Yeah, not yet anyway.

Michael Lander (20:19.278)
Right.

Michael Lander (20:25.805)
Good target for next year, for this year rather, definitely. So last question. So qualification strategies and signs of pitch success probability. So we've gone through quite a lot of the, where the problems are and how to fix them. So very practical, but do want to talk about, you know, when you're going through that process, what are the kinds of things that you look for that say, yeah, our wind probability is going up during this process?

Freia (20:27.394)
Yep, I agree.

Freia (20:33.796)
Mm-hmm.

Freia (20:51.724)
Yeah, yeah, you could, you know, I could kind of tell you a list that probably you and most of your listeners have heard before around the themes. But I think if you're an agency and you're listening to this, I would think about what are you worried about and why are you losing pitches? And then that becomes your qualification list. So for example, it turned out they didn't really have a budget or they didn't have a budget signed off.

Or, yeah, one person thought they had a budget, but another stakeholder didn't know yet. So that becomes your budget questions. Then, there was a stakeholder that we didn't know. They came to the pitch in the end and they actually made the decision, but we didn't know. Again, next time, that's your qualification question of who was involved, who was going to make the decisions. they weren't ready. Yeah.

Michael Lander (21:22.136)
Exactly.

Michael Lander (21:34.423)
Exactly.

Michael Lander (21:37.953)
the incumbent agency won. didn't you know there was an incumbent agency? No.

Freia (21:45.396)
Exactly that. So again, another typical one. They thought they needed, they said to us they need SEO, but actually they bought some kind of integrated digital service that we can't fulfill. Again, we should know this much earlier. So just think about what are the common barriers, the issues or ghosting, or we were ghosted. Okay, well, have you checked that they were ready to buy or were they just dropping around? So

Michael Lander (22:01.922)
Exactly.

Michael Lander (22:12.27)
Exactly.

Freia (22:15.17)
that becomes your list of how likely is it that this is gonna lead to anything. If we already know in our last 20, 30 pictures, these are the common things that we should have known, but we didn't know. So it's always about stakeholders. Yeah.

Michael Lander (22:25.549)
Yeah, like another simple one. Did the client tell you what their selection criteria were? So it's like, well, no, but how would they know? Well, if they don't know what the selection criteria are, how on earth are they going to choose? It'll just be, it'll be the most powerful stakeholder that decides if they've no selection criteria.

Freia (22:31.96)
Yeah. Yeah.

Freia (22:40.664)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes.

Freia (22:45.986)
Yeah. So on my list of questions that I always ask in pitch feedback calls, one of the first ones is what was the selection criteria? And they always tell me, but then my client never knows. So, so they do have that. And if they don't, you're absolutely right. haven't. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Lander (22:57.644)
Exactly.

Michael Lander (23:01.826)
Never knows.

It's like, did you ask the client? Yeah. I mean, they haven't written it down, but that doesn't mean they haven't got them. That is exactly right. Perfect.

Freia (23:11.554)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, I think just generally thinking about those things rather than just going through a generic list of, I need to ask about stakeholders, need to ask about timelines and budgets. Think about why you lose and then make those questions really detailed and dig into them and really find out, are you ready to buy? Who am I pitching against? So don't just go through a checklist of, do we want to pitch for it, but go through a checklist that tells you, we likely to win it?

Michael Lander (23:42.553)
So I often at the start of an agency relationship around growth, what I think what I've always done is gone through and done a win loss analysis. So I say to them, right, give me five big opportunities. Give me two that you won and three that you lost. And I've got a 37 point checklist and I go through it and I mark their proposals against the RFP or the kind of...

pitch document, the request from the client, and then I give them feedback and it comes out with win themes and loss themes. Why did you win and why did you lose? And they're very common as you go through clients.

Freia (24:12.462)
That's great. Yeah. Yeah, that's great. Yeah.

Yeah.

Freia (24:23.32)
Yeah, I love that. Just like checking back homework kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I like that. Yeah.

Michael Lander (24:26.646)
Yeah, it is. It's marking back the homework. So, Freya, this has been fantastic. We're about 25 minutes. What's the sub, what is what we do. For agencies that are listening out there, agency leaders or anyone in professional services, because it's broader than agencies, anyone selling professional services, this applies to in many ways, is if a CEO is listening and there may be 50 people and they're growing to 100 is the aspiration, but their win rates are down.

Freia (24:33.028)
you

Michael Lander (24:54.607)
They don't really know why. What are the kind of three things that you take away from this kind of session that they should be thinking about during January as we're now on the 7th of January, 2025? What do you think the three big things are?

Freia (25:07.85)
If they don't know why, I think get someone in who knows. And I'm not trying to advertise your or my services here, but if you genuinely don't know, you need to find out. So either start collecting pitch feedback, come up with your own conclusions as to why you're losing, or get someone in who will just look at your last five proposals. They will tell you straight away because they've seen it before. So once you know your reasons, I think do a full review of how you pitch from start to finish, from qualification to...

Michael Lander (25:15.255)
No? No, no, no, absolutely not.

Michael Lander (25:30.083)
Exactly.

Freia (25:37.048)
wind themes to war room to how you structure your pitch deck, how your brand looks like the whole thing. And then continue to collect pitch feedback so you can see if it's improving and see if your close rate goes up. So I think really if January is your time to rethink how you pitch, I would just do a full review step by step. And yeah, get someone in, get someone in who knows this stuff.

Michael Lander (25:50.435)
Yep, exactly.

Michael Lander (26:01.283)
Definitely.

Freia (26:06.272)
ideally also for the pitch doctoring. So get someone to tell you where it's falling down, why you're not winning. And when you have a live pitch, get them in again to help you with the live pitch opportunity so you can put it in practice and they hold you to account and they pretend to be the client and they will challenge you on what's in the pitch deck. Yeah.

Michael Lander (26:22.977)
Exactly. And so just some simple stats from me about the data I've collected, see if it correlates with yours. For every 10 opportunities that you're looking at that are proper opportunities, not some random inbound that's completely unqualified, but from every 10 that are reasonable opportunities, my rule of thumb is you qualify out three or four, we're not bidding for those three or four. Of the six that we bid for, we should be winning at least three. That's roughly, yeah.

Freia (26:50.852)
Yeah, 50 % is my rule of thumb as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Lander (26:53.729)
Exactly, of qualified leads and the qualification out is really important. So you're only working on things that you can stand a good chance of winning.

Freia (27:02.072)
Yes, and just know we are running out of time, but I guess that's point to say is a lot of agencies are stressed and there's pressure on capacity and resource and the teams because they're doing too many pitches because they shouldn't be pitching for half of the stuff that's coming in. So it's really expensive. It's a time waster. So I totally agree with you. They need to qualify out more and put more effort into the ones that really need to win the ideal client, the better contracts.

Michael Lander (27:04.931)
Yeah, yeah, it's fun.

Michael Lander (27:17.653)
Exactly.

Michael Lander (27:27.982)
Yeah.

Freia (27:31.509)
It's a massive squeeze on what should be chargeable resource on clients that is being dragged into pitches that are pointless.

Michael Lander (27:36.417)
Exactly. And I think the problem is it's a compounding effect. The pipeline's thin. We need to win more work. We're going to bid for everything because it's thin. but the win rates going down and down and down. Our teams are exhausted because they're working on clients and on pitches and they're now depressed because we don't win. So you get this very rapid downward spiral and you're better off saying we're going to step back. We're going to re look at our ICP.

Freia (27:45.358)
Yep. Yes.

Freia (28:00.792)
Yeah, that's horrible.

Michael Lander (28:06.479)
We're gonna qualify properly and we're gonna work on the things we can win. Freya, it's been amazing. I definitely want to follow up with you. It's been really good, really, really good. Your insights from the client feedback that you collect is really, really good. Brilliant. So thoroughly enjoyed it, thank you. So where can people find out more about you?

Freia (28:09.977)
Yeah, agreed.

Thank you so much.

thanks.

Freia (28:21.924)
Thank you so much for having me. Yeah, it's been great.

Cheers.

Find me on LinkedIn, connect with me and I'll go to my website, berate.com, but it's better to just go on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is where it's happening for me, yep.

Michael Lander (28:38.767)
Go on LinkedIn and find you. Freya. It is. Freya, been fantastic. Thanks ever so much.

Freia (28:46.456)
Thank you.

Michael Lander (28:48.447)
And we're out. Brilliant, Freya, thank you. Let me just stop the recording. Let me just stop that.

Freia (28:50.594)
Right. thank you.