Examining the Challenger Sale Concept with Richard Boon

Mike (01:41.302)
Richard, thanks ever so much for joining me on Hegel, the B2B Sales Club podcast.

Richard (01:52.748)
stuff.

Richard (02:01.814)
Mike, it's a pleasure to be here.

Mike (02:03.446)
Now I'm thoroughly looking forward to this. We've had a very interesting discussion before when you popped around and we had a coffee and we've got some really interesting questions and insights around selling and negotiating, which we'll come to in a second. But first of all, basically for our listeners and all listening in the audience, what do you do, Richard? What's your background?

Richard (02:26.678)
Oh, so I'm a growth leader, I would classify myself as. So I built a career in client services, sales, marketing, and technology is kind of where I started. So my career's seen me work agency side with global brands in gaming, high street retail, e-commerce, healthcare, and more recently quite heavily in the food and beverages marketplace. I'm a CEO of a sustainable marketing agency and my experience has been built.

on generating the most effective and efficient ways for us to reach brands with an audience effectively. So what's the best way we can reach an audience for a brand?

Mike (03:06.51)
Very good. And something unusual about yourself, Richard, is really unusual about your past.

Richard (03:12.222)
Yeah, so I actually decided to defer university because I had an opportunity to feature in a Young Dragons Den competition and I actually managed to get through to the final. So this was sort of, yeah well because I was 17 at the time I couldn't actually go on the program so Peter Jones put on a Dragons Den competition live in Milton Keynes in England and basically ended up with two finalists, myself and a friend of mine now.

Mike (03:20.066)
Wow. Well, as in the actual Dragon's Den, as in the program the Dragon's Den.

Mike (03:29.815)
Wow.

Richard (03:41.67)
pitching live in front of an audience to Peter Jones and a bunch of dragons. And yeah, I guess, you know, pitching has come naturally to me since a very young age.

Mike (03:41.712)
Amazing!

Mike (03:46.157)
Wow.

Mike (03:52.298)
Amazing experience at 17 you're in front of a dragons then audience live and an audience sat behind them

Richard (03:59.018)
That's correct, yes. 500 people in the audience and cameras and all the rest of it was a live audience at that age. I think the only reason I was able to sort of pluck up the courage to do it was I spent a bit of time getting into music and playing in bands and things like that, so I was used to a live audience. But yeah, it was a great experience. I actually really enjoyed it, and I think that's kind of how I ended up in the career that I'm in now.

Mike (04:00.973)
Wow.

Wow!

Mike (04:14.766)
Uhhhhhh

Mike (04:23.382)
Very good. So let's talk about the kind of the first topic that we wanted to cover was, if you look at your pitch process, how has that evolved over the years?

Richard (04:36.39)
Yeah, that's a great question. So our pitch process, I think, because I've been in the business for 17 years now. So I've seen it evolve over a long period of time. I'm, I've bucked the trend in terms of millennials that have stayed in a career for, for a very long period of time and not jumped around from business to business. So, so watching that sort of infancy of, of the pitch, you know, when I would say, I was sort of in the account management team and we were invited.

by procurement for that first time, it was kind of as a business, you know, quite a, quite an interesting experience because, you know, this was when procurement were coming onto the scene and very much we, we'd not found ourselves in that position before, almost taken completely by surprise and underestimated the kind of things that, you know, marketing and procurement we're looking for out of the exercise. And I think, you know, for, for us back then, we were always, you know, a high quality partner to our customers.

Mike (05:13.579)
Yeah, yeah.

Richard (05:33.066)
very relationship driven, very innovative. And then so obviously when you go through the formal process for the first time, it really took the business by surprise. And I would say that we found ourselves through a period of time being always invited to the pitch, but with minimal win success for retention, minimal success in terms of us actually, we would say yes to everything and go after many, many opportunities.

Mike (05:53.163)
Huh.

Mike (05:59.662)
Yes.

Richard (06:01.982)
because obviously you're hungry and you want to grow as an agency. So, you know, I look back and, you know, no formal bid library was a big one. And no test and learn cycle. So I think kind of, yeah, I would say that we were very junior in our approach to pitching. And I think kind of my role quite early on, I was made new business and marketing director around the age of around 25, 26. So.

Mike (06:04.462)
That's right.

Richard (06:31.17)
was given a job to completely turn things around. And so one of the first things I tried to do is to say, right, what is our direction here? Like, where do we want to be? We're seen as a radical alternative. How do we become a compelling choice? How do we make ourselves a little bit more attractive in the sense of we're answering the right questions, we're turning up, we can overcome those objections, we've worked on ourselves to improve that process. And so...

Mike (06:45.769)
Ah.

Richard (06:58.678)
Yeah, it was where we are today. Now I would say we're, you know, a top two, top three contender with a compelling choice for customers rather than being that sort of radical choice that was in the beauty parade.

Mike (07:11.466)
And if you looked at a few, so let's kind of unpick a few bits of that. So for example, qualification. So if you looked at the early days of when you were doing this to where you are now, what's changed in terms of how you qualify opportunities?

Richard (07:26.178)
Yeah, so I think we really took a long hard look at ourselves and the clients that we were really successful with and the clients that have stayed with us and grown and why we were solving challenges for them. And I think we've been able to then establish what is our ideal customer and why we're basic with Webinar. And so when I've looked at it and said, okay, so now we've got our criteria of the, the ideal clients that we want to win, then that's reduced us down from maybe some of the opportunities that have come to us.

and actually not been a good fit. And we've accepted that a little earlier. I think we've also fine-tuned the opportunities where it's pretty clear that the brief didn't fit us as a solutions provider. And I think that that's been quite a mature approach compared to where we were in sense of understanding that if we go through with this process and these are costly, time-consuming processes.

Mike (08:05.003)
Yes.

Mike (08:19.522)
there.

Richard (08:20.558)
where you want to have a positive outcome for both sides. You know, slowing down and qualifying out those opportunities earlier and saying, this isn't gonna put us in the place of where we want to be at the end, or maybe even solve the brief. The brief is wrong, so we can't answer it in the way that we're being asked. So it's time for us to maybe step out of this process earlier or challenge it earlier.

Mike (08:42.718)
Yeah, exactly. So in terms of the benefit of that, without giving away any particular numbers, because you may not want to, but if you look at the win rate improvement, has it kind of doubled in terms of win rate improvement, or has it gone up by 10%? Or what's kind of brought the direction of travel?

Richard (09:00.89)
Direction of travel has been up. I think we're going for less opportunities and we're winning more. So it's a positive trend. And I think, you know, you could say we're taking less opportunities, but the quality of the opportunities we're going for, the adoption rate by customers is a lot higher, that win rate is a lot higher, and we're able to give it more focus. We're able to give it the quality that it deserves. And I think so, you know, we're in the sort of high 60s, high 70s now as a win rate. And that's...

Mike (09:05.599)
Exactly.

Mike (09:28.011)
Well, that's good. That's excellent.

Richard (09:30.05)
And we're happy with that. You know, I think, you know, if, if you win every opportunity we go for, then we'd have some, some other issues around the business in terms of resourcing and it creates new issues. And maybe you're under pricing or, you know, uh, you know, throwing too much at these opportunities. But I think for us, we were a happy place where, you know, we, we can turn up, we can give it our absolute best and we can make sure we can deliver on that. So we're quite happy with that now.

Mike (09:31.679)
He should pay.

Mike (09:54.37)
So if I look at another aspect of as an ex kind of buyer, as an ex procurement person, to get that kind of win rate, typically what I found was you had to have something, no one's absolutely unique, but you had to have something pretty different, something stand out, something that made you stand apart from the crowd that was genuine, not just we've got great people because everyone's got great people. So can you kind of like identify

Not so much what it is, but how did you get to define what it is that makes you stand out so that when you are in the, there's five people pitching for this, now you're down to three and then you've been down selected to one. Kind of how did you get to the point of going, we've nailed our sweet spot, we've nailed our kind of win themes.

Richard (10:46.69)
Yeah, and I think you can fall into the trap of obviously with the scorecard process of trying to sort of be all things to all people. And I think really for us, we realized that we've got a huge heritage in sustainability from as early as 2005. So for us, you know, sustainability, there is a massive rise in appetite for that now. You know, for us, maybe potentially that made us a little radical back in the day, but actually leaning into it and normalizing it, I think, has been quite

quite good for us. And I think also for us understanding the efficiencies required from procurement leaning into our, the ability to use tech in the business to drive a more efficient delivery. That for us, if we've leant into those two things and we've explained our heritage, we've explained that we've had tech development teams in the business for 20 years, we've explained our heritage and sustainability. And I think that gives us the provenance because it's not just saying,

We understand that these things are now important to you. It's a case of saying, we realize that this stands us apart. We realize that at a very early stage, and we've been delivering that time and again for 20 years. And I think that that's given us that angle. And like I said, it's not for everybody, but certainly I think for those that have the scorecard where you start looking at efficiencies and sustainability, then obviously we score quite highly there.

Mike (12:07.986)
Exactly. Brilliant. Okay. So let's move on to the next theme that we talked about, which is the rise of the challenge of sale in your team. And just to reference that for people that are listening that may not have read the book, brilliant book by Matt Dixon called The Challenge of Sale, which is going back a few years now. He's written several other ones, including Jolt recently. So yeah, just talk about the challenge of sale and why it works for you.

Richard (12:36.894)
I love this. So Challenges to Cell is one of my favourite books, I would say, and it effectively was what I sort of hung my hat on when I moved into the new business director role because...

Mike (12:40.766)
Excellent. Likewise.

Mike (12:47.83)
Just to explain to people, by the way, listening, so someone sat in their car or walking their dog and going, what is the challenge of sale exactly? Could you just like kind of summarize in your own words what you think it is?

Richard (12:59.67)
Yeah, sure. And I think, um, listen, sales has changed massively. Certainly B2B sales have changed massively and more so in the last few years than ever. And I would say that, you know, selling comes down to a mixture of style and technique. Um, and you know, often as a salesperson, you're painted with the same brush and actually, um, I understood that maybe that, you know, we needed to change in, in terms of how we deliver, uh, our value to customers. And so when I read challenges sale.

The whole purpose of Challenger Sale is to adopt a completely different mindset where you're able to honestly and transparently challenge the brief. You're not just accepting a face value. You're not just responding. You're proactively looking for opportunities to demonstrate value, assist with the brief and find new ways to, to challenge it, you know, something it resonated with me because I never, I never really, um,

Mike (13:51.818)
Yeah. Well put.

Richard (13:56.886)
uh, accepted this sort of attitude in the business of no, we've tried that. So we're not going to have a go at it again. And so through my career, I've kind of tried to take that. No, this didn't work, but say, actually, maybe can we try it a different way? And so I love the concept behind the challenge of sale. And so one of the first things I did when rebuilding the team was to train, um, my team, very different skillsets. I had someone that had spent a bit of time in sales and someone that was

kind of fresh to it that had potential. And we wanted to train this sort of consultative challenger sale mindset. So that was the first thing that we delivered. And I think that for us really enabled us to start becoming more value adds, more consultative and really change our approach to winning new business more so than many of the other processes that we put in place.

Um, and that, that meant for us that we could have, you know, a very lean sales team, but a very effective sales team and a team that would really see partnerships with customers and be given the time, uh, by clients to, to solve new challenges because ultimately we were trusted as an advisor to come in and say, well, actually, you know, I see what you're trying to achieve, but I think maybe the question's slightly wrong or possibly you've, you've asked for this, but we can see that the root cause is, is slightly different. So we'll.

Mike (15:20.558)
Correct.

Richard (15:20.846)
We'll give you an answer to A, but we think that you should be going with B or C.

Mike (15:24.798)
Exactly right. So back in the day I worked at KPMG and the principles of the Challenger Sale were embedded into us about, you know, you're there to be the trusted advisor. But to be a trusted advisor, obviously they need to trust you. Well, how do people start to trust you? Well, you need to be credible and you need to, yes, build professional relationships, but you need to manage their risk profile. You need to not focus on yourself and focus on them. And you need to be, I think using that

that challenge yourself methodology, you do have to have a lot of personal self-confidence to say to someone, you know, you may not have framed that problem statement fully. You know, we think you've missed something. You're in our experience. I was always taught a very simple technique of saying to a client, you've missed something is bad because it turns them off. But saying, you know, what we find across clients like you in your situation is there are five problems. You appear to have outlined one of them. Do the other four, are they relevant to you?

And then that starts to tease out these other areas that they haven't thought of.

Richard (16:25.055)
Thank you.

Richard (16:30.438)
Totally. And they might be talking to three or four other, you know, vendors or agencies. And I think, you know, we're trying to tap into the experience that we've got from working with numerous different brands. And so going to a charity, for example, and saying, listen, within retail, there's a lot of money being thrown around on test and learn strategies and we can use that experience. We understand what you're trying to achieve, but actually other people have been tackling it this way. So why would we not tap into that rather than just responding to what we've been asked to do? Let's take that brief. Let's

provide them with a more experienced view on it. And sometimes that means to us, delivering a completely different solution to what they were expecting. It still tackles some of the original efficiencies that maybe they were looking for, if they were looking for cost savings, for example. But typically cost savings are great, as a short term measure, but actually that long term experience is what we hope, through a pitching process people are buying is the fact that once you get through those efficiency times that you've got a trusted partner that can help.

come to the table and solve other issues around a business and a marketing department.

Mike (17:32.078)
But if someone sat there and they're listening at the moment and they're like, okay, well, this sounds interesting, but I don't know how to start. And they don't even know what my style is of selling, but this sounds interesting. Where would you recommend they start apart from reading the book? How do they actually start practicing some of the techniques?

Richard (17:54.114)
Workshopping is a great way to do it. There's quite a lot of, um, accredited trainers that you can, you can bring in, but certainly there's also people that have been there and done it and are very, you know, made a career out of it. And I think, um, one of the techniques we use was, um, obviously not just the team in terms of reading the books and sort of doing, doing some sessions with them, but also, you know, role playing and workshop in it because it is quite a unique style. Yeah. And it's, it's a, it's a human to human style. It's, it requires, um,

Mike (18:16.046)
I was going to say role playing. Yeah.

Richard (18:23.11)
hands-on training and some scenario training. I don't think you can send anyone to run off and read a book or listen to audio books in the car. You need to practice these things. And so it's quite easy to drum up a few scenarios. Part of our test and learn strategy and our continuous improvement strategy on our bid process was actually looking back over some of the bids that as part of your continuing improvement, why did we lose this? And actually looking back at it and saying, can we apply

Mike (18:30.977)
Exactly.

Mike (18:49.789)
Correct.

Richard (18:52.558)
with our time now, whilst we're not pitching for anything, can we go back on that last one and have that sort of that mop up meeting together and applying the learnings and test it against that. Feedback is key to all of this. If you can ask for feedback, you can learn. And I think even if you lose, feedback is so important for that cycle. So I would say, yeah, workshopping and asking feedback.

Mike (19:16.31)
So, and on the feedback, and we know empirically when I've been a buyer, you know, if you came second, so you weren't my winner, am I gonna give you lots of detailed feedback? I'd like to, it's not that I wouldn't, but I'm pressed for time like all executives are, so you'll often get a few, you'll get a paragraph at best. But I think what does yield some very good results is just looking at comparing the original document, the brief.

or the RFP, whichever it was, with your response. And then getting either someone outside of your team that hasn't written it to look at it, or a third party, and just start to look at the themes. I've done loads of win-loss analysis for clients, and you can start to see patterns. Once you look at five or six, ones that you won, ones that you lost, you can tell why you lost them. When you've read it, you can really tell.

Richard (20:11.574)
Yeah, I love that. Really good themes. Yeah. And I think that's the thing is that you just take those themes back. You always have to have that sort of sport in psychology. You know, if you look at data sciences within sport, you need to have that same approach when it comes to your win loss and thinking about it like You know, you, you know, you've done your game day and you look back over your season, you do your analysis and you really need to use that mindset for that continually improvement. You see at the end of, you know, Formula One, they all sit there with their headphones on watching back every single

Mike (20:26.231)
You do.

Richard (20:39.95)
decision that they took and I think that reflective approach can really help. It doesn't come natural to agencies and sales processes because sales are looking forward and looking to that next thing. They don't like to look backwards and I think that's a missed opportunity.

Mike (20:53.63)
Yep. Yeah, yeah.

Very good. So next question. So the other topic we said we'd talk about is around negotiations. So how do you prepare? So when you're down to that, you've gone through a process, you've gone from say five to three to being their preferred supplier subject to the contract negotiations. So how do you prepare for a fair negotiation or to walk away with style as you've put it, which I really like.

Richard (21:26.294)
Yeah, so I think, you know, like, like the theme throughout this whole podcast has been sort of lots of time reflecting, learning, listening, and asking what KPIs effectively they're looking for. Because I think, you know, ultimately, you need to understand it. Are you going to be able to step up to the mark of what's expected of you? You know, you've got your quality, price, service, I'm going to add in there sustainability now. So it used to be pick any two. Now we're in this. It was a triangle. Now we're in a bit of a square and there might be new things on a foot on that as well.

So look, a race to the bottom really isn't like our game. And I understand that price pressures, certainly in the climate we found ourselves the last few years have been an issue. But I think kind of preparing to understand where you're ready to walk away is really important. And there's a bit of a, I don't know if you've come across the sum fallacy of when you get so far with something that you're not willing to exit it because you put so much time and cost into something you've got that far, it's very hard to let it go.

Mike (22:21.346)
Correct. But it's a sunk cost.

Richard (22:24.934)
is a sunk cost, yeah, totally. So people tend to, you know, to want to pursue these things. So I think for us, sort of, I would say preparing to understand where your walk away point is so important. You probably would have already pre-qualified out anything that's not of interest for both parties as part of your process. But also at the same time, when you start to see, you know, potentially some really crippling negotiations where you end up with

driving the price down and sort of avoiding the value when you know you've got so much value to bring to the table, whether that's for us, for example, tech solutions or sustainability or integrated audits to try and make sure performance goes up. That's our value adds, that comes after the initial maybe cost reduction, but if someone's really trying to unsustainably drive the pricing out of it, we've seen too many times where we've walked away from those opportunities to see that they're in trouble in 12 months time with the vendor that they have picked. So...

I think, you know, I guess for us, we're pretty long-term, really, we try to do things once right, and we're investing in that process. We try to outline that, you know, the whole purpose of us coming to the table is that we feel that we're a really good fit, and that's why we're giving this 100% of our efforts. We don't like to think of it as, you know, we're not big enough to say we've got an A team and a B team when it comes to our bid teams, you know, we put our A team forward every time. And I think that actually, I wonder,

Maybe it'd be interesting to hear your opinion, but bowing out early from a process when you're a very strong contender probably sends a message. And quite often we receive a phone call to ask why, and maybe if there's any feedback. And that takes quite a bit of courage, I would say.

Mike (24:03.342)
Correct.

Mike (24:09.678)
And I think if we kind of unpick that a bit, if you look at what perhaps is going on there, if you're negotiating with a trained buyer, a procurement person, I think a big thing for anyone listening to remember is, it's not their money. You know, the budget holder owns the budget. The budget holder in your case might be, say the brand director or the CMO. So let's say it's the CMO for a second. So the CMO owns the budget, they've gone through a process, procurement have run a tender process.

They've gone from five to three to one, come up and negotiating with you, and they're trying to chip you one price. I'm a big believer in, I don't believe in discounting. I think you trade rather than discount. So you've been trading along the way and then you've reached the kind of your walk away point. Walking away from that deal, yes, I've got alternatives. I've got my number two and number three supplier. So I'll go and talk to them. But if the CMOs decided that...

It's your business they want to work with because you provide the highest value in the most sustainable way with long term results. The idea that I can go to the CMO and say, oh, Jane, yeah, I've got a different deal for you. Richard wouldn't move on pricing and scope and stuff. So I've dumped him and we've gone for a 10% reduction from this other supplier. So a bigger cost saving. Quality is not quite as good. It's not really who you wanted.

you'll have to work with them, I won't, because I'm off to my next deal. But I've told the CFO, that's a 10% save when we can bank. It's ludicrous. Because Jane's going to go, Jane's going to go, it's not your money, Mike. It's all very interesting that you've saved another like £50,000, but that's my budget. And I need a high quality outcome. Yes, my relationships, my budget. We spent three months with Richard's team.

Richard (25:46.839)
Yeah, you'll end up in jail.

Richard (25:59.267)
Relationships, okay? Yeah, you can run down the hostile market. Yeah.

Mike (26:06.398)
and you think you can just walk away and switch supplies, it doesn't happen that way. So I think walking away at the right time professionally, typically your counterparty may well re-engage and go, okay, I understand that you've reached the limit, is there anything else we can do? A smart negotiator would start to build alternative options and say, look, I've got a problem, the problem's X, it's not, it might be, I don't know.

payment terms or it could be IP or it could be all sorts. Can we talk about that? I get where you are, but Richard, can we talk about how can you help me? How can you help me get this across the line? That would be a smarter approach.

Richard (26:46.986)
Yeah, and I think that's why I kind of summed it up as walking away with style, that with style pieces, not necessarily in a snazzy suit and with some music in the background, walking off is, it's, you know, boss, we might do that. Actually, it's a case of leaving another offer on the table. So basically, what we tried to do is to say, listen, this isn't for us because of the reasons of you're approaching it in the wrong way and driving down costs. So, for example, if I just use, I don't know, we had one where it was multi-

Mike (26:54.367)
No.

Richard (27:15.522)
multiple agencies involved in producing and delivering welcome packs for somebody. And we looked at it and said, well, the pitch here is to look at reducing the cost of millions of communications that go out to a membership base. And so if it's to save money, this is our option, but actually we're going to walk away with style. Our approach would be to fully automate the welcome pack process in the first place, reducing your time to market by three weeks.

We think that the cost per pack slightly higher, but you've got a huge amount of savings on wastage in time and resource, but also at the same time, it can be a much more personalized and integrated approach. It's a very different solution we're leaving on the table. And that's the way that that's the way the customer journey mapping and things are going. So we're going to leave that. I would say you can save a few quid this year, but next year you're going to be back looking for a new solution. So that's, that's us walking away with style. We're not in it for, you know, the short-term piece. Um, and so that.

Mike (27:58.144)
Exactly.

Mike (28:14.144)
Exactly right.

Richard (28:15.142)
would be how we walk out with the music playing in the background of course as well.

Mike (28:19.537)
Any particular track that you'd pick, Richard, just out of interest?

Richard (28:22.886)
Oh, that's a good one. With my band days, I will be accused of pushing my own musical ability.

Mike (28:29.026)
Well, there you are. It would be one of your own tunes. Excellent. I remember reading a book called Getting to Yes by William Urey. And it's a bit tangential, but similar. He says, you never threaten anyone. Don't get angry in a negotiation. It's just pointless. And he said, educate, don't threaten. And I've always thought it makes a lot of sense. You're educating someone about the implications of their choices. You're leaving something on the table saying, we'd love to hear from you. Please come back to us.

Richard (28:45.211)
Mm.

Mike (28:58.054)
But this deal as it currently stands isn't for us. But if you change your mind and want to explore the alternative that we've put forward, we'd love to hear from you.

Richard (29:08.134)
Totally, and I think one of the things I would say is probably one of our biggest challenges with all of this, because obviously, these are our strategies to grow as a business, but one of the things that I've personally found both a struggle and also quite funny as well is when you're trying to suggest a new way of doing things, you're often met with quite a lot of skepticism because it doesn't fit in the box that you've been approached with. And so, my favorite phone call is always that one of a head of procurement.

after probably treating us for the normal, slightly cold process that you go through for an agency, I would say. And then you get that phone call saying, can I just check that you've included everything in the price? And then you're there going, well, that means one of two things. Either the team are completely undersold and completely missed decimal place somewhere, which is usually quite unlikely with the checks and balances in place. But when you're offering something completely...

Mike (29:43.106)
That's right.

Mike (29:50.655)
Yes.

Richard (30:04.838)
completely different and you've been out to market and you've got a slightly different person in the mix there. Quite often I quite enjoy that phone call because you're confident and you say, yeah, we're just approaching it very, very differently. The market has moved on from perhaps where you thought it was. There's new technology. There's advances in supply. There's so many different ways of efficiency and the rise of AI and technology. Now, it's fascinating to me that you get that phone call and can you just

Mike (30:20.942)
Exactly.

Richard (30:33.594)
check the workings and can you double check everything's included? And you think, well, they think that they've got the deal of a century and you're happy because you're providing what you're great at. That's a great phone call.

Mike (30:39.395)
Yeah.

Mike (30:43.086)
Correct. It is. Richard, this has been amazing. So as a walk away from people listening, what are your kind of top three tips for kind of improving commercial outcomes, building a better sales team? What are your top three tips from this kind of episode?

Richard (31:00.642)
I think the number one tip would be continuous improvement in the pitch process. You cannot move forwards if you don't look backwards. That reflection piece is so important. And that's how you, even if it's 1% incremental gains and you're really at the top of your game, looking back and saying this could have been slightly better after every pitch, after every bid is submitted, you know, find somewhere to just go and reflect with the team.

work out or it would have been slightly better if we answered it slightly differently or we need to have this because we didn't quite have that edge for that stakeholder in the room. So that's my first tip. Second tip would be implementing the challenge of sale style and the consultative attitude within the sales process. I think that's really important and it's relevant for today's needs. And the third one would be preparing to walk away with style and your music of choosing as you do so.

Mike (31:54.524)
Richard, it's been excellent. It really has. I thoroughly enjoyed our discussion. If we were having a coffee or a cup of tea, it would have been even better, but we're in remote locations. But Richard, where can people find out more about you?

Richard (32:07.462)
So I'm mostly spending most of my time on LinkedIn. So you can find me under Richard Boone and I'm the CEO of Webmark, a sustainable marketing agency. And it's been an absolute pleasure. Thanks for listening and thanks, Mike.

Mike (32:18.634)
Richard, thanks ever so much for joining me on Hegel, the B2B Sales Club podcast. Thank you.

Richard (32:22.95)
Cheers.

Mike (32:24.362)
Right, I'll stop recording.