Leveraging Team Dynamics for Business Success with Geoff Griffiths

Mike (01:45.332)
Jeff, thanks ever so much for joining me on Higgle, the B2B sales to podcast.

Geoff (01:51.914)
I'll go with the rugby one. Yeah.

Geoff (02:05.346)
Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah, really excited.

Mike (02:07.92)
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it, Jeff. It should be great fun. And we had a fun conversation before we started. As we discussed, we're probably gonna end up talking about some broad themes and then go down some rabbit holes. But that's part of the fun. So before we kick off, because people are listening going, who's Jeff? So Jeff, who are you? What do you do? And anything slightly different about yourself.

Geoff (02:28.882)
Yeah. So yeah, I'm Jeff. I'm the CEO of Built Visible. So we're a specialist organic agency, fully independent, kind of 15 years or so in with expertise within organic search, and more recently sort of broadening out to look at reducing ineffective spends and looking at customer journeys in more in the round. In terms of something interesting, the thing everyone is absolutely sick of me talking about, which I'll sort of wheel out now is that I

I have absolutely zero qualifications for doing what I do in so much as I used to be a professional rugby player. So that's kind of the thing. That's the, I guess, the USP in terms of digital agency ownership. But yeah, I was kind of a mediocre professional rugby player. How about that?

Mike (03:16.624)
I'm sure you weren't mediocre. Who did you play for?

Geoff (03:21.118)
Yeah, so I spent about eight years in the English Championship. So I played for teams like Edford, Rotherham, Plymouth and Esher before kind of winding it down and going part-time and building a career at the same time. So yeah, never quite made it, but had a wonderful time along the way. And it certainly sort of taught me a lot about how the world works and also sort of high performing organizations, which I hope sort of carries through to be visible today.

Mike (03:25.508)
Wow.

Mike (03:29.552)
Brilliant.

Mike (03:42.3)
Brilliant.

Mike (03:49.168)
So something that we haven't prepared at all, listeners, is I'd also like to weave in, Geoff, if we could talk about that high performance teams piece as part of the discussion, that would be really interesting about the crossover between sports leadership and high performing teams and agency high performing teams. That'd be great.

Geoff (03:59.903)
Yeah.

Geoff (04:09.546)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Mike (04:11.488)
In fact, Jeff, why don't we kick off with precisely that?

Geoff (04:16.91)
Let's start there. Um, yeah, I think that's kind of, I think in terms of the way I always talk about it is, is I think rugby is an interesting sport in terms of it's quite a closed loop where you kind of, you play the game and then you kind of enter the, the management or the administrative side of the game. Um, and you do that because you're a good player, not because you're necessarily a good manager or coach or administrator. And I think that's something quite similar in that in services business in terms of.

Mike (04:17.496)
Let's start there.

Geoff (04:43.99)
typically career progression in the services businesses, you're very good at the thing. And all of a sudden you're then line managing more people. And you're not necessarily equipped for that, but you're subject matter expert. And there's some parallels there. And I kind of looked at, you know, across my career in rugby teams that were very, very good at that whole piece around management and kind of managing players. And I also saw what bad looked like. So a lot of what I kind of apply

business management philosophy, if we're going to be so grandiose about it, is, um, it is a lot of what I saw that wasn't good and how can we do the opposite and how can we really empower people and help them sort of, you know, get the autonomy, build a career. Um, and obviously there's all the good stuff from, from team sports, such as, you know, realizing you're a part of something bigger than yourself, fostering, you know, high forming culture, fostering loyalty, uh, resilience is a big thing.

things often lacking and you don't get taught, whereas sport really does teach you that. So yeah, there's sort of heaps of parallels. I think there's lots of cliches around it all as well. But yeah, it's certainly something I draw on every day is my kind of experience within sport and hopefully it affects Bill Visible for the better.

Mike (06:00.132)
So I'm not a massive sports fan. It never happened. It wasn't part of my kind of growing up, which is a bit sad in many ways. I wish I was. I think it builds amazing friendships if you've got a sport that you're passionate about. But if you look at, so looking at sports teams and you'll have played in a number of different teams, as you said, I was watching a program the other day and I think it was about, I think it was Beckham's program about when you put Beckham into different teams, sometimes they perform

Geoff (06:11.554)
Yeah.

Mike (06:28.76)
like, yeah, just out of their socks. And sometimes it just doesn't work. Even though you've got amazing star players as a team collective, sometimes it doesn't work. Did you work out why? Why is it that just having the star players doesn't make you a brilliant team in sports?

Geoff (06:46.382)
I think it's an old cliche, but I think rugby is sort of one of the ultimate team sports. And certainly within rugby, you know, you've all got your positions and your value adds. So I was a fullback or a winger. So I was fast and powerful and could do various things, but, you know, I wouldn't be much use in the scrum, for example. But at the same time, I'm expected to go and hit rucks and do things that weren't necessarily my job. And so I think what rugby gave me a lot on that basis is understanding where my strengths are.

Mike (07:03.12)
Right.

Geoff (07:15.85)
and where my weaknesses are and where, you know, where actually someone else is much better tasked or, um, you know, suited to, to a role. Um, and I think once you get that at scale, you'll beginning to get people really kind of dropping the ego. That's a big thing in rugby is that people typically don't get a lot of egos. Um, it's very much sort of a we before me mentality. Um, and you know, absolutely you can be the best player in the world, but if you don't buy into the team environment, you're just not going to succeed.

And I think that's the real skill of managers. And if you look at for football managers, for example, the way that Sir Alex Ferguson managed United, all of those years, it was because he was very, very clear about that as an idea. And then that Beckham documentary is fascinating. As soon as Ferguson was done, he was like, right, Beckham's out. And then he was ruthless with it. And I think there's something to be learned in that as well.

Mike (08:01.092)
It's brilliant, wasn't it?

Mike (08:08.664)
Yeah, definitely. And I think in the business and agency world, we often see people who are amazingly talented individuals. But if they can't work as part of a team, they quickly become a liability.

Geoff (08:21.918)
Absolutely. And the most toxic thing is if the leadership don't do anything about it. And so you've got to be really hot on it and sort of make sure you're really setting that agenda because otherwise it begins to spread and people do see the behaviourism. One of the things I always talk about rugby is it was very, very self-policing. So if somebody steps out of line of the values of the club or the way things worked is that...

Mike (08:26.683)
Yes.

Mike (08:39.407)
Right.

Geoff (08:45.794)
on a rugby pitch in a pitch in training is you'll get punched in the face, which HR, you know, in agency life isn't as keen on, but, um, you know, I think the, um, I think, yeah, I think the, uh, I think the principle still applies though, in terms of, you know, there's a way of doing things here. This is the culture around it. And the more that a team can self-police that, and it's not about, you know, management saying you do this, you do that. Um, you know, you're onto something, you know, really, really good. And again, that was a really common thread throughout my.

Mike (08:52.908)
No. Understandably, yes.

Geoff (09:13.646)
throughout my career. Luckily, I didn't get punched in the face too much for that reason.

Mike (09:16.46)
Exactly. So I run a consultancy business a number of years ago, and we had, there were over 100 consultants at one point, who were all interestingly freelancers. And on that point about self-policing, it was amazing that the organism, which was the collection of 100 consultants, who were all freelancers, it created its own culture. And people that came in as new consultants that didn't fit the culture, I didn't...

do anything, they basically kind of left quite quickly, because the organism rejects the kind of foreign body.

Geoff (09:49.61)
Yeah.

Geoff (09:54.046)
Yeah, it's exactly that. It's exactly that. And I've been in organizations where it does happen and also where it doesn't happen, uh, both in rugby and also, you know, in my career now. So, um, yeah, it's, uh, it's a really interesting sort of dynamic, but I think again, yeah, the background is sport. I, I can see it. I can see it. Um, and, uh, you know, what you do about it is the main thing, but, um, yeah, I think that's definitely something I've, I've carried through from sports.

Mike (09:59.951)
Yeah.

Mike (10:19.288)
And one of the agencies that I'm involved in, we have a bit of a mantra of we, we will hire for will and we will train for skill. We'd much rather have someone that's got the right mindset and the right values and the right attitude and train them up. Then we would take on someone obviously at very senior management levels, it's a bit different, but it's easier to train someone's skills than it is to change the way that they behave.

Geoff (10:34.22)
Yeah.

Geoff (10:44.534)
Yeah, a hundred percent. And obviously with what we, with what we do in digital is, you know, you can't really go and get a degree or a qualification in it, a lot of it is learning on the job and so, you know, you, you very quickly arrive at how does someone learn on the job? What is their attitude to failure, to sort of setbacks or success? And how do they collaborate? You get there very, very quickly. As soon as you've done the CV check of have they done things before? Yeah. Whether they have or not, you end up in the same place anyway, which is how do they approach things?

Mike (11:06.5)
That's right.

Mike (11:12.608)
Exactly. So let's go to the topic of what people may be listening about, which is like commercial leadership, negotiations, insights into procurement, etc. So given the type of marketing services agency that you are, what challenges does an agency like yours have to overcome during the sales cycle? You know, especially when you're dealing with people like procurement or very tough buyers, what makes it a bit different in your business?

Geoff (11:39.014)
It's a good question. I think because we're sort of specialist organic, I think, you know, and by organic, I mean kind of SEO content strategy, digital PR, those types of things. I think because of where those services or those channels sit generally within marketing is that one of the biggest things we have to overcome often is education in terms of what is it that people are actually buying. So I think buying marketing services is...

arguably a little bit easier on the kind of the media side of the paid side. Um, you know, it all fits reasonably neatly into a spreadsheet. There's, there's kind of returns and bays and charges and that kind of thing. Whereas I think with SEO or organic more generally, I think people try and package it up like the media side and it doesn't really work for, for what the cell is. Um, you know, particularly we're a very strategic agency, so we'll go in and

try and go on a bit of a journey with a client. And the thing is there is like, what are you actually selling? What's the deliverable on day one, two, three, month one, month three, you know? And very quickly we're seeing more and more is that it's okay if you're sort of selling to someone who has a good depth of understanding of that. However, often obviously with procurement, you're coming in perhaps with a marketing procurement department, very, very used to buying a lot of easier things to buy.

Mike (12:41.943)
Yeah, yeah.

Geoff (13:04.566)
Um, and it's trying to put a bit of a square peg in around hold as a way I kind of describe it. So it, and I really empathize. It's not, it's not sort of a moan. It's sort of, actually, this is really difficult to, to buy, um, in the same vein that it's sort of difficult to sell. Um, so, so a lot of my, my approach, you know, if we're dealing with a larger enterprise organization or something like that, where procurement do step in. It's kind of going on the journey with them a little bit and without being patronizing, kind of doing a bit of the education, um, around what it is we're.

Mike (13:19.258)
Right.

Mike (13:32.112)
Yes.

Geoff (13:33.942)
what it is we're selling and trying to bring it to life in a way that actually solves a problem for them in the future, you know, whether or not they select built visible, that's just their decision. But actually if procurement's job is to make good purchasing decisions, then it doesn't matter who they choose. If they don't choose me, if we can leave them kind of actually a little bit further forward in their thinking around how to buy what we do, then they will remember that that, that will move the whole, you know,

Mike (14:01.354)
Ugh.

Geoff (14:01.887)
on the basis of sort of all boats rise, you know, I think there's something quite powerful in that. Yeah.

Mike (14:04.667)
Yes.

Mike (14:08.656)
So that's very, I think that's a really interesting topic as well about, and I talked to other agencies about this a lot, is educating the buyer, particularly procurement people, around the kind of problems that you solve, the value that you add, where the tank traps are that the client shouldn't fall into. Whether they buy you now or not, if they're a big enough company, at some point they're going to have those problems.

they're going to remember what Jeff said, and they're going to come back to you. And I think I was taught the kind of trusted advisor model of how you basically want to become the client's trusted advisor, whereby they not only have a professional relationship with you, but they come to you because you've got deep insights about something that they need to understand in more detail, and you're effectively the shortcuts.

Geoff (15:00.806)
Yeah.

And I think there's something really interesting, I'm always quite flippant about it, which is a bit unfair, but I always think, you know, procurement have a very tough job, they kind of sit in the middle and they're there to facilitate, but if you're either trying to buy, you know, deeper on the client side or you're selling on the services side, you could feasibly have two sets of people looking at procurement in the middle saying, well, they're just sort of getting in the way and being a bit awkward. And so I think there's a lot of merit in doing what you're saying, which is that kind of

Mike (15:25.626)
Right.

Geoff (15:33.15)
moving them forward and going on the bit of a journey. And this is quite interesting when I think back, kind of the more involved and heated discussions I've had with procurement have often led to sort of, as you say, sort of longer lasting relationships where, you know, it's that they're not necessarily putting you forward on a short list, but you're there in the mixer in terms of, you know, well, actually I'm trying to buy to solve this big problem. What's, what's your early view on it? You know, et cetera, et cetera. So it's often a really interesting way to get, to get in with clients when you, when you're not on that.

Mike (15:58.22)
Exactly.

Geoff (16:02.801)
of initial shortlist.

Mike (16:03.96)
I think it definitely is. And I think your ability to explain the different ROI models between organic and paid and social and influencer and how all that works and how you kind of reduce your risk and maximize your return. That that's a much better conversation to have with procurement because they won't understand the technicalities of SEO. You can educate them on those, but they will understand we've got

$5 million to spend in the next year. We need to get this kind of sales uplift or this kind of brand impact. Talking to them about how they solve that problem, even if they don't appoint you now, but they'll remember that.

Geoff (16:46.418)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it's always, I always think it's a really interesting question of sort of asking, asking procurement people what they're KPI'd on. Because ultimately, any negotiations, you're trying to find a middle ground, you know, the classic cliche, isn't it, where everyone's a little bit disappointed. But I think understanding what are they there to do? What are they getting pressure on to do? And it's quite easy for me as the owner of an independent business, I can kind of do what I want. So I'm in quite a privileged position.

Mike (16:54.447)
Right.

Mike (17:08.165)
Correct.

Geoff (17:14.474)
you know, we're going up against often quite an immovable object or, you know, a set of, you know, a bit of a dictata around what needs to happen with a, with a buying process. Um, and so I often think that unlocks a lot of insight, that question, because actually I've got a lot of flexibility. I can make that really work for me because it's all give and take, but, you know, why are they asking these questions is often the thing, you know, they're not, they're not just being there to be a pain, you know.

Mike (17:28.633)
Absolutely.

Mike (17:36.972)
Exactly right. It's peeling back the onion layers. So just an example, if we were having a conversation, Jeff, and you said to me, you know, what are you KPI'd on, Mike? I'd be like, it's quite a bold question, Jeff, but let me just like talk through kind of where we are at the moment. And it might be, yes, I'm trying to drive savings on a light flight basis. Or it might be, and actually we've got, you know, we have got our reliability issue, so we're looking at that. Or innovation, you know, in the age we're in now.

What we need to see is agencies that can invest in AI to the benefit of the client while still being profitable. How do you solve that problem? It could be about risk management. I think having that conversation, as you say about, what's most important to you? What are you incentivized by? What are your KPIs? How can I work with you to try and make it work? That's a very refreshing conversation to have, I think.

Geoff (18:27.838)
Yeah. And especially in a world where, you know, like, especially in what we do is everything's getting a lot more commoditized. Um, you know, and it's, and it's easy to very quickly jump to, oh, this is just going to be a, a bun fight around pricing, you know, whereas actually that, that is the wrong conversation to have a lot of the time, because as you, as you were just saying there, you know, finding out about, okay, what's the strategic direction, how can we add the value there, you know, what does this look like? Um,

Mike (18:43.17)
Right.

Mike (18:48.08)
Completely.

Geoff (18:56.066)
That's all positive. It's all about ROI, not the I, if that makes sense. Which again, I think, yeah, it's sometimes easy to sort of jump too quickly to, well, this is just gonna end up a conversation about price. Cause that's not a good way to buy often. So.

Mike (19:00.398)
Exactly right.

Mike (19:11.292)
No, and again, I'll often talk to people about, on the supply side, on the agency side, as a buyer, I don't think I ever refused to work with an agency or a supplier of any kind because they were too expensive. What I often did and made sure that certain suppliers and agencies weren't appointed was because they couldn't articulate the value. So if they can't articulate the value,

and they refuse to for whatever reason, but they insist on sticking to a price point, then I'll be like, well, I'll just go back to my own type. I'll be like, okay, well, I'm good at driving down price based upon scope, based upon deliverables and SLAs. And I'll do my job. If you can't educate me, and if you can't stop me by linking the value to the price, I'll then do my job, which is I'll basically keep on going until you stop. So that's the agency's problem, not my problem.

Geoff (20:07.174)
Yeah, and, yeah, and, you know, SEO and organic is so primed for that, because it's a very sort of technical discipline. It's multifaceted in the multifaceted in the sense that, you know, there's different component parts of it, all of which can be themselves individually, commoditized to a degree or, you know, or sort of reduced to that level.

And often it's, it's a big red flag for us in terms of qualification. If, if things are packaged up where it's like, this is a technical brief only, or this is only about link building, or this is only about content. This is, that's just reflects, that's just a buyer buying the way that the organization is manifesting how they want to do SEO. So we've just done one recently was quite interesting where, you know, there's lots of conversations around sort of quite proxy metrics, proxy KPIs.

Mike (20:40.101)
Right.

Absolutely.

Mike (20:51.195)
Yes.

Geoff (21:02.654)
We'd just say, no, I was like, well, that's not really, we're genuinely not the best agency to do that, because you do get into this commoditized tactical play rather than anything strategic. But the conversation we had with procurement was it was like, well, let's be super, super clear. It's like, we really wanna work with you because you're a great brand for us. I don't agree with how it's packaged up, but I completely understand why. And we come up in SEO, as you know, Mike, you come up against it all the time where people have been burned.

Mike (21:24.642)
Exactly.

Geoff (21:29.654)
before and so everyone in the future is then a victim. And they said, you know, well, yeah, we've been burnt before on this. We haven't, you know, we've been really, really let down by other agencies and we just need to protect ourselves. And there it's like, well, I've got to weigh it up. You know, how stubborn am I, how stubborn are they? And where we actually got to is actually, let's do a really good deal on this first bit, get really clear measurement in place. But the whole premise of it is I want to unlock a much bigger strategic conversation around, okay.

Mike (21:29.881)
Yes, absolutely.

Mike (21:55.905)
Exactly.

Geoff (21:57.078)
What does this look like holistically over three years? You know, we're not messing around and talking about a few months of tactical support. Um, and you know, just from a seller standpoint, you go on your spidey senses of, you know, do they understand why I'm having that conversation the way I'm having it and, and do we think the potential is there? And there's always going to carry a bit of risk, but you are anyway. Um, so yeah, I think it's always a balance to be struck.

Mike (22:02.202)
Yep.

Mike (22:08.261)
Yeah.

Mike (22:19.228)
The fact that you've opened that conversation up, if there's a brand, you know, they have been burnt before, then what you're saying is, I understand that. And how do I de-risk you from getting burnt again? Well, what I'll do is we'll change the commercial structure and we'll have a phase one, which is a bit of a diagnostic, where they will build dashboards and will baseline your data and we'll give you a strategy. And that's phase one. And if you choose to walk at that point.

Well, no harm done. You've paid us a fee and we've given you value and you've got a way of going forward. But if you do decide to go forward, then if it's a three year commitment, maybe we back out part of that initial phase one against the three. There's all sorts of things you can do once you start to de-risk their position.

Geoff (23:05.962)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I think again, you've sort of the attraction for me with those types of conversations is you are unlocking long term potential, you're removing it from the here and now that conversation going on, you know, it's a, it's a negotiation, you know, sort of liberating yourself from it. It's like, well, yeah, this is a negotiation, but it's part of a bigger picture. And it's like anything, so the more you zoom out, the smaller that issue becomes. Yeah, it's quite exciting.

Mike (23:14.69)
Exactly.

Mike (23:29.856)
Exactly. So talk about, um, commoditization. So what's happening in the kind of the organic, um, uh, world regarding performance growth, regarding commoditization, um, of services. And how do you get out of that whole commoditization trap? Cause it is one that a lot of agencies are falling into.

Geoff (23:53.83)
Yeah, I think number one is being very aware of it, you know, it happening and kind of, you know, and went to sort of, I guess, define it a little bit, but often in a procurement discussion in particular, or any kind of buying discussion is what we're saying is, you know, we're going to deliver these services and then everything becomes about, you know, a tactical output of those services, which, as to your point previously, doesn't actually articulate any...

kind of value to the client. You're sitting there about looking at costs and driving down margins. And agencies just getting margin erosion, which, which conversely inhibits their own ability to be better at being an agency. So everyone's kind of losing and it's understandable because of the economic climate. Um, so I think under like with organic specifically, you've got, you know, the way we package up our business, for example, is, you know, we come from a quite a technical SEO background, quite a strategic SEO background.

Mike (24:29.265)
Correct.

Mike (24:33.936)
That's right.

Geoff (24:51.682)
The way the channel's evolved is actually, you need to really understand UX, you need to really understand content, you need to understand digital PR, you need to understand online customer journeys as a whole. And you need to understand how to measure them and prove the value. So our kind of response to commoditization is essentially the way that we package up our products and services, the way we market them, the way we generate new business leads, both inbound and sort of more prospecting based.

So just make sure that we're having the right conversations with the right people as early as possible to always never get into the commoditization discussion. Um, that said, it's like that example I just gave you where we're having a discussion where it's like, okay, we're going to have to, we're going to have to start on this basis because I think a lot of the market buys in that way. So we, it would kind of a victim of the briefs that exist and a lot of what we're trying to do is educate and move it forward. Um, as I sometimes you have to be willing to just take a hit on it and be like, okay, well, let's just get in there, but be really clear about.

Mike (25:25.551)
Exactly.

Geoff (25:48.374)
We want to move this to much more of a strategic, you know, a strategic grounding is kind of the aim. So yeah, with our business, we're kind of 80% plus retained business. So we're in with clients. We're kind of having lots of ongoing long-term discussions. We have clients that have been with us for sort of 12 years, you know, so those are the easy ones, the hard ones when you're trying to say, well, actually,

I want someone else to come and do the same kind of thing over the next 10 years. Um, when, yeah, particularly within organic, the industry is a little bit behind without sort of being too, too rude about it. Um, so yeah, a lot of education.

Mike (26:30.072)
And I think that whole, uh, the consultative sales process, uh, is really important. You know, I, I like you, Jeff, I didn't come from the SEO world, but I, you know, I work with SEO businesses. Um, and, um, I always committed from being, there's a, there's a business problem they're trying to solve. And I mean, I'm not an SEO lead of any, of any type. Um, I, I'm a board advisor, but, um, what kind of problems they're trying to solve, what's in their best commercial interests.

What's in our best commercial interest and how can we come to an arrangement that works for both parties where we share some risk and reward. So we do some fixed fee, we do some performance bonuses. No, we can't always tie ourselves to revenue uplift because we don't control the, as you were pointing out, that kind of conversion optimization piece is like, well, I can't guarantee you're going to get the sales uplift, but we can get as close as we possibly can to aligning our interest to your interest, which is...

Growth, profitable growth.

Geoff (27:32.054)
Yeah, and that's kind of, yeah, sort of almost why we partly evolved our offering, but like to try and get a bit more control of that, because it's almost like, it's quite a flippant example of it, but like link targets are a classic of the SEO world where people are like, you know, how many links am I going to get for this money? And the kind of point, the point I kind of make about that is like in any other walk of life, if I'm making an investment, my working assumption, I think anyone's working assumption, if they're making a financial investment is they get a financial return.

Mike (27:39.439)
Yeah.

Mike (27:45.892)
Absolutely correct.

Absolutely.

Geoff (28:02.314)
Yeah, for some reason SEOs like to say, I'm gonna pay you this money. And what I want from that is some links. Okay, fine. So yeah, it's, I think it's a little bit a little bit.

Mike (28:05.634)
Exactly.

Yeah.

Mike (28:16.004)
What's the value of those links? It's hard to say what the value of those links are, but they'll be links, they will be links. Right, okay.

Geoff (28:21.374)
It's just so, so nothing moves on. But that's, that's the thing. I think it's, it's kind of on agencies a little bit to, to offer some of those answers, because the easiest one in the world is, you know, you pay us this and we'll get you that easiest, easiest one in the world, but as you say, there's so many dependencies, um, and then the balance is if you're sort of a smallish or medium sized independent, you don't have the resource to just take everything. You're not the full service. You're not doing the tech, you know, but ironically you can add more value.

Mike (28:38.299)
Yes.

Mike (28:45.701)
That's right.

Geoff (28:50.19)
through the quality of a service and the big agencies, but they can have the breadth of service. So yeah, it's a tricky one. It's the one we're always kind of fighting against. I think a lot of it is, you know, once you're in, and once you've got something over the line, like I said, our business is built on retention. So it's kind of, once we're in, we tend to stay in a fight quite well. What that does is just breeds trust. And once you've got the trust, you're able to sort of influence internally and work through those dependencies.

Mike (28:55.451)
Yep.

Mike (29:18.419)
Exactly.

Geoff (29:18.446)
which obviously clients appreciate. But yeah, going from a standing start is a bit different, a bit tough.

Mike (29:24.324)
So let me talk about, just to kind of like finalize the conversation in the last kind of few minutes, around negotiations with clients. So can you think of a time when the negotiations weren't really well? You have procurement involved, you have the client involved, you were negotiating with the brand, with multiple parties, but there was something about the negotiation which made it successful for all parties. That might have been around the style.

It could have been around the content. It could have been around the scope, but what I guess what I'm trying to get to the point of is what in your mind makes a successful negotiation with a client where you both end up with, yeah, this is great for both of us. How do you set that up for success?

Geoff (30:16.591)
I think the best ones we've done are often quite reliant. We're sitting here talking a lot about the buy side, right? And like, yeah, I'm going at them the whole time. Okay, how we work with them, da da. I think some of the most successful ones we've done is where we've been, vulnerable is the wrong word, but we're very open about what our business objectives are. And again, it's kind of...

It's a luxury afforded if you're a, you know, an independent specialist, like bill visible or whoever, like if you're, if you're talking to me, it's like, well, I can tell you how my business works, you know, and I can, I can say, well, actually there are certain things that are really important to me as an independent. Um, you know, so I don't know, like running, running a healthy cash balance. That means something in a negotiation. That's a lever, uh, payment terms are a lever for me. Um, you know,

Mike (31:05.292)
Exactly. It does.

Mike (31:10.584)
Yeah. Longer term commitments.

Geoff (31:14.375)
the longer term commitments, what the client, what am I trying to achieve strategically? And I'm often very happy to be quite open with clients about that because I think that's, and do it early and it tends to unlock a bit of creativity because I actually think negotiation, it's kind of got a bit of a bad rep but I think it's such a creative process. It's such a crazy process because you're, you know, it's like a marriage, you know.

Mike (31:28.238)
It does.

Mike (31:31.652)
Hmm. Tis.

Mike (31:37.156)
Yeah.

Geoff (31:37.282)
You can't just have everything one way, not that I can talk about what a successful marriage looks like, but you know, you can sort of, you can, it's about sort of give and take and it's about, you know, where is the compromise? And if you get that right, and I think the only way to get that right is to be a little bit vulnerable upfront and say, you know, once you're into the negotiation, this is what's important to me. And actually, I can really help you out with what you're trying to achieve. If we look at this, they're always the ones that I think go really, really well.

Mike (32:06.732)
Exactly. And it sounds like also, so I think vulnerability is a great point. And the preparation, you know, the fact that you've thought it through before you get there. I was talking to an agency a while ago, you know, said to them, how long do you spend on the creative process of building a proposal? And they're like, I don't know, between 30 and 50 hours. I said, how long do you spend preparing the negotiation? They said, in the cab, on the way, 15 minutes, if we're lucky.

Geoff (32:18.674)
Yeah.

Mike (32:36.736)
And he said, he said, it's ludicrous. It's ludicrous. And that kind of preparation and then being vulnerable, I think, yeah, that will take you a long way.

Geoff (32:36.84)
Yeah.

Geoff (32:48.798)
Yeah, yeah. And just getting the right people involved there. You know, if we're going in, we're going sort of got a big process with a big corporate and we know it's sort of coming down the line, then actually just getting the right people in the room. So get the FD in the room. Right. David, what are we looking at? What are we looking like? What levers are you happy for us to flex? What could help you out? You know, get the ops director in the room, you know, OK, capacity wise.

Mike (33:01.658)
Yeah.

Mike (33:08.348)
Correct.

Geoff (33:12.482)
how we're looking to be able to service this. And there's so many levers. So, and it's great for commerciality with the team as well. I think sort of exposing more of the team to that as well. And, you know, just seeing how these deals get done is a very powerful thing. And yeah, get in the big brains in the room basically.

Mike (33:20.001)
Yep.

Mike (33:30.424)
Yep, which is probably big brains outside of, definitely outside of you and me, Jeff, which has kept people around us. We merely facilitate the discussions.

Geoff (33:36.038)
Jogger. Piss out.

Yeah, there's no big brain here. I need a lot of help.

Mike (33:43.244)
Nor on my end either. So in summary, Jeff, it's been a great conversation. Thanks for joining me today. Just kind of like what would be your kind of top two or three takeaways for someone listening, if they're an agency leader and they're growing their business, what would you say from this conversation with your ton of couple of things that you think they should take away?

Geoff (33:45.134)
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Geoff (34:03.21)
Yeah, I think there's a lot of the tangibles we've spoken about. I think one of the one of the other things I'll sort of add into it is I think there's just like I said, it's a very creative process. Sort of buying and selling is really creative. I think there's something in that you can really relish. I think people sort of often look at it as a bit of a scary thing, but it's, it's actually a wonderful opportunity to get something off the ground on a brilliant front foot. Um, and I think, yeah, the only other thing, the big one I said is, you know, as we've just discussed is, you know, how can you possibly negotiate if you don't know what's going to.

Mike (34:23.568)
Completely agree.

Geoff (34:32.726)
help you and if you don't know what's going to help the client. So I think early upfront conversations, you know, to your point preparation on, on the bar on the sell side for sure. And then just early kind of, you know, get, get into grips with what, what are they trying to achieve on the buy side and, and because the answers in the middle of those two things somewhere. So

Mike (34:33.797)
Yeah.

Mike (34:51.852)
It is. And if actually, I was talking to someone actually, just before Christmas, about alignment of interests on that point, which is if upfront, you get things on the table really upfront, and if you're completely misaligned and there's no overlap, then you're like, it's not gonna work for either of us. Yeah, exactly. That's okay. At least we found out early.

Geoff (35:15.996)
Probably not worth our time, yeah.

Geoff (35:21.666)
Yeah, yeah, there's no sort of sunk cost into that.

Mike (35:24.624)
Correct. Jeff, it's been amazing. Thank you. Whereabouts can people find out more about you?

Geoff (35:31.063)
So, buildvisible.com, probably the best place to find out about us. I'm reasonably active on LinkedIn, so feel free to drop me a DM if anyone wants to pick up anything and discuss further. Always happy to and always reply.

Mike (35:43.708)
Brilliant, very good. And is there anywhere they can watch you play rugby, Geoff? Is it online anywhere? Ha ha.

Geoff (35:47.774)
Not anymore, thankfully. No, no, that's, I think for everyone's benefit, I've sacked it off in 2019. So I've been a few, a few years retired now. So I'm kind of I've been put out to pasture. So yeah.

Mike (36:00.952)
Very good. I'm sure you'll still enjoy and watch the game then.

Geoff (36:05.546)
I prefer watching it with a beer now, yeah, much better. Much better, no one tried to hurt me. Nice one, thanks for having so much Mike. I appreciate it.

Mike (36:07.192)
Exactly. Jeff, thanks ever so much. Yeah, precisely. All right, thanks, Jeff. Let me just stop the recording. Make sure that both sides...