Strategic Partnerships and Success in the Third Sector with Jenny Kitchen

00:00 - Jenny (Guest)
We pull our hair out and we think, why the hell did we go for that? We know that it didn't take our qualification score and we've got a criteria. But sometimes you just do it and then you lose, and then you beat yourself up because it should have gone into the unqualified pot.

00:18 - Mike (Host)
My name's Mike Lander and you're listening to Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast, where we bring you actionable insights about sales, rfps, negotiations and difficult procurement discussions from sales leaders, brand leaders and procurement leaders. Please subscribe to get updates when new episodes are released. Jenny, thanks ever so much for joining me on Higgle, the B2B sales club podcast.

00:46 - Jenny (Guest)
Thank you for having me, Mike.

00:49 - Mike (Host)
So I met you through Emma, is that right? Emma Thwaite.

00:52 - Jenny (Guest)
Absolutely Great, great contact to know.

00:55 - Mike (Host)
Oh, she's brilliant. I've had a number of amazing guests through Emma. She's just a lovely human who does amazing work. So, yeah, so I'm very grateful for that. So, without further ado, who are you, what do you do and something unusual about yourself.

01:08 - Jenny (Guest)
So my name is Jenny Kitchen. I'm the CEO of YoYo Design. We're a brand and digital agency focusing on Umbroco, which is a NET CMS, and digital partnerships, digital strategy, websites, microsites, tools. We're very much known for our creativity. Business was started by two creative directors, so it's very much been at the heart of the agency from day one. In terms of something unusual about me, I have a huge cultural void in the early 90s because I spent time. I spent six years in rural France and I, with my parents, I went to a local primary school there speaking French. Incredibly simple life, wonderful, wonderful experience. But it's now becoming quite apparent that I've missed out on so much in terms of movies, tv programs, dance music, movies, tv programs, dance music. So I'm now, with my kids, going back and like filling the void.

02:16 - Mike (Host)
I think that's great. I think that's brilliant.

02:18 - Jenny (Guest)
You're jointly exploring an era in time where none of you have any context?

02:21 - Mike (Host)
Exactly, brilliant, fantastic. There's two sections to this kind of recording one around business growth strategy and one around negotiation, so let's just get into first of all. Can you talk us through the journey whereby about half of your fee income roughly is public third sector and half is from private sector? Can you just talk through that journey and why that was intentional rather than accidental? Or maybe it was accidental, I don't know.

02:48 - Jenny (Guest)
It was accidental at first. So in the early days then we were, to be frank, taking anything that we could get, so sector agnostic very much. If someone wanted to work with us and the price was right, then we would work with them, and I think that's a similar journey to most agencies. But then around 10 years ago we won an incredible opportunity with the RNLI. We became their lead digital agency. We designed and built their website using Sitecore and then we did a number of microsites and tools, an incredible amount of kind of different work with them over a six, seven year period, and that really put us on the map in the third sector. So RNLI is still held up even to this day as sort of one of the best websites and digital presence in the sector. So a lot of briefs that we receive then they reference RNLI's work.

03:42
Of course that was a fantastic kind of opportunity for us.

03:45
Did we seek out the third sector?

03:47
No, but obviously with that opportunity we then had some key marketing strategies to grow within that sector, whether it was thought leadership events, that we ran for the charity sector for many years actually, even now we still do some and all of that meant that we grew that sector really well and every business advisor, every you know business book, will always tell you to niche, and so for us that felt like a really good move to go deep within that sector, but from the other side, which is bringing joy to the team and excitement and interest, but also, I guess, exercising that creative muscle we actually didn't want to niche, because when you niche you then start to roll the same types of things out over and over again, and we didn't want that, especially when it comes to kind of creativity.

04:43
And so we very purposefully sought out other opportunities within other sectors. We didn't have any other sectors that we thought, yes, travel or yes, e-commerce for instance, but we kept an open mind and through word of mouth then we continue to build up other sort of sectors over the years. And then through Umbraco, which is our content management of choice it's a Microsoftnet platform so very highly regarded, and through that then we have also got lots of opportunities within sort of different businesses.

05:18 - Mike (Host)
Do Umbraco? Do they bring you leads as a channel partner? Do they also feed the channel?

05:24 - Jenny (Guest)
It depends on the level that you're at. So for us we've been working with them for a number of years and so we have spoke at conferences, we've won awards and so naturally then leads and our awareness is quite high within that community. But the sort of further up you go in terms of the partnership level, then the more opportunities that they bring you or the more opportunities that they give you to put blogs and case studies on their websites or make introductions or come with you to the pitch itself. So it depends on the tier. And we're Ambrocker Gold Partners because we've got certified developers in-house and we've got sort of various other kind of activities.

06:03 - Mike (Host)
This is very intentional. It's a very intentional strategy. You've chosen a technology partner not exclusively, but you do a lot of work with them and you've moved up the ladder and that has generated good, strong business growth for you.

06:26 - Jenny (Guest)
Absolutely. And I think for us, we can confidently say that we've been working with it for 15 years now and you know, we've got the case studies, we've got the certification, we've got the awards, we've built that credibility within that. So, yes, intentional strategy.

06:35 - Mike (Host)
Brilliant, and I ask it because we had a guy called John Goffrey from Red Badger the other week and if you know John, john's a brilliant guy to know. I know John and I know Kane very well and they were talking the same thing about. Basically, you work with technology partners and when you get to a certain level with that partner, then you start to do joint pitches and it feeds both of your business growth engine. So, yeah, it's a clever strategy. Talk to me about B Corp. How does that play into what you do?

07:01 - Jenny (Guest)
So we became a B Corp about five, five and a half years ago. We actually got accredited, I think March 2020, which was an interesting time in the world, and at that time, it was very much a sort of a personal quest. It was something that I've held very, very deeply. I wanted to rethink what business is in the world and really put that people and the planet within our sort of business DNA. So it was a personal quest, but it was also obviously over. Through time. We've seen that using B Corp as a asset in the sort of sales and pitching process has worked very well. I would say, though, that, over the years, as more agencies have figured this out and figured out the strategy we used to lead with B Corp, and now it's very much a secondary piece and we talk more about what it means and how it applies. As opposed to in the past, it was just we're a B Corp, and everyone was really impressed by that.

08:05 - Mike (Host)
Exactly.

08:06 - Jenny (Guest)
So it has kind of it has changed over the years. But we have got opportunities in America because of B Corp. We've got opportunities in different sectors because of B Corp and we designed and built the B Corp website and they're one of our clients and so that also cements us. That's handy, yeah, very handy. That also cements us within that community.

08:31 - Mike (Host)
Brilliant. Really, that's fantastic, and I think certain clients I can see, having been a buyer, it would be a necessary. Part of the pitch is that if you're not B Corp, you just can't enter the race.

08:41 - Jenny (Guest)
Well, that's exactly it. It's almost, it's a shorthand. Instead of having to answer just a ton of different questions, then they know that B Corp has already done that for them.

08:52
So it is still incredibly valuable and I just believe it's the right thing. And for me, I actually welcome other agencies to be part of the B Corp community and I've helped many agencies over the years dozens in fact help other agencies get their B Corp status Because ultimately the goal of B Corp is to make B Corp redundant so that it becomes part of doing business.

09:15 - Mike (Host)
Part of the DNA of any business.

09:17 - Jenny (Guest)
Absolutely so yeah, more B Corp.

09:20 - Mike (Host)
Definitely so. How does running your own charity Amplify help Yo-Yo as well? So there's a thread here, b Corp charity. You working in the third sector genuinely really interested about the charity that you run. I've got my own charity as well. I think they're really valuable for all sorts of reasons. How does running your own charity help Yo-Yo?

09:40 - Jenny (Guest)
For us. Then I created a charity. It's a charity called Amplify. We created it about two years ago, two and a half years ago maybe, and it's all around helping other businesses to reduce their carbon emissions Right then deliver a series of activities, whether it's events, film screenings, training, measurement plans, et cetera, so really helping the business community to reduce their carbon.

10:11
And we started it or I started it very much as a side project outside of yo-yo, but obviously over the sort of like, over the sort of months and years of sort of running it. Then I realized how much it helps us as yo-yo to run that, because a lot of the team have been involved in creating the brand and creating the website, in delivering events, all of that kind of stuff. But it helps us to then really understand the challenges that our clients face and some of the terminology, some of the challenges of lobbying, fundraising, grant applications and also doing more with less and having limited budgets and having to be resourceful and having to figure out new, innovative ways to make yourself heard when you don't have large budgets. So all of those all of that learning and kind of, you know, figuring it out, it really then helps Yo-Yo and really helps the people within it.

11:10 - Mike (Host)
I think as a case study again, I can see with certain clients it's a story, it's a story with purpose. That's a real passion of you and the agency and for certain clients as a story to tell, that's a real passion of you and the agency and for certain clients as a story to tell, that's really compelling absolutely, and it's the I guess for us it's also the sort of evolution of B Corp for us. Yes, so we became a very natural evolution exactly so.

11:36 - Jenny (Guest)
We became a B Corp, we looked at our own business, we got our own kind of affairs in order, and then I went through a period of helping other agencies become B Corp and then the next step after that was creating Amplify.

11:49 - Mike (Host)
Brilliant. Just out of interest, so you may choose not to answer this question, but just interested broadly I'm not looking for financial numbers at all Do you track your conversion rate on opportunities? So in terms of, like you know, if you get 20 opportunities in a year, is your conversion rate on those pre-qualified opportunities 30%, 40%, 50%? Have you got an indication of what that broadly is? Because there's something here which I think, if you qualify the right clients in my hypothesis is your conversion rate would be higher.

12:28 - Jenny (Guest)
Just seeing if it's true. So yes, it is true, but I think we haven't to date tracked conversion rates in a true sense, because we have tracked qualified and unqualified leads. Ah, okay, in that, yeah, yeah, yeah, only fairly. You know, over the last sort of like year or two have we said well, that's ridiculous because if you qualify it out, that shouldn't count as part of your conversion rate.

12:49 - Mike (Host)
Win loss.

12:50 - Jenny (Guest)
Exactly, and when we're really tight on that qualification score because we've lost out on opportunities at the beginning of this year, and we pull our hair out and we think why the hell did we go for that? We know that it didn't take our qualification score and we've got a criteria, we've got checklists, but sometimes you just do it and then you lose and then you beat yourself up because it should have gone into the unqualified pot.

13:17 - Mike (Host)
It should and probably at that time your pipeline wasn't as strong as it should be and you sat there going. We've got wages to pay and if we win this, it's great work for the client and we'll deliver an excellent outcome and it will pay the overheads. And we get tempted and it's always a mistake.

13:36 - Jenny (Guest)
Absolutely. I could not agree more, knowing the hours of time we have wasted the hundreds of hours of time.

13:46 - Mike (Host)
Average time on a pitch is about 30 hours roughly, we think, for a reasonably complex pitch. So, yeah, imagine how many of those you could have gone. I could have saved 300 person hours and not irritated the team as well, absolutely, yeah, the team as well, absolutely. Qualification is critical.

14:02 - Jenny (Guest)
And actually in our line of work then our pitch process and the sort of sales process actually tends to be more hours than that, because a lot of times when we're going in to pitch for a website then we have to have UX UI.

14:17 - Mike (Host)
You do mock-ups.

14:19 - Jenny (Guest)
We've got SEO kind of coming in and understanding that part. We've got our head of development, we've got myself. So actually, when it comes to sort of man hours, it tends to be a lot more than that.

14:32 - Mike (Host)
It's huge. And that's, I think, for anyone listening, as a practical takeaway. Qualify really hard. It will feel painful. Qualify really hard Only bid for things that you really, really believe you can win. Your win rate will go up, but you have to get more of the right things in the pipeline, otherwise you'll miss quota. But it's a really important lesson. Let's move on to negotiations. So what are the key differences negotiating contracts in the private sector versus the public sector? Just give us some insights about that.

15:04 - Jenny (Guest)
So you know everybody wants a good deal, they want good value and for a good price. So some of the kind of fundamentals don't change. But one of the things that we've noticed in the third sector is the amount of stakeholders the amount of stakeholders that are required within the pitching process, but also actually beyond the pitching process as well, when you actually get into the project delivery.

15:30 - Mike (Host)
But rightly, because it's often part public money. If it's part public funded, and it's funded by donors, the level of governance is much higher.

15:42 - Jenny (Guest)
Absolutely, and actually I've changed my view on it over the years because several years ago, going into a pitch with 15 people scrutinizing sort of your work and asking different questions that's why it takes so many man hours, because we have to have the answers to all of those questions within the hour pitch or hour and a half pitch.

16:04
So years ago it used to frustrate me sometimes kind of having that many sort of people within that pitching process. But actually now I have a different take on it because we are much more confident in delivering those pitches. But also all of those individuals in the room. You then know and understand okay, you've got legal, you've got finance, you've got procurement, it, data, marketing, fundraising, whatever all of those different kind of individuals within the room. And actually then following the pitch, the process is quite clean. In some corporate pitches not all, but some corporate pictures we've picked two, three people, great, signed off, amazing and then it's taken nine months of negotiations and questions and all in quite an inefficient way because you know different people come out the woodwork, it's all behind the scenes.

17:00 - Mike (Host)
There's, like you know, 10, 12, 15 stakeholders involved, but only three showed up at the times that you saw them. But the others are still involved and they've all got a say. That's it.

17:10
I spoke to Brent Adamson and Carl Schmitt about this. They've got a new book all about, basically, decision confidence, and what you're describing here is exactly if you've got 15 stakeholders inside a private company, you only met three and they aren't all aligned and therefore they lack confidence to make the decision. Or don't be surprised if it takes nine months or it just goes away. They haven't ghosted you, they're just not aligned.

17:35 - Jenny (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely. That's the issue that we do see a lot, whereas going through that sort of quite formal process in the third sector or sort of government and things, it really has its benefits.

17:46 - Mike (Host)
It does, but margins are different. So we know that if it's a government contract, because of the scale of buying and the value for money piece and the level of scrutiny, margins are thinner. But it's interesting work and there's more of it.

18:01 - Jenny (Guest)
Exactly exactly that and I think that's the, as I said, sort of. You know, value and price always comes into any negotiations, but within the third sector, it's very important to show that value and to show how you're going to deliver a website or whatever sort of it is, but how that relates back to the business strategy, how that relates back to the digital strategy and actually really, really emphasizing that value piece, Because a lot in our experience, a lot of the third sector gets a bad rep that they're always trying to find the cheapest deal. No, they're not.

18:33 - Mike (Host)
They're really not. They're looking for the best value Exactly, but that's completely different, and if more services companies understood that, then I think the world would be a better place. Bluntly, if you can't describe the value of what you do for a company and relate it to the price you're going to charge them, well don't be surprised if they just decide to go for a lower price because you couldn't articulate the value in the first place and you won't get selected because they can't defend their decision.

19:06 - Jenny (Guest)
That's exactly it, and helping them to defend their decision Absolutely, absolutely, key to the negotiations and making it really simple and straightforward to articulate that.

19:16 - Mike (Host)
Well, this is refreshing. Most people don't say that it's really true. Imagine in my old job in procurement I had to go and see Richard, my CFO, with a case to buy something. Well, I've got to go with a robust financial case that's got not just financials in it but all of the other benefits as well. Well, if you can't help me write that and someone else can, I'll go to them. I rarely bought the lowest price service I could find. It was very rare, but we always got great value.

19:52 - Jenny (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely, and I think what the downside I think of charities and the sort of third sector, but it happens in corporates as well is that sometimes they have a fixed budget in mind and they cannot go beyond that. And that is a real issue, though, in website delivery or digital strategy, because the reality is a lot of briefs that we receive have a one-liner to say, e-commerce functionality, for instance, or in the sort of charity sector, sort of donations, and that's just a one liner, but we have spent £2,000 on that piece of functionality for some clients, or we've spent £50,000 for some clients. The scope is so vast.

20:44 - Mike (Host)
But then you have to educate your client in the selling process and their buying process about what that means and budget implications and maybe they have to reset the RFP and go back to market again because they've not fully understood what it means and what it's going to take.

21:01 - Jenny (Guest)
Exactly, and that actually forms part of our criteria is around the digital sophistication and understanding of the clients that we're pitching to. And I'm not saying that all of our clients need to be at a certain level of digital sophistication, but they need to be open to learning. And the worst kind of situation is when I mean this stands true for life as well is when someone thinks that they know a huge amount and is not open to exploring sort of some of the limitations of that knowledge, and so that is one of the kind of alarm bells in that pitching process that really goes off for us of just that openness to we're not trying to pull one over on someone we're absolutely not but it's kind of we know what we do and we know we do it very well, but it's that case of being open to collaborating and figuring it out, figuring out scope and budget together.

22:01 - Mike (Host)
Well, you know we talked about that, about the crowd trip matrix, the top right-hand corner, which is very few suppliers can do this and it's got a big impact on our business in that top right-hand corner is where you collaborate and you jointly create things. It's tricky in the third sector because if they go too early down that route with one supplier, then they're open to challenge about why did someone else not get selected? So it is difficult. But I think having the discussions before the RFP gets released, making sure that the client's fully aware of what they're actually trying to buy, is a better way.

22:38 - Jenny (Guest)
And that's what we're finding more and more actually now and working with Emma and Bec, and has been fantastic to open doors to our potential clients and not necessarily with the project on the table, but being able to have those conversations early with them to share our knowledge, to share kind of what we've learned over the years and things like that. And then it may be that their RFP isn't going to be until 2026, 2027. But we're helping to shape those and to better educate the sector as a whole around actually what a really good RFP process is.

23:18 - Mike (Host)
So how do you bring more humanity to the negotiating table? What are your thoughts on that?

23:25 - Jenny (Guest)
I think ultimately, everyone's just trying to do a job. So it's really important to go in with that mindset and understanding what the other person is trying to do and if there's some challenges and sometimes there has been some icky challenges that have come back, but they're just trying to do their job. So taking out the emotion is really important and trying to have that sort of empathy. But I also really really emphasize on the trust element and building that trust early on through connection, but then also through not letting the other person down and making sure that sort of when you say that you're going to do something, do it, and being very open and trustworthy is really important, Definitely.

24:08 - Mike (Host)
So trust the research that I did across over 200 salespeople about. If you look at the negotiated outcomes that they get versus the characteristics that they exhibit, trust builders outperform everyone else. Building trust is a basic human trait. If you can build trust with someone, both sides get a better outcome in any negotiation. Jenny, it's been amazing Takeaways If someone was listening and they're running an agency and they're in growth, markets are tight and they're looking at the balance of sectors etc. Just in general, kind of over the growth journey you've been on. From this podcast, what are your kind of two or three takeaways?

24:51 - Jenny (Guest)
One is niching and being very, whether that's a sector, whether that's a service, whether that's a technology, it just I was skeptical and I am an absolute convert because it helps to tell your story and then it helps that conversion rate. So 100% niche. Secondly is bring humanity into the negotiation. Understand the other person, empathize, build trust, Don't underestimate those softer skills and you'll see better results?

25:24 - Mike (Host)
Definitely, Jenny. It's been amazing. Where can people find out more about you?

25:28 - Jenny (Guest)
LinkedIn Jenny Kitchen, yoyodesign Amplifytw. And my email address I can share in the notes.

25:36 - Mike (Host)
Perfect, Jenny. Thanks ever so much indeed.

25:38 - Jenny (Guest)
It's been great. Thanks so much, Mike.

25:41 - Mike (Host)
Thanks for listening to Higgle the B2B sales club podcast series with your host, mike Lander. Please subscribe so that you'll catch all the next episodes.