Thriving in the B2B World Through Powerful Referral Expertise with Tom Poynter

00:00 - Tom (Guest)
We all know the challenges of pitching, resulting in distraction from core business. The significant investment required, was it? Less than 20% of the work hits the market from a pitch to going live, so we very rarely pitch for new work. We will look at pitches but they're once to twice a year maximum because the referral vehicle really does convert for us.

00:22 - 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. Tom, thanks ever so much for joining me on Higgle, the B2B Sales Club podcast.

00:50 - Tom (Guest)
Afternoon, mike, pleasure to be here Straight back from holiday and straight into your podcast. Can't beat that.

00:55 - Mike (Host)
Perfect. Well, you'll be nice and fresh, very relaxed From having come back. Very relaxed, exactly which is what it should be. Do you want to just introduce yourself? Who are you, what do you do? And then something unusual about yourself, gosh.

01:09 - Tom (Guest)
I'll save the hard question till the end. Exactly. Well, I've worked extensively in the agency sector, I guess, learning most of my craft through client service and client relationships, and then I've taken leadership roles in agencies like Club Assist, digitas, iris Worldwide and Salesforce All a complete mix, really, of creative digital advertising businesses. I now have a brilliant job I'm the managing director of a brand and comms agency called Kiel, and I'm sure we'll come on to it shortly but we essentially work with global B2B brands specifically, and we are focusing on the engineering, manufacturing, infrastructure and professional services sectors, and we predominantly help those organizations reposition, refresh tired brands or sub-brands, create new brands. At the heart of what we do really is developing brand ideas that give those organizations a competitive edge and advantage, gives them the platform to hire the best talent and ultimately drive value creation over the long term. So that's kind of our marketplace, if you like.

02:15
Brilliant, and something unusual about yourself. Yeah, I was going to try and swerve that one, but I see you picked up on it. Oh, no, no, I've come back. Well, I was thinking about that on the way down to this room. I mean, I guess my first foray into home delivery sales, pre-deliveroo.

02:32
I was age 14, but I think I told them I was 16 to get the job, but I was a just hold your breath. I was a clean easy agent to a sleepy village where I lived in the West Country. Brilliant easy agent to a sleepy village where I lived in the West country, and I would essentially door drop these catalogs to the retired demographic of my local village, pay the orders the following week and then a week after that I would distribute ironing boards and cleaning products and household goods to the old ladies in the village and it could have been quite lucrative but I missed out on a lot of sales because literally every customer would invite you in for tea and cake.

03:08
So I probably got through about three or four houses rather than 30 or 40 houses on a round.

03:15 - Mike (Host)
Very good. Well, I certainly haven't had that before, so that's again. I always like something unusual.

03:20 - Tom (Guest)
I don't even know if the brand's clean as this.

03:22 - Mike (Host)
Let's get some questions Clean, easy. I don't know, actually I'm not sure. Why is discipline, specialization and sector focus so critical for success for agencies, especially now, I would say, as it's getting harder and harder to differentiate and be distinctive?

03:39 - Tom (Guest)
I mean, look, we're all seeking growth. And you say, why is it important for agencies? It was very important for Kiel and we made this switch about five years ago. I mean, we all get caught up in the dynamics of the market, of agency market. It's fluid, highly competitive and we all know that marketing buyers have got so much choice. I think some stats I saw we've got 25,000 agencies in the UK and that number's doubled in the last 10 years. So yeah, it is highly competitive.

04:07
So all those words you've mentioned about distinctiveness and differentiation are massively important. I don't know if you saw Robin Bond's recent book launch about creating a market of one. There's some great stuff in there and everyone should go and have a read of that. It's about having that clear proposition, striving for differentiation in market rather than feeling like you're sort of stuck in the sea of sameness in an oversupplied market. And I would definitely agree with Robin's provocations and we've done some work together with Robin as well in the past. But I almost take it even further and I think you've got to ensure as an agency, if you're striving for high growth, you are specialist or expert in at least one thing. You know if you're an indie agency or small to midsize agency. You've got to be known for something to help differentiate and drive value. Otherwise who wants to be a generalist? There's no space for generalism in our creative sector, definitely.

05:03 - Mike (Host)
And I think I mean I've been banging the same drum for the last like kind of five well, probably more years than that, especially as a buyer. The last like 10, 20 years is that from a buyer's perspective, the idea that I'm going to buy generalist marketing services from a niche independent agency is ludicrous. You just never do it. The only times we bought more general services was from very, very large service-based organizations. If you're buying IT services and you're buying them from IBM, you've got coverage and you've got depth and you've got lower risk. But if I'm buying specialist services from a marketing services company, I need to see deep sector focus. You need to see deep sector focus. You need to know my sector better than I know my sector. Yeah, real expertise solving a problem.

05:50 - Tom (Guest)
You have to solve that problem 10 times before and prove to me that you've solved it 10 times before and done it better than we've done it and I think you know the accelerated adoption of AI and everyone's obviously talking about it, but the commoditized end of what we have historically produced and delivered. We don't need humans to do that anymore, so we've got to find those deep expertise. As you say, we're already sort of second-guessing whether a client or a customer is going to need us. We know the answers before the brief's even written. It says that higher value, more consultative service is where we have to operate to drive the growth, and that's the decision we took in 2020, you know, to become an expert in B2B with an absolute focus on engineering, manufacturing and infrastructure organizations.

06:35
And whilst to some that might sound quite narrow or quite niched, I should say it's enormous. You know you've got, on the one hand, data centers, you've got cabling and infrastructure, you've got rail, road and travel, you've got construction engineering. It's just an enormous portfolio for us to penetrate with deep experience. It means that we know the codes of the category, you know. We know how to influence the board of these organizations on key brand decisions. Some of our clients are engineering companies. You know. Nine know how to influence the board of these organizations on key brand decisions. Some of our clients are engineering companies. You know nine-tenths of the organization will be engineers. They're marketing cynics.

07:13 - Mike (Host)
So you've got to go in and convince the boards that this investment is going to create value for the organization and, having come through those businesses, I mean I was an engineer, so I was an engineer for well over half my career and people that led those businesses had been engineers. If often the head of R&D would migrate to becoming the MD and the CEO, why? Because you need to have an understanding of that deep technical discipline, the problems that you're solving and products that you're building. And, yes, we're very rational and we tend to be very cynical of marketing.

07:47 - Tom (Guest)
I completely agree, and a lot of our work is really in the art of persuasion. We are persuading the C-suite and the board in general that getting behind this idea, this brand idea, is going to unlock value, drive growth, hire the best talent in the category, drive efficiencies in the local markets, et cetera, et cetera. And if I'm honest, I mean I've strived for value pricing for years.

08:15
Yeah, it's difficult right, there's no question. I think the adoption of AI is going to hopefully open up and assist that. But being expert focused on business outcomes in the B2B category enables me to get much closer to value pricing, and it brings a smile to my face. It's real reward for the craft and effort that still goes in.

08:36 - Mike (Host)
Yeah, and I think if you look at engineering companies specifically, you know technology engineering companies. If you look at your, why are they cynical? Well, look at who they're selling to. You know if they're selling into big, you know it's business to business. They're selling into big corporates. They're selling into technical buyers. If your marketing doesn't resonate with those technical buyers then it's not just a waste of time, it's an utter waste of investment. So it takes a certain skill and understanding to get behind that B2B engineering type sale, which obviously you've done very successfully.

09:10 - Tom (Guest)
Yeah, I couldn't agree more, I think, also why we're thrilled at the switch we made. And, of course, there's a space to B2C and lots of great agencies deliver great work in the consumer space, but we've doubled down on B2B and there's just less agencies hunting around for that kind of work. You know it has a legacy around it being slightly less creative, slightly less interesting, which is such a. It's a very legacy view. I think If you look at interbrands top 100 brands, right If you look at interbrands top 100 brands right In the top 20, you've got SAP, ibm, apple, oracle, cisco, adobe, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera they are either entire B2B businesses or a huge proportion of their business is in B2B.

09:57
And even if, whilst we're not targeting those kind of organizations because we just wouldn't find the cut through in the time that we're looking for to generate the work, if you look at the SME level, there are some fantastic and fascinating businesses at that SME level that need strategic support and creative craft and I think finally seeing it can I think it was in 2022, they finally launched a specific award category for B2B entries, finally launched a specific award category for B2B entries. It's getting recognized All of the richness of B2C emotional storytelling system. One thinking is absolutely required in B2B as well, so it shouldn't really be seen as sort of two separate worlds, that you're either one or the other. But we've decided to really focus on B2B the last five years.

10:40 - Mike (Host)
Brilliant. Well, that takes us nice on to the next question, which is in terms of how you gain business. So how do you attract new business? Because obviously I mean, if I make some really, really crude assumptions, in most agencies that I've seen, talked to, worked with, then 80% of their revenue kind of comes with them into the next year. If you're doing a great job and you're retaining your clients and delivering outstanding work for them, there should be a very high retention rate. So that leaves 20% of your revenue in a year roughly from net new. So how do you find?

11:10
All agencies have the same problem If you don't acquire net new logos, eventually you will die, because eventually you will lose clients, naturally, and therefore eventually you'll be out of business. So how do you acquire net new business? And every agency owner that I've ever talked to still wants to solve that problem with a silver bullet that doesn't exist. So your approach is around referrals, which makes perfect sense, and I think you said something like 80% of your business comes from referrals. So what's the secret to making that such a hugely effective new business strategy? Because everyone talks about it. It's, in my experience, very difficult to do at any scale.

11:54 - Tom (Guest)
I mean, look, we do many things in thought leadership, we do our own outreach, but I think it's about the ratio where you put the investment and the time and our investment time. As you've mentioned, that intro there is in client referrals. I mean, we all know the challenges of pitching resulting in distraction from core business, the significant investment required was it? Less than 20% of the work hits the market from a pitch to going live. So we very rarely pitch for new work. We will look at pitches, but they're once to twice a year maximum, because the referral vehicle really does convert for us. I think, first and foremost, to sort of get your head around it, you've got to think of every client as a potential ambassador of the agency, not just a project relationship. So we actively create moments where those clients can shine, whether that's through shared thought leadership, the celebration and the publicizing of their internal impact, of the work supporting them in their career progressions, whether making a switch or at trade. We join their relevant forums online. So we're kind of offering value without agenda and I think what that creates then is we're not seen as a sort of agency that's always got its bit between the teeth about sales, and I think when a client is looking great because of us, they are genuinely excited to tell others they don't see it as a. I've got to keep this hidden, they're just my agency. I think that's how advocacy becomes self-sustaining.

13:31
So, yeah, we'll go into 2026 planning shortly. We start with clients. You know I will be looking at the ratios of net revenue, what's carrying over, what's the gap we need to fill. But I always go into that process with real optimism because I know that we will get, on average, three to five years worth of sort of tenancy of the work with those clients. We're starting with the navigation of the brand. It's highly strategic, it's highly consultative, before it even hits a creative process. And then, once you've done then the identity positioning visual and verbal identity, et cetera, et cetera then we're into comms. So we get typically a good runway of work.

14:14
And so for me, yes, of course I'm obsessed about pipeline, but I'm not sat here fretting every day about why isn't it bigger at all, because actually I'm more interested in the relationships that we're nurturing and how we're using our clients to build our network. So we're being introduced and that's where we put the most of our time, because, as I say, and you'll notice, with other agencies you have so much capacity to spend in new business and marketing-led new business. We haven't got a team of 10 people here driving it. It's a very slim team. So that's really our approach really, and whether those clients are moving organizations or whether they're just speaking positively about us internally to other divisions and verticals, so we get lots of horizontal growth. It's just where we put our focus and time in order to drive the growth.

15:04 - Mike (Host)
I mean, I worked with a company called Resignal a guy called Kevin Gibbons who was the founder and CEO of that agency and we ended up with a mantra it was really simple which was excellence, retention and growth, and the basis for that was if you deliver excellent work, then you tend to retain your clients. And if you, for that was if you deliver excellent work, then you tend to retain your clients. And if you retain your clients because you've done excellent work and you've helped them hit their targets, they tend to speak well of you when they talk to their other colleagues in other businesses. And it's worked really well. It's worked exceptionally well for the reasons you've just outlined as well, tom, is that you do brilliant work and people are bound to say good things about you. If you do average work, then you won't retain them and they won't speak well of you, and you'll spend all your time chasing new business, and we know that that is a pit of money.

15:59 - Tom (Guest)
Yeah, there's too many variables to ensure that you don't win in that space. I think when you've got that position of trust, as you say, you're delivering high value services, where you're really thinking with your customers about solutions and they generally bring you into the sort of kitchen with them and you're seeing that kind of trusted partner level, they have no problem in receiving a message from me or my team about look, we're wanting to target this company over here. They work in digital infrastructure and data centers. We can see that you know three people in there. We give them a crud sheet, we explain why we're doing this and the client's like. Of course I will. I'd be delighted to. So it's just for me it's a bit of a no-brainer, right. That's where I need to put my time and make sure I protect time, that we're nurturing those conversations because they will come good.

16:51 - Mike (Host)
They will exactly. I mean, I think, instantly. We've come back to where I started my kind of services career. Post-engineering was in firms like KPMG and you were taught as consultants how to build client relationships at the most senior level and how to maintain those relationships, and why that was so important and why you became the trusted advisor and I think we're going back to being the trusted advisor. Why? Because content now content proliferation, as we all know, with AI it's easier and it all looks the same. So what's the client going to do? Yes, they're going to use AI, of course they are, but eventually they're going to want to talk to someone and go. What do you think, tom? What's your view In my position? I've got these options. What do you think are the right options for us? They want to talk to someone who's got some insight and who they trust.

17:48 - Tom (Guest)
And I think also, when you're expert in a field and you're clear on who you're targeting and you've got your clients as your advocates, then the next thing for me is that how we show up through our own thought leadership content, our case studies, some of the outreach that we do. How we turn up through our own thought leadership content, our case studies, some of the outreach that we do, how we'd sign up at key events. So anyone who then comes to our digital touch points to work out who are these Kiel guys. It all ladders up to our belief as an agency. We've got great case studies, we've got great thought leadership and those new prospects that have been referred in go right. I'm really glad that I got that call from my friend who works in the other company down the road and they're trying to do a bit of matchmaking with these guys called keel because they look great. That's the holy grail.

18:34 - Mike (Host)
I guess that we're looking for it is definitely the last. Can I like point how do you make an agency stand out in that b2b arena? So so what makes you I mean I'm saying differentiated, but I was listening to a great podcast of the day about actually what you need to be is distinctive, because often you can't be truly differentiated and unique. It's simply not possible in a lot of services, businesses. So how do you become distinctive in that kind of B2B arena? What do you think makes you stand out, as you've just articulated you do? What are some of the core components of that?

19:13 - Tom (Guest)
Well, I think it's like back to where this conversation started. I'm not here to plug Robin's book, but I think making sure your positioning is really, really clear and is landing with impact that's like table stakes. Else, or your offering is not clear or your beliefs are not cutting through. And you've obviously got some work to do on yourself. And we did that on ourselves, in fact, just short of two years ago. So five years ago we chose to be experts in B2B, focusing on a certain portfolio of organizations Through that sort of evolution. We then chose halfway through to just look at our positioning and making sure it was being tweaked and pointed, and so those organizations really understood what we were brilliant at, what we believed in and why we should have a partnership. And I think if you buy into that point that being expert is one of the critical components to growth then your positioning and belief needs to land with with such impact. To unlock that and the belief that we have at Kiel that we've worked on, is that that brand idea can literally change anything within an SME, from unlocking that sort of long-term value that shareholders or the board are looking for, attracting the best talent. There's lots of work going through now on EVP in this kind of hybrid working model where the brand has to do so much of a heavy lifting job to connect with its talent and to retain and succession plan, also in the B2B world. Inherently they are complicated or complex. Products and service portfolio in sales. So the brand idea allows the sales force to land their products and services with their customers with real impact. So that's the positioning that we've developed over the last few years. You're absolutely right. There's no one in our marketplace that can claim that they are unique. So it is about distinctiveness and differentiation.

21:15
I guess the second thing that we did a few years ago is we put, we invested by putting brand and communications together, working in unison. So it's not unique to us either, but there aren't many brand agencies who can execute really, really well in comms as well as navigating the brand and crafting the brand. So essentially, when we are creating the brand foundations with positioning, values, character, visual, verbal identities, et cetera, we're already thinking at that point how does all this pull through to communications? What are the brand fundamentals that need to come through that maybe a different ad agency wouldn't be picking up, or a comms agency from where the brand's been orientated?

21:58
And I think there are some key benefits to our clients by having that service offer. The first is efficiency, and of course AI will make that even more efficient, but in terms of the manual effort in brand into comms, it is more efficient in doing it that way. It also allows the client and us, and maybe agencies around the world for the global organizations that we're servicing, to have a greater understanding of the brand when they're executing comms in local market. So that just naturally results in much higher value, high impact, creative work at both the global and local market level. And that's the feedback we get from our 360s and our customer surveys that we deliver as well. So I think that sort of brand and comms piece under the expertise of B2B in a certain nuanced category is where we're kind of winning right now.

22:51
And then the last thing really for standout, which I'm guessing most agencies are doing, is just the ongoing commitment to fame, building free thought leadership, celebrating great work, showing up at trade events. I mean we go to a number of customer trade events at the Excel, at the NEC, in other European markets and global markets. I mean those brands are stuck in the sea of same. As you walk those big halls. Right, everyone looks and says the same, so for us that's a huge opportunity. We go to the stands, we go and meet these people at events and we get their details and then we have ongoing conversations and again, we find it's another interesting and high quality way into having a further conversation with prospect customers.

23:34 - Mike (Host)
And I guess also if you were purely doing brand work. Once the brand development has been done, it really is a project. It has a start point, it has an end point, there are deliverables in between. Well, where do you go next? I suppose by having the additional communication services. That gives you a meaningful ongoing relationship with a client.

23:54 - Tom (Guest)
Completely. There's a client of ours, when they did a brand refresh many years ago, called it. It was a hit and run. They did all the work, they went live and nothing else happened. The work can't stop there. I mean these companies in engineering, construction, manufacturing and infrastructure. They are delivering amazing projects that are impacting society in such a positive way. So there's an enormous richness in the stories that need to be told. So case studies can't be a static image, 300 words on a webpage and not much else. You've got to tell these stories in such a rich way and that's what these B2B buyers are seeking out now as they're building their lists of potential suppliers for these projects. So for us it's almost the kind of start point. Once the brand refresh has gone live, we have a huge amount of work to then focus on and deliver, from rich storytelling all the way through to much lower funnel kind of lead gen demand, gen content and activation for them.

25:02 - Mike (Host)
And the fact is, yeah, also, as we've all observed in the last, I guess, probably three to five years, there's been a very definite shift away from written content towards video-based content and audio content, and I guess that again is part of what you do is that you're turning, you know, you're building customer stories about them and their customers using different media formats.

25:23 - Tom (Guest)
Absolutely. We all know, for those of us that work in B2B, the buying journey has changed. There are more touch points needed in getting to long and short lists of vendors. It's taking longer. It's taking longer than it ever did, absolutely. And there are many more stakeholders than ever before to convince through the buying shortlist of vendors. It's taking longer. It's taking longer than it ever did and there are many more stakeholders than ever before to convince through the buying process that that is the right vendor to go for. So the brand and how it presents itself, and then the content underpins it all, is critical in nudging all of those audiences into selecting our clients as the preferred vendor of choice for those large-scale global projects.

26:00 - Mike (Host)
Perfect. So the last minute or so, tom, just kind of drawing it together. So again, there's always the unrehearsed bit. This is the unrehearsed bit. The unrehearsed bit, basically, is just draw together our conversation. If you were a B2B agency out there and you were like 30, 40 people and times are tough, and you've got some B2B agency out there and you were like 30, 40 people and times are tough and you've got some B2B clients but you're not fully vested in B2B and you're going to go on that kind of journey, what would you advise them to do? If you were sat with the CEO over a coffee and they were saying Tom, what are the three things I should mainly focus on to tighten up where we're going, what would you say?

26:35 - Tom (Guest)
Didn't brief him on that question beforehand? To tighten up where we're going.

26:37 - Mike (Host)
What would you say? Didn't brief him on that question beforehand, I didn't. That's the beauty of it, tom. It's not a setup, it's just like we're having a chat in a coffee shop. It's like you know what would you be saying to them? Because you've been on that journey a few times?

26:50 - Tom (Guest)
Yeah, of course. So I firstly would. I'd look at our client base, I'd do some mapping. You know you could choose a BCG quadrant or some other way of scoring right Brand fit, revenue, attractiveness, potential being those advocates for referrals in the future. So there's many lenses you could sort of cut it through or see it through. But I would score those clients in. Which ones are we investing in? Which ones are going to give us the best work? Which ones are we not going to make the journey with? And then that will just alter the effort, resource and investment we make in those customers.

27:26 - Mike (Host)
Especially if you've got like 30 clients and you instinctively know it's a bit fragmented and we're not serving all of them as well as we should and we need to focus on other ones. Where should we focus our efforts?

27:40 - Tom (Guest)
And it'd be the 80-20, won't it? So there's 80% of that revenue is coming from 20% of those 30 clients. So I think, obsession around the client base and who's fit for the journey.

27:51 - Mike (Host)
So client mapping number one, I think I'd absolutely concur, definitely.

27:54 - Tom (Guest)
And again it is table stakes. But do we have a clear position and proposition in market? Why should those referred contacts believe us and buy into what we're saying and why is it relevant to them If you haven't done your own work on your own self? That, for me, is absolutely critical. Once that's clear, then I think it is about your own content, so using your own marketing to drive sales. If you don't take the referral strategy that we have I mean, we still obviously produce content, we have to but if you're in that space where at the moment you're not really in the market with an opinion, you haven't got much thought leadership going, you're not hosting online sort of forums and discussions around topics that are of interest or relevant to your targets, then I think again you have to be careful, because if you've got scarce resource in sales and marketing within the agency, there's only so much that one can do, so you've just got to back the right horses, really. But I think it's client centricity, clarity on market positioning, content generation that then delivers that with impact.

28:55 - Mike (Host)
Yeah, and the only thing I'd add on the end because I asked it for three and you gave me three, so I'll put a fourth one in, because that's part of the fun would be you wrap all that together with patience. If you haven't got a strong balance sheet as a business, it's very difficult to make that journey, because it takes time. Yeah, it's a very good point. You've got to have some surplus cash to invest.

29:16 - Tom (Guest)
Which is why I think the referral piece needs investment. It does take time, you're absolutely right, because you're asking a customer to speak to someone who doesn't know the agency at all. Then there's a sort of meeting and chemistry period of time that goes on listening workshops, understanding business opportunities and problems that a brand can solve and then we're typically into the work. That could be a year process.

29:42 - Mike (Host)
We know all the research tells us that well over 90% of prospects are not in the market to buy in B2B at the time that you happen to come across their radar. So you've got to find a way of consistently showing up so when they are in the mode to buy, that you're at least front of mind.

30:03 - Tom (Guest)
Yeah, it's the 595 rule, right. So yeah, it's around 95% of buyers aren't in market, right then. So, absolutely, the content, the nudging, the connections you have are critical over the long term. And I think back to your opening point in the question. You've got to somehow convince the CEO that patience is required, because he is probably looking at short-term results as well as being patient on the long term.

30:31 - Mike (Host)
Yeah, exactly Tom, it's been amazing. Thank you ever so much for joining me. Lovely to see you again.

30:36 - Tom (Guest)
Thanks for inviting me on.

30:37 - Mike (Host)
No, I really enjoyed it, tom. It's been great and, in fact, I find the podcast is a great way. I mean, we met probably two or three years ago. You know it's a great way of reconnecting, of you know, sharing stories and maintaining a relationship. So thank you for agreeing to join me, tom. Where can people find out more about you? Our website is keel-londoncom.

30:57 - Tom (Guest)
I've probably got a horrendous LinkedIn URL I won't share here, but I'm a pointer with a Y, not an I.

31:04 - Mike (Host)
You are. You're easy to find on LinkedIn. Definitely, tom, thank you. Thanks, mike, take care. 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.