What Silence From Your Outbound Prospects Really Means with Dave Corlett

[00:00:00] Dave: You can have your strategy down on paper, and it can look like the best thing in a deck, but ultimately, if you're not out there living it and testing it and seeing if it's actually working, then you're not really doing anything. So if we think about strategic outbound from that perspective, where are you gonna play and how you're gonna win has to start with your proposition.
[00:00:17] Mike: My name's Mike Higgle, and you are 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. Ground leaders and procurement leaders, please subscribe to get updates when new episodes are released.
Dave, thanks ever so much for joining me on Higgle the B2B Sales Club podcast. Great to have you as a guest.
[00:00:45] Dave: Thanks, Mike. Yeah, it's really great to be here
[00:00:46] Mike: and thankfully the weather's called down recording mid August, but it was a bit of a heat wave recently in the uk, which made recording in offices quite tough if you didn't have air conditioning.
But thankfully it's cooled down a bit.
[00:00:58] Dave: Oh my goodness. Yeah. Our office is still cooling down, to be honest. I'm in our little podcast pod here. We have a podcast of our own. It's shaped by, so it's, it feels a bit funny to be on the other side of the fence on this one. Um, but I've still got the doors open here.
It's still a bit too stuffy, but yeah, it's nice to cool down a little bit. For sure
[00:01:14] Mike: it is. Exactly. So Dave, for the guests, who are you? What do you do and what's your favorite pod? What's your favorite song and why?
[00:01:22] Dave: I thought you were gonna ask me what my favorite podcast is. That would be a tricky one, to be
[00:01:24] Mike: honest.
Exactly. And then I knew what the answer would be to that
[00:01:26] Dave: exactly. So I switched Exactly. It would be Hile for sure. And I am an avid listener, by the way, which you've spoken about before. So, um, A genuine fan here. Yeah. But yeah, to answer your questions, my name's Dave Corlett. I am the growth director at a B2B creative agency called Shaped By. We're based in Bristol, but we serve global tech clients around the world. I've been doing new business now for something around 18 or 19 years or so. So it's kind of been my world for a long, long time. Wow. And I still love it. The song question again, being an avid listener, I know that your previous guests have a tough time with this one, or some of them and I No different.
So I did have to do a bit of thinking around this one, but there's a song I always come back to. It's not that old, actually, it's only a few years old. It's by a singer producer called Blood Orange. And it's a song called Saint. It always reminds me of my lovely wife. We met around a shared love of the football team, Southampton, who are called the Saints.
Ah, she's also an absolute saint. You know, she's a wonderful wife, mother. Um, she works for a charity, so does a somewhat more noble job than I do, I would say. But yeah, it just always brings me back to her and our relationship. So a nice little story there.
[00:02:31] Mike: It is. And songs have a way of bringing. I think all humans back to happy times or sad times, but certainly emotional times and it's a real connection, which is why we all listen to music and why we like talking about music.
Absolutely. And why we collect music. So let's get into the topic, Dave. So interestingly, again, you've been in BD for like 18, 19 years. I think it's really interesting talking to people that basically have it as a career. Not all people do. I think some people fall into sales, they fall out of it. I've been selling like you on and off for wow, 25, 30 years now, I guess.
And you pick up themes, don't you? Things that work. Things that don't work, and what happens as the world changes and adapts and how do you adapt with it? So let's get into the first topic, which is. Talk about, first of all, your BD principles and kind of bring them to life overall of that 19 years of experience.
What are the common principles that are everlasting?
[00:03:24] Dave: Yeah, it's a nice period of time to build those principles, isn't it? And see them in action and I guess try and live them every single day. You know, I think the world of. BD has obviously changed a lot in that time. I would say not necessarily the fundamentals, I guess it's like anything really, you know, you speak to marketers, for instance, um, who are kind of a core part of, of one of our audiences and you know, they'll say a similar thing.
Really. Anyone who's been in that game a long time would say that, you know, marketing has changed a lot, but the fundamentals haven't necessarily. And I do think it's the same to a certain extent with business development. I think obviously the way in which you take. Your business agency, whatever it is, out to market, have obviously changed quite a lot.
Audience expectations have changed a lot, but for me, the real fundamental principles haven't. I guess I'll start with what might be a slightly unusual one to some people, depending on your perspective on bd. But one thing I've tried to, this has actually grown a lot in my thinking over the years I've been doing this role and it's.
A principle that I kind of call give without asking for anything in return. And it's essentially a way of getting, you know, because I think business development is, is, is all about relationships and it always has been. And people kind of throw the, the, the phrase building relationships around quite flippantly.
I think what some of them mean is, you know, building a relationship to the point where you can get it to a sail as quickly as possible or, you know, just kind of waiting for the right moment to jump in with your sales pitch. Um, but for me it's really about, um, showing that you are on your prospect side and help and, and showing that you understand their challenges and you're able to do that in a way that, that doesn't necessarily ask for anything in, in, in return, as I say.
Um, you know, so there's a couple of ways in which we do this at Shape by, and have been doing this for a long time. Um, one of which I would say are, are, are kind of most successful in a lot of ways is, um, uh, a community of prospects that we run. Um, not just prospect. But people within the world of particularly creative leadership in tech, which is one of our core audiences, um, it's called the Changemakers community.
If you follow me or you know me, you won't have seen much about it out in the world because we keep it deliberately kind of under the radar a little bit. Um, and basically it was something that started a kind of a seed of an idea a little while ago, which was we speak to a lot of in-house creative leaders.
A lot of them are our clients and obviously sales prospects as well. They quite surprisingly, bring creative agencies. Onboard to kind of help with various different projects or kind of retained initiatives. Um, so we found that we were being hired and speaking to a lot of them. There usually tends to be only one of those, or a couple of those folks in, you know, quite huge global businesses and you speak to a few of them from different businesses and they're all going through the same challenges, but they're not necessarily having sounding boards and peers to bounce things off, um, in different.
Businesses. So we decided to just invite a few of them onto like a shared call where we would talk about a specific topic that's then grown and grown over the last couple of years. And within that environment, you know, you would never hear me pitching one of our members to become a shaped by client or, or even get close to that really.
But what I've found over time and showing up. Month after month, you know, we've increased the number of sessions that we do within that community. We run guest q and as, and we have a slack space and all sorts of different ways that members can connect with each other. I've found that there is a natural progression towards people either recommending shape by to people that they know or actually wanting to work with us directly as a client anyway.
Yeah, so. But it's great. And to be honest with you, it's exactly what good business development should be, which is it's building these amazing relationships that almost feel like friendships in a way. You know, I feel like I really, really know a lot of these people because they've been quite candid within a lot of the sessions that we run, and it's enabled me to understand them as people, and it's enabled me to build a relationship with them that feels.
Very, almost reciprocal in a way. I'm giving them something of value. They feel like they can give something of value to me in return in the future. Obviously there is, um, there's a certain element of, of also kind of seeding in a little bit of what shape by does, but that happens naturally within a lot of the calls that we have.
So yeah, that's a really, really nice principle to try and live by. I would say, especially for younger folks just coming into bd, don't feel like you've always gotta be pitching. Don't feel like you've always gotta be trying to sell something or, or have a call to action within your comms. Just see if you can give something of value without asking for anything in return, and you'd be surprised what comes your way.
Maybe not necessarily in the short term, but most certainly in the long term and new business is, is a long game, which is definitely gonna be a theme of this conversation for sure.
[00:07:46] Mike: Well, I think Dave on that, you know, it's a long game. People entering the kind of BD world, no matter what sector you are in, that to me is one of the lasting themes over Yeah, my 30 years of selling.
It is a long game and you do have to build trusted relationships. And if you do that, as you say, without the intention of closing someone with the intention of helping someone, eventually, good things happen. I got literally yesterday, someone referred me to someone. They're not gonna be a client, I don't think they're starting a new role in a particular area.
And they wanted some input about procurement. This guy I've known for like three or four years who occasionally I talk to said, oh, you should talk to Mike. He's an expert in that area. And then they'll talk to someone else and then they'll talk to someone else. And that's how you build the network, isn't it?
We'll come up this later. How do you keep a board on board with, it's a long-term game without them going eventually, actually the long-term game's over because we're not getting a return. But we'll come back to that towards the end. So another principle, Dave?
[00:08:43] Dave: Yeah, so this leads on from, I guess what we've just been talking about in a way, in terms of new business being a long game, there's just no getting away from that, especially in my world.
You know, all of that 18, 19 years has been spent. Working at smaller creative agencies who haven't had the brand awareness of, you know, sometimes I am slightly envious of BD folks who work at well-known agencies. You know, because your prospects can just skip that brand awareness part. They already know who you are.
They know the clients that you work with. They know the work that you do. You know, we're skipping straight to, you know, a bun fight between you and another well-known agency, which, you know, feels quite exciting. But for me, the exciting part of what I do is building that brand awareness with a very. Quite often niche and distinct audience or set of audiences, and then seeing the fruits of that labor come to life over time.
It is a long game. You know, I feel that throughout my time, I've always kind of used this general average of about 18 months between the first contact with a prospect to a deal being signed or a project being worked on. I still wouldn't stray too far away from that in terms of that being a general average that I would advise people just starting out.
I agree out to kind of, yeah, it, it still holds true now I think, and I've been using that for a long time,
[00:09:52] Mike: but that has big implications for your pipeline, so it does. Thing about short-termism and rightly, I mean, I've, I've been an owner operator of my own business, 120 people. There's a pressure constantly for, you know, I've got big salary bills to pay and therefore we need to drive revenue and retain customers, and therefore we need results in the next quarter.
And that's where the problems start, I think. Is that unless business development is a key topic on your board as a longstanding item and that all of the board members and the SLT are contributing to BD and we're in it together, and that's not saying, oh, you know, I'm not accountable for anything that's saying, it's a shared effort.
You can't just suddenly say to someone, we need to boost sales by 5% this, uh, quarter. Could you just like convert a few more deals? It doesn't work like that. Clients don't suddenly go, oh, you need to close your pipeline a bit faster. Yeah, of course I'll give you some money. That doesn't happen.
[00:10:49] Dave: That is true.
But if you hold these principles true and you do this properly, the kind of methodology I suppose that I'm talking about should only really happen once where you are getting all your ducks in a row, you're setting everything up. There's naturally gonna be a period. Where, and I guess we're talking about starting a sales motion or a GTM motion from scratch.
You know, you're gonna spend time starting to cultivate and build these relationships, and then it is a snowball effect. So if you're doing things right, you'll start to see the fruits of that labor, you know, in 6, 9, 12, 15 months. And then by that exactly kind of 18 month period, what you should have is a machine.
Especially if you're constantly evolving the way that you do things and understanding what's working and not working down to kind of a micro level, you should really have a machine that is almost like a lead tap, really. It's constantly something that you can tap into. I've been fortunate enough to have built what I consider to be a pretty good machine on that level here, where if we do feel that the pipeline is stalling a little bit, we've got a bank of prospects that we can tap into and just kind of give them a little nudge here and there.
Or maybe just. You know, turn the lever a little bit, pull a few, turn a few screws, pull a couple of levers, and we should see a couple of things come through. And that has happened, you know, periodically throughout my, certainly the last few years when we've been building this motion. But I guess coming back to the original principle that I wanted to talk about as part of this bit would be it's patience and persistence really to kind of term it
[00:12:08] Mike: and resilience.
[00:12:09] Dave: There's definitely a lot of resilience
[00:12:11] Mike: there. I think what comes with that is resilience.
[00:12:12] Dave: Yeah. Resilience is a mindset, I would say. It's definitely a mindset that you need to have, and it's not just something that you need to have again, as we'll get onto. It's something that your board needs to have as well, and that is built through a lot of blood, sweat, and tears, I would say.
But also a lot of this activities that I'm talking about. So the patient side of things comes, as you've already alluded to, with the fact that these things just don't happen overnight. You're not gonna see without being persistent. You know, I think back to an opportunity that we got in at Shaped by, it was probably about one and a half, two years ago now.
I'd identified a prospect a good few years before that, maybe two and a half, three years before that, understood that she was right in our ICP, you know, great persona fit. We felt that we could do really great work for them. So I started, you know, some gentle outreach, sharing things of value, sharing our latest work, not a Dickie Bird back, but you know, you have that feeling that.
You know, every touch point and I wasn't even sure whether she was reading my emails and my LinkedIn messages. You know, you can obviously get software and data that purports to track that, but I'm a bit skeptical of that. So, but you know, I felt like I was being persistent for the right reasons and then, hey, Presto completely randomly got a response.
We've actually got an RFP that I think you guys would be great for. Got hopped on a call with, with this lady. And she said, look, you know, I do read your messages. I do engage with the stuff that you've sent me. I just don't have the time to respond. It's not that I'm not interested or I haven't been interested, it's just that there wasn't really anything to respond with other than thank you.
This is great. So evidently that she's not the kind of person who does that. So I think you have to have that level of persistence. That every single, even if you're not seeing a response, if you are confident that that prospect is a valid prospect of yours, and you're confident that what you are sharing holds value and it's not too pushy, it's not, here's another piece of work, here's another piece of work.
It's actually, if you're sharing a piece of work, here's why it's relevant to you, and obviously sharing a lot of content and things of value as well, then ultimately you've got a higher chance of getting a response.
[00:13:57] Mike: So two things. You have to have a point of view in my view. Building a relationship is based around, you've got professional relationships.
Obviously friendships are slightly different, but a professional relationship with a prospect, you have to have a point of view and some value to add. Otherwise, why would they engage in you rather than the a hundred other people that are trying to do exactly the same thing? So I think this predicates on a point of view.
A separate topic for a second before I come back to that. So you talk about people not responding and I'm absolutely with you. Uh, just 'cause they're not responding doesn't mean they're not interested. Take podcasting as a really good example. As two podcast hosts, we record. With really interesting guests that have a point of view, and then we broadcast that into the outside world.
So we're mini media platforms, very small media platforms. I've now had 150 episodes, 60,000 downloads or something, and it's a top 5% global podcast, apparently. Congratulations across categories. Thank you. It wasn't the target, it wasn't what I was aiming for, but that's what the stats tell me. The message here is though, I hardly ever get anyone.
Emailing me saying, love the show with Dave because of X, Y, Z, because that's not what people do. You wouldn't naturally stop your day and say, oh, I must email that podcast host. That was brilliant, but you're on their mind. Do you see the same sort of thing with your podcast? Absolutely. Absolutely. Or get inbound leads.
Every day. I'm, I'm doing something wrong.
[00:15:22] Dave: No, no. It's exactly the same. What's really nice about our podcast, it's a shameless plug. It's called The Change Makers. It's in no way competing with Hile, so we're all good there. But it's basically interviews with folks on our team and within the wider creative leadership community, not just creative leadership.
To be fair, actually, brand marketing within tech. About all the issues that they face. It's quite serendipitous. So every now and then I'll hop on a call with the prospect and they'll, and I'll feel like I have to introduce myself and they'll say, I, I know you from the change makers, which is always really nice.
Exactly.
[00:15:51] Mike: But Dave just dwell on that a second. I think that's really important. I spoke to, I was with a client a year ago and I met some of their team. We were doing a bit of a change program and I was talking to quite a few members of the team and it was quite a cross section of the team and they all went, Mike, it's you.
Wow, I didn't know that about you. And I'm like, oh really? How did you, they said, no, no, no. We listened to the podcast. Love the stories. Love this guest. Love that guest. So your brand, your voice, your tone, the kind of guests you invite, become part of your brand. And that brand as an audio brand has real value.
'cause it sticks in people's minds. I think it's really important.
[00:16:32] Dave: It is really important, but there's an overarching theme within all of the stuff that you've spoken about and I was speaking about before, which is consistency. You know, I think that it's a really interesting thing. You know, we talk about this a lot with our clients.
You know, we work on a lot of big branding projects. You know, brand is our world, especially within the world of tech. You have to be consistent as a brand, um, so that people understand what you believe in and what your truths are, and what your values are. But you can also evolve that all the time in subtle ways that keep up with the times, keep up with changing markets, keep up with changing mindsets, and I think that's a good way to look at business development as well.
You know, whether you are doing a podcast, whether you are, whether you have another kind of. A content hub or resource hub or anything that you have or do within your business to show that you have that point of view, that needs to be consistent enough so that people understand what you believe in, that you're aligned with them.
But also, as you probably know with Hile as well, you do need to tweak things every now and then just to keep them slightly fresh. So it's definitely how we look at exactly. All of the things that we do, essentially as the business development function in the agency. But it's so, so important, that level of consistency.
And it also helps you to understand what's working and not working. You know, if you're consistently measuring the same metrics, if you're consistently looking at the same things to understand we've been doing this for 18 months now, you know, what's been successful about it and what do we maybe need to look at tweaking now just to make it even more successful in the future.
And that goes for anything that you do from a BD perspective as well. A hundred percent.
[00:17:58] Mike: Definitely. So we've got kind of principles around, it's a long-term game, principles around think more about your client's problems than your own. Don't try and sell and close and then consistency, you know, keep doing the right kind of things and having a point of view and adapt and change.
I'm conscious of our time, Dave, so I'm gonna move on to the next topic 'cause there's plenty there for listeners to pick up on. I'm really interested in strategic outbound. A lot of people say, outbound's dead. And I'm like, it's not dead. It's just changed. And I've never been very good at lead gen, never been my strong point.
I'm very good at the, when I'm in a relationship with someone professionally, I'm moving it towards, you know, meaningful programs of work. That's where I kind of. Excel, but lead generation's a really tough thing that I've never really cracked. Talk to me about what is strategic outbound and how important is it in the mix of things that you do to build your business?
[00:18:52] Dave: Yeah, for sure. I mean, it'd be good to start with, you know, a definition of strategy that I like, which is just really, really simple. Understand where you're gonna play and how you're gonna win. So that's how I tend to look at strategy. But also, you know, as I was listening to another great podcast just this week talking about.
Elements of strategy. You know, strategy is also action. You can have your strategy down on paper and it can look like the best thing in a deck. But ultimately, if you're not out there living it and testing it and seeing if it's actually working, then you're not really doing anything. So if we think about strategic outbound from that perspective, where are you gonna play And how you're gonna win has to start with your proposition.
Ultimately, you really need to be super clear on what you do, who you do it for. You know what that outcome is. And we're working a lot on this at shape by at the moment. Not too many spoilers, but the shaped by brands being relaunched in a couple of months. So, you know, we're looking at all of this as part of that.
Then that helps you to build a real picture of your, of your target audience. You know, their role, their company, their team size, their pain points, their goals, what's keeping them up at night, how they buy agencies, even if whether a proportion of them use agencies or not at all. You know, in our case, as I mentioned, we work with a lot of in-house creative teams, but some of them choose not to use agencies.
They just choose to build their in-house team. As a kind of in-house agency, we need to understand that. So I don't think you can really do anything strategic from an outbound perspective until you understand all of that. And you know, we're quite fortunate at Shape Bow. We made the decision around five years or so ago to go very, very niche into what is.
I'd stop short of saying it's one market. 'cause B2B Tech is a whole kind of charade of different categories and kind of sub-markets and things. But ultimately, you know, the people within that, the audiences that we look to, you know, we are able to build really, really solid ICPs and personas as part of that.
So that's the first place to start, I think, when you're thinking about strategic outbound. And then for me. Really, it's a couple of things. The first one is quality over quantity. Yeah. You know,
[00:20:48] Mike: every time.
[00:20:49] Dave: Exactly. Yeah.
[00:20:50] Mike: For me, every time.
[00:20:51] Dave: Um, yeah, for a hundred percent. And, and yeah, I completely understand that that doesn't work for everyone.
You know, I've heard of instances, we were looking at a tool called Clay little while ago and heard of instances where, you know, people are targeting millions of email sends, you know, millions, seven figures. That to me is astonishing. But that's the way some people do things. And that's fine for us as a niche agency working in a niche.
[00:21:11] Mike: And by the way, listeners. That doesn't make Clay a bad platform at all. Oh, no, no, no.
[00:21:16] Dave: Nothing
[00:21:16] Mike: against the
[00:21:16] Dave: platform whatsoever.
[00:21:17] Mike: There's no bias here.
[00:21:18] Dave: No, no.
[00:21:18] Mike: It's at all. And it's a well used tool and it's a successful company.
[00:21:22] Dave: A hundred percent.
[00:21:22] Mike: But like you, someone said this to me the other day, oh, well, you know, I'm gonna like do a direct email campaign to my ICP and we're gonna do like 10,000 emails a month, blah, blah, blah.
And I'm like, okay, that's an approach. I'm not judging the approach, but I said, just think about the second bounce to the ball. It's not the conversion rate that's the issue at maybe 1% or 2% cut through. It's the 99% of people that really don't like that kind of approach that are in your icp.
[00:21:51] Dave: Mm-hmm.
[00:21:52] Mike: That might remember your brand for being the one that spammed them.
So you've gotta think about what's the unintended consequences of your volume-based hyper-personalization through AI at scale approach. So I'm with you. I think quality over quality.
[00:22:06] Dave: Yeah, for sure. It does depend. Obviously it's horses for courses, isn't it? So you It is. You know, if you're trying to get.
Signups for an event for instance, or a webinar, whatever it may be, you don't necessarily need to go too bespoke to why that particular webinar is particularly relevant for that individual audience. Exactly. I mean, you could siphon off a portion of that audience and, and use them as a bit of a gold list and take that approach with them and obviously AI gives you certain elements of that personalization or purports to within certain tools and that's absolutely fine.
And there have been instances where we have done that in the past, but you know, for me. Ultimately, every time that you reduce that list down into something more manageable, it gives you an extra opportunity for personalization and being bespoke until you get to that real kind of almost one-to-one level.
And there are instances we flex and change, obviously, with different outbound motions for different audiences, but. We've gone into full kind of a BM mode where we've created bespoke landing pages for individual prospects that have their clients, have their companies branding and could only ever be for that particular prospect.
And we've gone a little bit more broad, but fundamentally it just, it still comes back to that original point about value. So a lot of the kind of the outbound activity that we do tends to be things like. Inviting people to join the changemakers community. Inviting people to be guests on our podcast, sharing pieces of our thought leadership content, which is a strategy that we're really ramping up this year with a note to say specifically why I feel this is relevant for you.
Obviously, we share a lot of our work with prospects as well. That can sometimes be a bit more of a slightly more passive less. Bespoke or actually kind of splitting the list, I guess, into people that we really need to kind of, you know, hammer home why it's relevant to them at this particular time, and other people who were maybe keeping on more of a kind of steady cadence of updates about shape by wear.
We know that they'll appreciate seeing our work, and it's just a case of sharing it with a really punchy message. But ultimately, yeah, I think the strategic side of things as well comes with understanding what that cadence is. Follow ups. Multiple touch points, understanding if we shared this with this person two months ago, then it's probably not best to share something similar with them two months later.
But we try and work really hard on a understanding, you know, which cadences are working and sequences are working in that respect and also. Like I said, keeping the numbers down a little bit. You know, sometimes I have a really good business development exec on my team. We're constantly talking about, you know, at this point, would it be best to try and find some new prospects to add to the list?
Or actually, would it be better to focus on what we can do for the existing prospects in that list? That need a really valuable touchpoint at this moment in time, knowing that there's only two of us on this team. And as, as my role transitions into more of a leadership role, not just in the team, but with the agency, I'm less and less on the tools.
So we have to think strategically from a resource point of view as well. But yeah, it always comes back to that. It comes back to those principles as well. You know, it's being patient, but it's being persistent. It's giving without asking for anything in return. Yeah, it's, uh, it always comes back to those.
[00:24:57] Mike: Let's just take kind of an example. Let's say you've identified 20 net new logos, that you don't work with that for a number of reasons. You believe there might be opportunities going forward. For all the research that you've done, how do you engage with the target ICP within those kind of 20 brands?
Just give some pepd examples. Just a few examples of. What might you do with someone that you don't have a relationship with now that you just want to build a relationship with over the next six to 12 months? What kind of things have you found? Work?
[00:25:26] Dave: Yeah, it's a really good point. I think the first thing there is, you know, in my early days I would've been thinking, right, this is a challenge here.
What's really gonna resonate with them first? Straight off the bat, let's really get them excited. Let's get them to convert as soon as possible. You know, my thinking on that has completely changed.
[00:25:41] Mike: Now. In your early days.
[00:25:41] Dave: Exactly. In my early days, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Young, hungry, want. To drive as much business as possible in the short amount of time as possible.
So I'd have been thinking, you know, bang. Right. I need to get straight in there with an amazing case study that's right up their street and tell them exactly why they need to buy Exactly the same thing
[00:25:58] Mike: Exactly
[00:25:58] Dave: right now. So, but obviously my thinking is I used to do the same thing. Yeah, exactly. You know?
I thought that was sales, basically. No, I would flip that completely and I would say, right, what is the thing that is gonna get this relationship off on the best possible footing? It's gonna be something that's super helpful to them. If they are, we have different personas, creative leaders, brand leaders, marketing leaders, and a couple more fringe ones.
Creative leaders are a shoeing for our changemakers community. So I would siphon off the creative leaders within, I'd look at those 20 businesses, understand which of them have in-house creative leaders that fit. The kind of model of the people within the community and who would add value to the community and get value from the community.
And I would pitch the Changemakers community to them as something that they might like to get involved in. There might be a few of those who would make valid podcast guests, maybe not necessarily the creative leaders. Could be, but could not. So me and my team would look at what kind of podcasts we've been putting out lately, what might make a good topic of conversation, look into what those people have been posting or talking about on social media, LinkedIn, whatever, and try and find an angle for an approach to come our podcast.
[00:27:00] Mike: So a quick tip for the listeners podcast response rates, I dunno about you, my acceptance rate and I track it. I've not looked at the latest stats. It's around about 70% to 80% acceptance rate. When I ask someone to come on the show and them saying yes, in my experience, that's a remarkable conversion rate to have a conversation with someone.
That you are genuinely interested in? Is that your experience as well?
[00:27:23] Dave: Yeah, and community membership is even higher than that. You know, it's a really, really right if, if I'm pitching to join the Changemakers community to an in-house creative leader, you know, the response rates are, it's kind of three out of four really?
Which is pretty astonishing. Really.
[00:27:37] Mike: That's all you need to do. People listening. All you need to do is just invite them to a group of peers they'll get value from
[00:27:45] Dave: Exactly.
[00:27:46] Mike: Or to a show where they can talk about their experiences.
[00:27:49] Dave: Yeah, a hundred percent. So those generally have a pretty high response rate.
And even the ones that haven't responded, you can bet your bottom dollar that if they've read it. Decided that maybe it's not for them. They at least appreciate and see why you've taken that approach. The other thing that we're building at the moment, that when we have a shiny new shaped by brand and website, we're also adding a kind of what, a working title of a, like a content hub basically, but like a resource section for some really, really insightful content that is kind of a hundred percent mapped to our audience's pain points and goals.
Our ICPs will be able to subscribe to that, like a substack style kind of subscription thing. So that will be something that we push as, I guess. For a first touch point in the future, especially if we can map that to things that they're talking about already on LinkedIn or wherever it may be. I noticed that you posted about this.
We've actually got an amazing insight hub where you can find lots of content that speaks to this challenge. Um, you can subscribe if you want to. Here's how to do it. Um, just thought I'd mention that. Kind of thing. So you see what I mean? You see what I'm getting at here? It's, it's things that really, really add value.
Get the relationship off on the right footing. Not necessarily expecting anything in return, but it'd be nice if we get something. And then from there, you've got license to start building that relationship, I guess.
[00:29:01] Mike: Exactly. Another thing, Dave, just to go back to the LinkedIn piece again, for listeners in the car, they're maybe driving to school or back, or it could be to work or whatever it is.
The LinkedIn thing. Something that I've found that definitely works and is very simple that just to remind people, which goes back to what you've just said about LinkedIn, if you've got someone that you want to build a relationship with and they do post on LinkedIn. Writing a dozen or so meaningful comments on their posts over six months if they're meaningful comments on their posts, has a remarkable impact.
I've got a guy coming on the show who's a renowned world leader in ai, and I've been following him and reading his books for a year now, and he came on the show. Because he'd got to know me through my commenting 'cause I was genuinely interested in what he had to say. Do you find the same thing?
[00:29:48] Dave: Yeah, I do.
I think you need to be a little bit careful that you don't look like you are kissing their ass a little bit. Exactly. I have people who comment on my posts a lot and I, I just, I cringe a little bit because every time I post I'm expecting a comment and I know exactly where it's going.
[00:30:01] Mike: I,
[00:30:01] Dave: so I know what, I know
[00:30:02] Mike: that you, I turned some off.
Yeah.
[00:30:03] Dave: Oh really?
[00:30:04] Mike: I've stopped someone doing it. Oh, yeah, yeah. No, I've stopped someone from commenting.
[00:30:07] Dave: Yeah. Yeah,
[00:30:07] Mike: because iq, it's like if you do it in a bad way, it will have the opposite effect.
[00:30:12] Dave: Exactly.
[00:30:12] Mike: Amplified. Yeah.
[00:30:13] Dave: So you've gotta be careful but done. Right? I completely agree. Yeah. Yeah. Really effective.
Really, really good at just that. It's that really low level. Slightly casual. Again, not asking for anything in return, just showing willing, showing initiative, but also showing enthusiasm for what they're doing and why you kind of align with it is. Yeah, a hundred percent. I really like that. One last point on the outbound side of things, I think there'll be people listening to this who might be crying out.
You know, why are we not doing events? You know, I've listened to past podcasts of yours where events have been a really, really solid strategy for that kind of relationship building. Most of our audience is based in the states. We do run an annual social in San Francisco every March, April kind of time, where we do invite all sorts of folks, prospects, clients, just people kind of friends, friends of shaped by along for some drinks and stuff.
It's really hard for us to do physical events because of the geographic. I get that challenges basically. So that's why the community events are pretty much all virtual, but I just wanted to call that out.
[00:31:05] Mike: No, no. I think it's really important, Dave. I've had the same conversation with people that are our BD people in the US and they've said the same thing they've said because of the geographic nature of the states actually holding.
Physical breakfast is just more challenging. I definitely get that. I definitely get that. So let's close the show off with a really kinda like short piece around working with the board. So how do you measure BD and how do you keep your board aligned with longer term benefits of bd? I think it's a really useful way to kind of close off.
Episode
[00:31:35] Dave: it is and it's so, so important. You know, gone are the days when you know, your business development person was just squirreling away in the corner and just, you know, every now and then ringing a bell, you know, I've got a meeting, I've got a deal, whatever it may be.
[00:31:48] Mike: Exactly.
[00:31:49] Dave: We have, if we wanna prove the value of what Bell we do, be beyond just meetings.
Calls and opportunities. We need to be really, really consistent and diligent in how we not just measure those things, but measure trends over time and understand how we're gonna react to tough times or what's generally happening within our world. So we do this, as I said, really, really diligently shaped by, we measure a lot of top line metrics.
You know, I'm starting to build out my marketing team here. So we're, we're really, we're looking at anything from website traffic to social media metrics on a kind of very, very top of funnel level. But the core metrics that we measure from a kind of pipeline and funnel perspective, we go positive conversation.
So that's basically anybody saying that, yeah, I'd really like to work with shape by either now or in the future. Um, meetings or calls. These are our pipeline stages by the way, opportunities. Pitches and proposals wins, and then we measure gross profit off the back of that, and our gross profit is measured by any client that we win in year.
And then the revenue minus cost of sales that we generate from that customer within the financial year and being consistent about all of that, allow and tracking it in real time, allows us to report on that every single week. It allows us to draw comparisons between Q1 this year and Q1 last year, and it also reassures the board that we're reporting on the right things because we've been doing it so long and it does.
We can track those trends and metrics and even down to seasonal trends and things like that. It really, really helps us to give a rounded picture of a real time rounded picture of what's going on within the pipeline. Especially I think some of the challenges are a little black. A lot of folks will have is around attribution.
You know, if it's an inbound, what's been driving that and sometimes. You know, prospects will be really transparent about that and sometimes they won't, and you know, we don't necessarily know. Okay, there might have been one thing that they mentioned, but what's influenced them previously is a bit more hard to track.
So we can't track everything, but we, we try and track those core metrics as diligently as possible, and we have certain workflows set up when a new opportunity comes in or when a prospect's moved. Pipeline stages, it's so, so important to be really hot on on that as well. One thing I'll mention as well is we track unweighted and weighted pipeline.
So each of those pipeline stages has a, a default. Waiting. So positive conversation might be 5% meeting or call might be 10% opportunity, 25%. You can override that rating in our pipeline and we use Pipedrive, which allows you to override if you suddenly think that, oh, actually this prospect is pretty set in stone, it, the opportunity says 25%, but actually should be 50%.
We've tracked out unweighted and weighted pipeline over such a long time that we know at any moment in time where we need to be, that there's a certain figure, unweighted and weighted that we need to be over so that we're, we have a healthy pipeline, so to speak.
[00:34:18] Mike: Exactly right.
[00:34:18] Dave: And it's so, so important to try and
[00:34:19] Mike: do that.
And I just call it coverage.
[00:34:21] Dave: Yeah.
[00:34:21] Mike: You basically need coverage. If you haven't got the coverage in your pipeline, your chance of hitting the number is very slim. Indeed.
[00:34:28] Dave: Yeah. Yeah. And it's a lot of education. You know, as what happens when we win a client is they go over to our client services team.
Obviously, if they're looking at, you know, second or third projects from a new client. They're the ones inputting the pipeline figures, and I've really, really impressed on them. You have to be as diligent as possible with your waiting with your time. We track this in real time, so any movement you need to be on top of that and making sure that it's reflected in the pipeline, they're really good at that.
So we now have an amazing real time pipeline tracker that tells us have we got a healthy pipeline? Um, how's that reflected in our wider agency figures? So we're looking at kind of, you know, studio delivery plus pipeline equals what we expect to bring in this month. Um, it's so, so important. And I guess to your original point, that ultimately is how you, if you speak a board's language around all of that especially, um, and help them become comfortable around those figures and around that sense of reporting, then you can very quickly get to a point where everybody's aligned around where you've been, where you are, and ultimately where you're going.
[00:35:26] Mike: Brilliant. And the only thing I'd add to that for anyone listening is anyone in BD. That sat there thinking, yeah, I should look at all my metrics and redo them. My advice is make sure you think it through yourself. Don't just say to someone else, build me a dashboard in HubSpot or Pipedrive, or whatever your CRM is, because you won't understand how it's constructed.
You won't understand what it means, and you won't understand why those metrics are important. I've done it for a number of clients, and it always, always pays huge dividends. All of a sudden, it's transparent and visible where we are and what we need to do.
[00:35:58] Dave: Yeah. Yeah. And I just, I wanna kind of add to this bit by a little bit of a heartfelt thank you to my CEO Nick, you know, because when we were building all of this out, we had just rebranded.
So Shaped by, shaped by, as an agency, we're 20 years old, but. The shape by brand has only been around for five years. As I mentioned earlier, we went from kind of generalist to specialist, and when we did that, we had very little, well, we had no brand awareness basically in the, in our niche space that we moved into.
So, you know, we had this amazing pipeline system set up, but it was quite barren. Um, I think the big story there is we stuck with it. You know, we believed in what we were doing. Put all of those principles into practice about being patient, being persistent, even in the days of giving, when, uh, not asking for anything in return when it really felt like we should have been pushing, pushing, pushing for the sale.
People just weren't aware of us enough to be able to drive those kind of projects that we really wanted. So we had to be very, very patient. But I do thank. Because he believed in what we were doing. He stuck with it. We didn't chop and change anything around the way that we tracked and reported our opportunities.
We still use the same system today, and that's allowed us to have that really well-rounded picture going back 3, 4, 5 years about what's worked and what hasn't and successes and failures and what might have led to those. So yeah, thank you Nick, for believing in, in me and us and what we would do.
[00:37:12] Mike: Brilliant. Well done Nick. So just to round it off, Dave, um, just give me literally three bullet points if you were listening to this. On your way into the office, what are the three things you think, oh, that's interesting. Maybe I could think about or try that? What are those three takeaways?
[00:37:26] Dave: Yeah, it's an interesting one.
I suppose it depends who you are. If you are a bd, if you work in BD and you're listening to this right now, I would definitely urge you to look at what you're doing right now and try and understand where the giving without asking for anything in return is coming in. If you can see that in the activity that you're doing, stick with it.
Because it will deliver value and it will deliver success for you in the long term. Double down on it, even don't by any means, make it the whole premise of what you're doing, because ultimately, if you just keep, give, give, giving, yes, good things will happen. But ultimately you do need, there is an art to understanding where you can just.
Just twist things ever so slightly and just start to seed in the idea that a working relationship might be a good thing. How you do that is obviously bespoke to your business, but I would definitely say that look at what you're doing and try and understand are you adding enough value? Are you showing that you're on your prospect side, and are you doing that without necessarily asking for anything back is one thing.
Another thing would be from a strategic outbound perspective, definitely looking at. Is your proposition as sound as it possibly could be? Do you understand your audience as, as well as you absolutely could do? And are you understanding their pain points well enough to be able to do things, whether that's creating content, offering things of value that really, really speak to those things and can you do that on a consistent basis so you can keep sharing things like that and building that consistency that we've been talking about.
And I guess the third point is on the measurement and tracking. Um, side of things, especially when you're reporting into a board that really needs to be as robust as possible. You really need to understand what your kind of baseline is for weighted and unweighted pipeline. You need to have pipeline stages that truly reflect the stages at which your customers buy from you, and ultimately, you really need to report on those things.
Again, not to sound like a broken record as diligently and as consistently as possible. So you start to build rounded picture over time of what success and also failure looks like as well, because. You know, none of us succeed all the time. We've been through many, many phases that shaped by where things have been a struggle, but luckily we've been able to understand the bigger picture, um, through all of this stuff and dig our way out.
[00:39:31] Mike: Brilliant. Dave, it's been a real pleasure. Thanks ever so much for joining me.
[00:39:34] Dave: Thanks, Mike. It's been great. Thank you.
[00:39:36] Mike: Where can people find out more about you?
[00:39:37] Dave: I'm on LinkedIn, Dave, call it You Can Find Me, shaped By is shaped by.com if you wanna go and check out what Shaped By does. And if you do wanna check out the Changemakers podcast, you can find that on all the podcast platforms as well.
It's one of my favorite parts of the job these days, as I'm sure doing this is for you as well, Mike,
[00:39:55] Mike: it's precisely. Dave, it's been a real pleasure. Thanks ever so much for joining me.
[00:39:58] Dave: Thanks, Mike.
[00:39:59] Mike: 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.