John: 0:00

Sometimes when you're quiet, when the meetings stop and the emails and chat notifications go silent, you're left all alone with your pipeline. You hear whispers, a deal you lost months ago, suddenly reaches out a stalled proposal, clicks back open. Coincidence maybe, or maybe you're being given a second chance. Let's talk about how to listen for those whispers and turn them into wins. Oh, mark, welcome to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. How you doing today?

Mark: 0:55

I'm great. That, that's, that's super, super fun. Thi this is, um, John, we've got this kind of on the calendar. I think we're Halloween ish, Yeah. Right. It's, it's, we're, we're, we're the fall, we're in the Halloween season. uh, but don't, don't think that this is kind of, you know, this is just for consumption. You know, during Halloween folks, this, episode about what I think you and I have called, sort of the pipeline graveyard is something, it's evergreen folks. Sorry. It's it's not just October. when this whole thing rears its ugly head, it's, it's all year long and we're gonna talk about what we mean. By the pipeline graveyard. And I think it's gonna be a fun, it's gonna be a fun episode.

John: 1:46

Abandoned hope all ye who forecast here. We're gonna, we're gonna have fun with this Mark. I can tell.

Mark: 1:54

Yeah, yeah. We're gonna, talk about, um, You know, the mortem end of the postmortem kind of thing? Yeah. We're, gonna talk about after the fact.'cause we don't talk about that a ton. You know, we're, on the marketing and selling end of things, John. We're, fully, you know, engaged. We're all gassed right up until the client says no. And then, you know, go throw it in the pile. forget about it, but we're actually gonna talk about what happens. Next, what happens when deals die and what you can do, maybe sometimes what happens after that or what you can do. You know, I'm always about the proactive sort of stuff, so we're gonna talk about that sort of, yeah. Deal's dead. What do we do now?

John: 2:34

Yeah. So, you know, I suppose that there's a lot of reasons why these deals die, right? You know, professional services, long sales cycles, long buying cycles, there's multiple stakeholders, there's a lot of moving parts with these sales. So, you know, it's, natural that a lot of these deals fizzle out or die, or are they really dead? I don't know. That's what we're gonna find out. Right. So Mark, what are some of the causes, like common causes that you've seen of deals going dark?

Mark: 3:05

Well there, there's, uh, I, I wanna make sure we parse this out properly and it's funny, we're gonna throw some numbers out here that are gonna freak people out. So There are new business opportunities that come your way. maybe it's sort of a formal competitive situation where they've asked a bunch of different firms to bid or propose or, you know, come and interview or whatever else it is. And, the client is motivated. They go through a very, you know, scheduled prescriptive buying process. It's won or lost, I think the one or lost thing. Present still, an opportunity down the road. but we'll talk a little bit about that. But, so there's, there's situations that you find, find yourself in where you will pursue something and you'll lose, and the client Moves ahead with maybe someone else or, or whatever else. But here's a scary number folks. And actually, when we go wandering through our graveyard, you might come across some of these,

John: 3:58

You're leaning into this. I love it.

Mark: 4:01

I saw a stat from Matt Dixon. Matt Dixon was one of the co-authors of the Challenger Sale and the Challenger customer, and he's got some new books out now. I'm, I'm spacing on, on the names, but he's, he's great and he's a researcher and he's a, he's a numbers guy and, Anybody listening out there, if you've listened, if you've, you've read or listened any of those books? Uh, he's on podcasts all the time. He's a smart guy. I enjoy Matt Dixon, but the number I wanted to put out there is, that he's said 40 to 60%, and I think it's actually, I think what, when he talks about it, it's on the higher end, 40 40 to 60% of your pipeline is lost to no decision, which means that ultimately when you wander through this whole sort of time and labor and energy intensive, you know, buying and selling process, the client just said, eh, we're just not gonna do anything. And that's a huge kind of weight or, you know, concern of anybody out there is that, you know, ultimately we're gonna go through this whole thing and then the client's just not gonna proceed. Right. And that's, you know, I, crm, CRM systems are always have this little like, reason for loss, you know, kind of thing. And there's always that little checkbox that says, just the client just didn't. They didn't move forward. Right. It's wild.

John: 5:16

It's funny, you know, when, when we were talking about this episode, it prompted me to go to my CRM and to go to, I call it closed, not one. And then there's also like different like reasons why, right? Reasons why they weren't won. And there's only like a small percentage that were lost. And the opportunity went with another service provider. The vast majority are either unqualified. Ghost or you know, timing was off. Those are like the three big other categories that I have at least that I'm tracking.

Mark: 5:47

right.

John: 5:48

But yeah, that makes total sense.

Mark: 5:49

so that tees off, you know, what I think is a super important part of this episode, which is if something that in your pipeline graveyard, all those ones that are on your sort of closed lost list, if those actually just didn't proceed, what's happening? did they need to rethink something? Was it a timing thing? Was it a, did they just give up on it all together? Did somebody that was the champion inside the firm leave? You know, like, what happened to those things? So that's kind of one of the things I want to kind of wander through. And the graveyard is like, what do we do now? What do we do with that information?

John: 6:23

Are these deals six feet under? Or are they just in procurement?

Mark: 6:27

Yeah.

John: 6:29

So how do we diagnose that mark? How do we classify whether or not a deal is truly dead or is it just dormant?

Mark: 6:37

Yeah, well, it's interesting I talk to a lot of people who are just fine having new business opportunities, just sit in sort of this, ambiguous sort of, middle earth sort of a situation where they're not really dead and they're not really alive, they're just kind of, kind of there. So the point, by saying that is that we wanna get to somewhere where we have some, some finality. We wanna, we wanna make sure that, it's either, moving or not moving, it's either dead or not. and some of the things that we can use to determine that. and sometimes we have to kind of read the tea leaves a little bit on this meaning that, you know. We have to take this information that's coming to us. Like the communication with the client is spotty. Maybe we're getting ghosted, maybe it's not consistent. Whatever else. It's like, is that a leading indicator that the deal is maybe gonna die? Yeah. Right. are you talking to the right people in the at the client organization? Did you start talking to them initially or did. Were you talking to some sort of enthusiastic champion that had some idea that wanted you to come in and do some work and, but the decision ultimately has to get, you know, run, you know, up the flagpole or, you know, two steps above this person, their boss's boss to actually say yes. Have you actually spoken to that person? Do you even know who the heck that person is? If you don't, even if the person you're talking to is enthusiastic and thinks everything's great, the deal's probably dead folks.

John: 7:56

And if you don't, quick plug, if you don't know if the, person you're talking to or to is the right buyer or the decision maker, we do have a podcast episode about the three buyer archetypes. Go check out that episode and that can help you map your organization that you're trying to sell into.

Mark: 8:11

Nailed it. I love it. So, you know, are you unknowingly competing with other competitors out there? You know, have you been sort of marching forward with this new business opportunity sitting in your pipeline thinking, oh yeah, this is, we're the only ones, they just came to us. And are you completely ignorant of what else is happening out there, in the world? Does that mean the deal's dead? It might not mean it's dead, but the probability definitely just got cut in half. You know, at best. Right. so here's some other sort of litmus test kind of things. Is that, did you qualify well initially with your new business opportunity? When you look at a pipeline deal that's sitting there and you're, it's flagging. You have to look back, you have to be a little introspective and sort of look back and think, did I actually qualify that? Well, did I actually say yes when it should have been a no? And yes, we had a podcast on that as well. The power of saying no, John is just such a big deal, you know? Did you, yeah. so did you qualify, well, did you have really good deep discovery? when you look at your pipeline, what is the age of the opportunity? You know, hopefully you have a pipeline tool that tells you, you know, when it was started and you know how old it is now. That's kind of important, folks. So you can look very easily at Opportunity Age, and kind of see. Has this been around for two weeks? Three weeks. So we're in good shape. Has it been around for six months? Uh oh. Things are not looking good, you know? So, um, and how long has it been in certain stages? Did it stall at some point? Again, that's some, some sort of age stuff. Did the close date that was listed in your pipeline, was it highly optimistic to begin with and now it's slipping endlessly? You know, that's April 1st, March 31st. June 15th, you know, August. You know, like where is it going, you know? So does that con continue to, to slip? And is the deal overall value, scope, dollars, everything else? Is it just endlessly eroding? It started out as something big and juicy, and now it's this, now this little nugget of what it used to be, Wow, it was a hundred thousand dollars project. It was gonna be great, whatever else. And now we're down to like, you know,$12,500. And oh, by the way, you've spent all of that money so far, Just

John: 10:22

Just selling it.

Mark: 10:23

Yeah. Just selling it. So there you go. So these are all some really scary leading indicators that, you know, it might actually be in the graveyard and you have no idea that it's there already. It's dead. Right.

John: 10:35

You know, this is, it's, it's, as you're walking through this mark, I'm thinking like, you don't need a robust CRM system to report on any of these metrics. This is something that you could do in a Google Sheet or an Excel sheet or a Monday, you know, board.

Mark: 10:53

Yeah, Yeah, It's true. It's true. So yeah, so these are some of the things folks that tell you that, don't be surprised when you're walking through the pipeline graveyard and you glance over and you see an opportunity that was, you know, resting in a newly dug grave. You glance at him and you're like, oh, that's a shame. That's really sad. That one died. And you're like, wait a minute, that's in my pipeline. You're like, Hmm, no it's not. It's dead.

John: 11:17

So now that we know how to, how to check for. For, for signs of death. Time of death, what are some of the things that we can look for to see if there's, still claw at the inside of their coffin, right? how do we know when there is a deal that is enclosed? Not one, but there might be signs of life.

Mark: 11:35

Yeah. So there, there's, I've talked about this one little tool, and again, there's a yes folks, there's another podcast episode on this. I think we talked about the magic email, right? I think, yeah,

John: 11:46

That was a popular.

Mark: 11:47

in, in one of our, our episodes. so the magic email for me is very tactical, very helpful tool that you can use at the right time, using it very strategically. when your new business opportunity is kind of flagging. It's when, when, when the pulse is thready, right? So it's maybe you fire off the magic email and you know, the magic email is the one that says, Hey, it, you know, I'm, uh, it, it sounds like you've gone in a different direction or your priorities have changed. I'm here if you need me. Thanks. Mark, you know, like it's quick, it's sharp, uh, it, cuts things off. and if they immediately get back to you and, you know, that day or the next day or whatever else, they say, wait, wait, wait, wait. You know, we're invoking that loss aversion cognitive bias. They say, wait, wait, wait. It's not quite dead yet. Then maybe you've still got a chance. So that's helpful. And hopefully from that you can reestablish a more active communication cadence that's like, look, if this, this thing is just slogging its way through procurement or you know, whatever, then let's just agree that we need to, talk every week or every two weeks or whatever else it is.'cause this is a really important time. You know, it's like, you know, patient is in the ICU. It's right there. you know, they're standing ready with the paddles to resuscitate at any moment. This is an important time, let's stay engaged and, you know, try to keep this thing alive. So, yeah, so, so that's, one. I think communication's really the main thing, right? It's, it's, it's just, just an acknowledgement from both parties from the buyer and the seller, that it's important that we stay, that we stay engaged.

John: 13:27

What about like new information that surfaces like I, I, I suppose that could be another, like maybe a trigger moment that says, oh, maybe this deal isn't dead. Maybe there's an opportunity in your pipeline, and then maybe you see a post on LinkedIn about like a major shift happening within the organization that wasn't on your radar. But now you know about it through, maybe it's a secondary source. I guess that could be another sign that that deal isn't dead.

Mark: 13:55

Yeah, a a any number of things. right. I mean, you read a, some sort of social media LinkedIn post that is like, it looks like you wrote it because it's like, oh, they're actually gonna take this, proposal that they have in front of them and incorporate it as, you know, a major strategic initiative in the coming year. You. Cool. Sounds like I'm in, you know, there's others when I, when I work with, um, some firms out there who do, some who work for public agencies, you know, a lot of times these big contracts will need to go up to vote, you know, and then, they kind of sit, sit around forever waiting. Waiting, you know,'cause they all sit in line waiting to get themselves on a, on this agenda for the, you know, the city council or the county council to vote on it or something like that. And I know this is kind of hyper-specific, but when you see something gets on the agenda for the council meeting, you're like, oh. Good. Now we've got a date. Right. And sometimes that can take two weeks and sometimes it can take six months, you know? so that's, that's a fun one. I kind of like that one when my clients Oh, it's on the agenda. Oh, great. Good. Awesome. Um, so yeah, so those are fun.

John: 15:03

So we've got dead deals. We've got deals that are still clawing from the inside of their coffin. Maybe they're not dead yet. They're ready to be brought back to life. what are some ways to like reflect upon maybe why deals were lost in the first place? Right, because there's always something that can be learned.

Mark: 15:23

Yeah. Yeah. There's uh. Some folks will call these sort of a postmortem or a debrief. Uh, there's a lot of times an opportunity to go back to the, um, and a lot of times this is with like a public agency. Sometimes private clients will do this. You know, you just call and be like, Hey, you, you didn't pick us for this. we're kind of bummed out here, like, you give us some insights on your sort of process? And hopefully if stars align, they give you something useful. lot of times they'll just give you a big nothing, in their response just trying to, you know, be nice. but there is a formal process that was created, like other big formal processes out there by the Department of Defense, you know, and it's called an after action review. And an after action review has five simple parts. Simple, not easy, like a lot of these things, five simple parts. the first part is. What did we want to have happen? What was our goal? And you can kind of picture Department of Defense. It's like they're doing these big sort of initiatives, these big exercises, whatever else. What did we wanna have happen, number one. Number two, what actually happened? report out what actually happened. Number three, what did we do well? What went well in this whole exercise, this effort? Number four, obviously there's that other one. What didn't go so well? Where did we stub our toe? And the fifth one is, what are we going to do differently next time? So that stuff in number four doesn't happen and more of the stuff that's in the number three happen, right? So five part framework, super easy. You can Google it. There's tons of resources out there for an after action review. If people are trying to find a way to bring some form and shape to sort of what do we do afterwards? this is a good one to use, and I'll tell you as an aside, you can do it whether you won or whether you lost. You can do it either way.

John: 17:15

Oh, that's a good point.

Mark: 17:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there you go. There's a, there, there's a little tidbit there kind of after, after the fact.

John: 17:23

So if your, if your graveyard's getting too big, check out that after action review,

Mark: 17:28

Yeah, they're, they're really helpful because, you know, folks, the only thing productive that we can do with these time and energy and resource intensive pursuits that a lot of firms undertake and then ultimately don't win, the only thing that we can do to make any of that worth it is to be, you know, really sort of, you know, to go in for the autopsy, you know, and to figure out what, what was happening. What happened? Right? What happened wrong? Whatever else. What are we gonna do differently? Whatever else, we'd have to learn from it. Otherwise, yes. In fact, it was a waste of time. You know, we have to do stuff differently.

John: 18:03

So, while the after action review is a great tool to use for those, uh, for all deals, whether you won or you lost, it's a especially effective for the ones that you did lose and you know are dead. So let's talk about what can we do to reawaken? How can we raise the dead mark? How can we resuscitate these deals that aren't quite dead? They're still a pulse.

Mark: 18:26

The Frankenstein deals, it's like, right. yeah, so these are fun and hopefully everybody who's got sort of a long list, painful, long list of the closed lost or the closed not won, you know, new business opportunities. Everybody who's got a list, let's just crack that open and see what we come up with.

John: 18:49

I went into my pipeline Mark just in preparing for this, and I, I found half a dozen opportunities that I went through and there's, you know, there's a pulse there. So I'm, I'm particularly excited to have this conversation with you'cause I'm gonna put this into action after

Mark: 19:05

People are always excited about. I will tell you, and this is funny, John, I will tell you straight up, you know, if you found six, there's only two that are maybe viable, you know, so, and if people go in and they find 20, they're like, oh my gosh, our closed lost opportunity list is up gold mine. I was like, looks like a gold mine today. It might not be so.

John: 19:24

reason why they lost.

Mark: 19:25

Yeah. Temper your enthusiasm. But point being on this is that it is a really good exercise. It's not something you wanna obsess about. You wanna do it every day. but you want to go back,

John: 19:35

Maybe every quarter,

Mark: 19:36

yeah. Maybe every quarter. Sure. Maybe every, you know, whatever, every year who, who, yeah. Twice a year. Sure. whatever else. But you wanna go back and revisit it and lo and behold. some percentage of those lost opportunities are gonna be the ones we referred to earlier, right? They're ones that never went anywhere. They just, they just didn't proceed. So you can reengage and say, Hey, this never proceeded. You guys said you just weren't gonna, weren't gonna do anything at this point. did you actually move ahead with someone else or did you really stop and is there a time in the future where you want to get going again? You know, when When should we reengage and talk about that? So, so I think those are really important. And kind of the, the note I have for everyone here is that when, an opportunity moves to your closed, lost, or did not proceed or whatever else, or it's just something that, you know, the doctor walks in the room and uh, you know, maybe I'm the doctor John and I look at the pipeline and I say, time of death now. Right. And we kill an opportunity that's in your pipeline, and I'm saying take it to the graveyard. I say, look, we're killing the opportunity, we're killing the project, right? Because it looks like that thing. Isn't gonna happen, but we're not killing the people. we're not dragging your important client contact off to the graveyard, right? The graveyard is not filled with people, folks. It's filled with these old sort of dead projects, dead opportunities. The people are oftentimes alive and well. So this gives us sort of an opportunity to say, Hey, alright, good that opportunity is gone. I need to go reengage with Susan in a couple months. Just sort of say, Hey, it looked like that opportunity was never gonna move ahead anyways. We just, you know, we had it, we had it as a, as a really fun opportunity with you. Now that, that looks like it's come and gone, let's reengage, let's rethink, let's approach our conversation with kind of a fresh, you know, sort of a breath of fresh air rather than our sort of twice monthly check-in on the status of the new business opportunity. You know, now it's like, Hey, that one looked dead. What's important to you now? What are you working on now? What's, what, what, what's, what, what's, what new stuff do we have to talk about?

Mark Wainwright: 21:48

You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman: 21:50

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright: 22:05

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman: 22:14

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright: 22:20

and now back to the show.

John: 22:24

Tabula Rasa.

Mark: 22:25

yeah. Yeah. Clean slate. Clean slate. Exactly. So super important there. Um, so yeah, so it's, uh, um, it's, it's a good way to do it and frankly, it's that new business opportunity comes back, you know, we killed it, and then it kind of comes back. I think there's an opportunity to reevaluate. It's like, it looks like it's still a good fit. The client's still good. Whatever else. That new business opportunity just stopped and now it's kind of come back. It gives us a chance to maybe, maybe be a little more careful and, and cautious about how we're gonna weight that. Okay. It's, we thought it was a high probability before. Now it's a low probability. And it also gives us the chance to go back to the client and say, Hey, look, the first time we tried to do this, our communication was lousy. If we're gonna try to do this again, we need to change. Right. So whether you set up some different approach to interaction in this whole sort of, you know, pre-contract thing or, um. You just established sort of guardrails. It's like, look, we have to talk every two weeks at a minimum about what's happening here. You have to be forthcoming with me about what's happening internally in your organization.'cause last time it seemed like there was some internal politics that, you know, derailed this whole thing. And now that that person is gone, you mentioned that person just left, you know, a month ago. Now that that person is gone and the deal's back, you and I really need to. do this better. So, I think there's a great opportunity there. So, Yeah, that's, that's, that's a couple of them. did you have some other points you wanted to make in that sort of re reawakening thing?

John: 24:02

I don't actually, no, I'm, I'm very much in more of like a learning mode right now and just tr trying to absorb.'cause I, I am going to apply a lot of these lessons to those half a dozen opportunities that I reach out to.

Mark: 24:16

you know, one of your, mantras is always, you know, empathy and empathetic, listening and learning and all that other stuff. So I know you, you are well equipped with that.

John: 24:24

Yeah. And, and I think that this is, you know, another exercise in, in that empathy and, and coming to the table with a clean slate. I think that's a really good point because, you know, you're, you're going into it saying, what's new for you? has changed since we last talked? And it's not, Hey, let me, I'm checking in on this deal that we talked about. It's a reframe of focusing on point of contact, the people. and so I think that's another good segue into this next section that we have here called Digging in the Graveyard.

Mark: 24:57

Yeah.

John: 24:58

touched on it a little bit earlier when we talked about like seeing that LinkedIn post and you know, that could be like a trigger moment within the client's organization.

Mark: 25:06

Yeah.

John: 25:07

Let's talk about some other potential, like trigger moments that could change a deal from either, you know, dead to reawakens or dormant to, you know, more active.

Mark: 25:20

Yeah. And, and there's, um, and this gets tactical, which is, which is good, I think for, for folks. So, so yeah. So when you go and revisit those closed, lost deals, like what are you looking for and what types of things should you be teasing out of that list? to think, oh, maybe, maybe I should, reconnect with these folks and, talk about this. So it's things that started. Maybe they were initial small phases that didn't ultimately move to a subsequent phase. Right? There's that, right? It's this, there's a, you know, a lot of firms have called these sort of, uh, an initial study or a discovery step or a whatever else. It's like, what happened next? Did the, did you

John: 25:56

Yeah.

Mark: 25:57

Sure. An audit, right? Like, what's gonna happen next? Did it ever move ahead? And it's like, oh no, the champion of that left, um. Now there's a new person that's kind of taking it up and they might have a different way to advance that. It's like, oh, who is that person? let's talk to them. So, you know, another thing is that, oh wow, we had a really good relationship. The communication was actually really, really good with that particular client. the project or the opportunity was just killed or whatever else. Wow. That, you know, let's not, cross off the relationship. That was really good. Let's see, let's see how we can kind of leverage that relationship into something else maybe. Um,

John: 26:31

projects.

Mark: 26:32

yeah, yeah. People are projects, Do a little bit of research and digging, you know, with, some of these opportunities that, you know, are sitting in your, in your grave card. It's like, Were there significant organizational changes? Were there team members who left or new people that came? Were there, leadership that turned over? You know what else? It, it, whatever happened. So on, on one hand you think. Okay, so there's this new business opportunity and there was a bunch of turnover. You think, okay, now maybe there's some new people that are open to rethinking, I should reengage with them. On the other hand, you think, oh, my, top two champions or contacts that were at this one organization left and they went, to a new company. You're like, oh, boom. Great. I'm gonna go talk to those guys at their new company and see if there's a need there. To see if what we talked about before at company A is gonna work at company B, right?

John: 27:26

I think another trigger moment that we have on our list, but I think it's important to talk about it from two different perspectives, is mergers and acquisitions. So.

Mark: 27:34

Hmm.

John: 27:35

most of the folks that are listening to this show are in a professional services industry and in professional services. There are constantly mergers and acquisitions happening. So I think this could be important from two different lenses. Number one, the organizations you're trying to sell into, if they've gone through a significant merger or acquisition, that can be a trigger moment for potentially your services. On the flip side, if your organization goes through a significant merger or acquisition, maybe, you're expanding your service line in a particular region, or you've added a new service line, or you've added new expertise in some specific area, this could be a trigger moment to reach out to potentially those. Debt opportunities or even those, you know, opportunities that still have a minor pulse and, and say, Hey, we've gone through this major acquisition, we've added this core area that was missing when we first spoke. We'd like to reengage and let's have a new conversation.

Mark: 28:34

Yeah. those are tough. I have spoken to prospective clients in the past and. maybe I was talking to a decision maker or one of a few decision makers, and they went through a merger acquisition and all of a sudden the two or three decision makers turned into 10, and oh, by the way, they added two layers on top of this person. So now you've got a, a steeper and longer hill to climb in some cases. You may still be able to advance this whole thing. In a lot of cases it's dead because now you know, you walked in the, you walked in the right door initially, and now all this craziness has happened and now you have to figure out a whole new door. IEA whole new group of people to talk to and get to know and build trust with and everything else. And so, yeah, super challenging situation. No doubt.

John: 29:28

it is a challenging situation.

Mark: 29:30

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's some specific things I said kind of, we got some tactical stuff here. There's some specific things that have worked, There are specific tactics that kind of have worked for me and I think would work for others, you know. So sometimes, you know, in your graveyard you look and, you know, it's the notes you took or what you're remembering. Is, oh, the timing. It was a timing issue. The timing just wasn't right. So you can simply go back to those people and say, Hey, last time the timing wasn't right. Is it okay if we establish some communication? You know, Hey, is it okay if we reconnect in six months? Or whatever that cadence is that you want to, to wanna create. Is it okay if we just reconnect regularly to see if the. If this, if the timing will be right then, so easy one.

John: 30:21

I, I like that. And it's funny, I recently did that from a buyer, like a buying perspective. I'm, I'm talking with someone who is a consultant and and it was just not the right time for me. Right now to work with this person. he's helping me set up some agentic AI workflows and things like that, but it's not the right time and so I kind of made that proactive move and said, Hey, would it be okay if we met in Q4 and then set up kind of like a regular touch base to, to talk? So

Mark: 30:51

Yeah,

John: 30:51

interesting that you say that.

Mark: 30:52

yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. a another one. and I hope people are just like jamming on this'cause I love these, I love to go back to your graveyard and be like, oh, uh, yeah, I can ask that question. This one is, you know, Hey, you chose another consultant. You chose another firm over us. And it's been. nine months since that whole thing happened and the project was completed, how'd it go? Right. you know, we're not doing this to kind of call out the other consultant firms and say what you wanna say is, how did it go? Did you guys achieve what you wanted to achieve? how was the process? Right? if communication was really important to you during the entire, Process of of, of starting the project and, and completing it. How did, how was the communication? Was it, you know, was it what you wanted? Did you guys get the ultimately results that you wanted? And then you can be asked questions like, Hey, if a similar need arises in the future, or, you know, would you just hire them again? Or would you think you'd enter, entertain working with other people, maybe even us?

John: 31:49

Interesting. That's kind of like an external facing after action review, right? You're going to your client and you're kind of simulating a similar experience with them,

Mark: 31:58

Totally. Totally. And, and, and, you know, the, the, and just to touch on that point, the whole idea behind the after action review is just to get all the information kind of out there, not to play the blame game, not to, you know, throw anybody under the bus or whatever else. It's just to get all the information out there and understand, you know, how we're gonna now act on this information. So you can do the same thing kind of with your clients. You can be like, Hey. Did it, what went well, what didn't go well? And you know, if you could change it in the future, what would you change? And, you know, should this need arise again, you know, you know, would you, would you entertain working with others, including ourselves? You know, so you can, you can do that. I mean, sometimes they'll say, you know what, those guys, they were amazing. They did everything we wanted and more. And frankly, when that whole thing comes up again next year, we're probably gonna hire them again. You're like, great. I am so glad that you are getting well taken care of. I know some people over there at that other firm, they're great people just. keep doing what you're doing. Oh, by the way, if you have these other needs that are a little bit different, we'd like to talk to you about that. So, you know, great opportunities to do that.

John: 32:58

Is there another play that you had?

Mark: 33:01

you know, a lot of times when deals die, there's obviously a lot of reasons. there's external factors, internal factors, all that sort of stuff. Competition, who knows, or maybe there's the whole no decision thing. You know,

John: 33:19

Mm.

Mark: 33:20

a certain point where, we couldn't move ahead. We just had to press pause and we couldn't, couldn't move ahead with the whole thing. Another engagement tactic is, Hey, you pushed pause 12 months ago on this thing. What has changed in your organization over the last 12 months that would lead to you restarting that? Or what would lead to lead to you rethinking it, changing it, and then restarting it? Or have things cha changed so much in your organization that that is no longer a pressing need? Oh, by the way, what are the pressing needs that you have right now? Let me understand that and see if we're a fit for any of them.

John: 34:03

So it's like kind of like a temperature check on priorities and then. Just kind of like a, a download of what's changed in the organization.

Mark: 34:10

you know, we have, that's another bias I know it's built into our brains at, at at some point is that, when we see our childhood friend after 20 years, we get back together and we just assume they're the exact same person. You're like, oh, right. 20 years has changed. They're different. Right. so, the same thing happens in, in clients and client organizations. It's like they are constantly evolving and changing and to, to think that the exact same thing that you talked about a year or two ago is gonna, you know, fit their needs or be exactly what they need at this moment is, is naive, right? So, yeah. Yeah. So they always change.

John: 34:43

So, mark, you've got a few different, buckets that folks can use to segment and score, uh, and assess their, their graveyard of, of dead deals. Let's, talk about how folks listening to this right now can kind of triage that into those different segments.

Mark: 35:00

Yeah. And, and you know, like I said, you wanna be super realistic about this, not, you're not gonna be able to take a hundred percent of your sort of closed, lost stuff and sort of run at it. Again. Some of it's just, not a good fit to begin with, so I think there's, some of that stuff and maybe we just put those in the bucket. That is right. The graveyard analogy. Just leave them buried. You know, they, yeah, they found their way to the graveyard. Let's just let'em rot. Right? They're there. Just

John: 35:24

they're going back to the earth, they're composting.

Mark: 35:26

Yeah. Back in the, back in there. So there's others. On the flip side of that, it is like, oh, wow. You look at it and you're like, oh, wow, this a next phase was gonna be happening right now. I haven't heard anything about it. I gotta pick up the phone, boom, pick up the phone and call that person, because hopefully you've established decent. A decent relationship with them, good rapport. There's a good, there's some good trust there. You're able to pick up the phone and have them actually answer and say, Hey, it's been a while. So great to talk. You completed this first part of the work, if I'm recalling correctly. You were hoping to pick that whole thing back up again. Now let's talk, right? And then there's another bucket that kind of falls in the middle that says. Maybe we, you know, maybe this isn't a pick up the phone situation, but maybe there's something that I call remarketing. Maybe there's an opportunity just to reacquaint them or re-expose them to. You, your organization, the work you do, your expertise, all that sort of stuff in a more subtle sort of, marketing way. Maybe it's through social media way there, you know, it's, you're kind of reengaging them that way. Maybe it's a, some sort of a, an email drip campaign. Maybe it's just whatever else it is. Maybe there's a, a, a less direct way to just reengage them and to, you know, like marketing's all about. Building familiarity. Right. And, you know, building their sort of awareness and trust in you. So maybe there's a, there's a need to re-familiarize them with you so that they think Oh, right. Those right. John John's out there. Right. I should, I should talk to John.

John: 37:05

Sure. Or, yeah, you could. Create a piece of content, whether that's a podcast episode or whether that's a blog post that centers on the primary challenge of that one single opportunity, and then publish that through whatever medium, and then reach out to them and say, Hey, you know, you were dealing with this challenge a year ago, or however long ago we wrote this post. We recorded this podcast episode. Would love for you to listen to it and hopefully it's helpful.

Mark: 37:33

Oh, I love that. that's like hyper targeted. And that's, that's great. That just sings to me. I love that one. that's a great example. All right, let's, let's put a nice little, uh, I don't wanna call it a bow. We need to keep the graveyard analogy

John: 37:45

Let's, Let's, put a tombstone on this.

Mark: 37:47

stick a tombstone on this whole thing. What's our tombstone gonna say for this episode, John?

John: 37:51

All right, so closing thoughts from the crypt here. Dead does not mean gone forever. I think that's kind of like the big takeaway from this is going back to your pipeline, looking at all of those closed, not one deals, some definitely are dead. Some there's potential for reawakening. So I think that's kind of the big takeaway here, is that something that folks can do, maybe it's quarterly, maybe it's once or twice a year, but it's, it's definitely something that can be a boon to your pipeline.

Mark: 38:20

Yeah. Good, good. the other one for me is, you know, and I'm a process guy in that organizations need to build a process around this and not just sort of staring at their active pipeline all the time. We need to build a process around revisiting. These closed, lost, closed, no decision, closed, whatever opportunities. And, running them through that, that three part thinking that I said is like, you know, which, who can I call right now? Who should we sort of remarket or re reacquaint ourselves with? And, you know, which ones are we just gonna leave in the graveyard? So, so a system means it has some regularity and over time you practice it and improve and get better at it so that you're better and better at reflecting on your closed deals. And coming back to ones that, you know, you might be able to, you know, bring in the, paddles. What are those paddles called? I'm Why

John: 39:14

The defibrillators,

Mark: 39:16

Yeah. I can't believe I spaced on. Yeah, you have clear, you know, like which ones are, which ones are ripe for the defibrillator to come in and just like shock back to life.

John: 39:24

Yeah. So as a closing thought for folks that are listening to this, I'm gonna assign some homework and Mark, I'm gonna do this homework too and you can hold me accountable to this find. Go through your pipeline and go through this exercise that we talked about on this podcast episode today, and identify a handful of opportunities that you think are not dead. They're dormant, they're worth reaching out to. Um, borrow a few of the plays that Mark mentioned on this podcast. I'll, I'm gonna do the same and then maybe we can revisit this topic in a couple weeks as it's just a quick aside, um, and see how the progress is going.

Mark: 40:01

Good. Good. I, yeah, some deals, deserve to be dead and gone, leave them in the graveyard, but there are a bunch out there that's, you know, given a little bit of effort you might be able to, bring them back to life. Do a little Frankenstein on him.

John: 40:20

Clear.

Mark: 40:21

Yeah. Good. So good. John, this has been a. Fun episode. Hopefully people enjoyed it. Until next time.

John: 40:29

Until next time.