Mark: 0:00

Even though we may believe it, not every client is worth it. Not every opportunity is actually an opportunity. Today we're talking about the uncomfortable but necessary habit of saying no and why it might be the best new business development move you can make. Let's talk about it on the podcast.

John: 0:25

Cue the music.

Mark: 0:27

Yeah,

John: 0:47

​Alright, welcome to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. I'm John. He's Mark. Mark. How you doing?

Mark: 0:54

I am. Great, John. Uh, how are you today?

John: 0:58

I'm doing well, doing well. Had a nice, uh, weekend. Played some music and now I'm ready to talk about saying no.

Mark: 1:05

What was the, what was the music all about? Speaking about saying yes to music, what was going on there?

John: 1:10

It's, uh, it's funny, we, we, um, usually our calendar is pretty open, but we're starting to build a little bit of reputation locally. So there's a couple of gig, uh, venues that wanted to book us for a gig on Saturday, and, uh, we had the. Decision to make of going two towns over to play a gig from nine to midnight at a place that paid less than the other gig that was right in our hometown. We could have friends coming, you know, the kids could come watch at an earlier time. So we had to say no to one opportunity to say yes to the other.

Mark: 1:45

Oh, there you go. I was, yeah. You, you, you're, you're, you're bringing it back. You're bringing it back into the, um, subject matter

John: 1:52

tie in a full circle. That's what we do here.

Mark: 1:54

it's good. Yeah. So yeah, this is all, this episode is about saying no, and this is a, a recurring theme in the work that I do with my clients, John,

John: 2:06

And it's, it's an important part because we often like to say yes to things and we often like to be helpful, but. That's not the case when it comes to protecting your pipeline and your marketing investments. So today on the podcast, we're going to talk about the power of saying no and why you should say no to the wrong clients, why you should say no to marketing overload, and we'll kind of wrap it up with a bow at the end of what you can do to take it away. Maybe some practical examples and activities.

Mark: 2:39

Good. So, so yeah, you, you mentioned there. Saying no on sort of the selling end of things and selling No, on the marketing end of things. So we're, we're wandering across our marketing and sales continuum today on both ends and the, on the sales end of things largely we're saying no to external opportunities that. we are, we are presented with or we ultimately create or we just have to make decisions about. And then on the other end, a lot of those conversations are internal conversations on how best to use the limited resources that we have internally for marketing, initiatives.

John: 3:15

So let's break it down. Mark. Why is no such a powerful tool? Why is saying no so powerful?

Mark: 3:22

I have some. Presentations, some things I talk through with my clients. This is a little bit of a, of an aside on that. I'll get to the answer of that question, John,'cause it's a, it's an important one. But I have a presentation that I talk about, qualification and qualification, as we've discussed previously on this podcast, is the very first step to determine fit in your sales conversations. And I throw up an image. Of these two, medieval warriors doing Battle on the battlefield. And the title of the presentation is, is Qualification, and then the subtitle is The Fierce Defense of Your Pipeline. and so it's a little bit of a, again, a mindset shift, right? I'm hoping to kind of prompt people to start thinking, wait a minute. I thought we were supposed to let everything we could into our. Sales pipeline because, you know, we need business and you know, we need clients. And so just we say a yes to everything. But as I talk it through, you know, your sales pipeline is the future work you'll be doing. They're the future clients you'll be working with. It's the future revenue that you will be receiving. It is liter, quite literally the future of your firm. And you, you want your pipeline to be, uh, representative and reflective of the exact type of an organization. That you're gonna be in the next 6, 12, 18 months, whatever else it is. So, yeah, I mean that's a, hopefully this is a little bit of a mindset shift and the power of saying no is so important because we have limited resources. Right. And that's gonna be a theme today, right? We have limited resources in which to work with clients. We have limited resources to do, you know. Different marketing initiatives or undertake anything, frankly, we just have limited resources and we can't just act like all of our resources are unlimited.

John: 5:08

I like this image of the Medieval warriors. On the Battlefield Knights. You know, I'm reminded of, you know, saying yes to the wrong opportunity is like the Black Knight from Monty Python, Tiz, but the flesh wound, right? You. Know, off goes your arm, and if you say yes to the wrong things, too many times you're just gonna be left a bloody stump.

Mark: 5:25

Yeah, you're a bloody stump. Just, just there a, a bloody stump having been taken full advantage of, uh, with, with no resources left. So yeah, it's so powerful to say no because on the flip side of this conversation is, you know, we end up with all these fantastic yeses, right? So we all these good things we're saying yes to, but it's often, so hard.

John: 5:49

Well, and that's the, I mean, I think it's in our human nature to be helpful, right? And it, you kind of have to like go against that a little bit every time that you need to say no. Because I mean, I don't know if, especially when you're in professional services, I think that it takes a certain kind of mindset, like that servant leadership mentality. And that is kind of like hard, it's a little counterintuitive to know what to say no to. And I think tying it to qualification is perfect because if you have tight qualification criteria, then it's easier to say no and go against that inherent like human characteristic.

Mark: 6:26

Yeah. Yeah, that's a, I mean, I mean that's a, that, that's a good point about the, we just wanna be helpful. organizations, clients come to us with, a need. sometimes it's a competitive situation, sometimes not. They're just knocking at the door saying, look, we could really use some help. But regardless of how they come to you or how you come to this decision making point, you need to vet them all carefully. Because like we said, we have limited resources and you know, we have this, this crazy thing going on our brain that, that wants us to help. The other stuff we have going on in our brain, and I wanted to make sure we touched on this, is this whole idea of opportunity cost, right? So, so opportunity cost is the value that your organization, your firm for goes. It's what you give up when choosing one option over another. Right? And it can be monetary, it could be time and resources. It could be just just effort. It could be energy. It's like, you know, we've exhausted ourselves doing the thing we said yes to, and this other thing that we actually should have been focusing on. there's nothing left in the tank, right? We're just all exhausted. We we're done. We can't say yes to this other thing that suddenly came along afterwards. That might have actually been a better use of our time and money and energy and all that stuff. So.

John: 7:54

Hmm,

Mark: 7:55

Yeah, so that's that opportunity. Cost is an important concept and I mentioned this thing going on in our brain that wants to help. The thing that's going on with these opportunity, with this idea of opportunity cost is there's a bunch of cognitive biases, kind of swimming through our brains, steering our decision making,

John: 8:16

So what are some of these cognitive biases?

Mark: 8:18

Yeah. Yeah. So we've, touched on one in the past, loss aversion, you know, loss aversion. Is dramatically more difficult. when we lose something, when something slips through our fingers than when we actually gain something. um, that's more impactful. to us. So we never want to say no,'cause we'd never wanna, we never want to kind of lose, lose that thing. The other two that kind of come to mind that are kind of involved with this whole opportunity cost is the sunk cost fallacy. And the sunk cost fallacy is kind of makes us feel obligated to continue, working on something, expending effort and time and energy on something. If we've taken a step or two down the path with it, if we've already spent a little bit of time with something, we just feel obligated just to continue on. So, right. We've already put some resources into it, we might as well just, you know, keep going. So it's that whole thing where it's like, yeah, I'd agreed to a conversation or a meeting, I talked, you know, I've spent an hour on it. At this point, we might as well just say yes and just kind of keep going. whether or not this is actually a smart decision to begin with. And then the other one is confirmation bias. And, you know, confirmation bias is this thing for us to, to put more weight, on things that sort of align with our current thinking. You know, it's, maybe a new business opportunity comes through and it's, very similar to something you've done in the past, or it's, something that very deeply, uh, you know, kind of Maybe the client is a lot like someone you've worked with in the past. It has some similarities to it. So we're thinking, oh yeah, this is just like that other thing. Let's just say yes to it, and it kind of feeds on itself right there. So, I mean, I don't know

John: 10:01

I guess if, that other thing was a profitable engagement with a client that was really good, then I guess this could be a good thing, right?

Mark: 10:07

Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

John: 10:08

But you gotta know what to look for.

Mark: 10:10

right. And a lot of times you, you think, well, of course, mark, of course you'd say yes to the thing that was just like the other thing. But you let, the potential similarities outweigh need to assess this on its own independently. Right. We

John: 10:24

your judgment.

Mark: 10:25

Yep. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so there's a whole bunch of stuff going on. This isn't, this isn't people out there making, you know, consciously terrible decisions on, taking things on that they should have said no to. Right? It's, our brains are working against us here with all these different cognitive biases. So, you know, yeah, that's a, it's a consideration. So, so there you go. There's one of the things that's at play with this whole no thing.

John: 10:48

And I guess like the fear of missing out, that's loss aversion, right? Yeah. Yeah. So.

Mark: 10:53

right?

John: 10:54

Fear of missing out on what could potentially be the one direction that you could take, or another direction that you could take your firm and its growth trajectory, which is actually like why it's really important to understand what that direction is that you as an organization, what direction do you want to go in and how do you want to grow? And keeping that in mind as like a north star with every yes and no decision.

Mark: 11:17

Yeah. good. So that's, that's kind of, that's kind of what we're talking about here. You know, why saying no is so powerful? The things that are working against us, it's not easy. These no decisions, can be challenging. There can be people in your, inside, your organization who are pressuring decision making one way or another. Our brains are, you know, making a mess of things with all these biases we have in our heads. Uh, so the whole. process is not easy.

John: 11:44

Do you have any examples, mark of times where you made a hard decision to say no?

Mark: 11:50

Um, you know, it, it, it's interesting you say, uh, I made a hard decision to say no. I have found that as time has gone on and I have said no with not, you know, not all the time, but with, with more, more frequency, you know, I've said no enough now, particularly with my own practice, I've said no enough. Now that I look at it as very empowering, kind of freeing. and a really important tool for me. You know, I have worked with enough organizations to know what success looks like, so that when I sort of entertain new opportunities that come my way, I'm kind of in tune with these new potential clients of whether they're a fit or not. I've got my sort of qualification questions that I, that I run through. I can sense pretty early on whether or not this is gonna be a good fit. And I have had success, and I think we'll talk about this a little bit later. And I have had success when I say no to. Have a have an action item on that, meaning that I'm connecting them with someone else or, you know, whatever else. So mine knows. and I've had one fairly recently, and it was, uh, I thought it was a, it was actually a, a good one. It was an organization that really wasn't a super fit. I have, uh, some, some good connections and I think at this point some friends that, that I have developed that do a similar thing that I do. And to this person that came to me and says, you know, at this moment, I'm not sure that we are a great fit. What I would like you to do is go talk to this other person and I'm gonna connect you to them. I'm gonna, I'm going to give you their contact information. I'll write an email and, and get you guys connected. What I'd like you to do is take everything that we've talked about and take everything. That you talk about with them and just sort of think it through and think which one of us might actually be in, a better fit or more in more alignment with you just to inform your decision making. you know, when people wanna work with me, I want them to come into it really comfortable, and confident. So refer that person over. And ultimately that person didn't end up working with either one of us. And whether it was. Both of those conversations, or, you know, ultimately it wasn't gonna play out. know they weren't gonna advance at all, with the whole thing anyways, um, I helped that person educate and sort of inform their sort of decision making, which I thought I thought was a good end result, really, frankly, for both of us.

John: 14:25

I think you're hitting on something that's very, very important because, saying no is, is a, is a way to keep the buyer's best interest in mind. And I think that example that you just shared is a great way to kind of say, Hey, we're not a good fit. But then you went the step further of making a referral to a reputable source. So you're reinforcing your brand, your reputation in the marketplace by doing that and offering that value and paying it forward.

Mark: 14:55

Right.

John: 14:56

So just, I thought, I thought that was just a really important like piece of advice that folks that are listening to right now might kind of take away and be like, oh, okay. That's a tactful way to say no in a good.

Mark: 15:07

Yeah, people have a tough time with it. They, they, they can't process quite, okay, how am I actually going to say no without, you know, feeling, feeling like I'm, you know, giving them the short end of the stick or just, you know, brushing'em off. and I think there's a whole bunch of ways to do it. And if you keep the client at the center of all of this and just, you know, want to be helpful. Yeah, you'll, you'll, you'll find a way through it.

John: 15:31

So let's talk about saying no to the wrong kinds of clients. Now that we know the importance of saying no and um, how to do it in a respectful, tactful way, what are some of the things that maybe Mark you look for that are like misalignments or bad fits or like red flags?

Mark: 15:49

Yeah, I think, uh, there's a, there's a few things that that come to mind. Uh, one is, sort of the, the speed or the cadence. Of when someone is coming to you. And what I mean by that, I I is that, are they showing up at the front door and they need something to happen immediately, right? I is it, oh, hey, I, I, you know, hi, I've got this new thing. And maybe you're a project based, professional services firm out there, and someone comes to you with a, with a, a project and their hair's on fire and they're like, all right, I need to get a proposal from you tomorrow. that's a huge red flag because, you know, it, it, there's a, there's a couple things going on. First of all, they could have a completely unreasonable, you know, sort of timeline. Yeah. Sense of like, there's certain sense of urgency could be, you know, like off, I mean, a sense of urgency in, in some cases it's very good. In other cases it's not good. Right. So this could be one of those bad

John: 16:47

is on the extreme end.

Mark: 16:49

Yeah. Yeah. This could be, right. That could be one of those bad ones. plus. You know, and we've talked about this I think, a little bit in the past, is that you're, you are allowing your clients to kind of dictate the whole buying, selling process. Which, you know, I throw the word out there, sort of control. You wanna maintain some amount of control in the whole process. You don't wanna be the one that is controlling in the process. But you know, if you're the seller, generally speaking, you've done this selling thing more than the buyers and the buying thing. That's kind of, it's a, it's a, for a lot of firms, that's, that's the truth, right? We have done more selling than

John: 17:21

more reps, you get more at

Mark: 17:23

yeah. We get more at bats. Exactly. So, so hopefully we're a little bit better at this than they are. So what that means is that we're letting someone who's potentially less experienced at this, at this whole buying, selling thing, coming in and starting to dictate direction, the timing, the terms, the, you know, whatever else. And it's like, that is not good. We need to maintain some amount of control. Plus, you know, we have our process, we have our series of conversations that we need to walk through. We need to qualify first, and then we need to discover, and then we need to propose with some options and things like that. So, you know, and that takes a little bit of time. And if the work to be done has any amount of complexity, which most. Most things out there do, right? This is gonna take time to develop this sort of initial, understanding approach, et cetera. So the heroin fire stuff is a huge, is a huge red flag, right? So there's other stuff. there's, the dollars and cents, you know, if the dollars and cents, you know, are mentioned or discussed early on, and they're way out of whack. And that typically means that the buyer hasn't really fully understood the complexity of, of, of what they need, you know, of what they, what they want to achieve. So there's probably a, mismatch there, and associated with that is they come and they say, Hey, I've, you know, I'd love to talk to you guys about this. The last two firms that I've talked to are just super expensive. And so, you know, here I am, I'm gonna talk to you guys and hopefully you guys can gimme a proposal. Like for anybody, even if you don't consider yourself like a high cost provider, which John, I've never worked with a firm who doesn't consider themself a HighCo provider, by the way. You know? So even if you don't consider yourself sort of a high cost provider, uh, that's a red flag. If someone comes to you and says, yeah, all the other guys I've talked to are too expensive, you're like, uhoh. Here we go, add, add us to the list. Right? So, um, and then, and then there's the folks that only wanna bite off a little tiny bit, but want to achieve this great big thing, which is sort of a scope thing, right? There's a complete scope mismatch. There's, they're completely out of touch with the time and energy and complexity of all of this, and they only think it's a, it's, it's a small thing. I use an analogy also in the work that I do. I use an analogy of. the client comes to you with a, with a problem or a need that they think, you know, looks somewhat like a crack in the sidewalk, and you, the professional, are looking at them thinking, Hey, this is the Grand Canyon, right? So there's your mismatch, right? So it's, they're thinking, oh, this is a small thing. It's just a crack in the sidewalk, right? And you're thinking, Hmm, you don't know. This looks more like the Grand Canyon to me.

John: 20:04

I, I run into that so often in my line of work producing, podcast media. There's like repurposing like long form episodes into short form content. You know, it seems like yes, there, there is efficiencies that are gained, but I think that there, like I've run into that with my own clients, a misunderstanding of the level of. Work involved and you know, everything that goes into what it takes to kind of pull those clips out. So I've, and then I've run into the price sensitive ones as well, even in just my couple years in business. So this is, yep. There's all sorts of clients out there.

Mark Wainwright: 20:40

You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman: 20:42

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: 20:57

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

John Tyreman: 21:07

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

Mark Wainwright: 21:12

and now back to the show.

Mark: 21:16

Yeah, so there's a whole bunch of red flags and unfortunately we, um, and I, I listed a few there. Unfortunately, we, are all too quick to dismiss them or we are sort of numb to them. we don't recognize them for what they are. we don't put any level of sort of validity or credence to those sort of red flags that pop up, you know? And one of the things that I often say is that, look. one of the most important things to keep in mind here is that if during this early conversation, this sort of determining fit, if you have concerns, but you sort of put them aside and then the process kind of continues. And this all sort of pre-contract stuff when you're talking through pricing or whatever else, contracting and things, and there's red flags popping up all over the place. If you ignore them because you're thinking, look, as soon as we get the contract signed, it's gonna turn into the perfect engagement with the perfect client. Yeah. I think you might, might be a little overly optimistic.

John: 22:13

You're just sweeping it under the rug and at some point you're gonna trip. Yeah. It's, it's like those red flags you could proactively address, like the understanding, the gap and understanding. That's just a conversation and just level setting. And then, you know, you do that over and over again. And sometimes, you know, if you run into one that's just a little bit, you're too far off, you can't bridge that gap, then, you know, watch out. Don't trip.

Mark: 22:36

right. So, so the, the, one of the other points I wanted to make in this, in sort of this saying no the wrong clients thing I, is that it's important that we prioritize qualifying people. Over projects, and again, specifically, you know, this may be more relevant to some firms out there than than others. but I don't know even, I mean, I've worked with sort of wealth management clients in the past and, you know, they'll have a new prospective client shows up that has kind of a big portfolio and they're like, wow, that's really gonna add to our sort of, you know, total assets under management. That's sort of the language that they, that those folks use and they completely disregard. The people. Right? and so architects, engineers, you know who, whoever, consultants, analysts, whoever else you are, all too often people are focused on the work to be done and the project, right? Ooh, this is a good project. It's this thing. It's, oh, we're a landscape architecture firm and there's, they want to put this beautiful new park in this place. Oh, it's gonna be great. And we're so excited about it, but they completely disregard. The actual people that they'll be interacting with the client. Right. And they just assume that the client's gonna be, you know, like everybody else is tolerable, right? They're just gonna, and they're gonna pay their, pay their bills, you know, on time for the most part. And, you know, they're gonna be okay to work with. Then they completely gloss over a whole bunch of that stuff. So, when problems arise over the course of, you know, delivering work. In a lot of cases, the problems don't come from the project itself, the work to be done, right? We're pretty good at the work to be done, and we, we've got that part handled. The problems arise from the people, right? So that underscores the importance of saying no upfront to people that aren't a good fit, regardless of what the project looks like. And then that loss aversion comes. FOMO hits us in the side of the head and says, we can't say no to this great project, but then everybody else is saying, yeah, but look at the client. They're a mess. Right? They've ghosted you for three weeks. They have a proposal that's like, you know, gathering dust in their inbox that you sent them. And it's like, what's going on here? So yeah. So people over projects when we are in this whole qualification, you know, saying no thing.

John: 24:56

That's, I think that's a great rule to live by, is the, the people of her projects.

Mark: 25:01

Yeah. Yeah. So, so the, the last thing it that that's worth touching on, that we mentioned earlier on, is that opportunities to, you know, gracefully say no and, and sort of still, still show up with that prospective client, um, like you're trying to help, right? You're really focused on them, which is the sort of the handoff, the referral, the, you know, even it's. You know, if you really wanna work with us, great. You know, that's clear. It looks like you and your team probably need to think some things through need to. You know, do, do your homework, whatever. It's just, it just feels like the timing isn't perfectly right. And, and, and it feels like, you know, in the near term future, if we, you know, sort of re-engage and continue our conversation, we're all gonna be much, much, much more, you know, informed and better prepared. To say yes and, and, and move ahead. So, and sometimes that'll fall flat. They'll just go somewhere else and work with some other schlocky, you know, consultant. but sometimes it says, Hey, just, just take some time. It sounds like you need to get your stuff together on your end of things. Maybe you're talking to someone who's a champion of a particular idea inside their firm, but they don't have support and buy-in from everybody else there. Like the important decision makers aren't really bought into it. So maybe there's a need for them to do some sort of work internally so that when there's a yes finally that it comes from, you know, the top, the decision makers in the organization and everybody's all ready to go.

John: 26:39

And, and you know, I, I think that's another really good point Mark, is, you know, saying no, doesn't have to always be, no, here's someone else that might be a good fit. It could also be, no, it doesn't sound like you're, there internally. Here's some resources to help you kinda get there. And that's where kind of marketing can support that. Sales conversation whether even though it's a no right now, doesn't mean that it's a no in in, in the future.

Mark: 27:08

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So that's, so that's, um, that's the whole, you know, sort of saying no sort of to the external clients. Let's, let's wander into the, you know,'cause this is your sort of end of the marketing and sales continuum. John, let's, let's wander into the sort of internal conversations that can happen around saying no to, you know, marketing stuff, right.

John: 27:38

I've, uh, I've been around a lot of marketers for, you know, the last 10, 15 years. And, there's a common affliction. I'll say it's the shiny object syndrome. It's chasing all the shiny objects, the brand new platforms, the new technology, the new tactics. And I think, you know, when it comes to saying no, I think it dis and when it's applied in a marketing sense, I think again, you know, qualification. Matters, right? So like if you're qualifying activities, where do, where are you spending your time? Where are you spending your budget? I think when you're going through a qualifying, these different activities, you gotta think through, okay, does this marketing activity help us achieve our business goals? What are our goals? Are we growing revenue by 20% this year? Are we trying to reduce client churn? Are we trying to expand client accounts? All of these different marketing objectives. Influence how you approach your marketing. Budget allocation. Time allocation. So does this activity help us achieve our goals? And then how, how is it going to do that? How is it, how are you going to connect the dots between this LinkedIn strategy and closed one revenue? Right.

Mark: 28:57

right, right there. Yeah. There can't be too many dots. There can't be 14 dots between this thing and, and the results. Right? It's gotta be a little tighter than that.

John: 29:06

Exactly, and, and so when it comes to kind of looking at your marketing strategy and then how, first of all, does that marketing activity help us achieve our goals? Let's just go through the, through the sake of effort. Let's just go through and say, yes, this marketing activity does help us achieve our goals. We understand how. And so I think those are, again, those are two good qualification criteria. But then if that activity helps us achieve our goals, what are the tactics underneath of that? Right? And then again, gotta stay disciplined in understanding what those goals and objectives are, because this is where it can get a little washy. And like you said, you don't wanna have too many dots. So, for example, choosing one or two different channels to go deep in instead of wide.

Mark: 29:58

Yeah. That, that, that speaks to me because, know, we've talked about this forever. We're all about going deep rather than going wide. Yeah, yeah.

John: 30:06

So, for example, like if you're constructing a, a marketing funnel, again, it's a framework that we've used on this, on this show in the past. It's easy for folks to understand at the top of the funnel. Maybe you want to choose one primary channel. Let's say it's LinkedIn, and then in the middle of the funnel, you wanna choose another primary channel. What's the main middle of the funnel channel? Maybe it's a podcast. Then at the bottom, how are you gonna turn potential maybes into potential yeses or maybe potential nos, and maybe it's an interactive audit or there's some quiz there that you know, helps you understand and qualify someone. So that's just an example of being very focused in where you're spending your marketing resources because. The flip side of that is if you're trying to be everywhere all at once. I remember, um, listening to the marketing school podcast, Neil Patel, like years and years ago, and he was all about omnichannel marketing. You have to be everywhere all the time. And I think at some point I subscribed to that a little bit and I was like, okay, yeah, def, that makes total sense, right? Putting that into practice is so tiring and. You don't gain any traction on any platform because your resources and your time allocations just totally spent elsewhere.

Mark: 31:25

Right. and it's, it's, you know, you being everywhere assumes that your, your fantastic clients are everywhere and a lot of times they're not. A lot of times they have to make smart choices about, where they spend their, their time and what they focus on. So that's a, that's a, um, that's a, a great point. You had another point in here about, you know, sort of the, quality over quantity thing. And that's just, that's just singing to me.

John: 31:46

Yeah, let's talk about that real quick. So I think, um, when it comes to. Collaborating with marketing partners. It's a, it's a huge, visibility accelerator is when you can find the right partner opportunity to co-market with. but if you find the wrong partner, that can be a colossal waste of effort and time. so qualifying your partnering opportunities is just as important as qualifying your. Sales opportunities, it's just as important as qualifying the channels and tactics that you use in your marketing strategy. I guess like a good way to think about this is, when you're selecting the channels, when you're selecting the tactics, when you're selecting partners that make up your marketing strategy and how you will execute, you know, getting in front of the right people is more important than getting in front of quantity people. So if you've got visibility with a hundred of. The right kind of people that fit your ideal client profile. You know that's much better than getting 10,000 impressions with just like a random sample of people you don't know if they are in market. You don't know if they fit your ideal client profile. They don't even know if they even are in a business that you could help.

Mark: 33:01

John, that flies in the face of this, you know, sort of, you know, sort of exponential growth curve that everybody wants in their sort of, you know, downloads and you know, visitors and, you know, all that stuff. So, yeah.

John: 33:17

Yeah, it's important to be in front of the right people, not just total volume.

Mark: 33:22

and I'd, you know, I'd like to think that you and I have done a good enough job in sort of being really specific and focused about this podcast that we have the right people listening to our podcast, that everybody out there. And if. Can, can sort of, uh, align with and sort of, you know, connect themselves with what we're talking about. You know, uh, they can relate to this content because they're the right audience. You know, we're not just, out there spewing stuff and we get random, random listeners all the time. So I'd like to think that we're pretty well, pretty well positioned.

John: 33:58

I think so too, and I think it's also like you serve professional services firms. I serve professional services firms, so we have a common shared. client base. You know, there's a lot of overlap. You know, I've got a little bit more experience maybe in the accounting industry. You've got a little bit more experience in the a, e, c industry, but, you know, together we can talk about a wide range of different industries and client types and sizes. So, yeah, I think that this podcast is a great example of a marketing partnership.

Mark: 34:27

Agreed. Agreed. Alright, let's, let's, let's wrap it up for our, for our, uh, hopefully ideal, customer audience out there who's, who's listening closely to this. So, so, you know, every no decision that you make. Presents an, an opportunity, to focus on something else, to spend your, your, your, you know, limited resources, your energy, your time, all of that on something else, right? It's that whole opportunity cost and really understanding and embracing That opportunity cost that, you know, constantly thinking that, yeah, we have to really qualify these things well because there could be something out there that's frankly even better. And I know that sounds a little sort of pie in the sky, but it's true. It happens a lot. And I, you know, anybody who's been in this business for long enough has known that they said something to, they said yes to something on Monday, and then something on Thursday showed up. You're like, oh shoot, that's. That one's even better. So it, yeah, it's, it's a tough world up there, but yeah, we need to be careful.

John: 35:29

That's a great point. one of my big takeaways from this is that reframe that no, doesn't have to be negative. And if you're keeping the buyer in mind and you're telling them, Hey, you know, it's not a great fit right now, and whether you're triaging that to a trusted referral source that you have or you're offering. Educational material to help your potential buyer get into a better frame of mind or a better understanding of, of how to engage with you. You know, that's, being empathetic in your marketing. You're, you're understanding your buyer and helping them make the right decision. It's not negative. It's very, very positive.

Mark: 36:04

Yeah. Yeah. exactly. And you, you have, you have a note here that there's a, there's a challenge that that, that we can put out there to people. And actually, this makes me think of something. the challenge that, you thought of was you look at your calendar and say no to one thing, this week. Right. So I think that's good. This actually makes me think of a very specific situation where. Fairly early on when I started working with one of my clients, they had, you know, we had kinda a long list of potential projects and I think this was early enough that they didn't really understand what having a, a really well maintained, sharp focused sales pipeline was. So there was just this pile of stuff that we had and you know, we organized it up a little bit and tried to take a look at it and it was a mess. So I got everybody together and I said, okay, folks. What are we gonna kill today? And they all looked around the room like, are you kidding me? Yeah. I'm like, which one of these opportunities is, is, is gonna get the ax? Which, what are we going to say no to? What do we have to get rid of? And they, it was like I was, you know, like taking their puppy or something. They were, they were freaked out.

John: 37:16

I, I guess you gotta start building muscle somehow, right?

Mark: 37:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah. so that was, that was a fantastic exercise and it was really, I think one of this, this client's first experience is of, oh, actually we can be empowered and we can say no to something and we can cross it off the line. And remember, we're not, you know, we're, we're, we're, we're not saying no to the people, we're saying no, to the, to the project here. So that's super

John: 37:39

maybe it's not looking at your calendar for folks that are listening to this, look at your pipeline.

Mark: 37:44

Yeah. Right.

John: 37:45

What is an opportunity in your pipeline that you can say no to? And which opportunity is gonna get the XI think that like, like we just talked about, that's a great, you know, first, first rep at saying no in a tactful way.

Mark: 37:58

Right, right.

John: 38:00

Well, mark, this has been, this has been awesome. Is there anything else that you wanted to close with?

Mark: 38:04

No, I, I, I, you know, I'd mentioned this, I mentioned this to you the other day as we were talking about this whole saying no thing. And, I have this, this analogy of, of this block of marble. Um, and. People picture this, this big, you know, quarry chunk of marble and then you've got sort of like the statue of David or something like that, right? That was carved carefully out of this big block of, of, of marble. So that's the analogy here, and hopefully it's pretty obvious, is every time you say no to something, you chip away at that, that, that big block of marble until you arrive at this final form. That's beautiful. Right? And you have to say no. So that you can chip away and sort of create this final form of your organization, of your firm, that is something that, you're excited about, something that your team members love, something that you know is really reflective of your values, your personality, your people, your, you know, the work you wanna do in the future. Uh, it's that final form that you're after and, and you can't. Get there if you keep saying yes to everything, so you're not chipping away at the block of marble. So that's the, that's kind of a fun analogy. I like to, to kind of do this whole sort of, you know, picturing in my brain sort of process of chipping away and ending up with some something that looks, you know, like you,

John: 39:26

Because David was inside that block of marble the whole time.

Mark: 39:29

was in there.

John: 39:30

Right, and all Michelangelo had to do was just chip away at it. Well, I think that's a great visual to leave our listeners with.

Mark: 39:38

Yeah, this was, this was fun, John. Until next time,

John: 39:41

Until next time.