Mark Wainwright 0:00

When a firm outgrows the founder's ability to sell, who should own business development? A dedicated sales rep? A rainmaker? Should you train your existing technical staff how to sell your services? Which approach makes the most sense for your organization? Let's get into it today on the podcast

John Tyreman 0:40

Welcome to another episode of Breaking Biz Dev. My name is John Tyreman. As always, I'm joined by my trusty co-host, Mark Wainwright. Mark, I think it's been a while since we've done this, but I'd, I'd like to call out to our listeners, if you haven't already, leave a review of the podcast, rate, review, subscribe to the show. It really helps us out. How are you doing today, Mark?

Mark Wainwright 1:00

I am, doing well. actually, on that I've been, communicating, sending some notes out to some, followers of the podcast and have been receiving back, some nice comments. So it's good to see that, somebody out there is listening and, that they actually, find some value in what we're doing here, John. So congratulations to you and, let's keep it going and hopefully today doesn't let anybody down.

John Tyreman 1:29

I don't think it will. I think this is a, a, a theme that's central to the podcast that we have here. so should you train sales reps or should you hire sales reps or train your doers to sell? This is a conundrum that I'm sure you're faced with a lot with your clients. So let's dive into this. I guess, the big question to open it up is who should be responsible for business development?

Mark Wainwright 1:53

Yeah. and, the appropriate response to that is it depends, and it varies, organization to organization as, as we always say. it's all over the place. But we're gonna get kind of binary today about this, and we're gonna create a sort of this or that choice, between hiring dedicated full-time sales team members, business development reps, you know, a rainmaker or rainmakers, you know, where their time is spent out finding and winning new work, or spending the time, and the effort, to identify the individuals in your firm who are there already, who are typically technical professionals, who are going to spend at least some of their, their week, month, um, finding and winning new work, right? These are the doer-sellers, seller-doers, however you wanna phrase it, that's them. So we're gonna choose between those two. We're gonna talk about both of those approaches or models, and we're gonna beat them up a little bit.

John Tyreman 2:57

And if folks that are listening, they probably know that we have a slight bias on this podcast towards our friends, those doer sellers. But we're gonna try to lay all the cards out on the table and come at this as unbiased as we can. So let's set the stage for our listeners, Mark. So let's clearly define each of these two types of roles. So let's start with the full-time salespeople. How would you define that for our audience?

Mark Wainwright 3:22

This is a, a full-time overhead position, right? This person does not, have any responsibilities in the sort of service delivery responsibility, so there's no billable time, no utilization targets or any of that. Maybe there's just, 1% or 5% of their time they're gonna be able to bill in some particular way. But generally speaking, no, that's not what we're talking about here. these sort of rainmakers or these full-time salespeople. They own the opportunity, the new business opportunity from a lead that they get either inbound or through prospecting or whatever else it is, to the contract, and then when the contract is completed, those individuals will transfer this client and that client relationship to service delivery, the folks kind of, doing the technical work. Sometimes these people are responsible for the overall client relationship, you know, in sort of the big arc of that relationship, but they are not necessarily responsible for the day-to-day, week-to-week, project delivery, service delivery work. So they're, a degree removed from that, but they may be interacting with the client to some degree, to maintain the overall client relationship. So that's that person.

John Tyreman 4:41

So account management notwithstanding, they're 100% unbillable. Their sole focus is on winning new business. All right, so let's contrast that with doer sellers. What do we mean by that?

Mark Wainwright 4:56

Doer-seller, so, you know, it's a split role obviously, right? so they are considered a full-time doer and a part-time seller. Really, that's kinda how it's all, all broken out. Yeah. So, so I mean, the reason they're in the organization is because of their technical expertise and they will deliver the work, and then at some point in their careers, they will evolve to the point to take on this additional role, they've got some delivery responsibility, and they have our wonderful friend utilization. They have some sort of target that they should be hitting. depending on their status in the organization, their seniority, that utilization rate for these doer-sellers can be, anywhere between 40% and 60%, just so people have a number in their head, which means that, they're splitting their time and they're billing half of their time, and then the other half they're spending doing all these other things in addition to doing this part-time selling role, the administrative work, the management stuff, the HR, and also the finding and winning new work. So that's that person. they are juggling things for sure. These individuals, unlike what we just talked about, that full-time salesperson, they own the opportunity and the client from lead to service delivery, right? So their relationship doesn't stop at the contract. There's no handoff. They own it all the way through. And sometimes these individuals, very similar to the full-time sales team, are responsible for the overall client, account relationship. So there's some sort of Venn diagram overlap between the two, but obviously there's some differences as well.

John Tyreman 6:27

So now that we've defined what each of these two roles are, let's get into some of the benefits and drawbacks of each approach. We'll lay these out on the table, and then, we'll start to put together what it means for your firm. So let's start with the, dedicated sales reps. What are some of the benefits and drawbacks? And we've got this little two-by-two table. Maybe we can put up a graphic on the screen for those watching on YouTube. Mark, you wanna go ping pong back and forth with these bullets?

Mark Wainwright 6:55

you know, the, the, the first and foremost one obviously is that, people's job responsibility is super clear, right? They are 100% focused on new business development, selling, right? it doesn't get pushed to the back burner. it doesn't become a lower priority. that's what they're responsible for. and typically, organizations, if they have these individuals, these individuals will have very specific goals. and, so they will have either monthly, quarterly, annual, contract goals typically. Not to be confused with revenue goals, 'cause revenue is when you're actually doing and then billing the work. But they'll have sales goals, which are front-end contracts. typically, these people will generally have some amount of compensation tied up in performance. whether it's part of their base compensation or whether it's discretionary, these people will, have that for sure, I would say. And if you have full-time, sales team members inside your organization and who do not have any variable performance compensation, you should

John Tyreman 7:52

So they're more incentivized. They're highly incentivized to win new business. And then I think another benefit of having dedicated sales reps is they do have a lot more volume of reps at the sales process, so they're deeply in tune with that sales process and guiding prospects through that, which can be a benefit to an organization that either maybe they don't have a really defined sales process and a dedicated rep can come in and help organize and formalize that a little bit

Mark Wainwright 8:22

Yeah, I think it's a, that's a fantastic point. They just get more practice. And so when we practice, you know, with a specific process, we can improve that process and we can improve our performance. the practice, is, is important and a, and a big benefit, I would say. So the last one, and it's kind of tied to that second bullet point, is that they just become more confident, right? they are sort of naturally more confident in sales and in selling because that's just what they're doing all the time. They're getting more practice. and, you know, your confidence as a salesperson, doer, seller, whatever else, a person responsible for, those activities, you know, just sort of a humble confidence, right? I think you know, that, that helps the buyer-seller relationship. Because a lot of times buyers won't really, have a very disciplined, organized approach to buying professional services 'cause it's hard and complex. So your confidence in, bringing an organized process, bringing some level of diligence and rigor and everything else helps the buying, selling process. so good. Thumbs up on those. Those are some of the benefits, for sure.

John Tyreman 9:27

let's flip the coin and let's talk about drawbacks to the dedicated sales rep. So the first bullet that we have here is in-- let me tie this with, one of the top selection criteria for buyers when they're evaluating professional service providers is the ability to demonstrate relevant experience and past

Mark Wainwright 9:47

Yeah. Yeah

John Tyreman 9:49

So that's a big one. Case studies, examples, anecdotes from, your, being able to deliver the work. Well, a dedicated sales rep with no experience delivering on the work, they don't have that natural connection point to be able to speak to that experience. So that's one of the big drawbacks of that approach is it's harder to relay that information

Mark Wainwright 10:11

For sure. They're just not a practitioner, right? So they, they, they don't have that practical, experience as a practitioner, for sure. They may have people alongside them, subject matter experts or other technical professionals in the sales process, but as the lead in this whole buying, selling process, they're not the ones that are the experts there. related to that is that, there's a handoff thing where they're bringing in these other folks here, right? so that's, a drawback to that situation is that they have to lean on other people for experience and resumes and all that, and then eventually they have to kind of defer to someone else, when it comes time. So that's definitely a drawback.

John Tyreman 10:52

Little bit of inefficiency there, that can add to your cost of sale too

Mark Wainwright 10:55

If, if, if you are a, a, a, you know, e- either new or kind of, maybe probably mid-career, 'cause I would say that this scenario is not practical for someone who's a long time full-time sales professional. But if you have bad sales, habits, bad sales skills, the reason I say that, you're probably not gonna make it very far But as a full-time practitioner in sales, if you have bad sales habits, and you just continue to reinforce those again and again and again and again, it's hard to unlearn those things.

John Tyreman 11:23

So those are some benefits and drawbacks to working with someone who's fully dedicated to sales and winning new business. So let's turn the page and look at our friends, the doer sellers, and some benefits and drawbacks to this one. So Mark, you wanna kick us off?

Mark Wainwright 11:42

Yeah. the obvious, counterpoint to what we made before is that, if the buyer is working directly with the doer-seller, the doer-seller can point to kind of their own experience and their own resumes, you know? so it's, there's no handoff, there's no deferral. Your lead sort of doer-seller is probably someone who has some relevant experience and some subject matter expertise that is important to the buyer. so huge benefit there, right? There's no other parties involved in the conversation. Now, obviously, you know, there's a team generally involved in a lot of these things. Very little is done these days, you know, with, one professional service, one consultant, right? So there's a team there, so there's other voices in the room, but, you know, the lead person is, um, is probably skilled, so that's a good thing.

John Tyreman 12:31

Yeah, the ability to pull those anecdotes and client stories is really powerful in those conversations. So another benefit kind of to the, counterpoint to what we were talking about with dedicated business development reps and unlearning bad sales habits, for many doer sellers, they've worked in their technical area of expertise to the point where then taking that next step means learning sales. And at that point in their career, presumably they haven't formed bad habits yet. So that's an opportunity to learn with a tabula rasa, a fresh start, you know, learn new good sales habits from the get-go.

Mark Wainwright 13:10

Yeah, I think that's a good point. Even though in the work I do, I see some kind of legacy, cliched bad habits with just about anybody out there. oftentimes, with individuals that I work with that are earlier on in their career, you're right, it's a lot of times it's a clean slate. and once they're able to connect sort of their career and the trajectory that they would like their career to take with, "Oh, at some point I'm gonna have to understand how to go and, find and win new business for our firm." Once they make that connection, then they are, ready to learn, which is great. So, and these technical professionals typically are pretty fast learners, so that's, that's good stuff.

John Tyreman 13:47

it's not all sunshine and roses with these doer sellers. There are some drawbacks and challenges to using that approach. and one of them being is that fear of, you know, hey, I went to school to be an architect or an engineer or an accountant, right? not to be a salesperson. And so that can sometimes be a blindside it sounds like in their careers or something that they don't wanna do.

Mark Wainwright 14:09

Yeah. we've discussed this in the past is that, "Look, this is not what I signed up for," you know? And lo and behold, person feels like their back is against the wall. They're being pushed to do this sales thing, and they don't want to do it, and they go back and they're like, "Look, my job description when you hired me said nothing about this. So that's a problem for some firms is that, yeah, they've got a bunch of people, you know, good technical professionals inside their firm that, do great work, clients are happy with, all that stuff. but, when it comes time for them to start doing some business development, they get freaked out and they default back to this, you know, "Hey, that's not what I signed up for." For sure. So that's a huge drawback because you're always fighting that. Until an individual kind of embraces it, you're always fighting that, right? It's like the rollercoaster, right? you're just trying so, like, you're up, up, up, up, up, and people are feeling pressure, whatever else. But as soon as they're successful at it, the rollercoaster rolls down the other side and they gain momentum, and they become really good at it. So it's all bonuses. So, the other thing, is the other drawback to a doer-seller is that they've got a lot of plates spinning, right? There's a lot of jobs to do for your typical doer-seller. and this sales thing can be a little uncomfortable for many. and oftentimes, you know, when we have a long list of tasks to do, the ones that we want to do the least get pushed to the bottom of the list, right? so that's one of the big problems is, you know, a lot of people think, "Oh, well, I, I of course I have to do all my billable work first, and then I got, gotta get to this other stuff, and I've got some management stuff, and I've got some administrative stuff that I gotta take care of, whatever else. and then I'll get to the sales stuff." But by that time, they've run out of hours, you know, and the clock resets, and then they're right back at it again. So yes, for people who are, kind of either just hesitant or unwilling, to dedicate sufficient time to this, and they have all these other competing responsibilities, competing needs, it gets, pushed to the bottom of the list for sure.

John Tyreman 16:13

that organizational mindset and cultural shift that needs to happen of setting that expectation, number one, for these technical professionals, that at some point in your career you're going to need to take on business development responsibilities. But then also to prioritize that unbillable time, in some form or fashion in relation to the billable work.

Mark Wainwright 16:34

You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman 16:36

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 16:50

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

John Tyreman 17:00

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

Mark Wainwright 17:05

and now back to the show.

John Tyreman 17:09

Mark, I think this is a great place for us to, segue into the Rainmaker death spiral. So, the floor is yours. Expl- explain this one

Mark Wainwright 17:19

this came to me and for the people who are, taking this in, over YouTube, or some other visual, we'll have something to show here. but I've always had this picture in my mind of this cyclical process, which starts to look like a death spiral if you see where it's headed. I'm gonna put a little bit of shade on the sort of rainmaker, all the eggs in one basket or too few baskets, i.e. you know, the dedicated, dedicated individual salespeople. You know, let's refer to those as the rainmaker. And yes, I refer to this, John, I think I've actually referred to it as the rainmaker silver bullet death spiral, something like, I don't know, what- whatever it is. yeah, I think a lot of people look at the rainmaker as, sort of the silver bullet, so here's what it is, and it's a cyclical diagram. You can kind of picture this in your head. Maybe we start at 12 o'clock at the top here, and firms sort of, I see them and I've seen this happen. I'm not making this stuff up, folks. I've seen this progress happen, and it can take a long time. Honestly, this whole cycle can take years. it could take a year, it could take less than a year, but likely it takes some years for firms to kind of mentally, move through this whole model. So let's start at 12 o'clock, and 12 o'clock at the top of the model says, you know, Holy smokes, we need a rainmaker." You know, maybe you're having trouble, your firm's having trouble generating new business. you're kind of going at it sort of in a ad hoc, you know, way. There's no organization, there's no process, whatever else. So they're like, "Ah, we gotta go hire a rainmaker." So you venture off and you hire a rainmaker, right? And you pay them a lot because they show up with a very long list of relationships, right? They know everybody, right? You're like, "This is gonna be great. We've got this rainmaker. They've got tons of experience, and they've got connections all over the place. This is gonna be wonderful." Right. So now we're progressing through our cyclical model. Phase number two is rainmaker is great, right? Everybody's looking at the rainmaker because the rainmaker has lots of things happening. There's lots of activity. The results are pending, but the activity is going. Lunches are happening, conferences, you know, networking events. Susan went to the, cocktail, networking event the other day, and then I couldn't believe it. She was up again at the crack of dawn going to the breakfast." there's lots of activity happening, and everybody else in the firm who maybe wasn't doing so well at developing new business is really excited about that because they've got a person that's doing a lot of stuff, and they don't have to. So they're like, "This is great." we move to the third part of this model, and I'm confident, John, there's gonna be a reader or two out there that's like, "Oh yeah, seen it. Yep." Then we get to the third part of this death spiral that says: where are the results? Right? All the lunches are not turning into contracts, right? Maybe still catching up with old friends and everything else, but those contacts, those relationships are not being leveraged into new work, right? There's a lot of activity, but not a lot of results, right? And the practitioners are starting to recognize this. Oh, and by the way, the practitioners who were so excited about not having to do any of this work are suddenly starting to realize that they've lost track of all of their own contacts. "Oh, shoot." Like, you know, like palm to the head, right? "Oh, I can't believe we let this happen. We neglected the people that were important to us." So the final step in the death spiral, John, right? We fire the rainmaker, right? Rainmaker's not doing it. Everybody gets into the conference room. It's a big thing, So we can the rainmaker. So the rainmaker is canned along with all of their relationships and some new ones that they managed to pull in, right? So the rainmaker, the net-net of it is the rainmaker showed up with this long list, made their list a little bit longer, and then they were off to some other firm, probably making some other promises to them So the rainmaker is fired, and the practitioners have to scramble to win new work. They start sending off frantic emails. they start going to lunches, kind of fumbling through stuff, not super organized. And then we can see where we are all the way back to the beginning again. And they'll do this as long as they can tolerate, and then they say, "We need a rainmaker."

John Tyreman 21:49

The Rainmaker death spiral, ladies and

Mark Wainwright 21:51

there it is. There it is, right? And you can kind of just picture it. And John, I have literally seen it happen. And it happens like I said, short period of time, long period of time, but it happens, right? And it's fascinating to watch every single time. And yeah, hopefully the takeaway of this is that there's clearly a path through this, right? And the path through this is when the practitioner embraces the responsibility themselves, to go find and win new work, right? Everything changes a little bit. So that's the rainmaker silver bullet death spiral.

John Tyreman 22:23

we've got this visual that we'll put up on YouTube. that's amazing. So understanding that death spiral and understanding the catastrophe that could happen when going down that road, where do our friends go from here, right? Folks that are listening to this, what does this mean, for their firms? How should they organize their business development function?

Mark Wainwright 22:43

Yeah. All right, John, and here's the time where we mess with everybody's brains. 'Cause we said earlier, it's like, what's, what model's the best? What model's the best, right? And the obvious answer to that was it depends. Here's the mindset shift, hopefully, that, that just, just really helps you kind of process all of this. It doesn't matter what's happening inside your organization. This model, whatever model you pick, has nothing to do with you internally. It has to do with your clients. It has to do with your buyers, right? So whatever model you pick, "Oh, we wanna do doers," "Oh, I'm gonna do rainmaker," it's not your choice to make, right? It has to do with who you are selling to. it has to do with your external audience. It has to do with your clients and your buyers.

John Tyreman 23:29

Yeah. So to be clear, this isn't the account. These are the points of contact within that account.

Mark Wainwright 23:34

Well, it's partially account, but, You're right. It has to do with kind of the human interface, and people hopefully will see where we're going with this, right? We've still got our sort of doer selves and we've got our rainmakers, right? So, we've got a sort of two by two, graph here that we are going to, present at some point. So Let's start in the bottom left-hand quadrant of the two by two, right? Our vertical axis is whether you're a practitioner or non-practitioner, our horizontal axis, just to, sort of get everybody straight here, the horizontal axis is your client has layers of administration or contract people or, you know, w-whatever else between your organization, your consultants and, their sort of individuals, right? There's layers of that. That's on one end, and then the other end is you're working directly with the technical buyer. You know, you're working directly with the public works director or the public works project manager if you're, working in infrastructure or if you're, a marketing agency, you're working directly with the partner, right? Something like that, right? So there you go. There's our, two-by-two axis. Bottom left-hand quadrant says that you're a non-practitioner, so you're a full-time salesperson, and the client has layers of administration between, you know, your experts or their experts and you, right? what falls into that quadrant, John?

John Tyreman 25:00

this makes sense to me, and it took me a while to understand this, Mark, but I'm glad that we put this two by two together. So this is where, you know, someone who is not a technical professional working with other folks who are also not technical professionals. are the

Mark Wainwright 25:14

organization, at the buyer.

John Tyreman 25:15

the client organization. Exactly. So maybe it's a dedicated business development manager or a project manager, and they're working with a project manager on the client side. And so they're saying, "Okay, we got these experts who need to do this. We've got these people, these resources that need to do this. Here are the timelines. Here are the budgets. Let's keep moving forward."

Mark Wainwright 25:36

Yeah. or they're working with, some person at the client organization whose responsibility is to navigate the buying process.

John Tyreman 25:42

Sure. Like a procurement professional

Mark Wainwright 25:44

Procurement professional or, contracts, or it's just someone very similar to a full-time business development or, or salesperson, where they're responsible from initiating the conversations, initiating the sales process to going through the contract, right? it's that situation. So we've got, the seller has a non-practitioner full-time salesperson, and the buyer has basically a, full-time buyer, right? That's a good situation, right? Totally cool, right? So yeah. Does a, rainmaker, non-practitioner work in that scenario? Absolutely. Absolutely. Because you bring together two individuals who are skilled at this buying/selling process, and they both understand that it needs to have a flow and have a process and all that, and you need to get from beginning to end, and you need to negotiate things properly and contracts and, you know. There's a lot of things happening in the buying/selling relationship that sometimes, an inexperienced buyer and an inexperienced seller can kind of fumble their way through, right? And just to be specific about this, a lot of times this has to do with very large organizations, right? Either on the consultant end or the client end of things. things like the federal government or state-level organizations, come to mind, So there we are, bottom left quadrant. Let's go up. We'll go up from here.

John Tyreman 27:05

Sure. Yeah, so if we, if we go up from here, then it is a practitioner who's working with the same set of individuals on the client side

Mark Wainwright 27:14

So we've got a mismatch. So we just said, "Okay, we got a mismatch." Now we've got a practitioner who's a skilled technical professional, a doer seller, but they're working directly with, a contracts person or a professional buyer at the client's organization So is it, is this good? is this a mismatch? I think it is.

John Tyreman 27:34

I could see how this could be frustrating from the practitioner's point of view.

Mark Wainwright 27:38

Oh, for sure.

John Tyreman 27:39

we wanna just do the work, we don't wanna manage the work

Mark Wainwright 27:42

totally. Frustration is a word that's, that comes to mind for me immediately. It's like, "Oh, we just want... Come on, let's just get going. We gotta work through this contract, and there's all this other stuff, and this the, this form and that form and everything else," and it gets frustrating on both ends. So bad place to be, for sure. good. All right, so let's cross our diagram before we get to the top right here. we're gonna go across down to the bottom right, where we've got a non-practitioner on the consultant end of things, right? Full-time salesperson working directly with, you know, the technical professional at the client organization, right?

John Tyreman 28:21

Public works director,

Mark Wainwright 28:22

public works director, right. there's a couple things kind of going on here, right? I would say first and foremost, creating some sort of credible relationship is going to be hard for the sales rep, right? It's gonna be tough, right? So from that, standpoint, there's a mismatch because you've got a sales rep who wants to advance the opportunity, advance Cleano, get the contract going, whatever else. the old salt at the public works director It's, you can just see this, right? They're like, "This young buck wants to come in here and sell us this stuff, and, you know, and I don't wanna work with them. I wanna work with their senior engineer," you know, all that kind of thing. So there's definitely a mismatch there. No doubt about it. But we've also got a note here that says maybe at some point the public's work director starts picking up on the fact that, the young buck is actually pretty good at this selling thing, and sort of the day-to-day administration and communication and all that kind of stuff is pretty good. they're like, "Yeah, I guess if I was working with the senior engineer who doesn't apparently have any time for me right now, communication would be spotty, and we'd have a tough time getting all the way through to the contract and getting this done. But this salesperson's actually pretty attentive," you know? on the plus side, that's kind of good that you can have someone who's really dedicated to advancing that contract, to a close, right? And just focused on that. You can't be overbearing, in that, but you have to introduce a sales process like we've talked about in the past, and you have to navigate it through to the close. Bottom right.

John Tyreman 29:56

I think that's great. I think it's just incumbent upon that non-practitioner to be able to speak the same language and learn the stories and bring in the relevant examples

Mark Wainwright 30:07

All right, good. So then let's move to the Top right quadrant in our two by two is on the consultant end of things. You've got a practitioner, doer seller, and then you're working directly with that crusty old public works director or their project manager or, the partner on the client end of things, where you're immediately talking the same language. You're building a rapport, you know, all that stuff. A lot of people look at that quadrant and they're like, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what we want. We want our skilled practitioners engaged directly with the skilled, technical experts at the client end of things, so we're talking the same language because, you know, complex professional services are a lot of times sort of technical and complex in nature, you know? So that's kind of where we want to be. And lo and behold, folks, with all the buying and selling that's going on out there and all these professional services firms, this is where the vast majority of firms live. They're typically small and mid-sized firms, and they're dealing with small and mid-sized clients, and your practitioners are generally working directly with sort of the seasoned professionals on the client end of things. So not that this quadrant doesn't necessarily have its drawbacks, right? And its drawbacks are, to me, pretty obvious in that both can be kind of fumbling through this buying, selling process,

John Tyreman 31:29

Sure the way that I see it, it's just a matter of, education and training and, process, right? So on one hand, the dedicated business development reps don't have the experience, so they need to augment that. and then on the other hand, the doer sellers, they have the experience, but they just need reps at the process and structure and prioritization. So that's like the key difference there to me. But following the process, that's a similar thing, and that can be a benefit to those non-practitioners. but it can become a strength for the doer sellers if they're able to learn it

Mark Wainwright 32:03

if the practitioner who is a doer seller can come in and, work with the senior team at the client end of things, but also be implementing this rigorous sales, buying and selling process, then it's a win-win, right? So that's the caveat with this top right quadrant is that great, your practitioners are interacting with their practitioners. It's all good. he's speaking the same language. Trust, is there, both are very trustworthy individuals as a result of all of this. but, you still need to have a process. So hopefully those doer sellers kind of have some sort of a framework that they're using to move through all of this.

John Tyreman 32:39

and I think that was a great call-out to point out that most of the industry is made up of small to mid-size firms working directly with other technical professionals as well. So, this has been a fantastic episode, Mark. It sounds like our listeners need to take stock of their clients, their points of contacts, go through this exercise, but then also layer this into your ideal client profiles too. Who do you wanna go after and win new business from based on how your organization is set up? so awesome conversation, Mark. Until next time

Mark Wainwright 33:10

Until next time, John