 Great photo by Andrea Piacquadio. RFPs—that is, Requests for Proposals—come in all shapes and sizes. Broadly, there are the ubiquitous ones that populate the world of government services contracting. There are plenty of private-sector RFPs out there, too.
In this article, we’re going to address the tipping point that must inform all of your RFP pursuits: the notorious “go/no-go decision.” We’re looking out for your best interests here, trust us. All-American competition A little background first. Why would a company (or the government) issue an RFP? The bigger question could be: Why wouldn’t they? Think about it. If you’re an entity that needs to spend money on services (or products, but we’ll focus on the former here), it’s entirely safe to assume that 1) you want the best possible services at 2) the lowest possible price. And what’s fairer, what’s more American, than level-playing-field competition? So. You issue an RFP. And you let all these suitors compete against each other. You get exactly what you’d wanted. It’s a beautiful thing. Or is it? The race to the bottom Let’s get real jaded, real quick. How well does the government do things, compared to private industry? By and large, not nearly as well. There’s no profit motivation. There’s no “Government 2” that they’re competing against. There’s a baked-in complacency and a literal ability to print more money if they need it. This shows in their work. Think of all the shoddy government services you’ve had to suffer through—IRS, DMV, U.S. Postal Service, Amtrak, you name it. Think of how many times you’ve said, “If only Amazon were running this!” And the crazy thing is, tons of these shoddy government services are actually provided by private-sector contractors! Why? Because they came in with the lowest bid. We’re over-simplifying here—there are other ways that the government procures things, and even in the private sector, there are SLAs or “service-level agreements” which stipulate a minimum required level of performance—but, as we’d intimated, nice and jaded, RFPs often represent a race to the bottom. Cheapest possible—and just passable. Now pivot this scenario to your business. Would you want to willingly join in, in this death spiral? To RFP or not to RFP The upside, for you, of competing on an RFP, is that it’s typically a pretty big contract. And it’s all or nothing. You either win it, or you don’t. And either way, you’re putting in a ton of work. Hmmm. This gets to the very core of the go/no-go decision. We were told, years ago, about an NFL coach who had a plaque in his office. It read: “Winning isn’t everything. It’s the only thing, Coming in second is un-American.” Yowch. Painful. Brutal. But refreshingly similar to your RFP go/no-go decision. It boils down to this: Only respond if you can, and will, crush it. Partial measures are a total waste of time; expend that energy on other biz-dev. Assess your capabilities and those of your likeliest competitors. Can you crush the competition? If you can almost crush them, what would it take to push you over the top? Here’s a little anecdote for you. We were recently invited to compete on an RFP for a slate of marketing services. We could see, right away, that it wasn’t a great fit. We knew we could crush a certain part of what this company was requesting, but there were other parts that weren’t our specialty. We were just about to pass on this one when--hmmm—we learned, through the grapevine, that a few other companies, which we know and have worked with before, were also invited to respond to this exact same RFP. Know where this is going? Imagine where it went? Of course. We reached out to those other entities, and said, “Let’s consolidate!” And that’s exactly what happened. Working with the others, we created a veritable Dream Team… and crushed the RFP. By the way, there are interesting and creative ways to craft the actual RFP response itself, to help you win it, which go beyond the scope of this article. We’d love to help you in this realm. Contact us and let’s talk.
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 Great photo by Karolina Grabowska. This article was originally going to be about developing a production process for video scripts. But because of the way things turned out at our client, this one is taking a decidedly more valuable turn. For you.
We’re going to talk about something that you can create, for your clients, as a gift, which will win you follow-on business. We can’t say “guaranteed,” but pretty darned close. What’s this have to do with video scripting? From production to presents A client of ours—incidentally, we typically get our best education and insights from our clients, as they’re a pretty ingenious lot—had tasked us with making a series of videos. Here’s the genesis: Our client does a lot of similar projects for its clients. And when it completes each one, it ends up with some raw screen-capture video footage, documenting the project. The job they handed to us: Turn that boring screen-capture footage into a compelling video that sells. We’d anonymize these, and our client would post them on their YouTube channel, since they’re great little sales vehicles which show off exactly what they do, in about two minutes each. So far, so straightforward. Right? But here’s the stroke of genius: This same client of ours decided to create a customized version of the same video for their client. Granted, we need to over-simplify here, but think of it this way: Upon completing the project, our client (a consultancy) produced and delivered—without charging an extra dime for it—a custom video for their client, showcasing the work they just completed. As a gift. With our services folded in, the finished video was very “Hollywood”: slick voiceover, music, effects, etc. The V.O. goes something like this: “Working with Consultancy [our client], ABC Business [their client] has been able to do something amazing, which you’ll see, firsthand, in this video.” And then it would effectively go into the demo. Private viewing Whereas videos made for YouTube are intentionally created to reach the largest audience possible (BTW, we worked on one which, as of this writing, has attracted 61 million views), this video was for an audience of, oh, about five people. Yep. That’s it. A slick, high-quality, seemingly big-budget video to be seen by: The CEO. The CFO. The project sponsor. And a couple others. That’s it. This video was a gift of our client’s, to their client. It said “Thank you for letting us work with you. You may not have been in the trenches for this one, like the Project Sponsor was, but we’d like the Executive Leadership Team to see just what we did for you, and how great it came out.” Can you guess what happened next? Roll out the red carpet The Executive Leadership Team audience, you likely won’t be surprised to learn, was positively delighted by this little video. Do you think they kept it to themselves? Au contraire. They demanded that it be posted, enterprise-wide, on the company intranet. Sent out to all the zillions of leaders and team members. And therein lies the gift that keeps on giving. The Executive Leadership Team felt great. They got a rush from this video… to the point where they wanted more. Want another video? Sure! Book another project. And what about all those other leaders in the company who now got to see the video? They want their own projects, too! Some of them, incidentally, ended up leaving the company and going elsewhere. Guess which vendor stuck in their heads as especially helpful when they landed their new gigs? You can, too This is a shockingly easy deliverable to create. Our purposely anonymized story above should inspire you: You can make these, too. And you should. They’re an absolute killer when it comes to burnishing your brand… and helping you win follow-on work. Of course, videos like this do require creative scripting and creative ways to make them look like a million bucks, while costing next to nothing. That’s where we come in. Contact us and let’s talk.  Photo by Amador Loureiro This sentence is in English. You understand it perfectly. And you take all of that for granted.
Stuff like this goes out the window when your client’s first language isn’t English. It certainly makes things harder for you. And for them. In this article, we’ll give you some pointers, based on our experience, for making life easier for you and your clients whose English isn't as good as yours. Bash the bias Here at Copel Communications, we’re native/first-language English speakers. We’ve had additional schooling in English. We speak, think, and dream in English. It all comes very natural. (Or would that be “naturally”?) (LOL!) The “bias” we’d mentioned above is kind of a knee-jerk reaction that you might have when you first encounter someone whose English isn’t very good. They’ll struggle with common phrases and idioms; we have one client who, when they give us input, will typically say, “Let me know how you think.” It’s cute. It’s kind of funny. And it invites a brutal bias. Because, face it, who else talks like this? Little kids. Little kids who are also struggling to learn English for the first time. So their brains aren’t entirely formed, they’re not as smart or experienced as we adults. And that’s the bias that rears its ugly head when you first hear, “Let me know how you think.” That particular client of ours is Korean (we have lots of Korean clients; more on that in a minute). Know how much Korean we speak? Try “zero.” So on the one hand, this puts us in an advantageous position for non-English-native clients who need to communicate to their prospects in flawless English; they can count on us. On the other hand, however, it obscures the fact that their English is better than our Korean, any day of the week. That’s the conundrum: Someone who sounds less intelligent than you is actually more intelligent than you, because they’re not only getting across difficult concepts, but they’re doing it in a second language. Holy mackerel! It’s humbling. So always bear that in mind in situations like this. Even when all those cute phrases keep popping up. Ways to work better with non-English-speaking clients We have clients with lots of different first languages. As we’d mentioned above, we have lots of Korean clients. But we have others whose first language is German. Japanese. Spanish. Mind you, we don’t speak any of those languages. But we have successful ongoing relationships with these clients, sometimes for decades. (This gets back to the Korean clients of ours. Once we establish a relationship at one client company, they all know us there. Then, invariably, someone from that company joins another company, and essentially brings us along. This gets so convoluted that we recently got a project for a major Korean enterprise based in Seoul, from their in-house agency in London. They told us they got our name from So-And-So at Such-And-Such Company. Thing is, we’d never even heard of So-And-So or Such-And-Such!) So how do you do it? Here are some pointers:
Get help We can offer you all of this advice because, as we’ve mentioned, we’ve toiled in these trenches for years and years, and we actually enjoy the assignments. There’s a huge degree of faith at work here: If we, say, employ wordplay or distinctly American cultural references in our work, our clients simply have to trust us to get the right message across. But they find out, soon enough, whether our deliverables score or not: they’ll get firsthand customer response. Which only helps to bolster the faith, and cement the relationship. Need help crafting messaging for a client whose English isn’t perfect? Contact us. We’d be happy to discuss your needs with you.  What does your next crucial sales presentation have to do with Rich Little?
And who on earth is Rich Little? Stay tuned. This will help you make more money. It’s based on some work we recently did for one of our clients, to help them sell better. And of course, it borrows from Rich Little. Who? Grating expectations If you’re old enough, you already know who Rich Little is. (We actually had to Google to make sure didn’t need to say—yet—“who Rich Little was.”) He’s a comedian. Specifically, an impersonator: someone who humorously imitates celebrities such as actors and politicians. He was famous for doing impressions of Richard Nixon and Johnny Carson. Who? And who? Oh geez. Google them if you don’t know. So. Late in his career—and this would be back in the 1980s, so we’re totally dating ourselves here—we saw Rich Little perform, live, at a casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Mind you, at this time, he was still very well-known. He was the headliner. So you might think that the live show goes something like this: There’s a warm-up act: A lesser-known comedian who opens the show and “warms up” the audience, so they’re already laughing and in a good mood by the time Rich Little takes the stage. And then, just as the warm-up comedian bows off the stage, you hear the house announcer, over the P.A., say, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, let’s welcome our headliner! How about a big Atlantic City welcome for the one, the only, Rich Little!” And the audience cheers and cheers, and Rich Little takes the stage. Only it didn’t happen that way. In a word: Huh? The setup The first part of what we just described took place exactly as we described it. That is, all the stuff about the warm-up act. (Don’t worry—we are totally going to loop this back to your business, and crafting a superior sales presentation, in just a minute. We haven’t lost the thread at all.) But then, after the warm-up comedian left the stage, here’s what actually happened: The house lights dimmed. You could hear glitzy show-biz music playing through the house speakers. And then an enormous video screen descended from the ceiling, and there, up on the screen, was… Rich Little. Huh?? Think about that. Here’s an audience full of people who have paid good money to see Rich Little in person. And the very instant he’s supposed to take the stage—you know he’s standing in the wings, just out of sight—he doesn’t. And, instead, you see a video of him. Correction: You see lots of videos of him. And therein lies the crux of this entire conversation. You see, the videos were clips of him… on television. There he is, yukking it up with all the kings of late-night talk shows: Carson. Letterman. Leno. There he is up on a dais, at some roast. With all these other famous people laughing hysterically at his John Wayne (who?) or his Jimmy Stewart (who?) or whatever. With lots of brassy music under it all, tying it all together. Clip after clip. Of Rich Little, effectively being famous. After a few minutes of this, a recorded announcer says, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, here he is! Live! In person! Give it up for the one, the only, Rich Little!” And with that, he walks onto the stage. Setting the scene Guess what? When he took the stage, he took the stage to thunderous applause. The audience was already primed to see him. Why? They knew his work from TV. They thought he was funny. And they knew he was famous, so it was titillating to see him in person. And his little “sizzle reel” video had just reinforced that. Took it to a whole new level. Ta-dah. See where this is going? For your business? For your… PowerPoint? The Rich Little Video (that’s what we’d called it, initially, with the client we’d mentioned earlier) is effectively the same thing. It’s a quick highlight reel of “all the stuff we’ve done, the big-name clients we’ve served, a quick overview of our breakthrough methodology,” and so on. It’s something you can—and, arguably, should—show to prospects, very first thing, when you’ve got them in the room to make a sales presentation. It worked for Rich Little. It can work for you. Think about it:
Go big Unlike most corporate videos you might make, this one is infinitely slicker. And likely shorter. Keep it under a minute if you can. Thirty seconds would be awesome. Sweat every detail of the scripting, the graphics, the music, everything. “Hollywood” it up. It’s worth it. Rich Little’s retired. But your business is still going strong. Make it go even stronger, with your own “Rich Little Video.” Need help with a project like this? We’re your go-to source. Contact us today and let’s discuss your needs.  How much do you know about Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt?
FUD is a great acronym; not enough people know it. It stands for “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt.” We learned this one years ago while working for consultants in the defense, intel, and national-security spaces: "Let's lay a little FUD on the customer about the prospect of leaving the incumbent for a prime contractor who hasn’t done this before.” Isn’t it wonderful? FUD. It’s great. It’s useful. In this article, we’re going to discuss some ways to employ FUD to your advantage, to grow your business. We’ll also spotlight some instances in which you shouldn’t use FUD, based on a recent experience of ours. Creative FUD FUD, properly employed—and in this case, we’re talking about a marketing/business-development usage—will subtly get under the prospect’s skin. It’s akin to FOMO—Fear of Missing Out—but it’s much more powerful. It plays upon their deepest fears. Your message, of course, is “Avoid FUD by working with us.” The title of this article is “FUD for Executives,” so let’s discuss that. As a consultant/business owner, you love to target execs. They’re decision-makers. They command the strategic initiatives. They own the purse-strings. They’re also, generally, pretty confident people. You don’t rise to the apex of the organization by being timid or insecure. Yet they still have insecurities. They’re not psychopaths. Indeed, many successful execs are so good at what they do because they can balance gut-wrenching risk with reward; it’s part of the entrepreneurial mindset. They want to take that leap. (Yes, yes, there are plenty of exceptions to this rule. There are lily-livered executives out there who rise by nepotism, and thrive on the status quo. Let ‘em. They’re not our target. They wouldn’t budge if a tectonic plate split right beneath their feet.) Our point, as far as executives go, when it comes to FUD, is to be subtle about it. These people are smart. You don’t have to tell them: “You’ll fail! The competition will eat your lunch if you don’t do this/buy our stuff!” That’s an instant turn-off. We’re currently working on a campaign for a startup, aimed at executives, which includes a component of FUD as part of its hook. We can’t get into the details here (they’re client confidential), but the messaging goes something like this: “Have you considered all aspects of your business’ [targeted] strategy? Would you feel comfortable if what you’re doing right now became known to your stakeholders, your shareholders, and the world?” Oooh. That’ll make ‘em squirm. But again, don’t dwell on it. Move, quickly, to the high road. Talk up the to-be world you’re pitching to these execs; that’s what you’re selling, after all. To FUD or not to FUD We recently worked on a client assignment in which the customer was wrongly characterized. Mind you, this is huge. This violates every iota of customer-back-ness that we preach, and practice, here at Copel Communications. In this instance, our client’s target customer was businesses that provide a luxury experience to their end-users. Our client, initially, and mistakenly, conflated the two: They assumed that their prospect wanted the same luxury experience that they intended to deliver to their own customers. Nothing could be further from the truth. These prospects were shrewd businesspeople who wanted great service and value from their vendors—which is, effectively, what our client was. Offering them “luxury” would be off-putting. It would seem callously overpriced and tone-deaf. Indeed, this audience—the businesses that offer luxury to their customers—was ripe for a dosage of FUD. That’s because our client offered them something that would, among other things, keep them out of legal hot water. That’s a huge selling point. A great FUD opening. And we were able to effectively torpedo any vestiges of the “luxury” pitch to this audience with the following analogy: Years ago, we wrote materials for one of the most exclusive properties of one of the most exclusive hotel chains in the country. And we never wrote: “Stay at Luxury Hotel. You won’t get any bedbugs here, like you would elsewhere!” Of course not. You don’t ever, ever employ FUD in a luxury context like that. Ergo, our business audience for our client was not a “luxury” audience. Using FUD on them (“Avoid legal hot water”) was wholly appropriate. So when do you use it? FUD is context-sensitive. It depends on what your prospect is fearing (or uncertain or doubtful of), along with what you’re offering them—and how that tees up with their underlying dilemma. It needs to be teased out subtly, especially for higher-end (read: “exec”) audiences. You can certainly bash them over the head in, say, a hard-sell retail advertising environment, but that’s not what we’re focusing on here. Much of this arises from taking a customer-back approach in the first place. That is, starting with your target customer’s pain points, and working backward to the messaging (and even the solution) you’ll offer. Need help crafting a nice “FUDDY” message? Contact us... or you just might fall short of your goals, LOL!  There’s more to growth than just “adjacent spaces”
If you’re looking to grow your consulting business, there are certainly a bunch of commonly-accepted ways of doing it. Very broadly, there’s organic vs. inorganic growth, in which the former is basically “getting new accounts,” and the latter is more radical initiatives, such as “acquiring a current competitor.” In this article, we’re going to limit our discussion to the former—that is, organic growth via getting new accounts—but we’re also going to veer into some very interesting, and creative, ways of doing it. We bet you’ll see some impressive parallels that you can profit from. Land and expand Before we tell you about that intriguing, counterintuitive way of proceeding, let’s clear the decks of all of the usual suspects (how’s that for a mixed metaphor?). We’re talking about “adjacent spaces.” Our old adage here is “Start with what you know.” Back when we were in New York, the expression was “Own your backyard.” They’re all different variations on the same theme. To wit: If there’s a segment you’re really good at, let’s say it’s P&C (property-and-casualty) insurance, then your first order of business is to own and dominate that vertical. If there are other P&C carriers out there that haven’t heard of you, then you need to shore up your marketing efforts to them. Because, frankly, you should be able to close new P&C prospects with relative ease; they’re the lowest-hanging fruit. Okay. So let’s assume that you’ve done all this. You now “own your backyard.” Where do you go next? The next-door neighbor The next logical step would be other segments within the same vertical. That is, the second-lowest-hanging fruit. Following our P&C example, this would be to extend your outreach efforts to others in the insurance space, beyond P&C. Such as, say, health insurance. That’s a pretty big ask. If a health insurer asks you about your experience, and all you’ve got is P&C, it will be a tough sell. But it won’t be as tough as, say, trying to crack open a wholly new vertical, such as, say, logistics. And remember this: All you need is one new client in that new segment, and you’re set for life. You will, from that point forward, have “health insurance” (in this example) as one of your areas of experience. You can use the “big ask” to shape your marketing efforts. If you’ve never helped health insurers before, we doubt you’ll get in the door at Blue Cross. But there may well be a smaller carrier who’s willing to take a chance on you, especially if you 1) sweeten the deal, and 2) tout your ability to leverage synergies from your experience in P&C and apply them to healthcare. (We wrote a related article on what we call “Cross-Pollination Consulting,” which you might also enjoy.) So you can do this kind of marketing all day long. Pick out adjacent spaces where you could at least carry on a credible conversation in the room, and then play the numbers game: The more prospects you’re able to reach, the higher your chances of closing new business. Sticking your neck out The highest-hanging fruit, by contrast, consists of entirely new clients in entirely new verticals—those that would occupy the farthest quadrant in the classic Ansoff Matrix of prospects. Keeping with our example from earlier, if your main experience is in P&C, good luck trying to crack open a brand-new client in logistics. That said, there are ways to counterintuitively crack open new spaces, just as we’d teased at the outset of this article. Granted, these are not entirely new spaces, but they’re not exactly adjacent, either. Allow us to explain. The basis of this idea—indeed, the inspiration for this article—came from a recent experience with one of our clients. We’ll need to clothe this in anonymity for obvious reasons, but we think you’ll be able to get the gist—and perceive the takeaways. This client of ours did tons of work in one very specialized consulting space. It was a lot of what we might call “after-the-fact cleanup”: a common calling in the consulting space. Our client was really good at this, and had tons of experience, won awards, you name it. But there was one other space they wanted to crack, which was dangling tantalizingly just out of reach. And it consisted of an entirely different vertical that was tasked with doing all the stuff that invariably led to cleanup requirements later. Hmmm! Think about that. There’s a chronological logic to this. Our client was doing cleanup work. They were yearning to get into the “Before” side of the equation, but had absolutely zero experience there. How do they get in? We helped them craft the messaging to this new market. It went something like this; note how brutally honest it was: “Hello. You don’t know us, but we would like to help you. And we certainly believe we can. We’ve spent the last XX years helping XXX clients to clean up all the messes that have happened in the ‘Before’ side of the equation. Doing this, and gaining all this experience, we realized that we could bring unprecedented foresight, power, and savings to all of those who, like you, toil in the ‘Before’ side of the equation, helping them to avoid costly mistakes in the first place. Might you have a few minutes to schedule a quick introductory call?” Guess what? It worked. Beautifully. Today, this client is straddling both realms: the “After” (their traditional area of expertise), and the “Before.” And like our fictional P&C example above, they needed to land just one new client in the “Before” realm, using that new messaging. After that, they already had experience in the “Before” realm, and the introductory messaging was already outdated, having served its purpose admirably. Turn the tables yourself You can see how cagey we’ve been forced to be here with our whole “Before” and “After” descriptions, but we’ll bet that you’re seeing parallels to your own practice already. Any business operation proceeds in a chronological fashion, and more often than not, consultants are called in to “clean up the ‘After.’” Yet therein lies the opportunity to “better empower the ‘Before.’” This could apply to any of a number of upstream verticals or segments; the only limit is your imagination—and your creative approach to the outreach. Need help finding that creative approach? Contact us. We solve challenges like these for our clients all the time, and would be delighted to help you, too.  It’s that time of year again. Time for our annual wrap-up of business-building posts for consultants from Copel Communications.
We hope you had a good year, considering that 2020 is one for the history books, in so many ways. We had a good year (thanks for asking), but that’s because we’re blessed with some really smart clients who always see the glass as half-full, and were able to thrive amid the most challenging of times. Here’s a recap of our 2020 posts, with a teaser and a link for each. If you’d like to revisit any, here’s your chance. And if you missed any of these, by all means, catch up!
Have a topic you’d like us to weigh in on? Let us know. We’d love to hear from you.  “Own your backyard.” That was a phrase we’d heard back in our ad agency days. It meant that you need to dominate your immediate geographical market... especially before you spend a single dollar trying to make inroads elsewhere.
Makes sense, right? To a point. Back then, “geographical” was a very real factor in the equation. To put it in perspective, this is when terrestrial radio was called, well, “radio.” An FM signal can reach for about 50 miles. A local paper reaches a local market. There’s nothing wrong with these media. They still exist; some still thrive. And they’re quite relevant for local businesses, such as retailers, restaurants, and car dealers. But we mentioned “consulting” in the title of this article. And as we write this, we’re still locked down amid Covid and travel restrictions and all that. Crisis? Perhaps. Opportunity? Absolutely. Clearly, this article will have a big “internet” component to it, but that’s only one aspect of “cross-pollination.” Make more money Cross-pollination in consulting—a phrase which we made up, by the way—is a more relevant take on “own your backyard.” But it’s also a clever way to expand your backyard. Put it this way. Which is easier: Cold-call prospecting, or scooping up a referral that’s been tossed your way by a happy client? Exactly. It takes the absolute most effort to reach, and convert, total strangers. At the other end of the spectrum, the ostensibly easiest conversion is upselling an existing client: the so-called “land and expand” strategy. Cross-pollination is more closely related to the latter than the former. And it’s got a neat spin to it, which we’ll get to in a minute. Let’s say you’re an expert in Industry A. You know all about it, you specialize in it, it’s the core of your business. That’s great. Next on your list is Industry B. You also play there, but not as strongly as you do in Industry A. That’s fine. It’s also pretty much the rule among boutique consultancies. So let’s see how we can apply cross-pollination to this situation. In Industry A—where you’re an expert—you have tons of deep-dive lessons learned. They’re so specific to Industry A, however, that they can’t be applied to any other industry, such as, say, Industry B. But that’s a misperception. There are always lessons and insights from Industry A that not only apply to Industry B, but are also a welcome surprise to everyone in Industry B, because they lack that specific Industry A insight that only you possess. Voilà. You use your Industry A insights to “cross-pollinate” Industry B. The trick here is to disregard all of those biases that have become ingrained in your thinking that had led you to conclude, incorrectly, that there’s no overlap between Industries A and B. Indeed, the more disparate they appear, the more valuable the cross-pollination insights. If you specialize in, say, long-haul logistics, you’re not going to break much new ground applying that to short-haul logistics. But if you can apply, say, insights from long-haul logistics to... banking. Whoa. You’re onto something. Entire careers are made from breakthroughs like this. Do the work, reap the rewards We’re not saying that this is easy. Because if it were, as they say, everyone would have done it. But you’re smart. You’re a hard worker. You simply need to carve out the time and the effort to draw up a little “Column A/Column B” note sheet, and start to populate it. Here’s where it gets fun. Once you’re able to impress even a single client (or prospect) in Industry B, you’ve just given yourself the opportunity to “land and expand” there. So you can keep working, and learning, and getting paid to do so, building your Industry B expertise to the point where it’s at least as strong as it is for Industry A. (Meaning that Industry C is just around the corner!) Here’s the neat little “spin” we’d hinted at above. You can also use your Industry A insights to prospect in Industry B. That’s right: You can showcase this knowledge as “broader perspective” outside-the-box/outside-the-silo thinking. Mind you, you need to couch it properly. You can’t tell a banking prospect, “I’ve spent years specializing in long-haul logistics. Let me help your bank.” Clearly, that won’t work. But what if you said something like, “Did you know that the way trucks are ‘reverse-loaded’ at the depot prior to their routes has direct parallels to solving cash-processing across your retail branch network?” Now, we just made that up, but even before we revealed that, you were impressed. Admit it. Get help We know about these challenges because we work with them, daily, on two different fronts. One: Our consulting clients span a variety of verticals, so we’re always seeing challenges in Industry A, Industry B, Industry C, Industry D... you get the idea. And two: Our clients themselves all straddle more than one industry among their clients and prospects, and we help them apply the insights from one to the other... and also sprinkle in a generous serving of insights from our other industries that they don’t serve. The cross-pollination goes all around. We can help you, too. On both of those fronts. Simply contact us today to learn more.  You’ve made contact with a new prospect. There have been LinkedIn messages, emails, even some phone calls. They’re certainly a “warm” lead.
But then... nothing’s really happening. What do you do? That’s the topic of this article. It’s the “gateway offering.” It’s what you use to firmly wedge your foot in that door and convert that lead into a paying customer. A time for choosing You’ll hear lots of talk about your business’ “sales funnel.” The name’s pretty self-explanatory. It refers, metaphorically, to the process whereby you cast for leads, bring them in, qualify them, and sell them—that is, convert them into clients. If you’ve got this prospect on the phone/LinkedIn/email, they’re pretty far down the funnel. They’re at the really skinny part. This should all be good news, right? This article shouldn’t even need to exist, right? Obviously, the answers to both of the above questions is “Wrong.” In fact, this article was inspired by some recent activity with a few of our clients at Copel Communications, who found themselves at this exact same spot of “funnel management,” yet weren’t able to easily make the transition from “prospect” to “customer.” Why is that? There are two big reasons. One: This so-called “prospect” hasn’t really been properly qualified or vetted. You know the type. They’re “tire-kickers.” They want to talk and talk, with no intention of actually committing or spending. At best, they’re a waste of your time. At worst, they’re a waste of your resources: There are plenty of people out there, unfortunately, who are far more insidious than mere tire-kickers; these are the people who are trying to get information or even services from you, for free. Often this is easy to spot. You can send them packing quickly. But the more pernicious ones are good at playing the game. Fortunately, you can flush them out—tell them to “fish or cut bait”—using the gateway offering, which we’ll describe shortly. The other reason that you may have a “warm lead” on the phone, seemingly forever/through endless calls, catch-ups, updates, Zoom meetings, you name it, is not because they’re a tire-kicker, but rather because you lack a good gateway offering, to offer them. The low hurdle Your gateway offering is not a real “client engagement.” Sure, it’s a paying engagement—that’s crucial—but it’s not a massive commitment. Still, it’s a commitment. That’s the whole point of the thing. It’s a way for you to transform the “dancing around the topic” into “a genuine client relationship.” If you’ve drafted, and gotten signatures on, a memorandum of understanding, that’s great. It’s directly related. The gateway offering is the next logical—and even better—step. So what is it? It depends on what you offer. But think of it this way: It’s a service you can provide to this prospect that hovers just above what you could do for free. For long-term pre-existing clients, it may be something you’d toss them as a favor. But not for this prospect. This is where the rubber meets the road. It’s when you make it clear that you have no intention of continuing to dole out any more free advice, information, or consultation. It might be something like a system audit. An SME (subject-matter expert) review of a product or process. Or the very first step of a bigger multi-step offering of yours. Price it attractively. For any true warm lead, it will be a no-brainer—they should easily perceive the value. Indeed, you can bid it at full price, and throw in a substantial “courtesy discount,” to let them know you’re eager to win their business and are willing to give them a sop, as it were. A binary proposition Here’s the best part. Once you present this gateway offer, the prospect is forced to make a decision. The choice should be ridiculously easy: Grab this high-value/low-price/negligible-risk offer... or walk away. And therein lies the beauty of the gateway offer for those insidious tire-kickers. It prevents them from kicking your tires anymore. Wonderful, isn’t it? And of course, any genuine prospect will see not only the generosity of the offer, but the easy opportunity for them to “get their feet wet” with your business on an important, albeit small-scale, assignment. Everyone wins. And just in case it wasn’t obvious: The very best part of this—when they accept your offer—is that, from that point onward, your foot is firmly in the door, and this prospect is no longer a prospect. They’re a paying client. Which means you’ve been cleared through their procurement/business affairs/whatever functions, and are in their system. So when the next, bigger, full-scale challenge arises for them, you’ll be already poised to help them address it. And both you, and they, will be able to look back, fondly, on that gateway offering, and how it paved the way for a successful, mutually beneficial business relationship. Need help ideating that gateway offering or how to present it? Contact us. We work on these types of challenges all the time.  Boy the year goes by fast. It doesn’t seem like it’s really been that long since we wrote a year-end roundup, but the calendar doesn’t lie.
Sure, we at Copel Communications would love it if you read every single one of our blog posts the minute it came out. But we also know you’re busy, so here, in convenient compendium form, is an overview of our posts for consultants from the year. (We alternate between posts for consultants and what we call our “creative clients,” i.e., ad agencies and others that directly contract us for creative services. So we annually do separate year-end posts, both in December, for each audience.) Each summary/tease below has a link to the full article, so feel free to binge away!
Do you have a topic you’d like us to cover? Or a marketing challenge you’d like us to help you with? Contact us today. We’d be delighted to hear from you. |