The Cruel Reality of Creative Work
Most creative people start with a love for the work. They love design, video, sound, or code. But there is a cruel, harsh reality that underpins every creative career: to do the work you love, you must first win the work you love.
Too many creatives cling to the myth that great work sells itself. They believe that if they just focus on the craft, clients will magically appear. This is a university professor’s fantasy, not a business reality. In a world where quality is an expectation, not a differentiator, talent alone is not enough.
There is no such thing as a super successful creative who isn't also good at selling their work. A successful creative business, by definition, has a sales process attached to it.
In a conversation with entrepreneur and author Daniel Priestley, Chris Do confronts this uncomfortable truth. Priestley, the founder of Dent Global and author of books like Oversubscribed, argues that the aversion to sales is the single biggest bottleneck for creative professionals. “Until such time as you can accept that, you'll always be a struggling artist,” Priestley states.
Accepting this is the first step. The second is understanding what modern sales actually is, and what it is not.
Deconstructing the Salesman Stereotype
When creatives hear the word “sales,” an image often appears in their minds: a fast-talking, high-pressure used car salesman. This caricature is not an accident. It is a historical artifact.
Priestley traces this legacy back to a specific market inefficiency in the 1970s. The Baby Boomers came of age, and demand for used cars massively outstripped supply. “There was essentially this unethical sales environment where people were trying to get used cars to people,” Priestley explains. “They would get these horrible cars and they would try and use personality tricks and force of personality... to get people to buy a bomb.”
A decade later, as Boomers began earning surplus income, this same sales culture migrated to financial services. The archetypal penny stockbroker from films like The Wolf of Wall Street became the new face of unethical, high-pressure selling.
That image is now decades out of date. To find the world’s top salespeople today, you must look elsewhere.
You will find them in two places: luxury and high-end professional services.
Companies like LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton invest enormous sums in sales training for their luxury brands. The best sales professionals are in luxury real estate, selling multimillion-dollar properties, or at a Bentley dealership guiding a client through a bespoke configuration. They are in professional service firms, consulting on complex enterprise deals. In these environments, sales is not about pressure. It is about delivering a high-end experience.
“If you've got any of these old legacy ideas that sales is anything other than a high-end professional luxury experience, flush that down the toilet,” Priestley advises. Modern sales is not about exaggeration; it is about clarification. It is not about hype; it is about building confidence. Introverts and engineers often make incredible salespeople precisely because they are methodical, clear, and focused on setting realistic expectations.
Great sales is also about disqualification. A robust sales process is designed to weed out clients with unrealistic expectations, misaligned values, or insufficient budgets. It protects the creative’s time and energy, ensuring they only work with the right partners. This is not about being pushy. It is about being a professional filter.
Your Superpower in a Sea of Mediocrity
Hearing that the best salespeople work in luxury real estate, a creative might wonder if they are in the wrong field. Do voices this concern: “If I think I'm a good salesperson, should I just give up design and go get a real estate license?”
Priestley’s answer is a resounding no. The opportunity is not to compete where everyone is a sales expert. The opportunity is to be the sales expert where no one else is.
“The people who are in the creative industries, the vast majority of them are on the supply side,” Priestley says. “There's a tiny, tiny, tiny minority of people who are good at selling it. And the money moves towards those people.”
Moving into high-end real estate is like trying to join the NBA. The bar is incredibly high because the best in the world are already there. “You don't have as much of a superpower,” Priestley notes. “When you're in the creative industry, if you can sell at all, you've got a massive superpower. You are a 6'6" person around people who are 5'6". You're just going to tower over everyone.”
In many creative fields, the competition is so poor at sales that simply returning a phone call promptly makes you stand out. Not hiding from a client conversation is a competitive advantage.
Furthermore, selling creative work is fundamentally different from selling a physical product. A real estate agent sells what is already there. They are limited by existing inventory, with all its flaws and features. Their primary weapons are product knowledge, work ethic, and personality.
A creative sells something that does not exist yet. You are not selling a house. You are selling the future.
As Do notes, paraphrasing designer Brian Collins, creatives are futurists who rehearse multiple futures and select the most optimal one for the client. This requires a consultative approach. The sales process is about aligning minds, understanding hopes and frustrations, and crafting a narrative around a path forward. The challenge is selling an idea, an intellectual property, a conceptual solution. It requires a different, more nuanced skill set, one that most creatives already possess but fail to apply to business development.
The Paradox of Hating Sales
For those who still resist, who truly hate the idea of selling, Priestley offers a jarring paradox.
“Being bad at sales means you're going to do a lot more of it,” he says.
Think about it. If you are inefficient at sales, you might have to pitch five projects just to win one. That means four rejections. Four instances of doing the thing you hate, with nothing to show for it. Your punishment for being bad at something you despise is to be served more of it.
Conversely, if you get good at sales, you become efficient. You pitch, you close the deal, and you get back to the creative work. You minimize your time spent on the activity you dislike. “If you don't like sales, optimizing sales is the best way to handle not liking sales,” Priestley argues.
This is the ultimate reframe. Getting good at sales is not about becoming a salesperson. It is about becoming a more effective creative who spends less time struggling and more time creating. It requires approaching sales not as an unpleasant chore, but as a professional discipline built on three pillars: rhythm, pattern, and profession.
- Rhythm: Establishing a consistent, sustainable cadence of sales activities.
- Pattern: Following a proven structure for sales conversations.
- Profession: Treating sales with the same seriousness as your creative craft, including practice and training.
Mastering these three areas is the key to transforming sales from a source of dread into a predictable engine for growth.
A System for Predictable Revenue: The LAPS Framework
The first pillar of a professional sales system is rhythm. Just like physical fitness requires a regular gym schedule, sales fitness requires a consistent rhythm of activity. Priestley calls this system LAPS: Leads, Appointments, Presentations, and Sales.
This is not a complex spreadsheet. It is a simple diagnostic tool that should be visible every day, ideally on a whiteboard in your office.
Every week, you track these four metrics:
- Leads: Anyone who has signaled interest in your work.
- Appointments: Anyone who has booked a dedicated time to speak with you.
- Presentations: Any formal meeting where you articulate your solution and value.
- Sales: Any deal that is closed and signed.
This simple act of tracking changes everything. It moves you from feeling to fact. Many creatives say, “I’m not very good at sales.” But without data, that is just an opinion. Priestley explains that when he asks people to show him their LAPS numbers, the real problem becomes clear.
Someone might have seven leads, four appointments, three presentations, and one sale. Their conversion rates are actually great. Their problem is not skill; it is volume. They simply are not generating enough leads at the top of the funnel.
Another person might have a huge number of leads but very few closed deals. Their problem is not lead flow; it is their presentation or closing process. The LAPS framework isolates the bottleneck. It tells you exactly where to focus your efforts for improvement, a methodology Chris Do explores in his own sales workshops.
Until you track leads, appointments, presentations, and sales, you have no idea whether you are good at sales or not. You might be amazing at it but simply not doing enough of it. Or you might be average, but a high volume of leads is masking your inefficiency. LAPS provides the clarity needed to diagnose and optimize.
How to Fill the Funnel
If tracking LAPS reveals your problem is a lack of leads, the next step is to build systems for lead generation. Relying on referrals and word-of-mouth is a passive strategy for a struggling artist, not a proactive strategy for a business owner.
Priestley outlines several effective methods his own agencies use to generate a consistent flow of leads:
- Online Assessments: Create a short, automated quiz on your website that helps potential clients diagnose their own problems. For a video agency, it could be an assessment titled “Are You Leveraging Video Effectively?” Every piece of social media content you create can point back to this tool. It bridges content with commerce.
- Discussion Groups: If you serve e-commerce stores, create and facilitate a discussion group on LinkedIn or another platform about growing an e-commerce business. By being the facilitator, not just a participant, you become the go-to expert and generate inbound interest from group members.
- Introductory Events: Host regular, live workshops on Zoom. These are not just repurposed YouTube videos. The live format commands more attention. You might host an “Introduction to Rebranding a Family Business” or “How to Set Up a YouTube Channel for Your Business.” These events showcase your expertise, build trust, and serve as a direct bridge to booking a one-on-one appointment. For more on this tactic, see Priestley's full system for getting clients on demand.
- Registration of Interest Forms: Create a simple, clear form on your website that allows prospects to signal their interest 24/7. Ask 5-7 qualifying questions about their project, budget, and timeline. This captures intent and provides you with valuable information before you even speak to them.
The goal of every one of these lead generation strategies is the same: to move the prospect from a lead to an appointment. The natural next step after someone attends your intro event or completes your assessment is to invite them to a one-on-one conversation to discuss their specific needs.
The Art of the First Impression: Framing and Rapport
Once you have an appointment booked, you move to the second pillar of sales: the pattern of conversation. According to Priestley, the two most critical elements at the start of any sales meeting are Framing and Rapport.
Framing is everything the client sees, hears, and believes about you before and immediately upon meeting you. It provides the context through which they interpret everything you say and do. Most people are completely unaware of their own framing, yet it has an outsized impact on the outcome.
Priestley uses the example of seeing a Mark Rothko painting. In a museum, hung on a vast, perfectly lit wall in a grand building, the painting feels profound and valuable. The frame—the gallery, the lighting, the hushed atmosphere—tells you it is important. “If you saw a Rothko hanging in a local school…you would not assume that it's a $20 million painting,” Priestley says. “You would assume one of the kids did it.”
The frame dictates the perceived value. The same is true for you. If a financial planner arrives at a meeting in a beat-up car with a cracked phone screen, no amount of brilliant advice can recover from that initial frame. The context has already destroyed their credibility.
For creatives, framing is built through:
- Social Proof: Awards you have won, prestigious clients you have worked with, publications you have been featured in. Many creatives have these assets but fail to display them.
- Association: Speaking on stage with well-known figures, being mentored by a respected leader in your field, or even just having a large social media following.
- Professionalism: Your website, your email signature, and even how appointments are scheduled. Having an assistant (even a virtual one for a few dollars an hour) handle scheduling sends a powerful signal that your time is valuable.
As Do emphasizes, building this frame is a crucial part of developing a strong personal brand. Your appearance is also part of the frame. A designer should look like someone who appreciates aesthetics. They should care about details, from their clothes to the location they choose for a coffee meeting. These are not superficial considerations; they are signals that communicate competence and taste.
This leads to a fascinating debate between Do and Priestley on punctuality. Do holds a hard line: being late communicates disrespect for the client’s time and a lack of attention to detail. “How you do one thing is how you do everything,” he argues. If you cannot manage your time for a meeting, how can you be trusted with a critical project deadline?
Priestley offers a more nuanced view. If you are meeting an Academy Award-winning director who is in high demand, their arriving a few minutes late because they were wrapping another important meeting can actually reinforce their frame of being busy and successful. The energy is not one of disrespect, but of high demand.
Both agree that arriving flustered and sweaty is disastrous. But the interpretation of timeliness depends heavily on the pre-existing frame. This is not an excuse for being late. It is a reminder that every action sends a signal. Your job is to consciously control those signals to build a frame of authority, competence, and value before your presentation even begins.
Stop hoping your work will speak for itself. It cannot. You have to speak for it, and the process for doing so is knowable, learnable, and an absolute requirement for success.
TRANSCRIPT
most creative people start with the fact that they love the work that they do and the cruel harsh reality is that to do the work that we love we have to win the work that we love a lot of creative people lean on this idea that if they do great work that it'll
sell itself there is no such thing as a super successful creative who isn't also good at selling their work a successful creative business has a sales process attached to it a lot of the times creatives just don't tell people that the stuff they've done you have to get good at Styles you're going
to screw up a lot of people's minds here hey everybody I'm here in righ and I don't know I keep running into this guy to my right he gave a wonderful presentation yesterday and we had an awesome boardroom meeting and we uncovered so many different topics but I think we we cannot miss
out on the opportunity to talk about sales I know that's what you're all interested in so who else better to talk about it than Mr Daniel Priestley Daniel thanks for doing this I'm glad that we're actually in the same room with finally in the same room that's right I've been with you in
the same room but not on a podcast episode okay now so we're here with take advantage of this kind of in-person conversation as you can tell my my voice is a little horse so I'll try to make it through this entire thing Daniel there's a lot of things that you talk about in
such I think you take complex Concepts and you make them super simple and easy to understand um Where Do We Begin this conversation on sales and what creative people can learn about sales the way that you see it so the first thing I noticed about creative people is that most creative people start
with the fact that they love the work that they do and you know if they're in video they love video if they're in design they love design if they're in sound they love producing sound and the cruel harsh reality is that in order to do the work that we love we have to
win the work that we love yeah and the first place to start with sales is a complete acceptance that successful creative business has a has a sales process attached to it that you have to get good at sales there is no such thing as a super successful creative who isn't also good at
selling their work um and until such time as you can accept that you'll always be a struggling artist um so I think that's the first place I see a lot of your content and you you showcase that you you show people how to sell um and people are kind of like wow okay
now I understand that the sales process is a thing and I see what it's like to do it you know and I think that's one of the key starting points okay I'm going to play the role of the struggling creative person I don't really believe these things but I'm going to Channel all
of you so that you feel like you're having a conversation with Daniel because the two of us were Mark we have very similar tastes in food in beverage lots of things the way we think about solving problems so I don't want it to sound like an echo chamber in here so I'm going
to ask you a couple of questions on this okay there's a general idea or feeling that if you're going to pursue sales then it must mean that your art isn't good so how do we address that mindset because that typically is what happens when you see somebody who's outgoing gregarious really good with
presentation they're like you must not be a good designer and so that's the first attack that they're going to Lobby or lob so let let me talk about the history of sales okay to answer that question okay there was a time in the 1970s where the Baby Boomers they needed to buy used
cars because they all turned 18 1920 and there was a boom of people who needed a use car but we hadn't produced enough cars and what happened is that there was essentially this unethical sales environment where people were trying to get used cars to people and they would get these horrible cars and
they would try and use personality tricks and force of personality and all this sort of stuff to try and get people to buy a bomb something that wasn't of high quality and that was driven because were too many people who wanted used cars and not enough used cars available and then those people
ended up getting into Financial Services um stock broking and things like that because in the 1980s Baby Boomers got a little bit older and they started earning enough Surplus income and they wanted to buy some stocks so the unethical sales people were in stock broking so essentially we have this Legacy idea of
used car sales people and on the phone Telly marketing stock you know um wolf of w stre as AIT of kind of Legacy idea around sales if we fast forward to today where will we find the top sales people we'll find the top sales people in two places luxury and and professional like
super professional super luxury so for example um lvmh spends an enormous amount of money on sales training uh with across all of their luxury Brands um you'll see luxury real estate will'll have some of the best sales professionals uh you'll see luxury cars Bentley these rolls-royces with sales professionals uh you'll see um
Professional Service firms doing sales training right so what we're seeing is that actually sales has evolved to a point where it's not force of personality from the 70s and 80s it's about a high delivering a high-end experience so the first thing to say is like if you've got any of these old Legacy
ideas that sales is anything other than a high-end professional luxury experience flush that down the toilet and start moving toward W this idea that it's it's actually associated with really high quality experience the next thing is a huge part of sales is actually disqualification so I really believe that creatives deliver great work
when they choose and select the right clients and when that they establish great terms that they're going to do their work and a great sales process is about disqualifying people who are not going to be the right people to work with and trying to weed that out early so if someone comes to
um a creative studio and they have unrealistic expectations a great sales process would actually tone that down and say I don't think we should work together because your expectations are not realistic about what can be achieved in the time frame you've got in mind so that would be excellent sales process to disqualify
someone um or to or to at least adjust their expectations back to reality so you know this is the other thing a lot of people think great sales is about exaggeration or being over the top introverts make incredible salese engineers make incredible salese you know because they're actually outlining this is what to
expect this is the process this is the method you know this is how it's going to unfold they're clarifying people's you know gaps in their understanding so it's actually a lot of that is what great sales is about well I didn't know this is where the history of the used car salesperson and
the penny stock pump and dump schemers come from yeah that's fascinating because I I think that's a general image that people have when they're thinking salesperson use car salesman and you use the word bomb in America we would say like a lemon a lemon a junk car that's going to break down and
anti- lemon laws had to be invented because of that so it so we're we're I guess we have in a way Boomers to blame for a lot of different things and this is just one more thing to add to the list yeah the baby boom did create these waves across everything and that
was one of the impacts yeah nothing against Boomers or Baby Boomers I just want to say because I guess demand far out strip Supply something you talked about yesterday the supply demand tension unscrupulous characters emerg because they just they didn't know what to do it's a marketing efficiency so they didn't have good
used cars so they got junk cars and they sold them then they got Junk stocks and sold them yep and that's the the kind of nastiness that we have that was the demand and Supply inefficiency yeah okay fascinating so that's kind of where it comes from so everybody I guess when we understand
the historical perspective gives you some context to look at this and your Association just needs to be updated mhm and now you're saying the best sales people work in the highest most professional luxury markets because that's the biggest payday right M yeah okay I started to think about this I watch these shows
these real estate shows where there are like million dooll properties and I think I never thought of this about myself but I think I could sell and maybe I'm in the wrong space Daniel if I think I'm a good sales person should I just give up design and and go get real estate
license and go sell high in real estate can I can I'll be brutally honest the people who the people who are in the creative Industries the vast majority of them are on the supply side actually supplying something and there's a tiny tiny tiny minority of people who are good at selling it and
the money moves towards those people in that industry so if you were to go into the high in real estate market the thing you would discover is that the world's best sales people go to the high in real estate market so it's kind of like the tallest people go to the NBA right
and you know so you would find that you don't have as much of a superpower when you're in the creative industry if you can sell at all you've got a massive superpower right you you are a 6'6 person around people who are 5'6 right so you're just going to Tower over everyone if
you were to go into the real estate market they're six they're all 68 right so you don't that height Advantage when it comes to selling because they're all great sales people in that industry um if you look at Million Dollar Listing you know yes they're big personalities yes they're big characters but the
people who sell the most real estate product knowledge is through the roof they off the top of their head they know the dollars per square foot they know what every other like in the in a mile distance every other sale that happened within the last few months they know exactly what it's sold
for who bought it you know what's happening they know the developments they know how many units are in there developments they're phenomenal on all of those levels and they've got the personality so the the real opportunity here is to be great at sales in creativity because so few people are I'm glad you're
dragging me back to reality Daniel you're saying in the creative space because they're all pretty terrible I could dunk on them you can dunk every day that's the term the kids would use I could dunk on them just simply by returning someone's phone call right you're you're dunking or not running away when
I freak not hiding in the office right so if you were to take most people in the creative Industries if they were fishermen they would have to have the fish jump out of the water and into the boat uh in order for them to to catch a fish right yeah yeah okay and
so you're saying that if I were to move into the high-end luxury real estate market I'd get destroyed because everybody there is like the top of the top I don't think you'd get destroyed but I I don't think you'd stand out the way you'd stand out in creativity all right I I want
to explore that a little bit more before I just totally give on this secondary dream of mine here's what I see and I know cuz I work in television too of course it's edited and hyped up for drama but what I see is yes they have tremendous knowledge about the neighborhoods the streets
what is being sold the comps if it's moving up or down and okay there's a lot of learning to do there I don't want to discredit that they also know things about homes but where I get a disconnect from them is they don't seem to understand people the way that I think creatives
do because what do what do creators have to do they have to extract from somebody a feeling something very fuzzy and then be able to use words to translate that into something and then make a visual for that abstract idea when I watch the real estate shows it seems like they're mostly primarily
interested in moving real estate and getting things done yeah in that in that situation you're dealing with a tangible product and there's very they have to sell what's there yeah so if you know if it has a random you know uh water feed running through the main living room they have to try
and make a good case as to why that's a good thing right so they are dealing with whatever's there they're selling the physical product they're selling the attributes um so therefore they're left with work ethic and product knowledge and personality trait um as their main weapons um in the creative space we're actually
selling the future we're selling something that doesn't exist yet so we have to enroll people into a vision um we have to understand the needs of what they're trying to actually where they are now what they're trying to do in the future what obstacles that they're facing so we're dealing a lot with
you know the thought space we're dealing with intellectual property we're dealing with um conceptually solving problems as opposed to physically saying hey this is it's it is what it is I got to try and make the best case for it right okay again you're bringing me back to reality so there's limited inventory
it's not like you can just reshape the home so me projecting myself in there I think well I know you want to buy a $10 million home in on the west side I will never show you a property I don't think it's a good fit for you and I need to understand that's
how I would approach it but there's only four properties there is what there you got to see 104 and you can sell what you've listed yeah right so you can you know a huge part of it is listing the properties having inventory yeah okay so I see where my my nav in in
real estate is now coming to Bear okay I get that part all right you know you you also mentioned something and I love the the language that you're using is that creative people can create you the future something that doesn't yet exist I heard Brian Collins say this and it was just a
wonderful way that he phrased it is that creative people designers in particular are futurists because they're rehearsing multiple Futures and they pick the most optimized future for you the most optimized website the most optimized logo or whatever it is or wardrobe or anything or podcast they're just thinking about there's 55 ways to
edit this they look at all 55 in their mind say this is the most optimal path I love that and it leads you to a different way of selling yeah so you have to then be a consultative salesperson you have to really you know a huge part of the sales process is is
aligning Minds it's getting people aligned around the thinking around the creativity so when you don't have a physical thing to sell you know it's like hey there's the cup you know it's like you can all agree that's cup um you you are doing you're going through a process of aligning people's hopes dreams
expect ations frustrations and creating a narrative around it understanding it and crafting a path of least resistance and that is essentially what's hard about selling creativity okay so I'm going to put to bed my dream of being a real estate agent and I'll stay where I can dunk yeah right okay but that
that speaks a little bit about positioning I think where if you have some unique skills and if you're you're like everyone else then you just need to move Fields so that you can you you have an advantage given your attributes right so there's a lot that we can learn from uh the best
sales people in the world even if they work in real estate um and I've studied sales for the last 20 years uh I've had hundreds of people on my sales teams I've um studied the data between who sells well and who doesn't sell well um the difference between on my current team the
difference the slight difference between a particular sales behavior that works and a behavior that's less effective uh is we we recently calculated that just one slight Improvement is worth $400,000 per salesperson per year right so there there are hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of difference between getting the sales process right and
being suboptimal so um you know this is something that we study all the time to try and find what are the ways to massively optimize that sales process especially if you don't like sales if that's not your Jam you really want to optimize your sales process so you don't have to do as
much you want to be really good at it so you can do a few key sales meetings really really well get the sales and then get back to the creativity you know so if that's you know if if you don't like sales optimizing sales is is the best way to handle not liking
sales okay that's a wild idea so what Daniel's saying if you hate sales you have to get really good at sales so that you don't have to do it as often yeah what you're talking about is if I hate sales and I do it and I don't really optimize for it I might
pitch for five gigs and only win one yeah so I'm going to have to be exposed to four more times of something I hate whereas if you get good at it you sell you close you go do the work yes next one you sell you close you do the work yes okay that's
a wild take on that okay you're going to screw up a lot of people's minds here yeah being bad at cells means you're going to do a lot more of it yep exactly that so your punishment for being bad at something that you hate is to get more of it you get S
straight to hell what okay I'm going to put a tweet up about that or whatever okay so to get back to the original question which I was throwing at you which is I think that people who aren't good at design or creativity have to learn to sell there's this myth and I think
it's perpetuated from art professors who don't live in the real world that just focus on the craft be better at your craft and it will sell itself let's bust that apart really the there are many reasons that that's not true let me kind of come come at it from different angles okay every
single client believes that they are unique and different and even if you've done a great job with a campaign for Apple they're going to say well we're not Apple um even if you've done this phenomenal big budget thing they're going to say well we don't have that budget so they will always make
excuses as to why whatever amazing work you've done in the past doesn't necessarily translate to them it might open a door might be great for opening a door but ultimately a sales process is going to take over and how you conduct that sales process is whether you win that client or not so
there are a few things that I look at for what a great sales process is so I look at um sales Rhythm which I call laps so great sales people get into a rhythm like like great Fitness people get into a rhythm if you see someone who's exceptionally fit you know that they
go to the gym three or four times a week and you know that it's like in their diary as one of the most regular things it's just always their Monday Wednesday Friday is gym day and it's just they're in a rhythm of Being Fit um great sales people are in a rhythm and
we call that Rhythm laps leads appointments presentations and sales and what they do is they establish a rhythm that for them is sustainable and they have a way of maintaining that Rhythm when you get that Rhythm you start to naturally optimize so rhythm is one of the first things that people um get
wrong with sales the next thing is that there's a pattern of conversation there is a there is a sales conversation pattern and that pattern there is a way of talking to people that appears to be English or your your native language it appears that you're having a conversation it appears that you're having
chat but actually you know that there are bases that you're hitting and you're going through those bases and that the more you follow those those bases the more you make the sale and if you go off those bases if you go off track you're unlikely to make the sale so there's this there's
this sales pattern of conversation and then final thing is sales as a profession and if you treat it as a profession with roleplay with practice with training um you get better like any profession if you a if you're a doctor you're going to do regular training you're going to do uh certain role
plays or or practice runs you're going to um stay up to date with current updates in the industry so treating it as a profession and not like some sideline thing that you have to do so these are the three big things the Rhythm the pattern the profession the rhythm of laps the pattern
of conversation and the overall professionalism that you bring to the table those are the three cornerstones for making sales work um so maybe I could break th those down a little bit sure yeah so let's go into Rhythm I mentioned that the key thing you want to track is leads appointments presentations and
sales we call that the weekly laps or the monthly lap apps so every uh creative Studio should have a poster on the wall or a whiteboard somewhere or yes you could do this on a spreadsheet but I like it to be visually somewhere that slaps you in the face every day okay um
and ideally it's a whiteboard that says how many leads how many appointments how many presentations how many sales and it just is tracking them so I have people come up to me and they say oh you know I'm not very good at sales and I say show me your laps numbers and we
go back through their diary and they go Okay so I identified seven leads I booked four appointments I delivered three presentations and I made one sale I'm like your numbers are great they're fine you're just not doing many numbers right right the the actual numbers are down um I see people who say
I'm great at sales I say show me your numbers and they go through and they show me their laps numbers I'm like actually your numbers are pretty average you've got loads of room to improve but you've just got a great lead flow and you're just doing you're doing a volume of you're just
doing activ so until we track leads appointments presentations and sales we don't know whether you're good or not you might be amazing at sales you just have very low numbers or you might be average at sales but you just have a have decent volume of leads coming through so leads is anyone who's
expressed interest anyone who's signaled their interest appointments is anyone who's booked a time to talk that it's in the diary presentation is any time that you correctly articulate and hit all those bases that we're going to talk about so you deliver a presentation and sales is your ability to follow up to conclusion
to sign the client on so the so you you ask the closing questions you follow up if you need to follow up and the deal gets done so on your wall you should say this week how many leads how many appointments how many presentations how many sales you track those numbers over the
course of uh 6 months and you'll see a trend you'll see a pattern and then you can optimize slight tweaks can make a huge difference um on on all of that okay let me let me see if I I got it all here if if we if we had a whiteboard and I
can draw it for you guys you would see it probably it would look like it would taper somehow because you can only close so many sales based on the presentations that you give and appointments that you book so if you have not enough leads you're kind of screwed right and you're saying if
you have a ton of leads that people are just reaching out to you or expressing interest in buying your products you can afford to not be so great at sales but if you were to make a tweak at the sales process you're better at closing you would probably double triple your income yeah
right and so a lot of people think oh I'm terrible at sales and like well actually no you're not because you have relative to the number of leads that you're getting you're doing fine doing fine so the problem there is you're not getting enough leads you're not getting enough at bats yep okay
let's start there let's assume everybody okay and I I'll I'll address the the issue for Daniel because he he may not know the Nuance of this a lot of creative people lean on this idea that if they do great work that it'll sell itself what they don't understand is given the level of
competition and the tools and and uh how democratized all the tools are today quality is expected it's not a perk it's not a feature it's expected so you can reach out to just about anybody in the world and get a competent product produced for you so you can't just go in there and
say well I'm going to be the elite to the elite maybe you are maybe you're not so you have to develop your sales game so let's say I'm pretty good at sales my work is good cuz that's a given how do I generate more leads so there are a number of ways of
generating leads and I I own a group of agencies so I'll tell you stuff that works for us um we have online assessments online assessments are absolutely awesome for generating leads so for example let's say you have a video production agency you could have an online assessment um that says uh are you
leveraging video effectively right answer 15 questions to find out people go on to your website they go on there and you can actually just promote that you can your social media you can write a little post about leveraging video powerfully and then by the way if you want to know whether you're leveraging
video powerfully fill in this uh this assessment and it will do an assessment to see if you if you as a business are leveraging video effectively so every piece of content Bridges across to the business through an assessment um and my agencies we have half a dozen to a dozen assessments and we're
just constantly out there putting content into the marketplace but we always link back with take the assessment that's a great way to to to improve so an assessment is a really powerful one uh the next one that I really like is discussion groups so um if you are you know if your if
your primary kind of customer is e-commerce stores you could run an e-commerce store discussion group so you do it on WhatsApp do it on Facebook do it on LinkedIn so you promote a discussion group and the purpose of the discussion group is how to grow your e-commerce business and you ra designer and
you know someone who helps improve that but you're also the facilitator of the group now if you just invite people into the group you're going to see that there's lots of people buzzing around who are answering questions if you facilitate that group you end up with a lot of leads right so that's
another way um the third way that I really love doing for growing any agency is what I call an introduction to event an intro an intro event for short so for every business that I've scaled at the very very least we run two intros a month um and the most basic form of
doing this is that we will have a team of people or a person or an activity that is designed to put some people into the intro and we'll focus on that then the following week we run the intro and we follow up with people and then we do it all again so every
two weeks we have a bit of a cycle of fill the intro follow up after the fill the intro deliver the intro follow up after the intro so the intro event could be an introduction to video an introduction to branding an introduction to um going global an introduction to uh setting up a
YouTube channel for your business so anything that your customers would find like I wish I I wish there was a quick way to find out the basics of X Y and Z powerful now this is distinct from content it's a live thing on Zoom typically and there's a reason for that and I
hate the reason but it's true when people view content on YouTube they watch a few minutes typically and then they can easily click away and when they go onto a live uh video a live Zoom they sit through the whole thing so they actually get to understand what it is that you're all
about and they see your whole presentation so if your presentation is 30 minutes 45 minutes 60 Minutes people are going to if they if they turn up there a very high chance they'll stay um if you just simply post the same content online people might watch the first few minutes they might get
distracted so live introduction events are very very powerful um and then the other simple one uh for leads is a registration of Interest form so a way for people to Signal very simply 24 hours a day 7 days a week a simple way on your website for people to signal I'm interested in
doing a project this this is what I already know about it so a registration of Interest form is um I have an IT project in mind we've got a you know do you have a budget or not have a budget do you have a scope of work that you that you already know
or not do you need consulting or not Consulting do you you know do you have an in-house person or not have an in-house person so you can ask five to six seven questions as part of a registration of interest um and that gets you people who can signal their interest and you can
promote that as well I want to follow up with the the intro event because I think I'm doing something wrong so again I'm going to just use Daniel and pick his brain and solve our own business problems and hopefully help you help you guys out too this is a question that I think
people are going to have which is let's let's say I do branding MH so I'm going to do an intro to branding I'm doing this for the buyer but not for other branders right yeah it's definitely for whoever writes the check okay so this is where it gets really tricky then for a
lot of people because logo designers teach you how to make logos but clients don't want to learn how to make logos so what the heck are they supposed to do so let's just take it down to the Logo level it's going to hit a lot more people because there a lot more people
out there who make logos so what could my intro event be like can we can we brainstorm this together an INT to having a powerful brand um this is this is an introduction for anyone who owns or runs a business who is not happy with their current branding or is not clear about
their current brand um we often run this event for people who have inherited a family business and they want to refresh it we run this for Business Leaders that have discovered that the brand used to connect with their market and now doesn't connect with their Market um we uh we run this with
product managers who are innovating and new product under an existing brand but there's a disconnect um so you might list off those key things and you say in this 45-minute Workshop we'll show you examples of rebrands that worked well and didn't work well we'll show you examples of family businesses that refreshed we'll
show you examples of new products that launched under uh a product brand versus a company brand um we'll give you a distinction between the three types of brands that that companies are building at the moment uh and how they interact with each other um and will give you opportunity to ask questions let's
unpack the metal layer here so you're doing case studies you're doing research you're showing what's worked what hasn't worked you're giving very industry specific examples what am I trying to Inception in the client's mind or the prospects mind in that moment there's a lot of research that just says that when a client
spends time learning from you that alone is a massive achievement so if someone logs on and just sits there learning the key Basics learning the key information that you've got to they are building a relationship with you they're building trust with you um they're opening their mind to working with you just if
you if you're just covering the most basic information just the fact that you're spending time together is working for you okay so that's that's a key thing but also for many people who want something it's not their everyday experience to get that thing if they knew how to do it they would have
already done it right so when you provide them with an introduction you're just covering off some of the bases and you're showing there's a process to this there's a way of doing it there are principles to follow there's processes to follow um we've done it before we know what we're talking about you
don't have to worry your problem is now my my problem it's not even a problem for me that's what I'm good at you know so a way of most people experiencing this is to imagine you want to buy something that you've always wanted to get a breakthrough in but you don't know how
wouldn't it be nice if there was an introduction of me so if you've always wanted to run a marathon but you've never run a marathon and there's someone who's like hey I've run many marathons and I've also worked with athletes to run marathons let me do an introduction to running your first marathon
oh cool right someone's going to explain what I need to know um and there's a very high chance that you're going to then sign up to whatever it is they offer so the fact that they're spending time with you getting information and an introductory level which makes not such a hard or high
barrier for you to be able to deliver on then they're having positive feelings about you trust is being built Rapport all that kind of stuff how do you bridge to the in the sales part which is okay I've learned from you goodbye oh wait hold on hang up we definitely don't want to
say goodbye um so you want to say the next step is to have a onetoone appointment okay um so this is a lead is someone who's booked onto that and then one the next step is for them to go to an appointment right so they book an appointment so off the back of
every introduction you say um for those of you who want to discuss your brand and you want to talk to me or you want to talk to my team um the next step is let's book an appointment here's the link to do that um or just let me know that you would like
an appointment I'll reach out to you at some times so you're trying to book a onetoone appointment at that point so any of those lead generation strategies the assessment the discussion group the introduction event or the registration of Interest the next step is always let's book an appointment one to one would it
be safe then if you're doing intro event to then first send them to an assessment so that you're not wasting all your time talking to anybody who wants to talk to you I always love when I'm doing an introduction event that part of the booking process asks them a few questions that are
qualifying questions okay so before they're able to go on when they book in the ticket I see you're sneaky devil you worked it all in there so you already know basically I'm not going to do this intro event if we already know you're not qualified to be here well we can put we
can put people onto the introduction event but we we want to sort of know who's qualif you know who are the qualified uh buyers and all of that sort of stuff okay the other thing too is the way that you typically fill the introduction event is is normally through Outreach so I might
message you on LinkedIn and say hey Chris I noticed that you run a family business we do a lot of rebranding with family businesses um it's often the case um that our clients have been in that business for uh 30 or the business has been around 30 40 years and it's ready for
a refresh if you're interested we're running an introduction to refreshing a family business um event um on Zoom if you want to attend it's free to attend so that's a warm Outreach that's a much more high like personal thing is that where thinking well it's still cold in the sense that I've I've
done a little bit of research to qualify I might have um joined a group that is the family business group right or I might have I might have looked at some content that's family business and see who's following that content and then I reach out and say I notice that you're a leader
within a family business so I do a little bit of research and I'll re reach out an introduction event could have five or six people on it right um so I just reach out and say I message maybe 50 60 maybe 100 people so we're going to we're going to have this introduction
to rebranding a family business feel free to jump onto the Zoom call okay yeah so if if the call to action is go ahead and book an appointment with me if you want to talk one one we can take this a little further what what is the structure of that conversation going to
look like great so this is this is into part two so when we talked about there's a a rhythm that's laps leads appointments presentations and sales and then part two is the pattern so there's a pattern of conversation so this is where we're going to need to do a bit of a breakdown
because there's quite a bit to this let me let me kind of hit some bases at the very beginning of the conversation there's two things that matter really really high and that is called Framing and Rapport those are the two biggest things that dictate whether this Call's going to go well or whether
this one toone appointment is going to go well so framing is what they've seen about you either leading up or how you present yourself immediately at first glance and Rapport is how well we have established chemistry we establish a rapport of conversation um so let me talk about those two uh framing if
you went to see a financial planner and you saw that they arrived in a uh what did you call it a lemon yeah right the car a beat beat up car total beat up car and let's imagine that they arrive really flustered they've got like a cracked screen on their phone and they're
sweaty they're sweaty um and you know you can sort of see like that let's imagine you overheard a conversation and the conversation was them asking for an extension on their bills right yeah so nothing about that sales meeting can recover that the framing has already ruined the experience um have you ever seen
rotho a rotho art like the yes yes like a real life Rothco yeah they're beautiful for most people maybe you've got an appreciation for most people who see a Rothco they're they're seriously underwhelmed and they're like how is this a $20 million painting I could do this with a with a paint roller
yeah but most people have the when you see a real life Roth go you have the experience of going to the National Gallery and you buy a ticket and you go into a grand building and then the way that it's lit and the the fact that it's hanging on a massive wall strikes
you that it's actually pretty impressive if you simply see a picture of athco on online uh it certainly doesn't hit you hit you the same way and if you saw a rotho hanging in a in a school um let's say it was you went to a local school and there was a an
actual rotho hanging up in the principal's office you would not assume that it's a $20 million painting you would assume one of the kids did it so there's something called framing which is we take cues from everything around the painting we take cues from everything around the person um uh we're not going
to sign up to a financial planner if we just s all that that example that I just said um on the flip side financial planner arrives and they look professional they look they they they look wealthy um you know they they arrive looking good their office is professional and nice that's good framing
so um let let me give you a different frame let's say before arriving you saw a YouTube video where that financial planner is speaking uh at a wealth conference and there are billionaires in the room listening to their advice and they like super multimillionaires and billionaires asking questions and that financial planner is
answering those questions and now you're having a meeting with them you would treat that as a very special event because you know that wow there was this time where they were they were advising so anything that is happening around you is the framing and most people are completely unaware of their own framing
um I I find this to be something that is invisible to most people they just simply turn up and they don't look the part okay I want to stay here for a little bit cuz this fascinates me and I've been talking about this so to hear you describe it it parallels a lot
of things I've been trying to help our audience understand so as as much as we we don't want to admit it we we do make snap decisions about impossible and it's impossible not to and it's a horrible thing I'm not saying it's a good thing but we do it and there's nothing that
we can do about it right okay so let's talk about Rothco I love Rothco I loved it in the books and and maybe because I'm an art snob I'm like wow the balance the proportion that color and the the blurriness of the edges it's beautiful and if you try to do it I
promise you you won't be able to do it but it's not about the technical part of it that makes it valuable you're saying how something is presented and and if we're talking about art the frame around the art often dictates our perception of the value right you read about it in books so
before you ever saw a Rothco you'd read about it you probably knew that it was valuable you knew it was expensive you also knew that there was meaning Inus into it if you you know you may have read in the books about the loss of meaning the loss of religion the the loss
of anything dear or important and that he was trying to convey you know this this kind of sense of loss and it's like wow okay now I now I kind of get where he's coming from so there's there's some sort of philosophy or infused meaning that you might have known in advance so
all of these things are the lead up the framing right yeah well the fact that he's even in the book says that there's to look at here right and and these are all little bits of like social proof or something I I didn't read the story the meaning I just I'm there's an
aesthetic to it that I love and then you see it and and if you've ever gone to a framing store quite literally you pick a cheap aluminum frame it makes the art not look so good but if you have it floating in space and it's in a shadow box it's a wood nice
stained wood and then you the scale of it matters a big mat around it put it on the wall okay so that impacts it and then the wall what you put it on impacts it because what you'll see at a bizaar or an open Art Market is tons and tons of art M
but you go into the gallery and there's nothing around it so they're like this entire wall is dedicated for this one thing cuz we don't want to clutter the space I just have a a funny story that just popped into my mind uh I know a family they have a beautiful big home
like a designer home and their kid was buying stuff at like gar and outlet stores and then listing it and then people would come around to the house to buy it and it would be he would have it in like the front room which was like a grand front room and people would
pay much higher he could literally buy something in a um in a in in a basic environment put it in this environment and just add $100 to the price this 15-year-old kid was just making money by buying stuff and then listing it in this beautiful big home home that kid is leveraging the
zip code yeah yeah walks through the door and the foyer or whatever it is to say like it's it's art yeah it's worth it yeah exactly clearly if you know clearly this furniture clearly this rug is is worth it because look at this house except for the frame goes down because then you
see the 15-year-old kid like wait a minute you know every thinks he's selling parents the parents expensive stuff oh okay I guess he lets them believe those things right I'm going to make the whole episode here Daniel that's how it's going okay so there's there's the gallery there's the frame that the pr
of the museum itself anoints that Arc to be worth all that yeah okay now we're looking at ourselves and we say okay how do we apply this if we're creatives so is the frame then have you been published yeah and but a lot of the times creatives just don't tell people that the
stuff they've done so it's like so they might have won an award and the person they're talking to has no idea um they might have worked with huge Brands they're not letting the person know that in an elegant way in advance um in in many cases where you meet someone is important the
way you shop I'll give you another a very simple example of framing if someone makes an appointment with you and the appointment is set through an assistant the assistant provides framing that your time is very valuable because people whose time is valuable have an assistant so like you know that that's that's a
simple one now mind you you can have an assistant in the Philippines for five bucks an hour yeah um so having an assistant who's copied into emails and who sets the appointments and who suggests the time that probably just pays for itself just simply because of the framing of that you also mentioned
something about if you've been speaking and if there's associations with different people that are noteworthy either clients or if you're speaking on stage with Gary vanderchuck or something or one of somebody that everybody knows Simon cynic they're whoa or you're on Ted all of a sudden again you're framing it to all of
that framing yeah or if they add you on social media and you've got 100,000 followers oh okay this person has quite a lot of people who know who they are so all of that is actually framing it's annoying and it sucks but it's totally a real phenomenon it's not annoying if you have
it it's annoying if you don't have it it's annoying if you don't have it that's a great point it's a great distinction yeah I I throw it around all the time here's the logo quilt here's everybody have worked with guys and oh I worked with Coldplay they're like oh okay excuse me uh
right and it works for you yeah totally does so that's the framing okay so for a lot of you who are coming up and you're still relatively young work on that now because it pays dividends in the future go Ahad and apply to a few design competitions do a little PR have a
mentor have a mentor and tell people I you know I'm really fortunate one of my mentors who is a multi-award-winning designer uh was talking to me about this the other day yeah right so that's framing but whatever you do just be honest because I know some people are a little sketchy about this
in a transparent world that we live in it will always come out it's got to be authentic it's got to be real um but just know that framing matters and don't hang your Rothco in the local school okay right you're going to diminish the value let's talk about one last thing because okay
that takes time to build it's not always in your control but you can control how you show up to the meeting and that talks about like uh we can talk about like showing up professional like being early not just on time being in a calm State yep so silence your phones get everything
everything else out of the way but what about your appearance if you're you you buy art you buy from creative people all the time when you're trying to solicit the services of somebody creative how do you want them to show up or how do should they appear well if I'm hiring a designer
I want someone who appears that they're passionate about design um every amazing designer that I've ever worked with um has a high quality aesthetic about themselves um you know they pick up on detail they pick up on a aesthetic um and they they want to meet in cool locations they want to they
they know they know cool places to eat they know cool places to have a coffee they they pick places that have an aesthetic um they appreciate why a Porsche 911 is a Porsche 911 and why that design has has enduring taste so that you know they take they take pride in understanding aesthetic
and appreciating aesthetic and all of those sorts of things um whenever I've worked with a designer who doesn't appreciate that it actually is often reflected in the work so now there's exceptions to that there's definitely exceptions to that but if I'm a buyer I'm paying attention of course I'm paying attention does this
person look like they appreciate aesthetic um of that sort of stuff there's a there's a there's an experience that I would have where if they said to me hey look let me meet you at a really great little um artart Gallery Cafe that I know that sets a that sets a frame right
um showing up early dep by the way depending on depending on who you are and what you've done it's not necessarily you don't also you don't necessarily want to be at their service as the frame so for example um if you said if you had a phone message sorry I'm so sorry I
couldn't take your call right now um I will get back to you as soon as possible um your business is really important to me and I will endeavor to be back to you within the next few minutes as soon as I get off the current call I will definitely be calling you back
right oh God okay that's a little little too thing sorry I'm busy I'll get back to you as soon as I can right sorry I'm late I've just come from another meeting with a client uh there was a bit of traffic I'm really glad that we could meet so the framing is I'm
damn good at what I do I'm busy I've got plenty of work on right I you know I've I'm I'm meeting you because I've done my research on you as well as you've done your research on me that's the perfect frame okay we may we might disagree here so if you sell to
Daniel it's okay to be late if you sell to me if you're late I'm done with you I I'll just tell you not not late but I'm not saying I'm I'm saying the energy MH is well actually I would I would I would actually even challenge you on this okay if you knew
you were meeting someone who was an academy awardwinning right cuz at your level you're already at a very high level if you knew you were meeting someone who's Academy award-winning at what they do let's say um they've just come off the back of some stunning projects incredible work right and you know that
this person is someone you're quite excited to meet and you've and you know like millions of people follow their work if they arrived a few minutes late you are definitely not done with them okay let's let's debate this then okay because I want to make sure the young people understand this here's what
I think I I I believe in this idea that how you do one thing is how you do everything so when you say I want a designer who pays attention to details so that you don't have to pay attention to details and they have a very sharp Keen Eye on doing things because
you're going to rely on their aesthetic right so if they show up and you're like I don't get the vibe the the Hat the hair whatever it is it's not working for me you're making those decisions but the person who shows up late says two things to me number one is I actually
don't value your time that much cuz I'll make you wait and that puts me off in a bad disposition we can recover but they have to do a lot and that's not a great way to start a meeting and I'm also saying this as a professional I've been late to meetings because we
didn't account for the amount of traffic and then we're done we're arriving we're running we're sweaty we're just all kinds of things it's just a you're massively on the back foot it's already bad and then there's a room full of highly paid people waiting for us we're I don't care how brilliant we
are we're kind of done number two is I think I'm going to project in the future designers are good at this so when there a drop dead deadline and my client Daniel Priestley says it has to be done at 2 o'clock are you going to be on time are you going to still
uh you know I was really busy number three you're overbooked you are just simply overbooked you're taking on more than you can chew and I'm worried now you're not going to give our the attention so purely and simply what we're still describing as framing that we we judge Things based on stuff that
shouldn't matter or might not matter like it's it's totally plausible that a great person gets caught in traffic of course because there was a car crash right and it's not even that they misjudged it it's just it it's always a 30 minute it happens humans we jump to conclusions yes right so this
is framing we jump to conclusions we infer more than we should and all I'm saying is that it's not always the case that if someone's late or if someone's busy or someone's arrogant as hell that that is game over because it depends upon the framing yeah if you met Steven Spielberg if you
had the opportunity to meet Steven Spielberg and Steven Spielberg showed up late and was busy and was sweaty and did everything wrong you would still freaking love it right I would because he's to me because of the framing well even if he was that a salty even if he was that a cty
he would he would say uh Chris you've got the opportunity to invest in one of my companies I've seen your work I love your work I Want Someone Like You on board you've got the opportunity to put in 100 Grand and join us on this journey I'm sorry I'm late I'm sorry I'm
sweaty I'm sorry I'm busy and I can't talk much about it because of the framing because of the framing it's right that's the power of framing so that's now what I'm Des there is elite elite elite level framing right but only to make the point that the framing is seriously powerful and you
shouldn't Overlook the framing that if if like someone who has Elite framing can do anything that anyone would describe as a mistake and it will still work yeah well since we talked about luxury Brands before I know where it works on the other side as I as the buyer will put up with
their nonsense because like I understand a great example of framing is they do not let you walk into a louison shop you can't just walk in they have a giant security guard on the door who looks you up and down to decide whether you get to go in the shop or not that's
not about security that's framing right they are they are deliberately creating an experience which triggers insecurity and uh and frames that whatever you're about to see is very valuable so valuable that it needs a massive security guard to prevent the wrong people from coming through right it's exclusive and it's valuable well let's
go there because I'm a theity the security guard is part of the marketing yeah I believe it is the framing yeah yeah well before you get to the security guard where are they they're on expensive streets I'm already like I don't belong here look at all fancy people look at all the fancy
cars I'm driving up my beaters like what's going out the front yeah so you go up there and then there's a there's a person there supposedly to control the volume of people that are going into the store supposedly they don't even let you in the store just because of that you have to
give them their your name and your email address so they're collecting your information on the spot right yeah Julie we've we've got we've got another one here yeah someone who wants to buy a handbag yeah yeah very suspicious all right look we'll let you in this one time but be quick they ask
you if you have an appointment to give you money I need an appointment to give you money this is ridiculous have you got an appointment today yeah but there's a lot we can learn here also I've noticed cuz I'm starting to do a little bit more of this kind of luxury brand thing
you go in there no one talk to you no one will talk to you the only thing they ask you is do you want something to drink mhm like yes I would so now it's like okay and now we're tapping into like reciprocity this is part two Rapport okay building there's transition right
there so so the framing is strong right the framing is high value framing yeah and then Rapport which is oh wow this person's really down to earth this person's lovely so imagine like I'm imagine you meet Steven Spielberg and he's lovely and he's just like hey Chris I've watched your recent videos it's
so lovely to meet you oh wow right the jux to position of high value framing with strong Rapport whoa right like this is this is like it's a that's actually uh the um high octane chemistry that we describe when we meet someone who's highly framed and they're lovely that's high octane being lovely
doesn't do it being highly value framed being an doesn't do it but high value framing with being lovely is like high like it's it's a heady mix it's explosive it's explosive level chemistry how does one build rapport so we we have Rapport based on there are simple things like um sharing common interests
um taking an interest listening asking questions uh looking after somebody's needs um so would you like a drink right is taking interest in looking after needs um things in common right um oh you you love that movie I love that movie um oh we both know olle oh I love olle Ollie's a
great person yeah how do you know olle right so having things in common um using name right we love our we love the sound of our own name Chris so great to see you you know I've been watching a lot of uh the content you've been putting on the future your name your
brand um and I'm I'm really impressed by some of the stuff that I've seen online about you oh compliments right so we're building Rapport rapid rapidly building Rapport I think some of the things you mentioned uh hit the the trust triangle which I I recently learned about which is authenticity like you're a
really grounded real person I like that okay cool you're a total jerk awesome the other part is do do I feel that you care for me or care about me so there's empathy there like the fact that you know my name and the company and you've looked it up well okay you do
care about me I guess and the last one is like they talk about like logic like when you speak I can follow your thinking this feels right to me yep it's easy to be on the same page yes yeah so all of that's Rapport um so that Rapport is that settling into chemistry
it's that feeling of oh we can talk we I can open up to you right because that's ultimately we're about to have a conversation so it's opening up okay so so those two the the accelerator and the gas right so the push pull Push Pull energy uh Push Pull energy is framing and
Rapport if you can get those two things right you you are massively improved in your sales meetings so then you go into the conversation um after a brief chat I always ask permission and I think that maintains Rapport so I will ask permission I'll say um Chris there's two ways we can handle
this chat right I know we're here to talk about your business we can have a chitty chat or I can ask you a bunch of questions take you through a bit of a process and we can figure things out really rapidly um do you want to have a just a chat today or
or you happy to go through the process and everyone says I'd like to go through the process well the way you frame that question was option one sounds terrible I don't want to chitty chat like who chitty chats like my doesn't sound important doesn't sound like a valuable use of time yeah we
we've got important things to do and we want to do high value things yeah so if you kind of box me into like I don't like option A at all so option b no matter what you say it's going to sound much much better yeah okay no i' I'd like for you to
ask me a bunch of questions take through your process and hopefully lead somewhere yes okay yeah so I've got a process and if I ask you a series of questions some of the questions are really going to be direct if you're comfortable with that um but then we can get straight to the
the Bedrock and get as much value uh as possible so asking permission to enter a process is really powerful because once someone has given permission to enter a process and especially if you've describe the process as I'm going to ask you some really direct questions then it's all okay and if you hadn't
have asked permission those direct questions would feel rude but if you do ask permission then ah this is critical here yeah okay because poor salespeople oftentimes also creatives they steamroll they go right into this direct question like I did not say this is okay and I don't know what are you trying to
get at we don't even know each other yeah like Chris what you do in sales last year I'm like get out of here yeah I don't know you yeah okay so you ask for that I also might even say uh in the process in this process I want to ask you a bunch
of questions question if anything at all crosses the line just tell me right I don't want to ask anything that's uh confidential information I don't want to ask anything that makes you feel uncomfortable but I do want to get as much information so I can give you the right advice you know this
is counterintuitive and it's something I I I kind of butt heads with people on they think it's rude to ask business questions but I think it's rude for you not to dealing with a business person asking smart questions about business the bottom line whatever it is they're trying to do says that you
have some kind of business acument and I'm here to help right you're here to help I mean imagine going to a doctor and the doctor says um so you know are you are you uh you know what do you have for breakfast oh that's a personal question well it's like come on how
am I meant to help you if I can't ask you questions right right right or or but a doctor or do you have a history of diabetes or anybody in your family have any kind has anyone ever had a you have allergies yeah oh well you can't ask me that how am I
supposed to help so but but but a good doctor with good bedside man manner would say let me ask you a few questions to establish your health yeah right um or is it okay if I take your temperature of course you're going to say yes but it's very polite it's just good good
bedside manner to just ask for the for those um permissions you know what I like about what you just said it doesn't have to be this long buildup story it's just a quick transition from like you walk in cold let me warm you up so that kind of know what to expect so
so nothing comes as a surprise or rude or abrupt you're just asking for permission yeah okay so three or four minutes of chat and then um Chris I know you want to talk about your business um I do too uh we can either have a bit of a chitchat which I'm really happy
with or I've got a bit of a process that helps me to rapidly understand what you're what you're trying to achieve and the more we get into that process the more I can just like very rapidly give you some advice or point you in the right direction or make some recommendations umef if
you got a preference General chat or enter into a bit of process around this right um before we get to the next step because it's kind of important I just want to do a sidebar with you here I first met you through zoom and I don't want to speak for you but I
I think there was some Cadence some energy some Rapport where we I you felt very familiar to me and we've now seen each other across multiple cities all over the world not every continent yet but soon to be I guess do you feel like we have chemistry and and if you think so
why why is it like what has happened between you and I uh so the framing is that we met through a mutual friend yes um the framing is that I'm aware of your work and I and I rate it and you're aware of my work and you rate it so there's there's a
quality of output that you've said oh this guy's written a bunch of books he's built successful companies I've seen you know what you've done I want to I know that you're really picky around you know the businesses that you rate and you know what practices so I want to live up to high
standards in your eyes you know that I've built some successful companies you probably want to kind of like connect on that level as well so there's just an instant kind of like hey let's you know let's kind of we've met through friends we have a mutual respect for each other's work so the
framing played a role and then when we started talking we immediately established Common Ground oh what do you think about this oh I totally agree with you right I came to the same conclusion if you go back to one of our very first interviews within a few minutes we're like totally agreeing with
each other on certain observations about how the world works so we got on to the same page um rapidly and and then you know there's just an authenticity to it we just there there is genuinely a shared experience of the world that you and I have that leads to us being on the
same energy level right we just kind of it's either there or it's not to a degree it's there or it's not in a sales meeting you can create it for the purpose of that sales meeting um but if you want to maintain a friendship over time and and continents I'm looking forward to
our Antarctica meeting um if you if you want to if we're going to tick off all the continents um if um if you want to maintain that over time there needs to be a genuine like we're genuinely on the same page yeah yeah I'll tell you what it is for me is I've
met smart people and I've met dumb people I've met successful people and I've met broke people and neither are an indicator as to whether or not I'm going to like them for me most of the time is do you know who you are are you comfortable with that are you comfortable in your
own skin and are you or are you pretending to be somebody and I could feel that from a mile away you got to write out for right so I don't I don't care if you're successful Rich poor it doesn't really matter to me but if you're like hey you know I just filed
for bankruptcy I'm like I like you already comfortable in your skin yeah so that that trust triangle the authenticity part it's like you are comfortable you are who you are you're not pretending and this is why a lot of times when I'll say this and I find this insulting people call me like
a bro it's like I hate Bros the the the term bro like what do don't don't refer to me as that because those Alpha Bros the sports Bros it's all pretense and pump and you know they're so insecure with themselves that they have to say things to you to make you feel insecure
right it's like if they're super fit they're going to make some comment about you not being fit it's like just chill I respect that you got you're really strong looking you look physically at your Peak but that's not my values right now it's not my priority yep yep going back to what that
um high octane thing I was mentioning as well about Framing and Rapport if someone's very elite at something like health and fitness and then they throw it in your face that's the opposite absolute horrible um when so when they when the and and the flip is when when someone's had a tough time
and you know they're having a tough time just declared bankruptcy but they're holding it together very a lot of respect for that a lot of respect for that yeah yeah it's that transparency that I I like and the naturalness of who somebody is so so here's your hack you may not have the
best frame and you don't know how to build rapport the best hack for you is just a show up and owning who you are from the get and then you can build up from there yeah yeah okay now let's get to next part the process well you said okay may I have your
permission to talk about the process and you you talk about the process do you want to expand on that or do we go to the next phase so the process so the process is very simple there's three types of questions where are you now where do you want to be what's in the
way okay where are you now where you want to be that's it that's the whole process where are you now where do you want to be what's in the way so for example let's say I'm talking about uh rebranding a family business I say um how long has the business been around that's
where you now um uh what's your role within the the company where you know that's current situation um if I said if you could wave a magic wand and something changes about the business what would what would you love to see you know what do you already know that you you would love
to see that's where where do you want to be um what have you tried that didn't work that's what's in the way um what criteria or obstacles do you perceive would prevent this project from working the way you want it um obstacles and criteria so essentially there's just this mental model which is
I have a current situation I have a desired situation and I have obstacles and criteria that I have to meet that's everyone's that's everyone's story that is the only story that exists in the leadup to anyone buying anything current situation desired situation obstacles and criteria so that is just basically what we have
to get on the table that mirrors perfectly with story formula I don't know if you know this no but story formula you don't need three things character want and obstacle character is who are you now I need to know a little bit about your back story your history and there needs to be
depth and Nuance there yeah what is it that you want what do they want right and if you already got what you want there's no story there's no conflict so 's an obstacle that's standing in your way so now what we need to do is surface what those obstacles are that's what is
the foundation of all good stories and that's the foundation of all good sales okay so look at that boom so you're a character you want something and there's an obstacle in the way otherwise we wouldn't be talking right okay you go through all that you start to put some pieces together what's the
next step and and there is an art form to this yes so there's an art form to how long do you spend on current situation how long do you spend on future desired situation there's ways asking questions that totally get different responses as well so I would here's a here's how I might
ask you a question just to just to be clever about it okay I might say uh Chris I want you to imagine 3 years from now you're having a party with your team you've got champagne you're at a fancy restaurant like Nikki Beach they're bring out a big platter of sushi they pop
the bottle of the champagne everyone gets a glass you clink your cheers and you say we did it we achieved that goal what do you want to be celebrating right so that's me telling a telling a story when I when I ask that question um people people go oh oh I'd like to
be celebrating this yeah right I might also say imagine that you get to celebrate that but then between now and that 3 years there's a particular moment that really lets you know that you're on the way to celebrating that what to you would be a moment of like we made the right choice
and and we we haven't achieved what we want yet but we're certainly moving in the right direction how would you know that you're moving in the right direction so I'll ask I'll ask questions like that when I'm doing that process so I tell stories and I like um ask questions in a fun
way that are list at a bit of fun and emotion um and I might also say things like hey Chris you're a super smart guy and you know you're talented and you got a 30-year old background with the business and there's amazing people who work there why haven't you been able to do
this on your own right I'm curious like why why can't you just do this in house oh well let me tell because that will get let me tell you all the things we've tried that didn't work and we actually we're really good at this but we're not good at this so they start
making the case for actually it's really hard for us to do this on our own so I love to kind of take it away from me I take take it away from me it's like hey you know I'm curious you guys are smart people why why why wouldn't you just improve this over
time on your own so you're asking questions to gain some insight into their dream dreams hopes desires hopes and dreams obstacles criteria right yeah all of that and then in my head I'm piecing it together yeah and sometimes I'm jumping around but I'm always organizing it in my mind current situation desired situation
obstacle criteria so here's where a lot of creatives get this wrong because we do role plays a lot live right they ask questions that seemingly lead to a bunch of dead ends they have no way of processing or organizing that really starts to erode trust or it starts to irritate cuz I'm like
where are you going with we're not getting to anywhere mhm yeah how do we help those people well you only need a minimum effective dose of information for where are you now where do you want to be and what's in the way and you're looking the other thing too you're looking genuinely to
understand the situation you like it's not just even a role play or I mean it's great to role play but it's not like it's not an empty thing we're doing we're trying to understand this situation I I really want to understand what's going on for you so there has to it has to
be backed up by I'm genuinely trying to understand the situation for me personally sometimes I can do this in three minutes and I go can I be can I be cheeky I see so many people in your situation I already know it I get it like I get it right right you've told
me enough I've got you pegged I've got you in a box and I might be wrong but I'm pretty sure I got you in a box right so I've I've said that in sales meetings I've also had sales meetings where for for 20 or 30 minutes we're talking about where are you now
where do you want to be what's in the way and I'm still digging because I still haven't hit a a genuine understanding of and I've I've had sales meetings where I've said hey I know this is frustrating I'm asking all these questions I'm still not getting it I just I'm not understanding the
key distinction between you you you keep saying that there's this thing that you want and to me it looks like you kind of already have it or you're on track to it I just I'm not understanding that of what it is that you want that you're not on track for and then they'll
go well it's it's like this okay now I get it okay yeah right so so I'm genuinely looking for that understanding of their situation I got you I understand you got it I was just reminded of like where are creatives usually get this wrong they're asking empty questions because all roads lead back
to you need an new Ecom site uhhuh and so they're they're asking a question that they got an answer they didn't expect to so instead of chasing that which is a clue as to what the clients really want like okay no that's not what I want so they're asking questions so that it
connects to the thing they have to sell yeah how do we deal with that or what's the problem do you know there's you've just brought something up for me that I wasn't going to I hadn't even thought of there's always part of me that wants to disqualify the client there's part of me
that always wants to say say I'm not the right person for you and that gives me an edge and the edge is that I have no agenda to sell them the stuff if they're not right and I really and I mean it cuz I'm I've always got myself busy and I've always got
myself high value stuff um and I'm always I I have always understood that the wrong client can be a total pain in the ass so I have a level of skepticism that is like I I'm partially secretly trying to say I'd rather not take you on as a client and that gives that
that's the difference so if you can approach a client with genuinely this may not be for you and it's not a sales line like genuinely I got other things to do and I would rather keep my diary empty for the right client to come along than take on someone who's not right so
I'm asking questions to really genu I'm really trying to understand yeah yeah that's a big differentiator clearly because the the creative enters into I must clest client I have one thing to sell and I'm just desperately trying to Corral the conversation into the thing that I happened to make and it doesn't matter
if they're like I have a diet problem you know what you need a new logo it's like how are those two things related oh you know what you need a new video or you need a podcast like yo slow your roll you're not this is how we go out of Rapport by the
way because it feels like you're not listening to me yeah and that's the worst thing you can do in a sales conversation right the other thing too you actually can't change anyone's mind on anything people don't change their mind at all there's only one thing that sales is good at which is helping
people to get what they want that's it that that's that's the essence of sales you can't get someone to want something they don't want but you can help them to achieve something they do want in a way they hadn't thought of so I'll give I'll give you an example of someone there's this
guy who just constantly emails me about vacant office space in London I don't want an off in London I'm not interested in London he's like oh there's a new building that's come up hey hey Dan uh there's a place in Mayfair and it's beautiful like dude I don't want an office in London
like I just don't want it now he's never asked have you ever considered having a space to bring your clients have you ever considered like you've got eight different businesses have you ever considered like having a boardroom that is like the place that is your boardroom maybe you already spend a ton of
money on boardroom hire and you don't like the same money could be deployed for your own space and you could use it for video and production and he's never asked any of those questions at all like doesn't at all know what I want just is like hey I got another office space do
you want it no still no everyone's working remotely not interested right so so there is there is nothing he can say to make me want a thing I don't want but if he were to ask the right questions he might discover that there is something I already want and there's a more efficient
way to get it that I hadn't considered yeah well you know he could have just asked you I mean this is a crude there's a better way to ask it is hey Dan what are you looking for that's it and then trying to help you that's all he can do if he said
what are you looking for and he said because if there's no Rapport yeah I'm just going to assume what are you looking for means what office space you looking for in which case the answer is none right if he said Dan I know you're interested in grow growing a really successful business and
I know you think I do office space but what we actually do is help people to grow their buses and we help people to create you know great teams and all that sort of stuff and we got Dan let me let you in on a secret there's all this empty property all over
London and people are really up for all sorts of proposals and flexibility you're in control if there's any reason to have any real estate in London that meets your needs Now's the Time right right if he said that right he said if I could better understand what you're trying to achieve as a
company I could probably share with you some cool things that I'm seeing in the marketplace that other companies are doing and just just kind of like introduce you to some outof thebox thinking yeah now I'm like okay now it's not about the real estate it's about business growth it's about culture all that
sort of stuff but that would require him to actually take an interest yeah so if he had said something like it's a real buyer Market out there and we see the market shifting two and a half years it's real early for us having this discussion but I just want to plant the seed
now so if you see need for something let me know let me know what you're looking for it and and there are companies like yours the reason I keep calling you is there are companies like yours that are doing cool things with office space at the moment that is really working for them
let me just share with you three examples yeah right perfect got it yeah so when I said no one ever ask me what I want they just trying to sell me stuff all the time I know it's not the right way to say it but it's like you are trying to ascertain what
the person wants what's important to them the only sale that will ever happen is is I can align what I do to something you already want yeah and you hadn't in a way you hadn't considered so that's all sales is doing it's just like giving people more ways of getting what they want
yeah and and for everyone who's listening here who I don't know where you guys are learning this from but in my inbox in my DMs is the exact same template of what not to do they're constant like Chris you want this you want this I know you want this like stop it appointment
setting I'm done with it I I don't need your appointment setting Services I promise promise you I don't want your video editing Services just ask me what it is that I want in the best way that you know how to frame that question because because then you might get some insight into what
it is I want and it's crazy they're just jamming it in there and I think that's what's happening this this kind of mindset that you're trying to sell so hard that it supersedes the person in front of you there's a human there Y and here's the weird thing about about you and I
you're saying this you're always kind of subconsciously or consciously trying to get rid of the client you're like trying to sabotage the sales call because you got other things to do and only if they pass a certain criteria are you going to be take the conversation further that the weird thing is you
and I have vastly different backgrounds we're not even the same age just about 10 years apart from us is that we think eerily similar I've said similar things in my mind and out loud and it's it's kind of weird so the difference between you and and everyone is it's vast the difference between
you and me is not that different because I think I'm the prize man I've got the cookie job you can hire anybody you want but you can't hire me there's only one of me and I'm not even sure I want to work with you right now are you yeah you're a big brand
so what everybody's a Big Brand yeah so what if you're cool so what if you have money I don't care there's a lot of people I know that have money that have big brands that are cool yeah I want to make sure I want to work with you and that you have a
problem I feel confident I can solve yes I want to get to the end of this and I want us both to be really happy that we we hit the we hit what you want you know that's that's the goal the goal is that we get to the end of this and we're
super glad that we both work together um and if if I can kill that off early because I know that's not going to happen I want to kill it off early so that Vibe is is really important so then the next part of the process so before we get there how did you
get that Vibe and where did you get it from uh I call that Vibe With or Without You energy so it's it's I'll be fine with or without you you'll be fine with without me um and it typically comes from just deeply understanding a few things that there's plenty of opportunity out there
there's no shortage of there's no shortage of wealthy people cool people big Brands whatever it is right there plenty of out there um so there's an abundance of opportunity we live in a world where 5 billion people are now connected online and two billion people speak the same language and all of that
like we we live in a world of abundance and then the second thing is it's a deep understanding that ultimately I want to do great work with the right people I have high standards and I don't want to diminish those standards because it doesn't lead to what I want which is to do
great work with great people um you know and there are plenty of other people you could work with like I'm happy for you to work with someone else um then what tends to happen is you get that understanding psychologically and then it and then as soon as you have that understanding you get
busy with great people and great work and then once you actually have momentum it it's With or Without You energy is the default at that point you just can't help but have With or Without You energy because you just genuinely do have hundred other appointments that you could do mhm do you remember
how old you were or what happened that then all of a sudden it clicked can you take us to that moment cuz I know when it happened for me yeah I I worked in a I worked in in my early 20s I worked in a a company that signed up anyone and everyone
and ended up with a lot of unhappy people um and uh I worked on a pro like I haven't thought about this for a long time I worked on a project where we were the marketing uh company for a new technology company that was doing Tech uh software that allowed people to trade
stocks and shares online and the company I'd filled this big roll out event for them and the guy standing up the back of the room was one of the senior guys and I actually asked him the question how many of these people will like I'm curious how many of these people will do
really well like that you know they'll be successful he's like none of them it's like they're not going to be successful it's like all of the financial markets are professionals who get paid millions of dollars to trade these guys will lose all their money and I was just like shock like like I
was shocked this guy is signing people up to something that he knows like it was like a casino or smoking it's is like you know this is bad for people and you don't care and I remember just thinking that is and I ended that contract I'm like I'm I'm not I'm not going
to be part of this I'm done with this that's unethical what he's talking about right he's selling things he knows it's up to them if they want to try this thing if they want to do this thing they're going to find a way to do it anyway people are going to smoke they're
going to smoke anyway right right so I just was like yeah but I'm just that's not what I want to do with my time so that was the that was the moment for me that I just went I'm really going to be choosy as to what I work on and how old were
you 23 okay 24 pretty young yeah yeah so for me and it this is a weird thing because I think when you get on the right side of the cycle it's awesome but often times you're in that vicious cycle and you can't crawl your way out y right so for me it's like
I get at school I'm getting called for opportunities and it seems like there's too many opportunities and I don't I I can't be in two places at the same time so I just walking there like you can work with me you can work without me I don't really care but I'm not going
to prove myself to you I'm not here to bend the knee if you will maybe there was a little bit of arrogance in there whatever or with without you energy I can do this with her without you yeah so people like I don't want to pay that cool thanks I'm out of here
see you like wait wait wait hold on let's talk I'm like okay do you want to we're off in a bad foot because of the way you handle that so I don't even know if I want to work with you and so when you have more opportunities than you have the capacity to
do it to do the work then your confidence goes up right that's a David C Baker thing so what happens is when these we'll just call them younger designers they're not by age but just by experience I suppose they don't know when that next opportunity is going to come they talk themselves into
all kinds of things and they just hype it up in their own mind and even people who used to work for me they would do this right there was like a world famous rock band like one of the biggest I don't want to mention who we wrote a treatment for it they loved
it and then it came back to us like we don't have a budget like how does that make sense you guys are millionaires not billionaires but you make so much money oh we had spent it on a Christmas special like how's that my problem and then my producers come in the room are
we doing the project I'm going get out of here don't make me fire you right now because you're telling me to pay for a project for a world famous rock band no the answer is no now Chris we might not get this opportunity again now with this band we're not you know what
happened they came back and found 100,000 or 200,000 I don't know they found money somewhere under pillow yeah it's wild they they they didn't take one extra private jet flight yeah they didn't have a fancy lunch you know in the Rivier or whatever they had so the thing is cretive people like talk
themselves into it's like oh we'll never get this this going back to lead's appointments presentations and sales when you track your laps you see that actually there's a consistency to it and that's one of the other benefits of having that Rhythm where you do actually see oh there is a rhythm to this
there will be more people show up like I've been tracking this for six months there are there are people who show up and it's and it's improving the other thing too is if you actually can track it and you can see that the line's growing yeah um then it's like oh actually I
used to get 10 appointments a month and now I get 12 appointments a month and 14 appointments a month okay there's going to be another 13 people this month yeah now before we get to the next Arc of this there's something that you said I want to just highlight really quickly I love
the level of transparency just saying what you think and the client's talking for three minutes like okay hold on I don't want to be cheeky here but I've seen this pattern most of the times people like you this is the problem just want to just so people know what does cheeky mean oh
uh Brash or um outspoken or um you know edgy okay yeah okay cheeky is not a a US word no it's not okay but I I know Brits use it all the time children are cheeky um they say things that you shouldn't say or they they they break convention they they say something
that's a little it could be too direct and rude it's a little bit direct okay okay good so you'll say that and that's important if you figured out the pattern already time to stop we don't want to waste any more time conversely 20 minutes in you're like you know what I'm unclear what
the problem is here have discuss about that oh oh this and then they help you get there so that's a tool that you need to use and that shows a lot of like confidence and experience and again back to authenticity it's like I'm not going to pretend like I know what the problem
is I have to just say it yeah okay where do we go from here yeah and okay so where we go from here is we once again we ask permission so so I would say this I would say Chris I get a really strong sense I get your under I get your situation
I get what you're trying to achieve I understand where you are understand what's stopping it I get it uh I want to share with you my opinions I want to share with you some insights um can I do that so I'm asking to change gear in the conversation I'm saying I'm I'm done
asking about you I want to tell you some stuff yeah right so that's the first thing ask permission now when they give me permission I've got three things I'm going to do number one I'm going to share insights about their situation what I'm seeing that they from my angle that they probably haven't
seen so I'm going to share some insights high level insights then I'm going to share a method I'm going to say here's how I would approach this and then I'm going to share my solution which is how I package this up to sell okay Insight method solution so an Insight is I would
say um let's say are we doing logo like a logo or a a video seem to be really good with this family business that somebody's taking over let's continue with that yeah so I would say um I'd say the Insight that I want to share with you is that you personally as the
new leader of this business want to put your stamp on it and that's a that's something that's really important but the customers perspective they don't care that you're the new leader they want the traditional business they've always known and trusted and there's this real thread that they want this to be a steel
thread that runs through this they don't want to have to get to know the business again they want to know that there's a steel thread running through it accessing the new market that you talked about they want to see the business in a fresh way and this is what's causing the problem that
you described balancing the steel threat of tradition with accessing a new market who sees the business for the first time in a new new way the fresh way and the way that the reason you've not been able to pull the trigger on any particular strategy that feels right is because those two things
don't go together right now what the inside is is and I'm making stuff upright but I'd say the what the Insight is is that we need to do something called a brand transition and a transition is where we take people along for the ride and that they understand the decisions we're making and
they feel bought into the decisions that we're making and that we're not just slapping a new logo on this thing right we need to actually go through a bit of a process to bring people along for the ride where they feel bought into the process they feel ownership of it does that make
sense so now it's like oh okay this this guy is sharing a high level Insight so he's like View from Above mhm yeah so that's the first thing okay so then that naturally leads me into let me tell you how we do a brand transition so a brand transition we're going to do
this we're going to do this Step One is this step two is right this is the method so now I'm going to say step one step two step three so I'm now going to outline what steps have to happen yeah cool so then the final part is solution so Chris for us to
do this it's not logo design that's not what you actually need right anyone can design your logo what you need is what we would call this whole brand transition from beginning to end taking like getting your core group of fans to buy into this right giving you all the materials and the strategy
to do that um doing it over a 3 to six month period where we bring people along for the ride we introduce the brand to New Markets we bring the core group of fans with us right so we call that package the brand transition package right the solution is full brand transition part
of it included in is the new logo that you've got in mind right so that's all that's that's a given but we're going to include all of these other things and across the next 6 months we need to budget something like 15,000 a month for 6 months where we can manage that whole
transition for you now the benefit of this is that on the other side you'll end up with a business that has more value you'll attract more Talent you'll access new markets and you'll have your core group of fans who go along for the ride with you how's that sound let's do it so
so I've gone high level Insight methodology and then packaged up solution right and then I'll say something like how's that sound and I I often get silence at that point they're considering everything I've said I'll often get push back in fact sometimes I invite push back so I might say Chris I know
you did not come in here thinking that you're going to go and spend 15 grand a month and you're going to do this whole six-month transition thing you came here to talk to me about a new logo I get it but given that you've now heard that that's what your business probably needs
right or that's my opinion what feels off about it what feels less than perfect about it what reservations have you got right cuz I'm not expecting to just jump straight onto that ship right I can see you probably got some reservations and you probably need time to process tell me what's going through
mine so I'll invite that yeah what do you think about saying something like this after you do the insights the way I see it is you have a couple options option number one is you just leave the family business alone you just keep doing it the way you do it and you see
if you feel greater pain if not leave it alone MH number two is you can work with someone else who's going to tell you what you need to hear but if you connect with what I'm saying here's how it would work M then you lay it out what do you to me that
would be in solution be a great thing to say in solution so here's here's your option so here's your options yeah would be the check out yeah exactly so so it's like I've the high level Insight is if you imagine we're discussing your situation on a podcast and I'm dissecting it as an
expert uh with giving you some sort of high level Insight I'm I'm sharing with you a bit of the theory um I'm applying a framework from the industry to your situation so it's sort of like we're zooming out 30,000 ft and we're just saying let's just give have a look at this objectively
right so so it's that it's that high level intellectual kind of you know this is what's really going on right yeah you know so um so for example I went to a I went to a fitness trainer um and I said oh I want to sign up to a fitness program I want
to do a body transformation and this sort of stuff the guy says to me Tom right I've signed up with him guy says to me can I tell you a bit about you I say yeah he said you've got three young kids you've got a group of businesses and you travel you're not
going to do a fitness transformation right people who do Fitness Transformations that's all they're focused on it's it's 12 to 24 weeks of just non it's the number one thing in your life and this is not going to be the number one thing in your life right you're just not going to be
able to pull it off what you actually need is something that's much more gradual and just fits into your life I won't take you on as a fitness transformation client because I just know you got too much else on you're not going to get what you want mhm right now that's high level
Insight yeah he's saying he's saying this this doesn't work for you right right so then he says what we what we need to do is something that's gentle that fits into your life that doesn't shock your system that's manageable but it's going to take longer than you think right and that's going to
be okay it's going to lift your mood there's going to be all sorts of benefits you haven't even considered but I I I'm going to give you an insight as to why in advance it's not going to work for you I'm going to share with you mhm yeah so and the level of
respect for that sight I'm like you're right yeah spot on yeah did he have a solution to take care of that or is say he's offboarding you no no his solution is I want to take you on but I want to do it in a much more gradual way I want to take
off the pressure that we're going to do a 12 or 24 week thing we're going to do a one to two year thing yeah we're going to transform your Fitness over a year to two years yeah you know and unfortunately it's not going to be the radical thing that you think because radical
stuff requires radical levels of f Focus that you haven't got access to yeah okay so this is an important thing for us to talk about because if you know the client wants to buy something from you and it's not going to work it's on you to say it's not going to work because
you're going to either deal with the the decision now or you're going to pay for it later but much better do it now gain the respect give them the insight as to why you think it's not going to work yes and then say here's my methodology that I think would work and here's
my solution which is not what you came in here asking about but here's my solution take it or leave it yeah and feel free go get a logo if you think it's just a logo and you think you can do it on upw work by all means like why on Earth would I
want to charge you a lot of money for something you can get for five bucks on low on you know on FIV you know ask chat GPT maybe it could come up with a logo that would be cool right right so so you say if you want to do that that's fine what
I'm what I'm describing is that there's this whole world of stuff you haven't even considered this is the Insight this is my methodology as to how I would solve your problem and get you what you want what you're describing is there's an Insight you hadn't considered if you had have considered it you
wouldn't have come in asking what you wanted what you did MH there's a path of least resistance for you to get what you want let me explain what that path really looks like not the imagined path let me explain for you the real path and then let me tell you how much it
costs yeah yeah Daniel is this a an appropriate time to wind down this conversation or is there something else you want to unpack no I feel like um the the only third part to all of this was professionalism and it's it's not a big conversation it's just treat sales as a profession you
know people get paid hundreds of thousands a year to do good sales so assume that there's there's a profession to this assume that there's training that would benefit you um assume that there are tools and technologies that would help you having a CRM system that that does reminders and help helps a lot
investing into technology that helps generate leads um you know the more professionalism you wrap around the process the more you're going to get good at the sales process and the less of it you're going to have to do we talked about at the beginning yeah you know get good at sales and you
don't have to do much yeah I love the way you frame this and before I wrap up one of the companies that you run is a solution for one part of this conversation in terms of assessment that's called score app right score app yeah can you tell people a little bit about it
we'll put the link in the description so all through the 201s I had these online assessments that were building and they were massively and dramatically improving our sales results so we had the key person of influence assessment to assess personal brand we had the 24 assets assessment to assess uh digital assets that
you had in the business we had the oversubscribed assessment to assess how you were running campaigns so these were the Cornerstone of our sales meetings and our lead generation and we were signing on so many clients like 90,000 people did the key person of influence assessment we sign on tens of millions of
dollars worth clients we're signing on so many clients and people are saying oh the way I came into your businesses through the assessment I want one of those so in 2020 we built a platform to allow anyone to set up an assessment so that they can have an online assessment that generates leads
and generates the data that they need to have a better sales meeting and we've made it templates and what used to take 6 weeks now takes 60 Minutes um we've embedded AI so AI does a lot of the heavy lifting and it's called score app score app.com we now have clients in 150
countries um we have 5 a half thousand businesses that generate millions of leads per month um and it's a real Great Piece of software it's it's very affordable um so it's less than 100 bucks a month regardless of size of business so there's like a starting plan that's $39 a month another one
that's like $59 a month so it's very very affordable um and it's deliberately designed to be an easy fun elegant piece of technology that allows people to generate leads through assessments um and works with creative Industries all that sort of stuff most of our clients are are professionals and creatives you've removed most
of the pain points around creating an assessment we use it to and and if you've ever taken one of our assessments it's because I met Daniel Daniel talked to me about it gave us access to the tools and we use I can't recommend it enough we'll include the links in the description Daniel
we're in Raleigh and on theme I feel like everything comes big and you feel very satiated I feel very satiated around this convers ation around sales I love your perspective around it I love the Nuance detail but you didn't over complicate it with language I'm hoping that you guys got a ton of
value and if you did here's what I'm going to ask you to do if you're listening to this on a podcast leave us a review tell us that you like it that'll help us out a lot and then tell two friends about it if you're watching this on YouTube or any other video-based
platform do screen capture it and then share it and mention both of us what what is your Instagram handle Daniel Priestley at the cisto or you can do at the Futures here I'd really appreciate it help others find this information I exist because I want to help other people achieve their version of
their dream to help a billion people make a living doing what they love and you could help me that way thanks very much for tuning in Daniel it's been a pleasure thanks for having me yeah and we got to do this in person you guys how cool is that if you want to
equip yourself with the right Community training and resources to take your business to the next level I want to personally invite you to check out the future PR group and our membership specifically created for experienced business owners ready to scale [Music]
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