How To Pitch To A Brand

Key Takeaways

thank you so much everybody for joining us this morning shana welcome um so if i sort of start give a bit of background to myself and then if you wouldn't mind shana um giving a small introduction that would be fantastic so i'm dave i am a founder of agencies so i founded two agencies in my time my last agency was a ux and design agency called heath wallace which i uh grew um from just being a three people in a garage in a small village called goring on thames in oxford oxfordshire to a international business uh i sold the business to wpp um and um yeah i'm here to sort of talk about the experiences i've had in terms of pitching to brands along the way but i've got a particular story which i wanted to share as well uh and yeah so that that's me shawna would you like to introduce yourself and um just give us a bit of background as to who you are and then we can kind of get into things great amazing yeah thanks dave so i'm shana i am a serial entrepreneur i'm all one of those people that's always had a side hustle uh throughout my kind of working career um i founded a couple of years ago a brand called lila which essentially what we're trying to do is revolutionize the way we think about diversity and inclusion in the workplace and so i'm very excited to kind of share my kind of tips having worked as well in innovation and marketing we have to do a lot of partnerships especially on a budget and trying to create real great long-term partnerships so really excited to share what i have and what we've learned and how to do it in a way that suits your brand and your style as well uh so yeah that's everything from me fantastic so today we're we're we we're gonna be talking about how i guess uh the both of us have uh approached pitching to brands and you know what what we've done in terms of preparing to pitch and sort of identifying prospects and um i think the other thing that we're going to talk about is is sort of balancing things as well so you know when you sort of have brands which are uh customers it's then how do you kind of select other brands which you know so you don't bring yourself into conflict and things like that so um so shawna do you wanna um talk about the approach you take to pitching and you'd it'd be great if there's a sort of particular story of some success that you've got and then i'll kind of share my thoughts yeah yeah no sounds good and one of the things that we were going to answer was all about a story when we pitched a big brand and how we overcome overcame nerves um and what i can do is just share i've actually got some slides i can just run through as well [Laughter] because i just like to be visual so i will attempt to share the screen and just show you can we see that and i'll just present perfect can we see that yeah is that good dave can you see that we can see that that's brilliant lovely so yeah one of the big questions is actually overcoming nerves um with pitching to a brand and it can seem quite scary and overwhelming and from my experience there are other ways of just not your typical i like to think of it like you see this dragon zen style intense scary overwhelming pitch but there are other ways and one of the things that we have done and is do things through things like dming and emailing so um we managed to partner with a huge fitness brand and a big food wise food waste writing app just through a dm on instagram and i just want to show that you can do it in other ways that you don't have to stand up there and pitch and go into companies offices and say look i want to um you know want to partner with you so there are other ways of doing it and we've done a lot of actually cold outreach emails as well we've got to work with a big tea brand um just based off a kind of cold outreach email so i don't think it's all about that kind of overcoming nerves but there are other ways to go about it and really thinking creatively in a style that really suits you and pitching as well in general it's a huge earning curve you learn a lot oh yeah so just i mean it sounds like that you know rather than waiting for business to come to you you sort of were very proactive in terms of going and finding opportunities and you know landing those opportunities but thinking as you say outside the box about how you kind of connect with people yeah i think it's really important to establish trust and credibility and especially as a young small brand you need to build that credibility and by working with a bigger brand you can leverage it so always think about it in that way that actually by working and it with association you can build credibility and especially when you are that early stage and that is one of the key points that i wanted to bring up was around being strategic because you can just kind of put yourself out there and send hundreds and hundreds of dms emails um and get your name out there that way but it's really important to be strategic in everything you do and understand why you're doing it and like one of my big kind of tips was planning and on the left i put a bruce from matilda because you can be greedy with this kind of way of outreaching but actually you should go strategic and really understand it's not just about throwing any ideas at them what we do in our kind of pitching process is come up with a couple of ideas like we come up with say three options and an option one and option two and then option three is actually let's wait and see what this could be and let them co-create with us because then that way you're covering yourself you're opening them up to new opportunities and then you're also inviting them to the conversation so it's really important to think of that if you really want this long-term relationship what do you want out of it is it that you want to give away something like money a long-term partnership outward facing inward facing what is it you you can see and what is that big vision so i'm a big big planner i love to plan and i've got a few tips as well of how to actually manage when you start having a few leads that you want to actually reach and how you want to keep up to date with them because it can feel quite overwhelming but i want to try and break it down as much as possible and um the same as with practicing and dave i'm sure um over the years there's been a lot of kind of practicing and that nerves that like overcoming that because i find there's a lot of imposter syndrome in when you are working with that big with a big brand or potentially working with a big brand yeah i mean i think that's it's so true because i think you you can really talk yourself down about what you're doing and i think you know i think practice is a is an incredibly important thing to do and you know practice is a great way of kind of making sure that you can overcome nerves and and you know actually in the past i've been bad at doing practice and you know where i haven't practiced things it's always been where things have gone a bit wrong for me so you know i think it's a really really good point and i think you know that i love that love what you say about imposter syndrome because i think we all do walk around kind of wondering about you know what we do and how we do things and will people take us seriously but you know i think one of the things i was going to talk about is is being courageous like you know when you're a small business there's nothing that there isn't anything to sort of stop you from from achieving what you want to achieve you know and i think balancing that imposterness with courage i think is a really important thing and you know i as i love the story of david versus goliath and i often think about like when you go into kind of pitching you know it is a bit like david david versus goloth and you know it's it it's kind of fun it's really good fun and it's sort of thinking about these things in the kind of positive way but i think you're right sorry i'm rambling but the the practice side of things is critical and do you find as well the i find sharing a story is something i always love to do so i always find they're super memorable especially if they relate to the brand like with lila we are all about creating kind of discrimination-free environments and one thing that i've experienced is personal experience of discrimination at work and not feeling a sense of belonging but kind of growing up when it's like looking to magazine racks to tv and film and i always bring that in and you always find that you can relate people can relate to that and it makes it so much more memorable when it means a lot more because you can speak from so much more of an emotional and um perspective when you're chatting like it really kind of comes out that passion and so i don't know if that's something that you do yeah no storytelling completely so the human brain is wired for stories we love to hear stories and we we can i think people understand when something's authentic you know and i think if it's coming from the heart and you know you believe in what you're talking about people can really pick that up and i think you know actually um stories is often what wins people over because you know one of the things that i've realized over the years is when you're pitching you're not pitching to a company you're pitching to people and in a room there's going to be one or two people and you want to kind of connect with those people because those people are going to become your champions and you want them um you want those people to kind of then advocate on your behalf so i think by stories you then work out fairly quickly in the room who you're kind of connecting with and then you can kind of um then you can kind of really really get them sort of on your side a hundred percent and do you know with the pitching i'm assuming you've done the traditional pitching in a room but have you also done a lot of the zoom pictures now because things are now changing and one thing i always like to think about with kind of tips for that is really focusing on you know the minute that you enter that door or the minute that you enter that zoom call you are on you're on show and that impression is going to be applied and i always find like even the hey how i use at the beginning it's all about making the impression and starting very much from that the pitch starts and it's same with kind of interviews as well like i remember and someone told me that you should always like chat to the receptionist even when you're going and meeting in an office and it's so true because it doesn't actually start when you enter the room it starts when you enter the building or the zoom call well completely i mean i completely agree i i i think it's it you build the narrative through everything that you do from the moment you reach out to that that that opportunity i was remember that this is going back years and years um there was a friend of mine he pitched to what was then called british rails so that they were the people who used to run the rail companies um many many years ago and they the trains like 30 years ago were disgusting basically uh you know they were dirty people smoked in them and everything like that and this this agency was pitching to british rail to get the account and uh they invited them to the agency for the pitch and basically the reception they dressed up to be full of cigarette smoke and rubbish and everything and they use reverse psychology because basically these people then went into the room and goes like what what was that all about and they said well that is what your customers are facing every day when they go onto the trains so it's a great example i think of exactly what you're talking about in turn it's all about impressions so yeah totally agree i love that did that work out it worked out that's great to know and it is good yeah because it's it it is it's being memorable and then i always find one thing that i have learned a lot and there's there's a difficulty is that the post is that the post pitching and how you can actually stay i i put stay warm because keeping them warm and interested can be difficult and it's a big part of as well that kind of selling and the chasing up and it's it's really important to actually really think about that and what one thing that we always talk about is if we're in and we're doing the pitch and we talk about say we want to send a proposal out after the meeting we have like a two hour rule that we want to really keep it warm um because we find then the later you you wait and leave it it can become colder and colder and just keeping that finding new ways to keep them warm coming up with new value that you can help them with is so so important and just building that relationship over time it takes a lot of time to nurture especially if it's someone that you don't know and you've never spoken to apart from that 30 minute call and i don't know if that's something the same that you found um yeah i i abs because i think you know what what happens through the pitching process again is you kind of you work you get a lot of adrenaline going into the process you kind of do the pitch you come out and you feel you know often very self-con con congratulatory about you know what you you know it feels good and then you go well actually the hard work starts now to your point which is actually the the getting proposals out making sure that you're kind of keeping people's um not faces but you know they they remember you um so and that is actually quite a tough thing to do but i think i love this idea of the two-hour rule where you're looking at kind of respect because you've set yourself some boundaries in terms of doing all of this so you know as the adrenaline's kind of leaving the system as i say that's when i think the hard work really begins so i think it's a great it's a great way to kind of look at things yeah and i think as well they'll if if you send it say two days after they've can you imagine how many meetings they've had with and it's just forgotten quickly and if you can just keep that momentum going whether it is a written form through an email then you're much more likely to then keep that conversation and i have thought about as well is like when you do get overwhelmed how to kind of um manage it all when you are kind of thinking about how i want to work with this brand this franchise brand how do i actually manage it um and one thing that i like to talk about is dory so i'm known to my friends as dory um because i forget things um quickly and one thing with things like working with brands is that you don't have to rely on your memory and i'm a really great lover of a spreadsheet and just getting everything out there and just this is just a really high level example of one um that we had created that we myself and one of our team basically look through and what we did is we use things like name size you don't have to do things like size but a little bit of info about the company um campaigns was there any campaigns that stood out and resonated can be really really helpful and then we put things like contacts and then what we did was like a traffic light system and it was literally a um amber green red it's like are they replying are we in conversations with them have we got a pitch set up and it really helped to basically keep everything in one and then what you can do is add notes and create another column of it once you've had the picture of something that resonates just so you can remember everything that happened in that call it's just really basically helpful when you're navigating lots and lots and lots of different brand partnerships and they all have different purposes and that's just something that it's just just a really high level example of what we did and we just love a a good spreadsheet because then when you come to it you haven't forgotten and it's all there for you and what i find then is you can tailor a one-pager if you are going to send something like a one-pager or um a pro like a pitch deck out you can basically tailor that to the company if you need and i found with things like um you know pitch decks or what pitch one pages they can be really helpful in terms of we find a lot of them about results about showing what we've done who we've trained for us it's about impacts so we've done brands we've worked with press features awards we've done our bigger mission as well to really show them this is what we want to get to and with your help you can really help us and we can have a mutually beneficial relationship um but i don't know if it's something that you've done dave uh but we'll love a good spreadsheet well i so yes spreadsheets the spreadsheets are all the world to be honest with you i mean i it's interesting because i was gonna ask you looking at this have you tried the other tools so have you tried things like i guess pipe drive or hubspot which is you know other ways of kind of managing leads through the sales funnel because you know my experience has been that i've tried them and then i've always ended up coming back to spreadsheets because i think this yeah for some reason there's so much more you can do with the spreadsheet um it's really you're really like you actually are i was just thinking about hobspot as well like hubspot has been a game changer but in a different way i would say like you're right i always go back to the spreadsheet i um hubspot essentially for those who don't know it um you can use it as a sales chase up tool so what how we use it is we will say um have a send an email out and what you can do on the email is you can track the email you can check if they've opened it which is really helpful because if you want to send a chase up and you've seen them opened it 20 times it's more likely that they are super interested and then you can send another chase up by looking and working out if they've opened it a couple of times and then also i set reminders for myself say i've sent an email out i'm like remind myself in a week to chase up if they haven't replied and basically it just helps automate and there is on the kind of hubspot it's a free you i've got the free version i don't i don't pay for the other parts and just the sales bit but it comes up with um if you can see on the print screen it's kind of like you can you can have like waiting on and you can basically move everything around and make it really organized but i agree it can be a bit overwhelming but i find it really helpful for the openings and the reminders so i think it's interest again the free version is probably has you know combine that with the spreadsheets it's got everything yeah kind of everything that you kind of need so you know i think it's it's fascinating and i can see loon there as well i'm a massive fan of loom i mean i don't think a lot of people know about it but wow loom's been a game changer for us so do you want to explain yeah a little bit well saloon you can create content like a presentation and then you can narrate the presentation with a video and then instead of you know people just sort of getting a a a presentation without the narrative without you talking over it they can get a link to a a presentation with you kind of uh talking about what's going on so we find it great for those follow-ups so you know just to remind people in terms of who we are you know we send the presentation with a video um but it's also a great way of kind of for us explaining uh difficult concepts as well you know without having to be in the room so i think i mean loom is a brilliant brilliant tool um gosh look at us we're like sales people i know i love that it's interesting though because i've never really used it for that purpose no i've used it more for actually recording the meetings to then go back pick out any key bits and then use that for them the proposal so that's really interesting that's great that's great i mean again you know i said the use of it i haven't thought about i mean i i mean shauna one of the things again you know this is really interesting so um there is a lot of tools out there that people can use i mean i i was going to tell you my stuff why don't i tell you my story um because it goes back 20 years so i set this agency up called heath wallace and basically what we saw was the kind of gap in the market for [Music] technology companies were kind of delivering digital experiences to um to to businesses but they weren't really thinking about the end customer and you know for whatever reason that was particularly true in banking so i said right that's it we're going to create a small perfectly formed design and we wouldn't even there wasn't even a word user experience but we called it ux user experience business and we're going to go and solve that problem and i remember um [Music] sitting with the the people who um i had in the business and i think there was sort of three of us that through those four of us probably and i just said look we're going to go after the biggest biggest brands we can find now um in banking that's pretty big companies to be honest with you and that goes back to the the the courageousness i think you know we just decided let's be courageous because what's the worst that can happen is we don't end up getting work and that's absolutely fine but you know i've always been a believer that don't wait for business to come to you get on the front foot and go and find the businesses that you want to do business with now there was a particular brand which was hsbc and hsbc happened to be the people who provided our business account at the stage and what they did was awful but i love them you know i just love them because they were i think at that stage the biggest bank in the world and i said we're gonna go for that company so we tried all the routes of you know cold calling and sending emails there wasn't things like dm in those days just couldn't get through and then i read an article about um the head of e-business which was a for us was the right person to to go to and i decided i'd write her a handwritten e letter so i wrote a letter and i said in the letter that i'm a customer i love what you're doing but you are not serving your customers well because basically um you you you you just don't deliver a great experience now i sent this letter off and expected to hear nothing more about it but um a few weeks later i got a call from someone saying can you come uh we we want to come down and visit you from hsbc and this bloke turned up and i met him and i the first time i met him and actually you know this person if it wasn't for him i wouldn't be sat talking to you today because uh he and he's the person who eventually introduced me to simon so anyway he's an important person in this but first time i met him he was like you know what you're talking my language and i realized that he was our champion and basically we he said look you know i'm gonna try and help you get into the bank and he gave us small tiny little opportunities and we just poured our hearts and souls into those tiny opportunities and eventually he then lined up for us to pitch into hsbc and we pitched against seven other businesses but because he was on our side it made the world of difference for us he was our champion and we won there and basically to your point about keeping things warm you know i was on the phone to him every couple of days we sent him stuff you know we were just i could just sense that my gut was telling me this was going to be big and eventually we got a big opportunity with them and i used to go up to canary wharf where they were where they're based and i used to sort of walk around their offices i could just go oh my god i can smell opportunity everywhere i look is opportunity for us and that sort of turned into what kind of happened you know we then [Music] spent 16 years working with the bank um and you know they took us around the world and they helped us in many many many ways and um you know it's all based on that one letter that i wrote but then just it we saw a of light we kind of went into it and i think it's it's kind of really interesting how if i analyze what happened is i was really passionate about wanting them as an as a client so sometimes they're those brands that we really want to go after and i think you know that that sense of sort of wanting to to to work with those people really helps us um but i think we were also like really courageous about what we did you know we just were like there's nothing to kind of stop us from doing this and then we were smart you know once we saw the opportunities and they were small to begin with small acorns we could see the kind of opportunity to grow big trees so that was that was my story in terms of in terms of pitching to a brand now it's interesting again because it wasn't a very traditional way of going in as part of a you know being invited in to do stuff and i've always you know i've never liked that too much i've always loved when you kind of go in on the front foot that's amazing because there's a question actually about how do you find brands align with your purpose and your client personas and you said about kind of walking around um canary wharf and seeing it visioning it like ha yeah how did you find and you were saying it's the biggest bra like biggest bank in the world was that something that you felt aligned to then with your purpose and what you wanted to achieve yeah because i was like you you know if i explain our driver was helping customers at the end of the day because we could see i could see in the future that you know mo well there wasn't even mobile banking but i could see that digital online banking was the future but somebody had to represent customers so i was like well let's go with the people who've got the most customers i also had a real desire to go international as well and i uh hsbc was very much kind of positioned in that international way so i could see them as someone who could kind of help us to do that um but yeah it was it was it was just the sheer scale of it and i you know i like a challenge as well so it's interesting again it's like the strategic it is strategic over that greed of the brief frog charter and you are doing it strategically okay you wanted to go and think about international and then you as a result that brand could take you international and i think that's really helpful for anyone in terms of where they want to go with their business like have a think about that do you want to go find brands that are local international where do they fit more industry do you want to break into another industry and you can use that to then put that on your spreadsheet of like maybe you're reaching new audiences and help that guide you does it fit into your strategic kind of one year five year tenure etc it might be very helpful to do that yeah no i completely completely so i mean i think one of the i guess one of the questions i have is like with um you know it's sort of there's a value equation as well so i think one of the things that i felt is if like your point of you know what was the the driver for talking to someone like hsbc and for me it was about the kind of end customer how do you if you're kind of how do you sort of balance your desire to work with with sort of value as well how do you make sure that everybody's kind of getting value you know the client's getting value you're getting value as part of part of the kind of relationship yes it's a good question and i think that's when you need to know all the different parties within what you want to do and that's where it's really important to have the clarity i find so we know our and like one of the questions was i had had around for lots of different people um because a champion is actually a huge part and there's someone can you hear me sorry i think yeah yeah sorry you froze for me but you're back now okay cool perfect um yeah it's really interesting because you need to know them and what you can do and how you can provide value to them and a big part for us is actually winning over the champion winning over the specific person within the company and then also supporting the employee and we've got multiple kind of points within that and because we know the kind of inside and outs of that we really go above and beyond to give them value and help them because we understand their pain and i think it's a really good understanding to have is really knowing what they need because at the end of the day they're going to be like why like why should we work with you why should we partner with you what are we going to get out of this and if you can answer all of that in the pitch and really drive home that pain point and you can do that by chatting to kind of your ideal um client personas you can chat to your clients have really in-depth kind of conversations with them and what you do you actually start to notice trends as you speak to more and more and there's this similar kind of pain point that you'll see and i always find that i always listen and then adapt to what they've said and i don't know if you find that as well but you really just have to have that active listening open absolutely i mean i think you know so tiffany's uh asking how do you build trust with big brands as a small business and i think that's that that point is absolutely the right one it's is you're kind of again you're not selling to a brand you're selling to the people who you know or you're trying to build relationships with the people and i think you know listening to what people have to say being you know respectful um you know understanding that you know for for many people employed in large organizations they've got challenges on their own side and sort of thinking about how you can kind of align to those to to what they need i think is is absolutely spot on to be honest but then on a on a practical level to building trust is there anything that you would say like when you're early stage as a business you know like it's hard actually creating a one-pager when you say haven't done a lot sometimes i find it it can be that's when the imposter syndrome comes in so like oh like i've never worked with a big brand before like i can't use a case study because this is the first one that i'm trying to get and so sometimes you have to really just back yourself within that kind of proposal or whatever when you're coming to pricing and like case studies and who you work with um i don't know if you have any tips for that when you don't say have a lot how you can start getting to that point or just show what you've done and it's very much a work in progress because we're not we can't just like expect overnight that we're going to be working with the biggest fans in the world so how is any tips for that when you're actually getting to that point so i think it's sort of um i i would say sometimes you have to use the collective experience around you to sort of be like when you're very early stage to help you with your kind of credentials and you know so um we often talk about kind of the experience we've had as individuals uh rather than you know having to present kind of case studies and things like that i think you know one of the things that i found really useful recently is actually building a profile um on places like linkedin on social media on you know actually just having content out there kind of creates a lot of validity in people's heads so you know i i i mean i don't know what you feel shauna but i sort of feel that actually having visibility on platforms helps short-circuit some of that kind of credential side of things so you know i i didn't used to think it was that important but now i i think it is really important i agree because i created a website which is my name like sean goodra.com for that reason to start really building the credibility you have to work out what what you want to represent but i think i agree it's really important to do that and if you don't have say any kind of press or like brands you work with like start thinking about it so one thing that i always do is i look for like awards and apply for lots of kind of smaller awards bigger awards because that's all credibility and same with brands you work with is there anything that you can do things like panels like this for example um training uh communities you can reach out to communities because then then you can say look i've worked with this brand and you can use their logo and i think it's really show that and use that credibility and one thing that we did in the early stages with lyla is we're a content platform and we worked with individuals that had a lot of credibility so talking about people say like four percent foreign ted talks and um had quite a lot of credentials because then we could use that to then leverage and help get bigger plans by saying look we work with some of the best around and then we could then use that credibility so that can really help as well yeah yeah yeah i know completely so um just if people have got questions do raise your hand and then we can kind of we'll we'll try and get you to kind of ask the questions directly so um expect a an intervention at some point china so how have you um again this is from tiffany wants to know about how you found brands that align to your kind of purpose and values i'm guessing that's a kind of critical thing for you it's a it's a good one it's a really interesting question because finding a brand that aligns yeah is is so important but at the same time if that there is a brand that is very much early on they're like for example dni journey and they're transparent that they want to make change then we're basically very open as well and we're we can then help them and give them the extra support so we kind of put them in brands into stages in a way that we look at them and we kind of identify them as a stage one brand or a stage to stage five and that just helps us to be like oh okay like our focus for the next six months is only working with brands are very much ahead of the game in stage five um and i know i'm going quite technical but that's just how we kind of work and we find that really important to then know okay strategy wise the next six months are focused because otherwise you can go with anyone and you can try and work with anyone because there are hundreds of brands out there so we really do focus on like shorter sprints three to six months and be like this is really helpful no no great great great great so um aisha's just wondering how you've kind of looked at um identifying sort of some of the awards because i think going back to that as a kind of practical thing that's a brilliant brilliant idea have you gone about going and finding sort of awards to to sign up for it's a good it's a good question i think you can go in as a founder and you can get awards like on your own and it's just like it will be like you would get the reward personally or you can get an award as a brand so i guess thinking about it that way you can either do um so i've done a bit of both like some of them the awards have been very much just around myself and then some of them have been more for lila so in that case you're in the mental health and well-being i found follow people that are in the similar um industries because they will post when they win and when and all these kind of i find if you now yeah do you do the same well no but yeah i'm going to god that's a brilliant idea because they're always close when they've won it and i'm always like take note for next year so then i have a yeah it's a really interesting because i use notion i don't know if you're a big fan of notion i've never heard of notion what's notion but it's just an organizer basically and i put all my awards that i need to apply all the deadlines on there and then i put tick once you've done it and that just really helps because then you always see them on email on someone's story like it could just really help that you see look at someone that you inspire like a spot inspires you in that industry and see everything they've won and it just by googling their name you can find a lot of like press from them awards everyone you might be able to find on their website make that list and say look i'm gonna win this i'm gonna do this this is my goal two years three years five years and hopefully that will help because i'm sure there are mental health and well-being it depends because if it's a technology um like app you might be able to win on the like if it's a tech award and it so really like have a look there is something that you can sign up to and they send you a monthly email a newsletter i believe for awards i'll try and find it um because i found that helpful it is a little bit overwhelming like it comes up hundreds and hundreds but yeah you have to be picky i i think that's i mean it's so bro i mean gosh this is like a master class so thank you because i'm learning a lot so we're going through this as well so i'll have a look at nation so um again a question about pitch templates and structure do you do you sort of follow a structure or do you kind of um do you kind of personalize things based on opportunities or kind of how do you how do you go about things like that it's a it really depends on the um if it's a cold out we make it super tailored to them but we really really think about them and bring them in like it couldn't be a copy and paste we always find like you can't just copy and paste and change the name at the top it has to be really tailored and we find that helps because the amount of emails they get you need some cut through but then the actual pitch itself that's an interesting one do you have any any look so i think there's a i think there's a formula which i've learned over the years which is don't talk about yourselves talk about the the business so go in and tell them what you know about them and what you think their problem is and then at the end as a as a sort of um as a as the final kind of couple of slides tell them a bit about who you are and why you're you're incredible to work with which i think then means you've got to tailor things so you know one of the things i'm doing at the moment is a big review on bank social media outreach because i think i've basically identified that so really banks are terrible at social media and you know we found it's a really good way to kind of go in and so what we've done is a review of social media kind of ranked banks and then we're going in and saying well you know again you could do better or his and actually that's been brilliant because it's opened doors to a bank in brazil for me a bank called new bank which is is sort of 40 million customers i mean i don't speak portuguese but i've got a burgeoning relationship with them so you know i think using things like reviews and knowledge and you know what understanding a brand and where it sort of sits and compared to its kind of competitors around a particular area i think is really interesting yeah no i agree and it's that it's that listening isn't it in the actual meeting itself i find even in like when you are in that kind of cells meeting with say a group of people it's like reaffirming and just repeating what they've said so they know that you've understood and listen because that really helps okay they get it we're on the same wavelength here and then as a result this is what we can offer you and keep kind of reaffirming what they've just said and if they said they really need something if you keep saying oh look we solved this and we solved this before through blah blah that can just really help as well like credibility and just understanding because when they feel heard and they're like oh right they know what they're doing and it can be a lot of that just like that active listening throughout i don't know if you find that as well completely complete i completely agree i think it's just um yeah um listen to what people have to say and then kind of yeah going back with with appropriate i think is is totally totally the right thing so can i is there any other questions people have um we're gonna slowly start wrapping up i was sean i was just gonna ask you if you could kind of um i don't know give just some final thoughts on this um as a subject but you know you have been utterly amazing i mean i've i've learned a lot i've got a few notes myself and you i i think it's really interesting because i really like even now the hand written letter i think would work i think if you went i think we don't do that anymore we do emails so why don't you think differently and i would say definitely try and think creatively one of the things i was going to show was i've seen on linkedin people really think outside the box of how they've reached brands and this is more in a context of trying to get a job but i've seen say for example the brand oatley the oatmeal plant-based brand um someone went to them and put their cv on the bottle and they photoshopped it and just something like that really stood out to them i think they end up getting the job so really think about creative ways that you can do that but from a brand perspective um for brands that really align to you put the effort in um and show that they that yeah it's it's very important to really stand out because you if you think about and put in go and put yourself into their shoes think about how many emails they're receiving so really think differently whenever you can and always think about them and what you can give to them are probably my main kind of points and one thing as well really important to celebrate the small wins with this because it can be tough if you don't get an email reply and you just see that they're opening it and they're not reading it but really think what can i learn for this and how can i do it better you can always say adjust your writing your email that you've sent you can always like actually work out they're dropping off when i send the proposal what's going on wrong here so you can start then evaluating each step and be like okay this isn't maybe working let's try it and just try again and it's okay if you get it wrong and it fails it's all good you know it'll work out if you keep trying and trying again probably my main top tip so how about you well look i i think it's such a such a good one because i think it's you know none of this stuff is easy is it if it was easy we'd all be doing it and i think that's i mean again it's almost the fun bit about this this is like a puzzle isn't it how do you solve the puzzle and you know if you want to if you want to enjoy the puzzle sometimes it's it's going to take time and you're not going to get it right and it's you know so so i think that's absolutely true i mean i i would add to that that you know sometimes things just take a long time as well so you know one of the things i've noticed over the last few months is how unresponsive people have been you know so you have a first conversation and then it takes a few weeks for people to kind of um get back to you and but but you know it's it's not because they're not interested it's just things are taking time you know and i i like this week we've suddenly had lots of people coming back and sort of they suddenly want to work and it's over the summer it's been very quiet for us and then you know that's because everybody was sort of worrying about covert and doing other things over the summer so you know it's it's just never give up on this stuff i think is the other thing i've also there's a question around the awards yeah i i think it's awards dash list code uk you just basically it's just a list of uk business awards and you can basically separate it out through i can just quickly show i'll just put it in the um chat now actually just had someone ask about it but that might help because then you can have a look at it it's got you can filter it by deadline date and just the only thing with it that i would say is a lot there focus like if you're going to focus just do one a month say if you want to really get one and think small versus big you're more likely to win a smaller one and as you grow go for the kind of if you want to get a young entrepreneur of the year award and the bigger kind of nat west owned ones there's a there's big and small there um and it really depends again yeah so hopefully that happens so talia i think we should put that in the community page as well so you know as people sign up they can see it so no that's brilliant thank you so much for that um listen i really appreciate you turning up um it's been so insightful i feel sort of i've learned a tremendous amount i think everything i mean thank you for your slides as well they were brilliant um so yeah i mean i i just really appreciate your time this morning and giving up your saturday morning it's been it's been fabulous and you thank you to everyone for coming and if you have any more questions do let us know and yeah for for the people of tonight i really do appreciate you giving up your saturday and yeah we're around if you've got questions so um do do let us know but um have a fabulous day i think the sun's out so it's going to be raining tomorrow so get out there and enjoy enjoy enjoy brilliant appreciate it thank you everyone take care bye bye