How To Get Your First 6 Figure Client

Key Takeaways

[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] thanks gabriel five out ten hopefully we can get up to a seven or an eight by the end of this session dave darmish how's your day out 10 i would say mine's a mine's a nine so far wow it's quite good that's quite a high number it's a high number find an eight it'll be ten by the time we finish this come on we'd love to see it we'd love to see it we'd love to see it right i think um we're good to start we've got a seven there we've got nine there we've got five um thank you everyone for joining us for another personal weekend session um i am very happy and excited to be joined today by dave and darmish um they both run a podcast together and i found out about dimension with dave um i won't butcher their cvs but i'll give them both the floor to um tell you a bit about what they do right now and um the first question that will go with like what you do right now is how did it feel when you got your first six-figure crime saddam do you want to go first um yeah so um darmish mystery i am a geek and um i love technology but you know what i really love about technology is um when it improves people's lives right when it makes something better for another human being um i'm not really into the bits and bytes and how clever technology can be for the sake of tech i really like it seeing you know how it's used to improve people's lives and and actually you know the the first six ever uh figure project that i was involved with was um back in 97 just before i met dave to be fair and it was a killwatt bank and you know it was a bank that was very focused on multi-channel experiences and you know was wanting to go on to the internet and at that point in the uk none of the internet banks had gone live um during the project nationwide and rbs went live just before us and then we went live shortly afterwards but you know when we were pitching for this you've got to imagine this was a startup with about half a dozen people right in in a tin pot alpha in goring lovely part of the world but nobody imagined the tech company would be there right and you know um [Music] we had um some very good sales people you know the two founders very good sales people and and myself who had never sold anything really because i'd worked in banks before right and um we put forward a very compelling case for internet banking you know that we could do this based on their experience from having worked with the likes of steve jobs um selling an e-commerce platform that um they were selling for next and you know what happened was that we actually lost the bid in the end because they said that they weren't comfortable with our level of experience in handling security and so we went back to the drawing board we said well who else you know knows really about security and when i found a company in uh germany that had brought together a solution for 128-bit ssl so at the time the browser was only had 32 ssl very weak security so we re-pitched the solution and we said look this solution is way more secure than anything else in the market and you know that's why we should be allowed back in the pitch and um essentially because of that it was a game changer and we won the bid you know and really you know what we hadn't um worked out in the first pitch was what was the real buying criteria here we thought it was just the delivery of internet banking but actually you know they they wanted internet banking but they wanted really secure internet banking right and and we were lucky enough to be able to kind of work that out in the process and close that deal i love that that's something that um i think the thing that they call it buyers remorse sometimes when the buyer doesn't get what they want or there's something that they really need and then there's obviously the whole process of like actually identifying whether there's a chemistry when you're actually trying to win the cell so i think we can definitely unpack a lot of that yeah i mean you i mean sometimes you can ask the question like what's the what's the three most important things that you want you know from this project and they'll tell you what they've got on their you know rfp but you know it takes a lot more of questioning and understanding the people right because the the issue of security wasn't necessarily driven by the bank it's driven by the gang the guy who was running the project his fear of for his losing his job if there was a security breach right so it wasn't in the rfp list right and that's really i think quite key to a lot of these bigger deals is that you know really getting to what's going to change you know this person's mind or who's making the decision etc yeah so i mean because i i so there's i met dharmish around the time that this this was happening and i think you know people forget that people buy off other people yeah and what darmish managed to do and i think you know it was it was really obvious is he managed to get the team very comfortable around this very complex um this very complex uh sort of product and you know you were very credible because you'd come from the sort of industry you you under you were able to talk to them in a language that they kind of understood so i think you know you you were sort of instrumental in kind of making sure that that that person who was worried about losing their job if the security went wrong that they were made to feel comfortable by the whole thing and actually you know when i look back on that you you took responsibility for ensuring everything in terms of making sure that that was then delivered so you know that that client had you as the person they could turn to to really every time they had a worry or concern you were there to kind of make sure that they understood that that you were listening and you had a kind of response to it so it's kind of you know when people are spending a lot of money they need to feel very comfortable with the people that they're dealing with and as i say you know it's just never forget that people buy off other people and that's that's kind of the critical thing yeah it's very fun yeah good good point dave and that's very kind you said that so and and then and then yourself dave tell us a bit about it oh so yeah i mean i i am a six-figure client as well so i joined this company um i joined darmish and i'd come from yellow pages so i'd come from a very so yellow pages which was called yell now or uh it was very corporate um at that stage it was part of bt and then i suddenly joined the startup and then they were off you know selling to banks and big insurance companies and i think in our first three years of that business we managed to grow turnover from nothing to 14 million pounds so i was like oh this is the way it all works the whole time you know let's celebrate that that's not no small feat fellas no no no as it turns out it's quite a big feat so i was like well this is the way of the world in terms of you know a and actually what was kind of really interesting because darmish and i we had sales people around us but what was i think you'll agree dom that we were the most effective sales people that that business had because we were really passionate about what we were doing we were really we were the subject matter experts so darmish was the geek and i was i like to say the freak which was the the design and the ux person we were a really good team and we'd go in jointly to these opportunities and we'd you know make sure i think people just could feel the chemistry between us but also they understood that we knew what we were talking about so i think that was that was really interesting and then sort of that business through um you know sort of no fault of our own then eventually disappeared and i set up my own agency and i then realized actually to go from nothing to 14 million was the next in that short period it was extraordinary and actually it took me a long time to grow my business to that scale again but our first six-figure client in that business was was a bank and um you know actually we didn't get that by pitching a six-figure bit of work to begin with we pitched a very small bit of work we got our foot in the door and then we looked at the opportunity in that that organization and we built um a pipeline in that organization and that turned into six and and actually then on to seven figures um so you know some sometimes when you're sort of thinking about building a kind of that that sort of six figure client and that six-figure piece of work it's it's it doesn't come straight away you know that's it very rarely comes straight away you have to sort of i think open doors be prepared to kind of do some sort of smaller pieces of work and then think about how you can kind of get into into that opportunity if that makes sense it does make sense it's um definitely something that kind of speaks to kind of like sustainable businesses long term especially in the service world around retention i think people get so excited to close the first deal that they often forget that it's all good getting all these new biz wins but the real business and everyone that sustains a long time actually the one that doesn't have that much churn and actually has people coming back so bj that's such a good point and i think if you if the business that damash and i met at it grew too quickly so you know there was a stage where we were literally in stations trying to attract people to come and work for us we were talking to strangers you know because we couldn't get people in the door fast enough so you're right it's exactly right it wasn't sustainable to kind of do that and actually you know if you take your time over this stuff you can build your business around it and you know i always think if you if you think about a kind of clone as a long-term partner or long-term opportunity then you can really look to build your your team around them so you your your point is exactly spot on and we've kind of lived that yeah i love that um now something that has kind of come out of both of your um opening um talks i've kind of it's been i felt a lot around product and understanding exactly the value offering these people and then the second thing was all around uh relationships i think those are two things that kind of resonated with me um i wanted to kind of like understand in in your both your kind of experience and your thoughts um if you're starting again i know it's dave you've obviously got a new company you've started recently in nmd and um i know darmish is still running asking me right now but um for the founder who literally has no big sales experience they've got something that's awesome that they know the world they want the world to see how should they be thinking about their self strategy um because i think the foundation before even having a conversation about six figures or something because it's gotta be strategy for me i don't know something even before that but i said let's just say that product is there and they want to test it now there's a getting to market point what what what what frameworks what full processes what questions should a founder be asking when pulling together their first or their second or more revised sell strategy for 2022. yeah yeah i mean uh for me it's got to be that um i think one of the challenges for a startup right is that you've got you know sales to think about and then you've also got you you're naturally especially in the tech world right you're naturally thinking about funding and what the funders would require they require revenue and growth you know and and these guys require a solution to a problem so when you're thinking about the funding side of it you kind of want to build a picture that there's a massive ocean of opportunity that you can address your you know your skill set or your services or your product can address a huge ocean of opportunity the problem with that is that you know it's too generic and and you'll go to a client and you can say i can do anything it's almost like saying i can do anything for you right whereas if you pick a very very specific problem and you identify a problem or an opportunity that applies to everybody but it's very specific then i think that helps you build a pipeline because it helps you to filter the people that you're going to speak to so for example let's say it was um anti-money laundering you know you're only going to speak to compliance you don't have to work out who in an organization of a hundred thousand employees to speak to is the an aml you know chief operator uh chief of aml right secondly you know you're gonna know uh um as much about the problem as possible before you go in if it's generic you've got to know about lots of little things and you'll be too much of a generalist if you're going to be a specialist on the problem they're all ears right so you've got their attention right and thirdly if you pitch exactly the same thing but make little adjustments from learning from each one of those things your fourth or fifth one will be perfect and you'll be winning much more on a regular basis so you know pick something very specific you know um narrow down the audience you're going to kind of have to address and then you know go and get as many pictures as possible yeah that's my view yeah i mean i i i think i think i really that sort of practice as well i don't expect to get your pitch right in the in the first place so you know one of the things i'm i i'm loving about my new startup which is another little agency is um you know i pitch to people and i get sort of people going well what the hell are you talking about you know i get immediate feedback so i've got a product i can see the opportunity but then you know i sort of found through the process of kind of pitching that people kind of either you know they've got questions or they might not understand it and i use that to kind of refine the pitch and refine the proposition because just because you think it's brilliant doesn't mean that the rest of the world will think it's brilliant or understand it so you know i think this whole thing of don't be frightened to practice you know start with your family you know get yourself so you know if you if you sort of pitch and you feel embarrassed about what you're pitching sort of wonder why you feel embarrassed you know what it's or you know if you pitch to your family and they say well look you know i didn't quite understand this just sort of really think about what it is so don't be frightened to change your sales deck as kind of time goes on so i think that evolution is is really really important um that is something that you're very good at dave is that you know you're very open to kind of critique and refining the thing and and actually really listening you know to the customer and what they're actually saying even the words might be saying one thing but you're working out what they really meaning and that's you know absolutely key i think yeah i love that i love that i think that's definitely pretty practical um how do you guys both practice so baby mentioned in front of family but like um the strategy is now down now you know you've you've you've made a great point about maybe productizing yourself a bit so that you're not selling those different things that mean generic but actually yeah we're just telling the same thing i think damage means the same point as well but okay next step practice i see so many mistakes you know i'm not walking into your meeting without your your pamphlet or your follow-up pamphlet for the person they call it dex they call it powerpoint different industries different things but it's the same thing um what what does practice look like for you guys yeah so i think i think practice then means getting in front of people so you need to find create a pipeline and you know i mean i'm not sure we won't go into the kind of details of that but you know basically find people who you can go and pitch to and you know you're not gonna i mean you might do but it's very rare that you're gonna connect with the first few people that you meet so you know expect to kind of go through a process of talking to lots and lots of people um so you know i think it's um i think it's just i think sales is people forget is a kind of numbers game so you know you need to think about like um having a broad broad kind of pool of people or companies that you pitch to in the first place and then out that broad pool you'll have a few who kind of really so say yeah let's take it to the next meeting or whatever and then you're kind of narrowing down the whole time and you basically need to manage that whole process of narrowing down as as you're narrowing down to sort of through sort of i guess a range of meetings you're basically constantly checking what you're selling and you know what you know going back to darmish's point about what people are really interested in what you're buying and shaping your story around that for them yeah i mean i i think also i mean um you know in enterprise software you know if it's an established playing field like let's say for example crm right there's no point in trying to say you know let's do a discovery call to work out if you understand crm so that you know we can show you you understand whether we can help you um you know implement a better you know relationship management strategy using our software right but certainly in kind of newer um issues or opportunities you need some kind level of um uh meeting where you're kind of discovering more about what the client actually needs so you know for example you know with ask comey we'll say you know our first call is you know can we book 15 minutes to see if if if you know reducing your cost on property handovers if that's important to you can we see whether we can you know shave you know 25 to 50 percent off your cost and doing that right and very quickly you'll know a whether most people worry about that cost and b you know you'll get that 15 minutes because if it's important they'll they'll want to spend 15 minutes right and at that point you're not actually um pitching to them a solution you're just saying well look tell me about the process how does it go where do you find the pain points how much you spending on this yeah i think we can help you can i book another call now to show you how we can help you right so now you've got empathy with the client because they've told you about their problem and now you're saying i'm going to try and help you fix it yeah yeah like that it's very important um we're getting a few questions in from the audience so i want to get people engaged a bit before i go back to my set of questions i prepare for you guys um i think we will start with kelly's question um how long should your pitch last for supposed to tell that it's almost like how long uh piece of string can you guys give some examples of well yeah so i i for me i think you know you should be you should be aiming to kind of get as much what you want to say to people over in about 10 to 15 minutes now maybe that the conversation and the presentation goes longer but that that is kind of you need to be distilling things down into you know bite-sized chunks because people get bored you know they start looking out the windows so you've probably got 10 or 15 minutes to kind of connect with people would be my view um and i think it's it's it's again it's really like often in pictures so you know again i'm from a sort of much more services than a product point of view you know what you're trying to do to damage this point around empathy is very quickly listen to what the people are saying to you so you know pitch is half about delivering your message and half about listening to what people are saying so you know if it turns into a 40 50 60 minute kind of monologue from you then everyone's just gonna go what what's this all about yeah i mean and that makes a really good point you know if if whether you've done it in the meeting or whether you've done it in a discovery call up front once you understand their problem your pitch should all be focused on what the problems that they told you about right and you say right and you said blah blah blah and this is how this you know uh resolves that or this is why we save you so much time or so much money based on the problem that you're having over here right so as long as you're relating to their absolute need you know i mean typically we would we would have a you know five to 15 minute discovery call and then typically our pitch would be you know half an hour but in that half an hour you know obviously you've got some intros you've got a conclusion you've got a demo as well right so it's it's quite um yeah it's a little bit longer than maybe dave's approach but but from a product perspective we have to sneak in a demo there as well very important very very very important um next question i've got in here from ryan what was the biggest factor for moving from five to six figure size deals so i think there's there's a few things in there i mean for me there's confidence so you know believing that you're worth that money or your product is worth that money is a massive thing so you know when i started um my previous agency i i didn't do enough work in understanding what competitors were charging so i basically plucked a figure out the air and it sort of felt like what i think was kind of right and then you know a few years into it i discovered we were really cheap and i was like oh so which was quite a good position to be but then i had to go like we're going to raise our rates and i had to go back to plants and saying we're raising our rates so i then had to justify that process now if i'd done my homework a bit earlier on i would have seen that actually we were selling ourselves a bit cheap to begin with so you know i think it's listen to or try and understand what sort of companies like you what their charging structure is um and you know it's always amazing to me like what companies do charge for specific things but then use that to kind of fuel your confidence to kind of go from five to six figures and i think you know that when you do get those larger deals i mean it's such an amazing feeling so you know focus on that kind of that adrenaline rush as well i mean it's it's a really it's a really nice feeling so yeah yeah i mean i i'd say yeah exactly the same thing um i'd say you know um you've got to understand the opportunity right and you know is the opportunity worth six figures in the first place and if it is then that's great you can go ahead and charge me it's not about the size of company that you are but it's about how easily that customer can find other people to do it for them cheaper right and if they can't then why are you charging cheaper right you go straight in at you know a six figure if that's what it's worth and it's hard to get that product or that service yeah and that's why you should charge me i mean you know in the early days of the internet i think the average mandate rates were like you know 450 for an i.t consultant and we were charging a thousand a day for a graduate right because because you couldn't get people with experience of the internet so you could get away with it you know poster.com boom you know rates dropped back down towards you know six seven fifty because you know in in the five-year window that we were operating in you know lots of people came to market people got up to to date with the skills and and then you know it wasn't so scarce to get those skills anymore right so it's about knowing the market and and especially from a product perspective sometimes that can be really difficult to see what competitors are charging etcetera but you know the best best thing to do is in your practice call also ask them how much is this problem worth to you to get sold you know what would you pay for it good question and choosing choosing small customers that you know if you lose them doesn't really matter then you know so so that's a really good point is i but it's also you know going from five to six client five to six figure clients or opportunities is often a it's determined by the size of the people you're pitching to so you know i i'm a believer that your the size of the business you're hunting for will then reflect in the size of the business you become so if you're targeting like the hairdresser down the road you're never going to be a six-figure business whereas if you target a ftse 100 company then definitely you you kind of are likely to and you kind of win work then you're likely to be a bigger business so you know have a think about like who you're going after as well yeah that's the kind of big thing so yeah i definitely will probably even add to that with my own businesses um having a couple of different buckets in place and understanding right what are quick wins because obviously a business runs on cash flow and then who are our dream clients and then working for it by understanding that not all money is good money so sometimes even turning away and being like hey you know don't have to burn the bridge but this doesn't work for us right now i think clients respect that and they will still consider you if you're still doing the delivering good work i have seen those relationships that where we've done the work just because we wanted to do it um and there's something that we needed to just get out of the way rather than because the team really loved it something we could really deliver there's a difference there's two different levels um so yeah i hope that helps you um mr ghee mr mcgee ryan um next question we've got in is how did you each approach getting clients for your new startup this is an age-old question um but yeah how did you approach getting clients for a new startup you got the phone phone what about what about now like where people are maybe not in the office you know these phone lines don't always go through anymore what's the new phone yeah i mean it's it's really tough cold calling people at the moment i think that i got an answer podcast interviews create some sort of media that enables you to bring them and move them and get them you know excited funny you should say that because that's one of you know darmish and i do run a little podcast so we're both focused on the proptech and fintech marketplaces yeah and you know that's opened a load of doors to us so you know i i think it i mean it's all hard work this stuff in the old days it was about kind of cold calling and building sales lists and things like that in this day you need to be on linkedin you need to be visible you need to create content so you know both dharmish and i are doing a lot of writing and um you know um that it it's sort of like the more visible you are the more people then kind of gravitate towards you or you know the more legitimacy you have in terms of opening those doors so you know what i do at the moment is um you know i spend a lot of time on linkedin and then i've got someone who helps me in terms of just follow-up meetings but with people i've kind of connected with on foot on linkedin because you know just managing getting meetings is a absolute mission in itself so people say yeah we'll see you um but then you know just actually getting to see them can take an awfully long time so you know i guess it's like all this stuff though what you want is people to say yeah i i i will meet with you and then you kind of you're kind of in and you can then do the rest of rest of things from there i think a lot of agencies again you know i don't use them but there are intermediaries out there who will connect you with clients so don't don't forget that these intermediaries exist and so a lot of a lot of agencies actually use those intermediaries so have a have a think about who's out there who can then put you in touch with with potential clients as well and then you know use your network as well so you know it's it's really good um to have a kind of solid network and it's really good if people you know say oh look someone i know is looking to do xyz would you be interested in having a chat with them um so i think you know it's been very kind of socially minded i think is the way to do things now yeah yeah i i think you know a lot depends also you know um in your target market where are they spending their time right certainly in the early days of the internet nobody was on social media or the or the web really looking for companies right so you know our early success in that start out had to do a lot with pr you know we were the company that was one that put one of the banks live on the internet for the very first time we did the world's first java based solution we did the world's first you know insurance solution and and that got huge amounts of pr right yeah and and that point in time we couldn't afford to do advertising in the broadsheets so we went down the pr route and we generated loads of it right because that's where the customer was getting its information from right um i did a follow-on company and you know on in that one we we kind of um use social and you know the web a lot more but you know again we went back to also some traditional marketing because these were enterprise sales so we you know we had people calling customers fixing appointments then turning us turning up doing pitches right um in my current gig at the moment with ask comey you know um we have to work out where where property developers spend their time where do they source their materials whether they source you know contractors etc and be there right um most of those guys aren't on social media right um they don't spend lots of time on their mobile phones they're on site you know with bricks and mortar stuff right so so what else can you do right big cracks big facts kind of gotta meet the customer wherever they are yeah definitely the property developers it's down the pub buying them pints and things but yeah i mean it is it's really i mean i love your point about pr because people really do underestimate the power of pr and i know that's been the topic of one of our other uh one of the other sessions that you've run bj but even now you know getting a getting someone to endorse you in an article is really powerful so um you know i i i still think pr is a is a very powerful weapon in all of this stuff so and you know i mean as you know now if someone prints an article for you you can tweet it you can put it on linkedin you can put it everywhere basically and um it's sort of the longevity of stuff i mean this is something darmish taught me is but just one piece of content you can use over and over and over again and you know sweat that sweat that piece of content and i think you know just getting eyeballs on this stuff is really important yeah one other thing i just add is on the enterprise sales side of things um especially from a software perspective another key uh thing and that this worked really well in my previous company which sold a software platform for building web and mobile applications we got on to uh where we we helped define a space with gartner the analysts that you know was about mobile application development and um then it became kind of user experience platforms and we kind of broadened out the platform with you know for them we have them to shape it define it we wrote some thought leadership with them right and and so then they started to publicize it and as soon as they you know first came to market with the paper they said well look you're too small a company to go in a magic quadrant because there's a sales criteria associated to it but we'll put you in the cool vendor kind of category and suddenly you know we've got loads of people interested like why are you a call vendor right and then as our sales grew we got into the magic quadrant and the advantage of getting into the magic quadrant is that if you're a large-ish organization somebody's going to ask you why did you choose this vendor and if you could say well we did our homework but we also checked with gartner who the main vendors were and we picked one of the top vendors in this space and it was you know dom's company there blah blah blah they're in the top right hand quadrant right so you know don't underestimate the power of you know what you can do with analysts as well i think that's a really useful avenue especially on kind of uh enterprise software sales love that how does someone go about establishing a relationship like that um that's a that's a topic for uh for another day but um essentially you've got to know how ghana operate if you can pull the right levers it's got nothing to do with how good your product is actually by the way right so this is a fact could be anyone doesn't have to just be gartner yeah it could be um data monitor it could be forester it could be you know any one of uh celent it could be any one of the big analysts right none of them in you know they're all evaluating software right none of them take the software and install it on their site oh yeah this one's great oh yeah this doesn't work none of them do that they they they interview you and they ask you a load of questions and then they position you but there's a lot more to the game than you know i'm letting on right now so once you understand how to pull the levers suddenly you'll go it doesn't matter about the size of the company or what kind of product you've got it's more about how you've engaged with the analyst right and that makes a huge difference to your positioning are you there bj bj seems to have friends i wish he might have a phrase there's such a good answer that he's stunned um okay so in a process of you know you know finding a prospect working on a sale working on a deal you're in a conversation i suppose we've all probably done deals where i think dave mentioned it already you're underselling yourself or you've rushed to to quickly get the terms done just so that is in that quarter so you can tell the investors um but a topic i wanted to discuss was um how to how to negotiate in your terms how to negotiate in your favor when leading cells or yeah just any any tips uh opinions thought processes i mean like how do you approach it try and stay away from procurement as long as you possibly can i mean if you can negotiate with the people that you've pitched to like and built the relationship with that tends to go better to be honest with you as soon as they put the professionals in um like the procurement teams it then just turns into a different ball game so you know then i would make sure you have um like the right support from finance people and legal people in terms of going off and negotiating um because basically what the procurement team do is they suck all the emotion out of the whole process and you know leave you with forms to fill in so you know i i was in a process for um we were pitching for some work for a really big company it was um you know it was about half a million pounds and basically um we were the company that the client wanted to go with but their procurement team kept saying well you know the other the other people in the process are they they're cheaper than you and then they basically started whittling away what we were doing from a kind of budgetary point of view and you know it got to the point where we were like well we're just not going to make any money out of this so i was like well if we you know we need to make money because we need to pay people and we need to sort of so at the end of the day we just ended up going look we just can't we can't do this work because you know you you you've absolutely procurement you screwed us to the floor so we ended up walking away and i know that the company who then took on the work they actually had real problems um they actually had massive business impact because they decided to take on the work and you know i was jolly glad that we hadn't done it so i think the point is if you can steer away from procurement for as long as possible that's a good thing because then you're kind of dealing with people at that more emotional level if you get into procurement then bring in finance and legal people to support you smart love that i always make sure that there's a little bit of allowance on price for procurement because that's what the procurement guy also wants is you know i've done my bit and i've you know you guys sweated everything but i've done my bit to reduce the cost but but i think dave is right you can't take deals at any cost um you can invest in a deal if it has strategic you know outcomes for you and it means that you won't go bust so yeah you can buy a deal if the name is big enough and it will help you open other doors etcetera but but you've got to go in eyes wide open you've got to know that at the end of that project you haven't burnt enough of your cash that you can't chase any other customers after that right yeah yeah yeah very important um obviously if you've now done all these processes that we've spoke about and the pipeline and the phone is ringing off you know managing relationships managing prospects uh relationship management is the next kind of 101 that i think people need to master i felt i fell down on this many many times i've you know smashed it a few times as well but um what are your thoughts when it comes to management of relationships so in some fields to call it crm in some spaces it's just relationship management but um what does that prospect relationship management look like for for you and your teams today um and is there anything that you wish you did that you do now that you wish you did when you started all those years ago like maybe it's like you get your prospects on a on a newsletter so i do that with some prospects i have like a newsletter that goes over two months that lets people know what's going on my business so they might not buy from us now but they feel like they're in something private and it sparked lunch conversations and requests every so often but yeah i don't know if there's anything that you guys do people can take notes and kind of implement it i think it depends on the size of the deal right when it's like tens of millions you know that this is like you know multiple levels of relationship you need guys at the very top um you know talking into the board you need guys that talking to the key decision makers you need guys that are talking to the influencers in their language so for example you know if i was selling a deal and um i needed to you know influ the cmo was a large you know influencer in the deal i'd bring in something like dave right because he speaks the same language right um i'd i'd make sure that the ceo was speaking to the guy at the board you know me i'll deal with the guys that are making the decision as such right so you know you want to be able to have some options you can't do it all yourself because it closes off some doors that you know if you mess up on one let's say at the board level you messed up all the way through now right whereas if you've got few people doing you can say well hold on also let me sort that issue out you know what he said was not quite right this is not the way that we're doing this blah blah blah so you know what i mean you can you can play goodbye good cop bad cop as well on it and that gives you a bit more flexibility on the really big deals but obviously if these are smaller companies that you're dealing with you're gonna have to do uh a lot more yourself and but what i would say is you know um i'm terrible at kind of making notes but i've learned now that you know keeping track of conversations um is is absolutely key in in managing that relationship because if you've got three four clients on the go you know it's so difficult to remember how you know what you promised what you said etc you know no doubt that they will always remember everything yeah i love that i mean i think you know their tools like pipe drive which we've talked about before are really good in terms of making sure that you've got a kind of diary of sort of follow-ups and things so i mean i loved your idea of the newsletter so things like that i think are really really good just to kind of keep you your name visible with these prospects i think if you've had conversations with people then often they're very happy to kind of be kept up to date i mean i when i talk to prospects i always say oh would you mind if i back in touch in a month or two's time and you know very rarely do people say no just never never get back to me do things like take people out for lunch a lot you know just to just have friendly chats invite them to events and things like that just to kind of keep them ticking over i think you know one of the things i was going to say i'm going from sort of five to six figures and you know darmish has kind of alluded to this is you need to really think about that you know if you've got larger deal sizes you need to think about the management of those so you know on the agency side that means probably having dedicated account people to help look after an account of that size and then you know getting those account people targeted on sort of managing that that deal but then also looking at kind of future deals as well so businesses are built on momentum as well so just because you land a six figure deal doesn't mean that that's the end goal the next goal should be to to get the next six figure deal you know or even talk about a seven figure deal you know so you need to think about momentum in all of these things like i think the classic mistake businesses often make or people in businesses make is like they think achieving something is the end goal and you know you never you never achieve the end goal in a business it's always about kind of going on to the next thing i mean i i talk about it's like climbing a mountain but you never quite reach the top and that's almost i think it's a it's sort of one of the best things about business is like every every every turn is a new adventure but you know i think sort of really thinking about kind of management it's so it's a great question actually bj because i think you know in the past i've tried to do too much myself and then missed opportunities because like dahmer should say he's spinning plates so so much that you don't see something coming in and you know that's just a missed opportunity i i i also add that you know sometimes you don't have to win the project to win a deal right right and you know one of the things that we did um with a bank in holland was that you know we pitched for a big deal and we had this we hired this enterprise sales lady tons of experience in selling you know seven figure deals right and and we lost a deal right and about a month later i went back in to find out you know why we lost the deal she'd actually decided that we were too small a company to sell these kind of deals anyway right and left so i went back in and said you know what was the deal and they said well you know this is a really big project it's quite important blah blah blah and i said well you know what's your challenge now right so well the problem is we've got time scale like this and the project is like this and i said well you know why don't you just get take a temporary solution from us because we can get you live in three months right which is you know within your time scales but you're never going to deliver the big project in three months you know that right so so why don't you just take this as a contingency you can throw it away afterwards because you know for a three-month thing it's going to cost you 50 grand right and i pull the pig figure out the top of my head i said really came back and you know within the week we'd signed a deal right and and this project um our idea was for a six months license to use our software and sure enough the big project was late by another six months so we signed again for another 50k and at the end of the year they were still late on the big project so we signed again and at that point they said well look can we just take a longer deal right and so this thing went from a 50k thing to over a quarter of a million right but what we had done was continuously deliver on that deal and you know over three years that became five million pounds worth of business right and you know what what it says to me is that you know sometimes it's better take something small and prove yourself and then bigger things will happen and that's where you know what dave is saying on account management that's exactly what happened you know we i just spent as much time with as many people in the bank as possible and just telling them what i was doing in the small project well we've got something like that you know something drops out of conversations great way to do it rather than you know some guy that rings up and says oh do you need one of these right yeah yeah for sure um so to round up um because we could talk about this for a long time i think a part of uh cells is loneliness and building resilience with those nose can we speak a little bit about that um just any sound bit of advice or thoughts that you guys can give to anyone listening playing this back up to resilience about all your mind that they go through when dealing with people you're selling to it's it's a really good it's a really good question because it can get very frustrating and i like you use the word loneliness and i think sometimes you end up going you know am i pushing water up a hill and i just i just think you know if you believe in what you're selling and you you have people who kind of are responding positively but maybe not barring then you know you're on to something so it's just a case of keep going and if and and just being sort of relentless about that i think it's um you know and i think sometimes you've got to change the story slightly so don't don't be flexible have a flexible mindset around these things but you know it's tough i mean there is nothing easy about running a business to be honest with you and that's the good and the bad thing i mean it's a constant evolution in terms of the way you're kind of looking at the world um but you know it's it's it's it's sort of hard work really in the in this sort of stuff really pays off yeah yeah i might you know echo that and say also that um you know it's not just the nose but you know it is so destroying if you spent a whole day calling and trying to speak to clients and you you never get through so but you know um it's it it's not a failure it's just you know the only failure is not trying that's the main thing yeah keep at it and you know if if you stop that's your failure right um not the fact that you're you know contacting these people and then the other key thing is that you know if you get any small successes celebrate those because yeah you know you need to remember the moments when you actually got through to somebody spoke to the ceo and said yes i i understand what you solve whether he buys it or not you know if there's affirmation about what you're doing take it as a win right and those things will get you through some a lot of the other um knows that you you might incur along with along the way yeah i love that i love that well thank you both for sharing so many tips so many pieces of advice um to close off to everyone um something i always say to the entrepreneurs that we work with is everything starts with small action you know do something today take something practical from today and implement in your business rather than trying to implement the whole hour worth of information try to take one thing um daily for the next seven days and see the difference in your end of q4 um i hope everyone stays safe and has a great night thank you again to both my esteemed guests who in three years got 14 million and and then went on and did other things and you both kind of told it as it is you know business that highs and lows right but the skill of managing relationships is something that you keep with you for life so well thank you i think it's you know the the thing i will say is when you do get that win there is no i think there's no better feeling than that and that's something you know the hard work just pays off i mean and just as dumb says it's like celebrate those those wins to be honest with you so anyway thank you so much for having me all right guys bless up cheerio