Real Relationships Real Revenue - Audio Edition | Invest in Relationships to Build Your Business and Your Career

Mo asks Marty Fagan: When you think of GrowBig Training or the Snowball System, what's your favorite science, step, or story? The Give to Get is the easy answer for Marty. By utilizing the Give to Get, Marty’s team establishes a much stronger relationship with their customer and gets them bought in, drastically increasing the odds of landing the business. You’re becoming a partner with your customer through the process by investing in them, and in return they often begin investing in you. A Give to Get is essentially offering something of value to a prospect that you think they need before you are hired. This can take the form of thought leadership, connections, and more. It has three criteria: it adds value for them, it’s relatively worth it, and it’s easy for you to do. The key to a successful Give to Get is that it leads to a next step and the prospect realizing that they can benefit from your expertise. Get to a place where you agree on what success looks like, that mutual agreement is what leads to the next step and eventually the close. With a Give to Get, you're both agreeing to something, and you're working on this in collaboration with each other. You're both investing time and effort into it and that's what ties it all together. Without both sides escalating the commitment level over time, there won’t be a future together. Compared to a blind RFP, the Give to Get approach is almost ten times more effective at landing business.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com linkedin.com/in/martyfagan

Mo asks Marty Fagan: What is your personal definition of business development? Business development is sales but in a different way. You have to think strategically from a thought leadership perspective instead of tactically. Sales and marketing should be integrated, and that’s what happens within the context of business development. This is the approach TransUnion uses to enter new markets. They combine the sales, solutions, and marketing into one coordinated effort. Marty uses the analogy of the three legged stool. Without the legs of a sales process, a solution to offer the market, and the marketing/outreach of having conversations with people that need your solution, the stool falls over and nothing happens. If one of those elements aren’t in place for you, seek out as many subject matter experts on that area as you can to help you develop it. If you don’t have it internally, find it externally. When looking at a new market, Marty starts by looking at the solutions his organization already has and how they can apply to that industry to make a customer more effective. It’s an outside-in approach that is very powerful.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com linkedin.com/in/martyfagan

Mo asks Marty Fagan: Go back in time and tell me of the moment when you realized growth or business development was something you wanted to dive into. In his role at TransUnion, Marty is helping the organization explore new areas of the market that the business has never participated in before, and that’s where business development has been a critical component. As an unknown entity, it requires an entirely different mindset in how you approach new business. If your brand isn’t really well known yet, that can actually be an advantage, as it gives you the opportunity to decide and shape the brand that people will perceive. To break into a market, you need to have the mindset of a marketer and sales executive. You have to bring together the tactical and the strategic to win. When meeting someone for the first time, Marty tries to glean as much information about them as possible ahead of time using resources like LinkedIn to find people with connections to the person he’s going to talk to. Next, he looks at the company’s strategic objectives, vision, and priorities, then moves up to researching the industry as a whole. All this research allows Marty to create really customized questions that are highly relevant to the potential client, all within the context of solving a need for the customer.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com linkedin.com/in/martyfagan

Monty Hamilton shares the principles and strategies he used to start his career, launch Rural Sourcing, and grow the company up to 1,000 employees. Find out why business always boils down to relationships, why the key to solving client problems is to appreciate those problems, and discover the framework for growing both a business and your personal skills.   Mo asks Monty Hamilton: Take us back to the moment when you realized that growth was great and it was something you wanted to focus on. Monty landed a job at Arthur Anderson Consulting out of business school, where he got his start learning how to program in COBOL. Business process reengineering and strategy became part of his day to day eventually. It was there that Monty met the group of guys that would start Clarkson Consulting with him in North Carolina. Business development came into the picture after Monty realized that if he could sell work where he lived, he wouldn’t have to travel far from his new family. His success became a matter of landing new work, so he decided to become good at it. Business all boils down to relationships and solving problems. Monty realized that going into a relationship with the goal of making a sale was counterproductive and so committed to a mindset of helping instead. You've got to spend an adequate amount of time appreciating the problem. If you can help a person identify and paint the picture of how gnarly their problem is, then you’re in the right room. Appreciating the problem starts with listening and asking good questions, and then discovering whether the issue is a symptom of the problem or if there’s something deeper. What are the upstream and downstream effects of the problem? Who else is impacted by it? What’s in it for the person you’re talking to if you can help them solve the problem? How will it help their career?   Mo asks Monty Hamilton: What is your personal definition of business development? Growth is simply about relationships. Being valuable to someone is intrinsically rewarding. Over the course of Monty’s career, the Give To Get mentality became a core part of how he built the business. Fundamentally, it’s about whether or not you can create a truly authentic and transparent relationship with someone while helping them. Don’t focus on what you’re going to get out of a relationship. Instead, focus on being around interesting people that you can also learn from. When you’re networking, throw away the title and industry and try to get to know a person’s story. In addition to being more effective at developing business, getting to know someone on a personal level is what makes life more enjoyable. Once you land the first meeting, do your research and invest some of your personal time and energy into making their business better, regardless of the end result. If you’ve got something valuable and you deliver that in a highly personalized and warm way, you’ve got a chance to meet anyone. Come in with some interesting, customized, tailored questions that show your ability to help and bring perspectives that the client could benefit from. The goal of the first meeting should be to secure the second meeting.   Mo asks Monty Hamilton: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System? The blueprint of Monty’s business is think big, start small, scale up. Rural Sourcing started out as a 10 person organization and has since scaled up to 1,000 employees, with the future goal of 3,000 employees and 30 centers all over America. It’s a growth mindset that can be applied across a 10,000 person organization, but it can also be applied to your personal life. Great intentions can be sabotaged if you try to do too much, too fast. Recognize that, as an individual, you will never be able to do it all. You have personal limitations and must be able to recognize those limitations to unlock your business’ potential. You’re not going to be perfect on day 1 or day 10,001. The goal is continuous improvement. With that mindset, you can do better, you can get bigger, you can do more. Being willing to reinvest is critical to knowing where you can add value and where someone else can add the value that’s missing. To scale up to the next level, you need to understand your strengths and your weaknesses, and to know that you need to ask your peers, colleagues, bosses, and people you can trust to give their honest opinion. People are usually happy to give you feedback, and when you find someone willing to give it to you because they want you to be successful, you may have found a great mentor.   Mo asks Monty Hamilton: Tell us a business development story that you are really proud of. Monty’s proudest moment occurred three years ago, when they sold a stake in Rural Sourcing to Bain Capital. It took building the right relationships and getting people to believe in the mission, vision, and story of the organization. Monty brought them into the center in Alabama to give them a feel for the culture and the organization beyond the numbers. After visiting the center, Monty and the crew from Bain Capital had their flights delayed, so he had the opportunity of spending five hours in a rental car with them. No matter how well you practice and prepare, there are always going to be curveballs thrown your way. If you can take them in stride and play your hand well, you can come out the other side and you will win more than you lose. The part of the story that Monty was most proud of was his confidence in himself and his ability to be authentic with people that could have been intimidating. Being confident and authentic is what allows you to perform in business development situations, whether that’s selling your business or selling the next deal. When you’re authentic, the other person knows exactly what they’re buying. It’s much worse to pretend and end up delivering subpar results.   Mo asks Monty Hamilton: If you could record a video and send it back to your former self, something around business development or growth mindset, what would it say? Monty would tell himself to not settle. Looking back, he can see that he didn’t always have the abundance mindset he needed to grow past barriers. He would also say to take more risks and that it’s okay to fail. The third thing would be to enjoy the journey more and be less fixated on the end destination. The pandemic has made celebrating the journey more difficult, but also more precious at the same time. You have to be more intentional in creating those moments.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com #MinuteWithMonty on YouTube linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton

Mo asks Monty Hamilton: If you could record a video and send it back to your former self, something around business development or growth mindset, what would it say? Monty would tell himself to not settle. Looking back, he can see that he didn’t always have the abundance mindset he needed to grow past barriers. He would also say to take more risks and that it’s okay to fail. The third thing would be to enjoy the journey more and be less fixated on the end destination. The pandemic has made celebrating the journey more difficult, but also more precious at the same time. You have to be more intentional in creating those moments.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com #MinuteWithMonty on YouTube linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton

Mo asks Monty Hamilton: Tell us a business development story that you are really proud of. Monty’s proudest moment occurred three years ago, when they sold a stake in Rural Sourcing to Bain Capital. It took building the right relationships and getting people to believe in the mission, vision, and story of the organization. Monty brought them into the center in Alabama to give them a feel for the culture and the organization beyond the numbers. After visiting the center, Monty and the crew from Bain Capital had their flights delayed, so he had the opportunity of spending five hours in a rental car with them. No matter how well you practice and prepare, there are always going to be curveballs thrown your way. If you can take them in stride and play your hand well, you can come out the other side and you will win more than you lose. The part of the story that Monty was most proud of was his confidence in himself and his ability to be authentic with people that could have been intimidating. Being confident and authentic is what allows you to perform in business development situations, whether that’s selling your business or selling the next deal. When you’re authentic, the other person knows exactly what they’re buying. It’s much worse to pretend and end up delivering subpar results.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com #MinuteWithMonty on YouTube linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton

Mo asks Monty Hamilton: What’s your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System? The blueprint of Monty’s business is think big, start small, scale up. Rural Sourcing started out as a 10 person organization and has since scaled up to 1,000 employees, with the future goal of 3,000 employees and 30 centers all over America. It’s a growth mindset that can be applied across a 10,000 person organization, but it can also be applied to your personal life. Great intentions can be sabotaged if you try to do too much, too fast. Recognize that, as an individual, you will never be able to do it all. You have personal limitations and must be able to recognize those limitations to unlock your business’ potential. You’re not going to be perfect on day 1 or day 10,001. The goal is continuous improvement. With that mindset, you can do better, you can get bigger, you can do more. Being willing to reinvest is critical to knowing where you can add value and where someone else can add the value that’s missing. To scale up to the next level, you need to understand your strengths and your weaknesses, and to know that you need to ask your peers, colleagues, bosses, and people you can trust to give their honest opinion. People are usually happy to give you feedback, and when you find someone willing to give it to you because they want you to be successful, you may have found a great mentor.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com #MinuteWithMonty on YouTube linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton

Mo asks Monty Hamilton: What is your personal definition of business development? Growth is simply about relationships. Being valuable to someone is intrinsically rewarding. Over the course of Monty’s career, the Give To Get mentality became a core part of how he built the business. Fundamentally, it’s about whether or not you can create a truly authentic and transparent relationship with someone while helping them. Don’t focus on what you’re going to get out of a relationship. Instead, focus on being around interesting people that you can also learn from. When you’re networking, throw away the title and industry and try to get to know a person’s story. In addition to being more effective at developing business, getting to know someone on a personal level is what makes life more enjoyable. Once you land the first meeting, do your research and invest some of your personal time and energy into making their business better, regardless of the end result. If you’ve got something valuable and you deliver that in a highly personalized and warm way, you’ve got a chance to meet anyone. Come in with some interesting, customized, tailored questions that show your ability to help and bring perspectives that the client could benefit from. The goal of the first meeting should be to secure the second meeting.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com #MinuteWithMonty on YouTube linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton

Mo asks Monty Hamilton: Take us back to the moment when you realized that growth was great and it was something you wanted to focus on. Monty landed a job at Arthur Anderson Consulting out of business school, where he got his start learning how to program in COBOL. Business process reengineering and strategy became part of his day to day eventually. It was there that Monty met the group of guys that would start Clarkson Consulting with him in North Carolina. Business development came into the picture after Monty realized that if he could sell work where he lived, he wouldn’t have to travel far from his new family. His success became a matter of landing new work, so he decided to become good at it. Business all boils down to relationships and solving problems. Monty realized that going into a relationship with the goal of making a sale was counterproductive and so committed to a mindset of helping instead. You've got to spend an adequate amount of time appreciating the problem. If you can help a person identify and paint the picture of how gnarly their problem is, then you’re in the right room. Appreciating the problem starts with listening and asking good questions, and then discovering whether the issue is a symptom of the problem or if there’s something deeper. What are the upstream and downstream effects of the problem? Who else is impacted by it? What’s in it for the person you’re talking to if you can help them solve the problem? How will it help their career?     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com #MinuteWithMonty on YouTube linkedin.com/in/montyhamilton

Andrew Robertson, CEO of BBDO Worldwide, shares the key principles of business development success that every subject matter expert can immediately apply to their career. Learn how to ensure every business relationship is a triple win, the one BD strategy that will change the way you think about who to build relationships with, and why discipline is the most important factor in your ultimate success and why it’s a skill that everyone can master.   Mo asks Andrew Robertson: When did you first realize that business development or relationship development was a good thing? The first time Andrew realized business development was fundamentally about discipline was while working as a barman in Maidenhead where he learned how to connect with people and build rapport very quickly. It was there he met an insurance broker that offered him a job. As a student working in the evenings, Andrew learned that if he made 100 phone calls on Monday night he could line up 10 meetings for the rest of the week, which would usually result in 3 sales. He started experimenting with the approach he was taught and learned two important lessons very quickly. The method he was taught was tried and tested, and if he didn’t do the work of making the calls, he didn’t get the results he needed. No one else was going to make those calls if he didn’t do it. He wasn’t in the relationship-building business yet, that came later. Andrew learned the importance of discipline and trusting the process. The idea that people are born with the habits that make them successful is incorrect. Discipline can be learned like any area of expertise. The most important thing is to get a meeting, not to have everything prepared. Don’t get ahead of yourself. If you focus on the delivery first, you’ll never set the meeting in the first place. You need to pick up the phone and offer them something valuable and interesting as quickly as you can. That’s how you earn the time to develop a relationship afterward. Pulling insights from other proposals and using them to intrigue other prospects enough to get a meeting is a good example of an offer that gets people interested. You don’t always have to go straight to the ultimate decision maker. Getting a meeting with a mid-level manager can be a great opportunity too. Every meeting is useful in learning more about the company or the industry.   Mo asks Andrew Robertson: What is your personal definition of business development? Business development at its best is win/win/win. Your business wins, the client wins, and thirdly, the client is winning so much that they become your best business development ambassador. Raving fans turn into your own personal sales force. Focusing on the win for the client secures the win for the business. If your client wins enough, they become predisposed to become a raving fan, but you still have to ask for it. Do something for them that gets them something of value and gets you even more. Don’t assume it will happen automatically. First, recognize that the person you are working with is a person and not just a job title. They have interests and frustrations, and when you understand that there is something you can engage with together. Dinner is a great opportunity to connect with someone outside of the confines and constraints of the work. You can also find a time to accompany them on another aspect of their work and learn more about what they do and what they care about in a way that’s not structured like a meeting. The best conversations you can have with a client are the ones where you do 20% of the talking. Figure out questions to act as a stimulus and get them talking. There is value and benefit for people in just having the opportunity to talk.   Mo asks Andrew Robertson: What is your favorite science, step, or story from the GrowBIG Training or Snowball System? Writing down the seven relationships that are the most important to growing the business was a technique that changed the way Andrew thought about business development. Andrew has a lot of great relationships with CEOs in various other businesses, but a lot of them didn’t start out at the top. Those relationships were nurtured over time with people that moved up in their organizations or moved around in their industry. Think about how you got into your position and where people are right now that you can connect with. When asked to list our most important relationships, we tend to think of our best current relationships by default, but that’s the wrong approach. We should think about the relationships that will have the most impact on our business first. The number seven forces you to make choices and really identify those relationships that will move the needle. Your list should contain people you have a relationship with, people you don’t know but would like to have a relationship with, and the people you need to have a relationship with who won’t necessarily send you business directly but can help you find it elsewhere. You only have a limited amount of time, so you need to be clear on your priorities, not just around what you do but who the most important people are. Create a shortlist and give yourself a short timeframe to connect and advance the relationship with those people. If someone is not going to make an impact, it’s better to figure that out in three months rather than three years. Be thoughtful. Sit on the other side of the desk and empathize with the person you’re trying to build a relationship with.   Mo asks Andrew Robertson: Tell me a business development story that you're particularly proud of. Andrew tells the story of a client in London that BBDO had been working with for 20 years and how they lost most of that client’s work after delivering a terrible piece starring John Cleese. Instead of bailing on the client completely, Andrew and the team decided to stick with the unglamorous work that remained and deliver excellent results for the client, knowing that eventually, the rival company that won their former work would stumble. By sticking with the client, they had the opportunity three years later to offer a new brand campaign, which was informed by the fact that they were still involved in the business and understood their needs. Andrew signed Jamie Oliver, who wasn’t quite famous yet, after scouring London on Easter weekend physically to find him, and landed the business again. Andrew learned three key lessons from the experience: be gracious on the way out, treat a rejection as a “not for now,” not a never, and the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t. Even when you get fired, those relationships are still valuable and worth keeping alive. We show our true selves much more in defeat than in easy victories. How you behave during the bad times says much more about your character than when things are good. People are human, and it’s always hard to fire someone you’ve built a relationship with. Don’t make it harder than it needs to be, and keep adding value to the relationship after the fact. How you behave afterward will be remembered. Even if you don’t win a project, that’s an opportunity to ask for feedback and give the prospect the opportunity to stay in touch. One loss is not the end, it’s the beginning of the next potential project.   Mo asks Andrew Robertson: If you could wave a magic wand and record a video around business development and send it back to your younger self, what would it say? There is very little in business that is as satisfying as business and relationship development. Landing a client and then getting them big wins is fulfilling and it’s a wonderful thing to be good at. Define victory as a series of steps, instead of an end result. This makes the journey rewarding and not just about the destination. If you can take the first step, which is the hardest, everything else gets easier. Start with the end goal in mind, and then break it down into the fundamental steps you need to make each day to achieve that goal, then celebrate when you take those steps. It doesn’t guarantee success, but it makes it much more likely. You can’t control whether a client will say yes, but you can control whether or not you ask them in the first place.     Mentioned in this Episode: GrowBIGPlaybook.com andrew.robertson@bbdo.com