The Four Conversations: Attributions

Here is a list of attributions from The Four Conversations: A New Model for Selling Expertise.

If you find any attribution errors or omissions, please send an email to us at corrections@winwithoutpitching.com and we will add it to this list. We will continue to update this page as new information becomes available.

Preface

1. From the film The Matrix, directed by the Wachowskis (Warner Bros., 1999)

Introduction

2. Many of the frameworks mentioned throughout the book can be downloaded at winwithoutpitching.com/t4c-resources.

The Probative Conversation

Objective

3. The idea that both buyer and seller may view themselves as the prize to be won in the relationship, and the specific language “I am the prize” comes from Oren Klaff’s book Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading and Winning the Deal (McGraw-Hill, 2011).

Principles

4. Simon Sinek, Start with WHY: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action (Portfolio, 2009)

Frameworks

5. A fuller set of more detailed Probative Conversation frameworks can be found at winwithoutpitching.com/t4c-resources.

The Qualifying Conversation

Objective

6. For those whose expertise is delivered over long relationships instead of projects (e.g., financial advisors), “accounts” are usually used in place of opportunities. Most CRM applications create an account (i.e., a client relationship with the larger organization or family) when a lead is converted. Any opportunities that might be created get attached to the account.

Principles

7. Available at winwithoutpitching.com/t4c-resources

8. WeWork’s original mission when the fractional office space business was founded in 2010 was around building community. By the time their bubble burst a decade later and billions of dollars in enterprise value evaporated, however, their mission had grown to “elevate the world’s consciousness.”

9. One of many insights I have gleaned from my friend, the management consultant and author David C. Baker.

10. We seek to address many of the client’s questions and therefore enable most of their vetting of us in The Probative Conversation, before the first person-to-person conversation that is The Qualifying Conversation.

11. From Jim Camp’s book, Start with No: The Negotiating Tools That the Pros Don’t Want You to Know (Crown Currency, 2002)

12. The origins of this email are unclear. It was taught to me over 20 years ago as a voicemail script.

13. From a 2016 RSW/US omnibus study on advertising agency new business development to which I contributed some questions on how the degree to which the selling firm affected the buying process correlated to sales outcomes. Those findings are summarized at https://www.winwithoutpitching.com/affect-the-buying-process/.

Framework

14. Dan Sullivan, The Dan Sullivan Question: Ask It And Transform Anyone’s Future (The Strategic Coach, Inc., 2009)

15. The distinction between Leads and Contacts is common in more robust CRM applications but there are many simplified CRM or hybrid CRM/marketing automation applications that don’t make this distinction. The important point is that qualified leads (regardless of the label being used) trigger an opportunity and disqualified leads do not.

The Value Conversation

Framework

16. Some of this is a modified version of Dan Sullivan’s DOS framework which is covered in his book, The Dan Sullivan Question: Ask It And Transform Anyone’s Future (The Strategic Coach, Inc., 2009).

17. Todd Rose, The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness, (HarperCollins Publishers Ltd., 2016)

18. The anchoring effect was first described by Kahneman and Tversky in their paper Judgment under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases (1974) and explained in more detail in Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2013). For more information on pricing visit winwithoutpitching.com/pricing.

19. It is often claimed that there is no “boomerang” effect to a price anchor that is too high—meaning no decline in average settled price caused by an increase in the anchor price—but the juries of mock trials used to measure this effect in studies do not directly translate to a sale of expertise, where a price deemed to be wholly disproportionate to the value to be created can cause a buyer to reject not only the price but the idea of doing business with the person proposing it. Jurors cannot walk away and seek another plaintiff. They must sit and listen to the arguments regardless of the size of the claim being pursued or their feelings toward the person pursuing it. Still, most of us are likely to overestimate the likelihood of a boomerang effect in the sale of expertise, and any backlash we do receive is as likely to be tied to our communications around the price as it is the actual price.

Pricing and Proposal Creation Framework

20. From William Poundstone’s Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It), Hill and Wang, 2011

21. The 2022 BenchPress New Business Study of advertising agencies in the UK found that firms using three-option proposals not only had higher closing ratios but they were more profitable and faster growing than their counterparts that did not use multi-option proposals. https://www.thewowcompany.com/uk-benchpress-2022-new-business-benchmarks

22. Utilization rate is the percentage of available time that is billed to the client. It is sometimes referred to as “billable efficiency.” An 80% utilization or efficiency rate means that 80% of the available time of the professional or the firm is billed to the client. When calculating firm-wide efficiency, some firms consider only the time of billable employees and some factor in the time of all employees including those who are “non-billable,” thus creating a wide range of utilization rate targets that differ by profession and by firm.

23. The term “gross profit” is used somewhat loosely here, as gross profit usually refers to price less the direct costs of delivering the service. While this “profit off the table” is all gross profit, it is not necessarily the full measure of all of the gross profit in the deal.

24. Performance pay—value-based pricing with at least some compensation tied to outcomes—can take many forms with different permutations of incentives, KPIs, guarantees and other variables beyond the example given here. For more pricing resources visit winwithoutpitching.com/pricing.

25. Whether the incentives are capped at those KPI levels or not is another issue, one likely to arise in the contract negotiations. It’s generally advisable to not cap the incentives in the proposal, even if we expect that a cap might be negotiated.

The Closing Conversation Framework

26. A client-friendly version of The Closing Conversation agenda can be found at winwithoutpitching.com/t4c-resources.