2Bobs

David sees a lot of creative agencies making bad assumptions about their client relationships by not making the distinction between the reasons why clients come to them in the first place, why they choose to continue working with them as time passes, and then why they ultimately move on.

Blair is stunned that he still encounters so many advisory businesses like ad agencies, consulting firms, legal and accounting practices — large and small — that are still selling time. So he and David discuss what new revenue models should look like as we all adapt to how AI is changing our businesses.

Blair interviews David about a recent article he’s been receiving a lot of feedback on, in which he lists all of the things he would try to incorporate into a brand new creative agency, based on what he’s seen and learned from working with thousands of firms over the years.

Blair differentiates between decoy pricing and price anchoring, which are two different techniques that are often confused for each other, and can increase your average proposal value in multi-option pricing when used appropriately.

Despite the fact that many entrepreneurs hate people telling them what to do, they end up running their own agencies using a “central planning” model. Instead, David encourages entrepreneurial leaders to set clear standards, give staff more freedom, and institute kind accountability, for them and ourselves.

David interviews Blair about his recent article in which he gives us methods to cope with our own natural emotional and physiological responses that can be triggered when unforeseen events unfold within sales conversations.

Blair interviews David about a recent article in which he argues that the very traits that make entrepreneurs successful also make it hard for them to give up being their own boss and join someone else’s company.

David interviews Blair about his recent article in which he explores how our businesses are not simple machines that can be tuned (or killed) with specific wrenches, but they are complex adaptive organisms that we need to understand differently.

David sees too many marketing agencies trying to attract new business by staking claims of specialness on things for which nobody is claiming the opposite, instead of building their positioning on uniquely defined expertise.

Are prospects not responding to your follow-up after you submit a proposal? Blair goes through what might be causing their lack of response and then provides three tools to address the ghosting problem.

One characteristic of our industry is disappearing moats. After a brief overview of the fourteen moats we've lost from 1965 to today, we'll look at what turf we really have left to defend and what the future will look like if we get this right. It'll be very different, and you'd better get ahead of it.

What do we do in those situations where we have to pitch? Blair simplifies some important principles from his books into a sequence of four precepts we can follow when the sales process doesn’t progress like we’d hoped.

If/when you sell your firm, it’ll likely be the largest transaction of your life, and so it makes sense to understand it! In this episode David gives a crash course in everything earnouts.

Blair recognizes growth opportunities in every area of life and business, yet sees many people chasing metrics while unknowingly resisting genuine progress for various reasons.

David recognizes that the fear of repeating ourselves in our client work is motivated by the right things: “am I delivering value?”

Blair tells the story of recreation.gov and how its performance pay deal has been nothing but wins for every party involved, with plenty of lessons for buyers and sellers of all kinds of services.

David provides a framework for one of the most important conversations in a creative agency principal’s life.

Instead of railing against AI-generated spam, Blair decides to "get in on the action" with his brand new SpamHack AI Growth System™️ in this spoof episode.

David recognizes more than a few parallels between his passion for motorcycle racing and the work being done in creative and marketing agencies.

Instead of just relying on the talent of individual sales people, Blair recommends creative agencies identify and invest in six elements as a part of their organization’s long-term sales system.