2Bobs—with David C. Baker and Blair Enns
David C. Baker and Blair Enns
254 episodes
Conversations on the art of creative entrepreneurship with David C. Baker and Blair Enns
Episodes page 2 of 6
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Selling Your Professional Services Firm
Blair interviews David about his new book, Selling Your Professional Services Firm: A Primer. LINKS Buy a copy of David's new book from him directly. Buy David's new book and audiobook on Amazon.
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Questions, Not Answers
Blair interviews David on his recent article about the idea that expertise does involve supplying answers, eventually, but mainly expertise is about asking the right questions, first, and then offering a few answers…
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Assume an Advantaged Player
Blair shares how to determine whether or not we are the advantaged player the "polite battle for control" within the game of sales, and how we can get the odds of winning the sale to be more in our favor. Links…
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The Four Conversations: A New Model for Selling Expertise
David interviews Blair about his new book, which lays out his proven framework B2B service providers can use to increase closing ratios and average proposal values. Links Order The Four Conversations: A New Model for…
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200th Episode Special
Blair and David reminisce about their podcasting journey since Blair first pitched the 2Bobs idea to David back in 2016, sharing what they've learned along the way, and what they might like to try with the podcast in…
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How Account Managers Deliver Strategy
David unpacks six principles that can help creative firms benefit from delivering strategic guidance through their account managers. LINKS "Account Managers and Strategy" by David C. Baker at punctuation.com
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How to Avoid Commodifying Your Offering
Blair sees four common behaviors when business owners are looking to get deals moving in times of economic decline, stagnation, or uncertainty that end up doing long term harm to their positioning and pricing. LINKS…
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Are Email Newsletter Even Viable Anymore?
Every few years we're told that we need to move on from using email newsletters as a part of our marketing platform. And David says that advice has always been wrong. Links David's article on Punctuation.com…
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How to Make Horizontal Positioning Work
David provides some clear examples of what is required for a firm to be successful at offering one service for many different verticals. Links "Strengthening a Weak Horizontal Positioning" by David C. Baker on…
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Are You Fishing in the Right Pond?
Given these uncertain economic times we are in right now, Blair is asking if some creative firms might need to rethink the market they serve, looking at whether their positioning might be too broad, too narrow, or just…
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Leading in a Chaotic World
David shares his decision-making framework that will help agency principals make better decisions during chaotic times like these. LINKS "Leading in a Chaotic World" article by David C. Baker on Punctuation.com
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Creating a Premium Pricing Culture
Pricing is a prison cell of our own making. And it's cultural. Blair has come up with a series of prompts as a creative exercise to help us all move into a realm of higher pricing. Links "Creating a Culture of…
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Building a Scalable Sales Strategy
David wants agency principals to develop new business plans which delivers more new leads with less labor so their organizations can have more controllable growth, as well as increasing their likelihood for a…
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Have We Hit Peak Strategy?
Blair thinks too many design firms and other service providers are trying too hard to raise prices by presenting themselves as more "strategic." Both he and David see these agencies losing more and more work to…
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What Tech Bros Get Right...and Wrong
David definitely doesn't want anyone to be like tech bros, but he has recognized a few things creative agencies might be able to learn from them.
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Turning Your Delivery Team Into a Sales Team
Blair has five steps creative agency leaders can take to turn their account managers, project managers, developers, engineers, and advisors into a source of instant scale to their sales efforts. LINKS "Turning Your…
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Advising Clients Ethically
Whether you call yourself an advisor or consultant (or not), David has seven core ethical principles that should govern advisory work. LINKS "Advising Clients Ethically" article on Punctuation.com
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Just Stop Talking
The fact that sales people tend to talk too much is nothing new, but Blair has observed in recent client work just how profound of an effect this pervasive problem has on sales outcomes. Links "How and When to Talk…
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Working With a Maverick
When it comes to qualifications for ideal clients, David doesn't hear anyone talking about how agencies can benefit when the person across the table is someone who presses boundaries and ethically skirts the rules…
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The Dichotomy of the Expert Salesperson
As Blair is finishing his new book that drops later this year, he comes to the realization that pretty much everything he does comes down to the fundamental issue that experts think they need to show up as a different…
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Maximizing Pro Bono Opportunities
While discussing eight ways creative firms can do pro bono work better based on an article David wrote recently, both he and Blair discover a couple new profound insights together. LINKS "Maximizing Your Pro-Bono…
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Attending the Way
Blair recognizes how a Confucius quote is really bad business advice, but is still moved by how a highly principled creative firm in New Zealand continues to thrive by prioritizing their creative practices and client…
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A 7-part Theory of Principal Compensation
David frequently gets hired to help resolve issues at firms between multiple principles when it comes to who does what and how much each should get paid, so he's come up with a 7-point framework he can use in each…
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The Time Value of Knowledge
David interviews Blair about his recent article in which he takes a lesson from investing with compound interest to understand the increasing returns we can receive from our relentless pursuit of knowledge over time.…
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Revisiting Remote Work
David looks at the current data and weighs all the pros and cons of continuing to have staff who work from home in our post-pandemic economy, which makes Blair wonder if he would even survive if he was starting out in…
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Ditch the (Sales) Script
Blair sees too many creative firms talking at prospective clients using sales scripts instead of having a series of wide ranging conversations on their unique issues and objectives that set the tone for the potential…
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Constrained by Artificial Boundaries
Blair's latest obsession is bounded rationality, in which he sees too many creative firms failing to make "rational" decisions because they choose to bind their businesses with outdated and overly-constraining ideals…
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A Theory of Leisure
David shares his thoughts on some bad advice he hears involving the focus on pursuing personal passions in business.
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The Death Throes of the Pitch
Blair weighs in on this year's Forrester report, which shows the ridiculous amount of money agencies have been wasting on pitches. LINKS "Are These the Last Days of the Pitch?" by Blair Enns for Win Without Pitching…
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How Much Should You Spend on Your Own Marketing?
David addresses another frequently asked question, looking at what creative firms should budget in terms of both money and time for their website, SaaS/automation, PR, content creation, and social media.
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The Conflicting Ethics of Selling and Negotiating
Blair identifies the differences between the ethics of selling expertise and the three schools of bargaining ethics, and what happens when we don't adapt our bargaining approach to match our opponents in the game of…
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Doing Employee Orientation Right
In an era of rapid turnover and remote working arrangements, developing a structured onboarding process for new staff is more important than ever. David has a checklist to help agencies get their new employees up to…
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The War on Payment Terms
Blair sees non-standard payment terms as a two-sided issue, where agencies should be creatively leveraging terms more to their own benefit as opposed to just defending themselves against procurement departments who…
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What Your Team Wants From You
While analyzing data from his Total Business Reset surveys, David has noticed five significant trends which principals should be aware of to run their firms more effectively, as well as one thing your team wishes you'd…
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How to Ask for Referrals
As a follow-up to the discussion in the previous episode, Blair has some criteria for firms that would beneift from prioritizing and codifying an effective referral strategy as a way to gain new business. LINKS "The…
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How to Make Referrals
In part one of a two-part discussion about developing a business referral strategy, Blair is surprised to hear that David wants to cover how and why we can get better at giving away business, before talking about how…
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Do You Even Need New Business People?
Blair runs through one of his constraint driven exercises with David by having us imagine running our business with nobody dedicated to the various functions under the banner of new business.
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Predictive Traits of Successful Owners
David has observed six common characteristics of agency principals that can affect whether or not their business succeeds.
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Six Barriers to New Business Success
Even after understanding and trying to adopt the philosophies from Win Without Pitching, Blair sees many creative firms struggling to increase profit because of these six obstacles involving their people and processes.…
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Ten Questions I Want to Ask You
This is your intervention and David has some tough questions about the important decisions you should be making to manage and grow your creative firm. LINKS "The Four Types of Employees at Your Firm"
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Qualities of the World's Best Project Managers
David feels like project managers get a bad rap and has tried to raise their profile within creative firms. So he's gathered a list of traits from the best project managers he's met in the hundreds of agencies he's…
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CRM and the Mistakes to Avoid
A lot has changed since Blair wrote his article about seven mistakes he sees creative firms make with CRM years ago, and David wants to know why Excel isn't a good tool for managing sales leads.
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Why We Suck at Negotiating
Blair has six challenges creative agencies face when it comes to being compensated for the actual value they generate for their clients.
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Developing a Client Conflict Strategy
David addresses how vertically positioned agencies can manage a client roster containing multiple companies who are competitors with each other.
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Inbound, Outbound, and In Between
Blair has been getting too much spam lately and sees an opportunity with warm leads that lies between inbound and outbound marketing which is not being mined well among the creative firms. Links "Inbound, Outbound &…
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The Perils of "Good/Better/Best" Pricing
Blair wants sales people to stop ranking proposal options in a way that assigns judgement for prospective clients without considering the many tradeoffs that need to be considered. Read the episode notes and…
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Reverse Trojan Horse Syndrome
Blair is confused by David's mixed metaphors about creative agencies being able to sell strategy services up front, instead of entering through the implementation door with new clients and then trying to demonstrate…
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Is Your Firm Addicted to New Business?
Blair sees some creative firms as "black holes" where accounts go in and seemingly never come out, and others as "new business development machines," consistently generating half of their revenue from new clients every…
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Secret Tradecraft of Elite Advisors
David has a brand new book, Secret Tradecraft of Elite Advisors: Covert Techniques for a Remarkable Practice. In it he reveals exactly how he manages engagements with his clients, and he's nervous about how it will be…
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Innoficiency in Your Agency
Blair has talked many times on the podcast about how innovation and efficiency are mutually opposable goals, and after presenting his first keynote on the "Innoficiency Principle" goes deeper into this idea with David.…
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