 Welcome to the third video of this series where Chris Dahl and I are helping you to sell service design with confidence. If you have no clue who this guy is or this guy is and what we're doing here. Check out this playlist and make sure you check out the first video where everything will be explained. Now we got a few questions from the service design community about sales challenges. And now we've picked the one we're going to explain what we've picked. Let's paint the context, Chris. You and I are engaged in our proposal stage. You're the service designer, you're the creative, I'm the client, I'm still running a construction business. And we're now sort of going over your proposal. And one of the things in your proposal is we need to do some form of research. We need to understand the problem before we actually start solving the problem. And that's where we run into our conversation. Ready? Yep. We're going to do this the first time the way it shouldn't do it and the second time in our way that might be more effective. So Chris, I've been going over this proposal and I'm really excited to do this. I really believe that this will be beneficial to the problem that we want to solve. There's just one small thing. I saw that quite big of a chunk of the resources in the time in this project is allocated towards research. And I was like, man, we know so much about our customers already and last year we did market research. So can we squeeze that to maybe 5% or 10% and just move into the ideation stage? I'm not comfortable doing that, Mark. I think it's really important to do research and maybe you don't know your customers as well as you think you do. I've been in the business for 20 years and I can't walk into the room saying that I don't know my customers, right? And again, we did research but we did a survey last month. We did a survey last month. I've got the paper over here so we know a lot. Yeah, but I really believe that it's vital for us to do discovery and I think it's important that we not cut corners. I'm not comfortable doing it that way. I think it's going to really compromise the results, Mark. And do you want to kind of rethink this? What's the problem here? Yeah, you know, I'm going to need to sell this to the CEO and when he sees this, it will be like talking to me. We know our customers. Why are you spending a quarter of your budget on research, man? Okay, what if we discounted it? Will that help you? The time or the price? What's the holdup? The holdup is that I feel that we can just move into the next stage of generating ideas and scenarios and solutions with the data that we already have. So it feels redundant for what we're doing. I see. Okay, well, since you've done the survey and I see that you're not comfortable moving forward, why don't we just take it out and we can just start with design? Is that okay? Sounds great, man. Sounds great. Okay, so this was, I think, a pretty common scenario. But let's try to reshape the situation after having taken a business masterclass from the Jedi master, Chris, though. Let's jump in and do it once again. Chris, I've been going over this proposal. Man, it's awesome. I'm so excited. The whole team is excited to get on board. We can't wait to start. Well, thank you. Yeah, man, I'm super excited. You're delivering already upon the promise that you gave us. There's just only one thing that we sort of need to iron out. And that is, I saw that pretty big chunk of the budget and also the timeframe is allocated towards doing customer research. And everybody in the team here is like, ah, but we already know so much about our customers. We just did a survey last month and last year we've got a market research report. Can we just move into the next stage like the ideation and generating the ideas that sounds so much more logical? Okay, so let me see if I understand this correctly. So you feel like by doing additional research, it's going to be really redundant and it negates the work you've already done in the survey. Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, yeah. Why should we do it? Do we really need more research? What is it that we don't know yet? You know what? I really like the fact that you are so inquisitive and that you're a pusher. You push back on things because you want to be very thorough. It sounds to me like you're a very responsible person and it also sounds to me like you know exactly how you want this to go. Is that right? Like you know how to get where you want to go. You know the things, Chris, I need to sell this to the CEO later and I know how he will respond. So I'm just doing my job here. How will he respond? If you could pretend to be the CEO for a second and we submit this to the CEO together, what would his concerns be? Oh yeah, for sure. He will start asking questions about research. We already know so much about our customers. We work with them day in, day out. I've been in this company for 20 years. Is there anything we don't know about them? So you will be probably pretty skeptical. Okay, so here's kind of what I know about this in working with other clients just like you. There's an assumption because we've been in business that we know our customers really well. When in fact they come in the door and we might even take it for granted why they come in the door and why they choose us. Most people will say things like because we give great customer service, we're very responsive, but we just really don't know. So I respect the fact that you've done a customer survey. Can you tell me off the top of your head 5 to 10 key insights that you've learned from the survey? Because you know there's this quote that I love to share with people that having the, there's no such thing as having the right answers to the wrong questions and it begins there. So if we're asking the wrong question to begin with, it doesn't really matter then if the answers come back a certain way or not. So you want me to give the top 10 insights from their survey? Yeah, 5 to 10 things that only you guys would know about your customers that are deep insights. Can you do that? I'd have to look it up, but my gut feeling tells me that we're doing redundant work. I understand your gut. We need to respect the gut and I can see that you're hesitant to it. But in the past, if you base your solutions on information that is flawed, you will have a flawed product. And considering the size of this engagement, the goals that we've outlined to success metrics that we've outlined, are you willing to gamble by not doing the proper research and discovery? Are you that kind of risk taker? Because we're upset or we think we might be upset when the boss sees this and says I'm not going to do this, but would be more upset when we wind up at the end and not much has changed at all? Which situation terrifies you more? I don't know yet. That's like choosing from two evils. Let's got it here, Chris. What's the difference? What's your different approach in situation one and two? A couple of different things. One is I want to express empathy. I want to listen to see where the pushback is. And we also understand that you are the deal maker, but the deal breaker is more important in this situation. That there's a force greater than you, not dress that and to understand the psychology. Like for you, this is your job, your livelihood. So I'm going to start thinking about, well, what's at stake for you? Well, you might get fired. You might get demoted. You might get a lashing from your boss and I want to be sensitive to that. I can't ignore that. Other things that I'm doing differently on the second try, the things that you should do is I need to play back. I need to identify the emotions, the fears that you have. And I could do better. And I think I'm getting caught up in like the service business and who you are and being on the show. But I need to really be able to label the emotion that you're going through and talk about that. So you feel like Chris has heard me. And towards the end, I started to get there because you do sound scared. What is the greater fear for you? Is it presenting something and making sure we've invested our time and money wisely? Or when we're done and nothing has changed, I think that's going to hurt you more. Right. So you have to dig into the resistance of why clients don't want to invest in research. You have to understand what's holding them back deep. Yeah. And in this case, yes, that's what it is. So whatever it is that you're afraid of, we need to identify that and understand it first. And the first objection that I draw to you and that is that it's redundant, right? That's not the objection. I don't think it's that ultimately. That's the symptom of your fear. And the fear is my boss is not going to like this at all. And I don't want to be stupid. So I need to help you find a better reason. You need to help you need to help me sell it to my boss, right? Yeah, in a way. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. All right. Let us know if you've ever encountered a similar situation where you had to sell research discovery problem definition and run into similar challenges. I know I've had tons of time. Leave a yes down below and let us know what the situation was in the next video. We're going to talk about the third sales challenge we got from you from the community. And that will be about clients who demand a guarantee who want to see want to know when will we get results from the work and effort we put in. Here's how Chris will handle that. You know what to do. Click this next video. See you over there.