 Hey everyone! In this video, we're going to share with you our secret weapon to selling remote workshops. The video you're about to see is an excerpt of the Remote Design Sprint Masterclass, where we go into detail on how to run step-by-step a remote scoping workshop, which is our secret weapon for selling remote design sprints. So what is a scoping workshop? A scoping workshop is an optional workshop that really helps the sales process. So when you sell complex products like workshops, the selling rule number one goes, show, don't tell. So you can offer the scoping workshop as a free one-hour workshop replacing a sales call, and instead of telling your clients how amazing the workshop would be, you actually give them a little taste of what it feels like to run a full design sprint. As you watch this video, if you have any questions about the scoping workshop or how to facilitate remote workshops in general, leave them in the comments box down below. And if you find this video helpful, then you will definitely enjoy the remote designs from Masterclass. It's a massive course we've just launched that goes into deep detail on how to run, organize and sell remote design sprints or any remote workshops for that matter. I hope you enjoyed this video. Let's dive right in. All right. So let me show you the template that we use with our clients when we want to run a remote scoping workshop. So this is how we like to structure all of our boards. We like to cover it up so that it's much simpler for the client. They don't have to see everything that we need to do. We'll just reveal it bit by bit as we need to. And we have a very clear start here text that we make it very big. So even if you're like completely zoomed out, this will jump out at you. And it'll give you a clue as to where you should be like zooming in or focusing, right? But what we also do is that we set a starting of you. And this is something that you should always consider when working with a tool like Miro, which allows you to do this. So you can do this in two ways. One is that you right click on the view that you want to be the start view. So if I say like, I'm happy with this view, I can just set this as my start view or I can click, set start view here and I can tweak it a lot more precisely, right? And so basically, the way that we do this is we just invite the client to a one hour call and we and we say instead of just doing a normal call, we're going to run a mini workshop with you. And this has a few benefits. So like I said, in a previous video, the benefits for this are basically threefold, right? So one is that you get to define the project. Let me make this a little bigger. So you get to define the project and you're working with something that's a lot more concrete. And this is useful for the client as well, even if they don't decide to work with you later on. This is just something that they can take away, they can propagate internally. And it's just a useful exercise in and of itself. The second thing is that the client gets to see or like gets to have a taste of design sprint, right? And the third benefit is that they get to see remote workshopping in action, right? So those are the three benefits that we get from doing this. And a remote scoping session like this only makes sense if you're doing it remotely because it wouldn't make sense for every potential client or lead that you have for you to go and run an in-person workshop. It would just be too expensive, time-wise and travel-wise, right? But remotely, this is something that you can do. And so before the call starts, we basically send a link to the client to say like, hey, here's what we're going to be using for the mini workshop in addition to the Zoom call or the Google Hangouts call or whatever it is. And when the clients open that link, they are dropped into this view. So we just have one slide introducing what we're going to be doing. And we say that workshopping beats talking. So we're introducing this concept that workshops are better than regular meetings. And instead of us doing a one-hour call with the client, it's better to run a mini workshop. So by doing this, we can show them really like the power of workshops and how much progress they can achieve in a short amount of time. And so we say, why are we doing this? Because it's a much better use of their time. And honestly, it's a lot more engaging. And by the end, they'll have a much better definition of the challenge and we'll send them a PDF of the output. And they can share that internally. Again, this is all completely for free. It only takes one hour of our time to do this. So it's not a big deal. We don't say that, but this is something nice that you can do for your clients, right? And then we go into explaining what we're going to be doing in the workshop. So basically, we're going to be capturing an overview of the business. And we're also going to capture the current challenges of business, then we'll articulate the unique value of the product and service. And finally, we'll bubble up the best ideas by using a voting exercise, which you're familiar with. But like, this is where we introduce these concepts to the client and they get to see the power of working in this way. And we say as a bonus, they get to see how a sprint works and how remote workshopping is done, right? And then we say, let's get started. So like I said, we like to do this thing where we cover up the parts that we're not using other people like to use templates and they just drop in the next exercise. That way we find that that's a little more hassle. We just like to know that everything is already on there. And we reveal it bit by bit. It also creates kind of a like an intrigue effect of you knowing that there is more to come. And you can also tell when we're towards the end, right? And so for example, so let me show you basically what this looks like. So this is the whole workshop. And I'm going to show it to you bit by bit. During the workshop, I wouldn't remove this all in one go. But what I would do is that I would start resizing it to reveal only the next exercise, right? But for the purposes of this video, I'm just going to get rid of it because it's easier to work that way and faster. Okay. And so the first exercise is what we call setting the scene. This is just for them to organize their own thoughts and for us to understand their situation better. And we time all of these exercises as well. So we're showing them like a lot of the parts of how a sprint is run and introducing them to these concepts of time boxing, structure, discussion, together alone, all in this workshop. So when they get to see the power of these things, they'll wonder it's like, wow, this is what we accomplished in one hour. Imagine what we could do in like a full on project that's run like this. And these are things that clients have actually said they were so happy after they experienced these workshops. They said, wow, we've never been able to have so much alignment in just one hour, especially when it's a big group of people. So we already know that this format works. So in setting the scene, we start by 10 minutes telling the client to just describe what their current situation is, what their current challenges are. And at this point, we're not asking them to do anything just yet. So we're kind of slowly warming them up to jumping in and doing some work themselves. But we start off by just sending them the link, telling them to open this. And then one of us sometimes shares our screen, because usually we have maybe a couple people on this call, one person who's doing the talking and another person taking notes. And so what we say is that we just want you to describe your current situation to us. And then we're going to take notes and categorize them on the fly as you're talking. And so if, if you've watched the videos about the sprint is specifically the expert interviews, you know that this is very similar to the expert interview exercise, right? And so basically the client will start talking. And then as we feel that themes are emerging, we'll rename these headings to, you know, the headings that correspond with their current challenges, whether it's product or marketing, or getting customers or growth or anything like that. And we'll start taking notes down here. And this is a lot more interesting and engaging for the client as well. Like right now they're talking and they see like that they feel heard because they see their word being their words being typed in real time as they talk. And they see us categorizing these things and sometimes rephrasing what they're saying as how might we, so we're also introducing them to how might we is in a much more intuitive way instead of just explaining a concept like of how might we theoretically we show it to them in action, right? And so this is how we take notes and we said 10 minutes for that. Hey, if you find in this video useful, then you will definitely enjoy our weekly newsletter where we share our best tips on UX, UI, product design and facilitating workshops. Link in the description below. Subscribe to it now. Let's dive back in. Next we give them a hint to say like now you can join in on the fun as well. So we start off by thanking them for sharing their thoughts. And then we say like now you get to take part in this as well. And the next exercise is going to be all about talking about like the value that you offered to your customers. And what we need you to do is basically we're going to do this exercise in three sections. And in each section, we just want you to read the question and try to answer it and keep writing sticky notes until the timer is upright. And then we say, in the first exercise, we asked you to talk, but in this exercise, you'll get some quiet time to yourself to think deeply about each question and come up with as many answers as you can in an uninterrupted flow. So this is where we teach them about the concept of together alone. And so in this exercise, we also cover up the three different parts so that they're not overwhelmed or they're not distracted by what's coming next. And so in the first part, we ask them about which pains they eliminate or reduce for their customers, right? So let me just give you guys a preview of what this whole thing looks like. So the three columns are, what do we eliminate or reduce? What do we raise and what do we create? And this is inspired by the Blue Ocean canvas, which helps you articulate your value in a much more visual and structured way. So here we're not doing the actual scale, but we're taking that idea and also warming up to basically the last part of the creation of new value by first starting off to say, okay, which pains do you eliminate and reduce for your clients? And we have a stack of post-its here and we time five minutes for that. So essentially, this whole exercise takes 15 minutes because it's five minutes per column. And during each sub-exercise, basically, so instead of overwhelming the clients by saying, like, you have 15 minutes to answer all these questions, we structure this process as well. And we keep these two parts covered to say, like, all right, for the first five minutes, just focus on answering this question, right? So which pains do you eliminate or reduce? So it might be things like, you know, we save our customers time or we remove a lot of unnecessary steps and things like that. And we just play some music in the background and we share it via the Zoom call because there's a feature in Zoom, if you don't know it, that allows you to share your system audio to the call. And so it comes through not exactly as if you're playing it from your own computer, but pretty close. And I mean, we don't turn up the volume too much on these anyway. But it's much nicer than just deafening silence when everyone is working and just like hearing a keyboard clacking while everyone is writing their post-its. And so basically this exercise takes 15 minutes. And I'm going to move these up to show you like these arrows that are under them. And we try also like in the design of our boards to just keep it a little more fun. So like you can see the whimsical design, it's like, it's not very serious and businessy, but like we have, you know, the almost like gaming terminology of like level one, two, three. And this is almost like a comic book font that's not too annoying and not too hard to read, but also not very serious, right? So like trying to communicate your personality across in your boards will also add to the value that you bring, because you're not just like another boring business partner that they have to work with, but like they also get to have a little bit of fun as they're working with you, right? So having like a nice casual tone is something that is really useful in our case. So like your tone might be different, but what you want to focus on is just like bringing your personality across because your office has personality. So there's no reason why your remote workshops shouldn't carry over that personal personality as well, right? And so after everyone has finished writing their post-its, we introduce the voting exercise. And in this case, it's not so much about, you know, voting like a winning idea. It's just to create a little bit of a heat map and to show the clients how voting works, right? Because maybe in the past, you know, they've discussed ideas and everyone has their own ideas about what they should do, but they were never able to visualize where most people agree on what the best idea is, right? So again, we thank them for sharing their thoughts and we say like, okay, now we have loads of great ideas, but when it comes to communicating value, which is what this exercise is about, it's about us finding like a clear, concise way of saying what, you know, our client does for their customers and how they communicate their value. So we say like, in this case, less is more. If you tell me like if you talk for one hour about why your product or service is great, I'm probably going to tune it out or if like it's a lot of text on a webpage. So it's when you have something that's a lot more concise, it can have a lot more punch. And this is what we're trying to do in this exercise. So we say to narrow down the ideas, we need to pick the best ones, but how do we do that? And then we say we're not going to be discussing them as a group because that's kind of the old way of thinking that's very inefficient and time consuming. And instead, what we're going to do is use dot voting. And here's how this works. So we say like you select a dot and you copy it, you follow the arrows that we place down here, which have some silly phrases that are not related to anything really, but just allows the client to really know where they should be going, because scrolling through these digital whiteboards is not easy for everyone. And some people struggle with it. And in terms of knowing like where do they need to go, just because a lot of people aren't used to scrolling around in like a two dimensional kind of document, people are used to scrolling up and down in a Google doc or a Word doc, but just this 2D space of scrolling is a little challenging for some people. So we try to use arrows where it makes sense without making the board look too cluttered, but at the same time, adding a little bit of like a treasure map feel to it all. And so after the clients vote and we said like seven minutes to vote, so we time it approximately around two minutes per column and one minute extra to say like to explain, you know, the outcomes like, okay, now we have, you know, alignment on, on what are the best ideas to tackle. So these could be, you know, opportunities or challenges in areas like that the company wants to grow. So some of the stuff that they might write might be aspirational that they haven't done yet. And after we're done with that, we come to the closing slide. So even though it shows that there's more, this is also covered under something like it's under construction, right? And we say what happens next is that you're done. And so like the workshop also ends a little sooner than you expect, which is kind of nice, right? And we say, you know, we you've achieved a lot in this mini workshop, both in terms of idea generation, as well as alignment, but that's not all. Because now we're going to take what you've done, because we don't want our mini workshop to be more than one hour. And we're going to take that and create a map. So this is also like similar to this print where we start with the map, right? But in this case, we don't want to take the client to, you know, the map exercise just yet, just because we don't know if they're ready for that step, and it would take too much time at this point, and we can do it a lot more quickly, now that we have the context of talking to them, right? And so we say like the map doesn't explore solutions yet. But instead, it aligns everyone on a high level workflow or journey, which will come in very handy in a sprint, or even just regular discussions. And it'll help us find the most crucial areas for investment. And then we say that agent smart always creates these journey map at the beginning of each sprint, and they're a really great alignment tool, right? And after the map is done, that's when you get to problem definition, long term goals and challenges and idea generations. So this is where we thank the client for joining us for this mini workshop. And we say, All right, now you don't have to worry about it. Now you get to go back to your day to day work, and you're still going to get more from us. That's not, you know, all not just what we achieved here. And so this is where we say goodbye. And then after the client is gone, our team continues working on this. And it's usually, you know, two to three people, two people is usually enough. A third is a luxury in this case. And what we do is we try to articulate the key value propositions from what they told us, and we create a high level map. So this is actually an example that I cleaned up from an actual scoping workshop that we've run, you can see even here like the voting. So a lot of these posts that were taken from the two exercises that we've done here, and here, right? So obviously, the ones with the red dots are the ones that were taken from exercise number four here. And so you can see this is how we created a map for one of our clients where we have the actors on the left, just like in a normal sprint. And then we highlighted some potential high impact areas to explore, right? So we organize all of the information that we came up with, we considered all the ideas. And then we said, like, okay, if we had to draw like a map target, like we do in a sprint, this would be a really good one. And after we're done with this, we download all of these frames and we convert them to a PDF and we share them with the client. And after we do that, like, a lot of our clients will be really impressed, like a lot have been really impressed by this. And your clients will be really impressed when you do this for them, because you've offered them a lot more value than anyone else would during the sales stage, right? And they got to see what a sprint feels like and the power of these principles, and they got to see remote workshopping in action. And it'll just give you a much better chance of, you know, building a long term relationship with that client, whether this opportunity comes through or not, maybe you don't work with them this time, but you'll definitely make an impression and they might come back to you in the future. Because a lot of the times someone will want to work for you, but like the they just can't get the budget, right? But what like the first, you know, as soon as they can get a budget for a project in the future, they will come knocking on your door, right? And we've had this happen a lot in the past where a startup will approach us, they really want to work with us, but they can't afford us now. They go away, they think about it, but sometimes they get funding, they come back. And so you just want to focus on creating value and being really helpful to your clients. And good things will follow for sure. And that's it from us. I hope you enjoyed watching this video. If you have any questions about how to run a scoping workshop or facilitating any remote workshops in general, leave them in the comments below. If you like this video and would like to see more from us, then subscribe and hit the bell icon to get notified whenever we publish new ones. That's it from us today. Hope you enjoyed it. See you in the next one.