 All right, we can go. Good afternoon. It's a pleasure to stand here in front of you all today, alongside Guy, my good friend and colleague, as we delve into a discussion that for us is both crucial and impactful within the technology industry, which is fostering mutually beneficial client relationships. We'll start with a brief introduction. I'm William O'Keefe. I'm the director of client services at Technocrat. And aside from my work at Technocrat, my work is a specialist rescue operator in northern New South Wales, primarily in road crash rescue and vertical rescue. That role has certainly sharpened my ability to navigate high-pressure situations and adapt to diverse challenges. Now we'll shine a light on Guy, my partner doing this talk with me today. Guy brings to the table a wealth of experience in building client and customer relationships. His journey includes running a number of highly successful hospitality venues up in Brisbane, where he mastered the art of creating memorable experiences for customers, for every guest. This background has taught him a unique perspective on client service, emphasizing the importance and understanding of anticipating client needs and building trust and loyalty. In his transition from hospitality to the tech world, Guy has seamlessly applied these principles, showing that genuine care and attention to detail is as important in the restaurant industry as it is in the technology industry. His ability to empathize with clients, understand their challenges and craft tailored solutions has been one of the leading strategies of our client-centric approach at Technocrat. So together we're here to unravel, be on the code, building mutually beneficial client relationships. And this isn't just about technical acumen, it's about reimagining our role as more than just service providers. We're here to be the architects of our client's success, employing strategies that not only foster strong connections, but ensure these relationships flourish over time. So we'll navigate through strategies that enhance client connections, share success stories, and outline some of our strategic frameworks that we try to use within Technocrat. So to start, reflecting on my experience with rescue operations, particularly road crash rescues, I often find myself drawing some parallels between my work there and the work in our client relationships. Now you might be thinking what could a rescue scenario possibly relate to a client relationship? This is a rescue scene I attended some time last year. So imagine arriving at the scene of a car accident. The scene is generally chaotic. A car is usually wrecked and someone is usually trapped in order for me to get called. It's in these moments and as a part of a rescue team our decisions can have life altering impacts and it's more than just employing our technical skills. It's about dedication to resolving the crisis and these situations teach us a vital lesson about the power of looking beyond the obvious because the obvious objective here is to extricate the patient safely. However, achieving this goal isn't as straightforward as it might seem. It always involves a deep understanding of the person's physical, but not only physical, but their emotional state, I'm sorry. And assessing the wreckage and determining the best course of action. Much like Rory Sutherland's perspective on marketing and consumer behavior, it's not the obvious path that often leads to the most effective outcome, but the one that acknowledges the complexity of the human experience and the environment. In these scenarios, the importance of communication and empathy become profoundly clear, not just within our teams of responders, but crucially in how we interact with the person in distress. Making them feel safe, understood, can significantly impact the situation and their outcomes. It's about establishing a genuine connection, guiding them through what's happening and managing their expectations with compassion and clarity, and this approach not only builds trust, but provides a sense of security during usually their most vulnerable moments. Similarly, when engaging with clients, it's essential to remember that effective communication and empathy is key. It's about not just transmitting information, but forming a real bond, guiding them through the project and managing their expectations with transparency and sincerity. By fostering trust and confidence through open and empathetic communication, we find we create stronger foundations for the relationships. Each client, much like every rescue, presents a unique set of challenges. Adopting a one-size-fits-all approach for us anyway is not effective. We generally need to tailor strategies, every time to the client and sometimes the person. So if the person that we're dealing with changes, then the whole strategy sometimes needs to change. So I'll share a story from our archives, one that shows how facing up to our mistakes and honesty and transparency can turn a tricky situation into a long-term client relationship. Essentially, and this is quite a while ago, but we once quoted a project at about 150,000, but this is where it got interesting. Due to a small oversight, someone missing a whole tab on a spreadsheet, we signed a contract for $150,000 for a $400,000-something project and had already signed the contract. It wasn't our finest moment. It was a long time ago, but the mistake definitely put us in a tough spot, risking not just our bottom line, but the trust we had worked so hard to gain through the sales process. Faced with this, we really only have two parts. We can either pull the pin on the project and tell the client we can't deliver it, or which will damage the relationship for good, or we can step up, own the mistake and work with the client to fix it. We chose honesty and transparency. We went to the client with all of our cards, essentially, on the table and basically told them we're willing to work on this and willing to work this out with you, but here's where we currently stand. And it wasn't just about admitting that we'd messed up, it was about showing we were committed to making things right. Our initial conversations were tough, that's for sure. I think I have multiple emails where the client emailed saying that we had ruined her reputation and the organization's reputation, potentially. But it was a wake-up call and emphasizing how crucial the next steps were. In the spirit of partnership, we did slowly work towards sharing the unexpected costs, a strategy that really marked a turning point in the relationship with that client. And that approach, which was centered on transparency, shared decision-making, and commitment to our client's success paved the way for a quite a successful client relationship. And that client, at the moment, we're still, seven years in, we still have that client. So it's in moments of uncertainty and the manner in which we respond that can significantly impact the future of our client relationships. So you may have noticed our use of the phrase, hospitality, and when you think of hospitality, I'm sure that the first thing that comes to mind is probably restaurants or hotels. But I'm a firm believer that in any service industry, it takes more than just contract fulfillment to create meaningful relationships. When I first discovered this quote from Danny Meyer in his book, Setting the Table, it put into words for me the underlying strategy that I had been trying to use when trying to run my restaurant. Service is the technical delivery of a product and hospitality is how the delivery of that product makes your recipient feel. Our focus from the beginning had been to build a business that did more than just serve great meals. We wanted to build a regular client base through authenticity and perceived value. I wanted to create a space that made people want to return not just because they were loyal to the product, but because of how our hospitality made them feel. Upon entering the tech space, I quickly realized that the specifics of the two industries might be wildly different, but the value of hospitality was just as real. There is no one size fits all approach, but hospitality is more than what you do. It's how you do it. It's your impact. Every situation, every relationship is gonna be different, but more often, the how is gonna be remembered more than the what. Building mutually beneficial relationships is about the how, because in the words of Maya Angelou, I've learned that people will forget what you said. People will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. And I want you all to take a moment and think of some of the best and worst customer service experiences you've ever received. Are you thinking about the specific transaction and what you did or did not receive? Or are you thinking about how it made you feel? It's this response that you can harness by leveraging the power of hospitality in your client relationships. Let me. All right, let's dive into the matter of, or how did the matter, why are we here? It's a question that does seem simple on the surface, but it definitely deserves a deeper exploration. At the most basic level, we're here to create value, pay our bills, have a little bit of fun ideally, but if that's all we were doing, we'd be selling ourselves short. Our role is and can be so much more than that. I want to share a story that encapsulates the essence of some of our discussion, which is beyond just technical delivery or technical delivery, I'll still leave it there, but into perception and experience and the impact it has on our client relationships. This narrative, which is inspired by Rory Sutherland, a behavioral scientist with Ogilvy over in the UK, revolves around an unconventional, yet insightful approach to enhancing the London to Paris journey on the Eurostar. So Sutherland posits through a thought-provoking question. If the objective is to improve the journey between these two cities, what's the most effective way to do it? And they did give that problem to a bunch of engineers and they came back with a six billion pound solution, which was to cut that journey by about 20 minutes. That's a slightly unimaginative way to solve that problem. For one, one hundredth of the cost they could put Wi-Fi on that train and that would make the journey a lot better. For one, fiftieth of the cost they could pay the world's models, male and female, to hand out Chateau Patrice and people would ask for the journey to be longer. So the premise here is relatively simple. The value of an experience isn't just in shortening the time it takes, but in elevating the quality of the time spent. This story is not just about trains or wine. It's about reimagining how we deliver services within the tech industry and it challenges us to ask ourselves, are we just reducing travel times or are we making the journey more memorable? In the context of our work, this translates to a vital lesson. It's not only what we deliver to our clients but how we make them feel during the process and that technology solutions we develop, the projects that we manage and the problems that we solve. All of these are our trains, but how do we serve the Chateau Patrice within our industry? It's about adding a human touch to our interactions, understanding our clients' needs and desires, not just from a technical standpoint, but from a human one. It's about creating an experience ideally so positive and so memorable that the technicalities become secondary to the value that they're feeling and they perceive from the relationship that we build with them. Incorporating this philosophy into our work requires certainly a shift in mindset sometimes. We must look beyond the code and beyond the immediate project deliverables and focus on crafting experiences that resonate at a deeper level. It's about ensuring that every interaction leaves our clients feeling valued, understood, and genuinely cared for. Let's hide this. So what we're aiming to do is not just be efficient, we want to be memorable and not just solve problems but create experiences. I think that's you now. So I think a lot of this comes down to a focus on selling value and becoming a delivery partner. Aiming for maximum utilization is a business necessity but building mutually beneficial client relationships requires us to deliver more than just contracted work. It relies upon our ability to deliver value. What that means exactly is going to be different in every engagement but what will remain consistent is that you are going to need to think empathetically about your client. How can you make their life easier? How can your actions help them achieve their business goals? How can you make them look good to the people they report to? The more a client associates you with their success, the more irreplaceable you become. Listening and asking the right questions plays a huge role but at the core these are just tools for understanding and the more you understand your clients, the more you understand what they really value. We're all very familiar with activity reporting and but how often do you engage in value reporting? Activity reporting and progress reports summarized the services we have been contracted to provide within a given timeframe. Value reporting details the benefits your engagement has delivered to the client and the wider business. More importantly than the what, it's telling the story of the why. Do you know your client's current strategic plan? Were you involved in the development of their roadmap? What are their internal pain points and can you help alleviate these in a meaningful way? Once you start aligning your activities with these outcomes, value reporting goes a long way to elevating your role from service provider to expert partner. Value reporting is effectively a kind of storytelling and a key talent of any great storyteller is their ability to tailor the story for the audience to which they're presenting it to and I'd argue in a technical setting this is even more important. Who are you talking to? IT, marketing, a developer, a department head? If you can't articulate the value of your activities then even if your work is technically brilliant you're unlikely to achieve the buy-in or credit that you and your team deserve. On a weekly basis I encounter a situation with a client who either doesn't understand a situation or needs it explained to them in different language and it's your job to find the most successful way to translate all the hard work your team has put in to make sure it hits its mark. If your clients were experts on the topic they wouldn't need you in the first place. In an era when transactions are often reduced to numbers on a balance sheet it's easy to overlook the profound impact of fostering relationships. When you prioritize building strong relationships with your clients something magical happens. They become more than just customers they become your advocate. Satisfied clients are not only returned clients but enthusiastic advocates who spread your message and occasionally this can attract new business but more importantly it helps to cement your existing relationships. You do need to keep in mind however that when you rely on a sole key contact within an organization you run the risk of losing the entire investment the moment they change roles. When the wider business is familiar with the value that you have delivered your job is that much easier. Now let's address the misconception that price is often the primary factor in decision making. While it's true that some customers may initially shop around based on price the reality is that true value goes far beyond cost. Building a reputation for delivering exceptional value allows you to differentiate yourself from competitors and grow loyalty in your clients. After all it's that much harder to put a price tag on reliability, expertise and personalized service. Meeting SLAs and milestones is merely the basis of your contractual obligation. True growth stems from going above and beyond what is expected. When you consistently provide value that exceeds your client's expectations you create a virtuous cycle of growth for both parties involved. It's not just about fulfilling contracts it's about actively contributing to the success of your clients and by extension your own. Understanding their needs, preferences and pain points allows you to tailor your offerings to provide maximum value. By anticipating their requirements and proactively addressing them you demonstrate your commitment to their success. Moreover this knowledge enables you to identify untapped opportunities and potential areas for growth ensuring that neither party leaves money on the table. I want to ask you all how recently it is that you've taken a step back looked at the way that you worked and asked yourself why am I doing this? Because when you're stuck in the weeds dealing with tickets, deadlines and whip meetings it can be hard to see the forest for the trades. But growth requires a combination of forward momentum and constant gentle pressure. Even with a winning recipe times and tastes change and if you're resting on reliable processes just because that's the way things have been done before you're already limiting yourself. So there's a great story I've heard that I'm gonna factor in here it's from the author Paolo Coelho and he talks about a time when he was sitting at a train station passing the time waiting for a train and became preoccupied trying to work out the width between the train tracks. After doing a little bit of investigation you found out that they were exactly 143.5 centimeters apart from each other. To his thinking, 140, 145 this would all make easier sense so it would be easier to design for so why was it like this? And the more he looked into the topic he discovered this came back to the fact that when the original inventors of the first locomotives were putting everything together they were recycling pieces and parts that was involved in the manufacturing of carriages and wagons. Straight forward, makes sense, there's a standard there. But then he looked in further and he was like, well why are they all a similar size? And it came back to the roads that they were built to use on. The roads themselves going even further back were dictated by Roman engineering. The great builders of the roads went out through Western Europe created an incredible road and highway system. This effectively with a little change remained the same up until the time that trains were being invented. And then when we cut forward to the 20th century we find this impact coming through to the Apollo missions. While trying to build a spaceship that would take man to the moon they encountered an unexpected and incredibly mundane constraint. Despite their goal to push the boundaries of science and human exploration they realized that their ideal design was not possible because they had to get fuel tanks from Ohio to Florida and they couldn't get them through the train tunnels. Sizes of train tunnels that had been dictated by the size of the carriage which had been dictated by the manufacturing constraints of wagons which was all the way back to being impacted by the decisions of Roman road builders. Thus the grand ambitions of NASA's brightest engineers was restrained by an unexpected historical impact. This story serves as a reminder of the importance of reassessing entrenched norms and challenging the status quo. Just as the Apollo engineers grappled with the limitations imposed by historical precedents so to us we navigate the complexities of our business relationships. By questioning conventional wisdom and embracing creative opportunities for growth we pave the way for innovation and progress. Am I? Yeah, it's tragic. Yeah, so drawing from Daniel Kahneman's insights on how we perceive gains and losses did you put that in the text? No. Really opens up a new way of thinking about working with our clients. So imagine this, if I offer a guy $25 right now or I offer him $50 but he has to give me 25 back on the condition he gives me 25 back he will end up with the same amount either way but one of them feels like a loss. Kahneman's point here is that we're naturally more bothered by losing something than we are excited by gaining something of the same value. Within our work it's sort of key to understanding how to talk to our clients. It means we really need to focus on highlighting the positives, the gains, and making the decision to work with us feel like a no-brainer but mixing that with what Rory Sutherland says about perception being everything it's not just about being good at what we do. It's about a deeper understanding of what our clients truly need. It's about seeing beneath the surface and finding those unique ways we can make a difference to them and it's not just about ticking boxes it's about creating something meaningful that resonates on a different level. So wrapping up, every chat that we have with the client, every challenge we face every project we take on is all an opportunity. It's an opportunity to not just solve problems but it's to set the direction with that relationship into the future. Building partnerships and creating value that sticks around for a long time. Thank you. Have a good day.