 Hey, my name is Mark Fontaine and welcome back to a brand new episode of the ServesDesign show. Do you have people around you who still find it hard to understand the benefits of ServesDesign? Well, you're not alone. Too many, ServesDesign is still fluffy and they find it hard to see how it creates business value. I know a lot of ServesDesign professionals who feel stuck while they want to work on the meaningful and fulfilling challenges where they can make a true difference. They tend to be working on the small and incremental stuff. Many at the end of the day feel frustrated and some even lose hope. Wouldn't it be great if you had a clear and compelling message that would help you to articulate the benefits of ServesDesign, a message that would help you to show the value of your work to the people around you, especially to non-designers? Because let's be honest, when you're able to clearly communicate the benefits of your work, everything becomes easier and your work becomes more fun. And as a byproduct, people will actually start to appreciate you more and respect you as a professional. But clearly communicating the benefits of ServesDesign, unfortunately, isn't a topic that's addressed in ServesDesign books. So I decided to set up a program for professionals who want to grow and develop this skill. The program is called Selling ServesDesign with Confidence. As far as I know, it's the only program out there that specifically focuses on this topic. We have just finished the first cohort of 2022 and I have invited six great participants of this cohort to share the learnings with you today. You'll hear about the challenges they were facing when trying to communicate the benefits of ServesDesign and what they are doing differently today to overcome these challenges, but most importantly, which positive impact this has had on their careers. If you stick around till the end of this episode, you'll walk away with some very practical tips that will help you to simply communicate the benefits of your work to your CEO, manager, or client. And this episode is also going to help you see what you need to focus on in your messaging and what is just noise that confuses people. We try to give as much value as we can in this episode, but of course, we can only scratch the surface. So if you're interested to dig deeper into this topic and become a more mature professional, I'm happy to announce that the next cohort is just around the corner. The deadline to apply for this upcoming cohort is April 30th, 2022. Let me repeat that one more time. The deadline to apply to the Selling ServesDesign with Confidence program is April 30th, 2022. And depending on when you're listening to this episode, you might also benefit from the early bird discount that we've got going on. So head over to servesdesignshow.com slash selling to learn more and see the instructions on how you can apply. So that's servesdesignshow.com slash selling. And you'll also find the link in the show notes of this episode. Mind you that we have a limited number of seats available in the cohort. So if you want to increase your chance of getting in, make sure you send in your application as soon as possible. I know that in our busy schedules, it can be hard to find the time and most of all, permit yourself to invest in your professional growth. But if you want to become a more mature professional and get to work on more fulfilling challenges, I can only encourage you to take this opportunity and apply for the program. But don't just take my word for it. Let's hear the stories of the people who did. Let the show begin. Welcome to the show, everybody. Hi, Mark. Hi, Mark. Hello. Yes, this time it worked. Everybody said hello. That's usually the hardest part of the entire episode. Happy that you're here. We're going to dive into some tips, tricks, advice, reflections on how to communicate the benefits of servesdesign, how to get stakeholders on board, how to get green light to actually do some awesome stuff. You've just finished a very intense six weeks, and I'm happy that you're still here. I have a bunch of questions for you, and I hope that you'll have some answers for me. We're going to do this one by one. So we'll get six different perspectives, six different stories today. And I'm going to start with the first participant, and that is somebody who's also in the Netherlands, very nearby. Malus. Hi. Hello. Hi. Let me switch to a bigger image that we have here, perfect. Malus, for the people who are curious what you do these days, could you give a brief introduction? Well, I'm a servesdesigner at the municipality of Amsterdam, and I'm part of the team, the user experience lab. It's not a physical lab. We are a team of people together with UX designers, data analysts, serves designers, user researchers. That's... Yeah. Cool. And what was your previous background? Have you always been in servesdesign? No. I graduated in Delft as an industrial designer, integrated product design. I went to Philips, my first job, and started as a packaging designer, and then I transformed slightly more into research and in service design. Cool. So we've just finished completed six weeks' program on how to communicate the benefits of servesdesign and how to sell servesdesign with confidence. Now, one of my first questions is, what is a typical challenge that you've been running into with regards to quote-unquote selling servesdesign? Well, like, people as POs or project leads, they don't understand well why they need servesdesign in their project, what the value is, what we deliver, and when to evolve this. And if they contact this, or my colleague, they ask for a customer journey map or user research straight away. And when asking around, you notice that they actually don't know, well, what we do. And it's quite hard to sell servesdesign, yeah. So people have a hard time, stakeholders have a hard time understanding what value you bring. Like, what was the consequence for you? What did you experience as a consequence of this? Well, you're involved too late in the process. So they passed the analysis phase of the double diamond, and actually the solution is already there, yeah, famous thing to happen. Yeah. And as servesdesigners, we want to be involved early so that we can help steer a project in the right direction, I guess, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Okay. Now, I'm curious, there was a lot to sort of digest inside the program, but if you had to pick one thing, what would you say is your biggest takeaway or learning? My biggest takeaway is that actually focus on the goals when explaining to people and or problems they have instead of processes and methods. Yeah. You just need to figure out what colleagues want to achieve and what are their interests, because then you're not surprised by what they do. And you have more control of the situation if you do. So understanding sort of the needs of your fellow co-workers, how is that different maybe than you used to do before, or were you already doing this before? Well, maybe I used, for example, yeah, I can explain an example. I use the map with the Four Mountains, which is a tool you get in the course. And I use it to share my goal, what I want to, how I will see myself in about one year. And I went to some colleagues who work on the same, or I know they have the same motivation to reach that goal and ask them, hey, these are my challenges, but what are your challenges? And that's made a discussion happen. And then it's nice because then you can look and try if you can be part of their challenge as well. So you are basically doing research, sort of user research using design tools to better understand what the needs are of your co-workers. And if you understand the needs of your co-workers better, then it's much easier for you to sort of understand how and where you can add value in their work. And that might also less scary because then you don't have the feeling that you need to fight every time to get a place on the table. But to see it as more like a game, yeah. A game, how so? Yeah, I think a study, like you say, user research by keeping a diary, by talking with similar designers will have the same problems. Yeah, make a stakeholder map together. You can, yeah, you can work on your own project. And sometimes you have to put your ego aside for that because it's not always nice to work with some colleagues. But yeah, it's for the organization then. Yeah, yeah, sort of we talked about this on the show quite a lot that the people around you are sort of your design material that you have to work with and know how to sort of use and this, yeah, focusing on their needs helps you to do better work. Um, now I'm curious if you could give one tip for somebody who's listening right now and is in a similar situation, like for you, it worked to better understand the coworkers you work with. But which tip would you give to somebody listening right now? Well, of course, do the course. That's first, because I enjoyed it very much. I especially enjoyed working in teams with the people from all around the world, so it's not only a Dutch program as you're a Dutch house, but it's an international program, which is very nice. And, um, yeah, that's the one thing. And I also, what I really liked is that I called a former client and asked him, what is the biggest problem myself? And you got lots of compliments, which you can use for testimonials, but as well, um, uh, it's also nice to talk with failures because on the letter you can get into action mode again. And failures are good discussion starters and great learning opportunities if you have time to reflect on them. Yeah, yeah, that's a really good tip. And that's super easy, but some there is like a very high barrier to actually do it, but call a former client and even a client can be an internal client. But the conversations you get from that are super, super useful. Yeah. And it's a, it's a big step to do it. Um, I still have one on my agenda, but I did one and it was actually very nice. Yeah. What convinced you to actually do, uh, to make the call? Um, first try a client which you know we are on a good level with. So it's less scary, scared. And, um, yeah, that's, you know, work your way, uh, from there to the clients where you have a harder relationship with or less successful projects. Awesome. Uh, that's a good tip. And I can absolutely second that. Thanks, uh, Malus for this and for sharing. And, uh, I'm sure we'll be in touch and I'm going to move on to the next participant, which is coincidentally also in the Netherlands. Um, Hannah, welcome to the show. Hi, Mark. Hey. Hey, Hannah. So, uh, also the question for you, um, what do you do these days? Or what are you going to do these days? That's maybe a better question. Uh, yeah, so I'm not, uh, your typical design, uh, service designer. Uh, I'm, uh, a customer success manager at a small company, uh, an attack, uh, company in the Netherlands, going from, uh, startup to scale up. Uh, and in this journey, especially the last, or actually already for years, I'm doing a lot of the user research in our company, but for the last year, it's more focused on real customer centric thinking and, um, yeah, doing user research with the end in mind to have a clear customer journey in mind and how to prioritize new products, uh, development based on those insights. So that's why, um, I am a bit of a, uh, service designer at the side. That's, that's more how I, uh, I pick how I picture it at the moment. So this is really interesting because this program is called selling service design with confidence and you still signed up. What, what made you sign up for the program? Yeah. Well, I think because I had the feeling it's, this is really important, uh, for a company to become successful, to be more customer focused and, um, more, uh, aware of, uh, yeah, of, of the value that it can bring when your service is properly designed to put it like that. And, um, yeah, maybe because, because that's probably also a question that you would want to ask me about a typical challenge. And, and, uh, a typical challenge for me is really, um, because I work in a B2B company. So we have, uh, our customers are not the end users. Um, and what I really ran into the last year is that, uh, although the company is pretending or saying that they are really customer centric and really think it's important to understand the real user needs prioritizing development based on those needs. And we do a lot of user research, a lot of focus groups, a lot of testing. But in the end, always prior priorities are always based on sudden, uh, things that come in from like the B2B customers. So the ones, uh, not their end users, but our customers. So always priorities are based on commercial, um, or commercially driven. And yeah, trying to get, um, more in, in, in, uh, trying to get priority shifted more to the real end user needs. That was something I thought maybe this course can help me get more in that position. So yeah. Yeah. And this is a challenge. I think a lot of services are professionals face if they are not directly interacting with end users that there is always like, um, the other business, uh, involved and the other business is paying for your salaries. If you're doing a project. So, uh, it's, yeah, you sort of almost have to educate them what their, uh, users and customers want, correct? Exactly. Yeah. But, and, and they're not always willing to hear a thing. But actually to, I think it's even more own leadership in a company, which is, of course, definitely in a startup that is needing to scale and needing to then it's, and you can't blame them, of course, but priorities are always about if a customer, uh, says he wants this, then we'll just create that because the customer says, although it's not based on real end user needs or real, uh, proper research, it's just because they like it or they think it's good. Uh, and so it's also the leadership in your own company. Yeah. In the end, feeling stronger, um, for those arguments than, than in, in-house people, product people, user research people that, that have another opinion. So. Well, yeah, leadership is an important thing. And it's, um, sometimes it's hard to influence. Sometimes you can influence that. Um, I'm really curious if that's also related to the thing you took away from the program, like if you had to pick one thing, what was the thing that was most valuable for you? Well, what, what I thought was really nice. The idea to start a movement in, in it was one lesson was more about starting a movement. So also in a, in a small company, I, I, I could really. Have the idea that if you start a movement with a couple of people around you, starting small in, in, in a safe environment to, to test small activities around with maybe folks groups or experiments or whatever, just to show them the value of what we can reach and then try to get more in between of the decision makers in the company, get more in, for example, the product manager getting, um, yeah, getting more, uh, of feeling how important this is. Um, so yeah, those things were really important for me that I thought that's what you should do in a small company. Start small, not, yeah. And also in a big company, I think, uh, again, we, uh, quite recently had a few episodes where, uh, the power of communities, the power of movement was discussed and it's really hard to change something by yourself entirely. So the, if you can find more people who share the same beliefs, who share the same attitude, who share the same mindset, um, you increase the likelihood that this will actually change something bigger inside the company. So starting a movement is, yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, exactly. That's what you really need. If you want to be climbing up the ladder in decision making in a company to make some impact, is that, uh, so that's the thing you took away. Is that also the tip you would give people listening right now? Or do you have a different piece of advice? Yeah, yeah, I think it's very related to that. And, um, yeah, not make it too, so I had the feeling I always made it very big in my mind that it's something we, we need to put service design on the company map for and, uh, make, yeah, and then not, not achieving that properly and not like the things that I shown in all the customer or all the research and in on our customer journey map that, that I wasn't, wasn't able to get those priorities really into real product development, uh, really showed me that I should start looking at it smaller and start with smaller activities, smart, small, and then try to explain to other colleagues why it's so important and get their attitude also more to this way of thinking instead of only doing what's commercially probably, yeah, because for me in the end, um, these, these B2B customers won't stay if your end users are not satisfied, right? And, and I think that people are still a bit blind of the end, these B2B customers, they are the one paying, but in the end, if in the year ahead, they, their end users are not happy, they won't stay as a customer. So investing in those end users, making them make the service better, that's what we need to show. And it can also be done in smaller projects. So yeah, that would be a tip. Yeah. It's really hard to sort of, um, explain sometimes the ideas and the concepts of service design. It's much better to show them. And if you can show them on a small scale, sure, why not? Right? If that helps you to actually set a step, um, in the right direction. Yeah, exactly. All right. Yeah. Cool. Great tip. Uh, thank you. Thank you for sharing. Um, and I'm going to move over to our next participant. We're going to move away from the Netherlands and, uh, fly all the way to India today. Hey, Poova. Hello, hi Mark. Hey, uh, good chatting with you. And of course I have the same question for you as well. Um, who are you and what do you do these days? Yeah, sure. So hi everyone. Um, I'm Poova. I'm part of a company called ThoughtWorks. I'm working here as a service designer, which is not an in-house service design role, but more like on a consultancy or consulting side. It's an IT tech consulting company. So we have to work with multiple clients. Um, and, um, yeah, try to solve crazy problems. Try to solve crazy problems. That sounds like, uh, the average, average day of a service design professional. Um, so you're at an agency or a consultancy. Um, you're working with clients. What are some of the typical challenges that you encounter? I think what Malus also said, um, often time we have, we are parachuted into a situation which is already worst and we are expected to suddenly, you know, work on the leaking tabs and start bridging the gaps that are there from, you know, time, uh, long enough. So it becomes very challenging and for, uh, companies who have never had any interactions with design, any of design disciplines, it becomes hard because they are used to looking at design which have, which can deliver tangible outcomes like UX or industrial design. And then suddenly service design would want to ask, uh, wants to solve, you know, crazy problems like change management or everything that needs to be done to fix the problem. So it becomes hard for us to tell them what exactly we do because it's changing all the time. Yeah. So they have a day quote unquote, the, the clients without a design heritage have a different perspective on the word design. And that brings, I guess, some, uh, learning you need to do first with these clients to actually be able to do your work, correct? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Hmm. Um, and in that sense, uh, also, uh, the question to you, like there was so much, uh, we went through so much material. What's the thing that you maybe were able to already take away, uh, from the program and use in your own work? Yeah, I have three, three to four things to share. I think what one of the biggest takeaway is this realization that no matter how great or good you design professional you are, you need absolutely different skillset to sell what you do. And that is not taught in a design school. Um, most of the design schools, if I can say, and it's also not taught, it doesn't come with experience. So if you have to come, because you might be doing the same bit, uh, delivery design for many years, this needs more of a business selling and a different kind of mindset. So I like the fact that the way program was broken down, and addressing the objections was fantastic because I used that recently in my work, um, last week, um, where it, um, you know, there's typical challenges that clients come up with, um, no time, no budget. This is what I faced and we said, okay, what can we just break it down to smaller chunks and can we do partly in-house, can we outsource some of it and then, um, so it worked. I really, um, recommend, uh, everyone to, yeah, I mean, look at it in a very, very different lens. All of the material actually teaches you something you can apply directly. So yeah, yeah, so handling the objections, that's one of my favorite topics as well because it comes up so often and great to hear that you are already able to maybe mitigate, uh, some of the, uh, objections or at least have a different conversation, uh, around them. You wanted to share, uh, another thing or was this the thing you took away? Yeah, no, no, I want to share one other thing. This was, I never ever thought of doing that, uh, what you asked us to do, which is calling back your old clients and asking, what is that one thing, one problem you solved. And I want to read it's, you know, quote, unquote from one of the very senior managing director from my ex-company. What she says is the most important problem you solved for me was to disrupt the organization's tendency to believe that they know the solution, therefore rushed to execute. I was so touched, I never ever thought that, you know, people at that level really look at service design and that form shape and, you know, the impact that this discipline is creating. And so yeah, I would tell it is just makes us more and more empowered, I feel. How, how did this change your perspective? Now that you had this conversation with a former client, how did this change your perspective? I think, um, it also helped me to overcome imposter syndrome to some extent, because, um, unless you go and ask, you always think, oh, this wasn't delivered, right? You know, you always remember things that did not go well and you fail to really know the perspective of what was done, right? I think this was very, very helpful to overcome that. And I think we can really sell this with more and more confidence because now we know that there are so many other positive sides of the work that we do. Yeah. And it's great when a client sort of confirms in their own words, which value you created, because that's the thing that you next time can sort of articulate and highlight, even though you might use a different language, now you know at least what clients value, right? And then assuming it. Absolutely. Yeah. Hmm. The other question, of course, I have for you is, which piece of advice would you give somebody who's listening right now? Maybe a piece of advice you wish you had gotten a year ago or two years ago? A piece of advice is, I think it's important that we look at this discipline from a different lens, also from from a selling, I think we can apply the same principles, but it was actually very enlightening when we looked at it, especially objections, because what are the challenges? You know, self failure, client failure, or reasons for its human centered way of approaching the same problem where you're not able to sell service design. So I think it was really amazing, even the smaller exercises of analogy and service design is like XYZ. It just makes it so easier for clients to understand. But for us to explain, I had never ever thought of it that way. So I think all of the techniques are real value addition to your already good design skills, I would say. Yeah, I like how you phrase that. And I definitely agree with that, that it's just another design challenge that needs to be solved. Like, I think there is a lot of misconception around what sales is and how that is approached. And I think that as service design professionals, we have a very good tool set to actually be really good at selling because we are so human and user centered and we can use all those skills, all those communication skills that we have just have to reframe what it is and how to approach this problem challenge. Yes, I would agree. Awesome. Poova, thanks for sharing. Happy to hear that you were already able to take some of the things away and had that conversation with a former client. I definitely can recommend everybody to do that. I'm going to move on to our next participant because we have three more stories to go. Now we're going to cross the ocean fly to the other side of the world, almost moving to Canada. Hey, Ben. Hey, Mark. Hey, Ben, short introduction. Where are you in Canada? Because Canada is a huge country. And what do you do these days? I'm in Montreal and I'm a service designer for a company called Flow, which is a charging network for electric vehicle. And they also manufacture the charging station as well for home and in public. Sounds like you are a service designer in one of those situations where there's a lot of engineering going on, probably a lot of digital focused people and then you're a service design professional. Is that correct? Yeah, exactly. Like I'll speak for my like a previous experience. I've been in a lot of contexts where I work in house at product focus company. And it's it's it's really awkward sometimes to have this service discussion. Because one question I get when I come with backward insight is OK. But what does it mean for the project of the product? So that's a tough question to answer because often it doesn't mean anything directly for the product, but for multiple products or they fall out of the bucket because it's like it's like a product company is like they have different buckets for each product and they want to kind of classify the work needs to be done or the insight or whatever. And like sometimes it's hard to classify. But sometimes the the the bucket doesn't exist at all. So that's why I wanted to take that that course. Yeah. Well, why could you explain why why did you want to take this program? Just about the the idea of selling service design internally because like when you get hired as a service designer, like a part of the selling job is is already done because they had a a role for that and they appreciate in some way service design. But the selling part actually just starts there because you have to sell it internally because service design doesn't really work in silo. You need you need it really decentralized across the company. So that's where I'm at in my career trying to sell service design elsewhere in the company. Yeah, that's I get this remark every now and then. Then like people signing up for the program and then saying or getting the comments like you are already in house. Why do you still need to sell they hired you so they apparently believe. But as a service professional, like we said, you need to collaborate all the time. There's nothing you can do by yourself or so you need other people and then whether you call it selling or not, you're you you have an agenda. You need to get people on board. You need to get people excited and buy into your ideas, your plans or at least get involved in the decision making. And that is that is you I call that selling. And that's basically what you're describing as well. So even if you're already inside, there is still a lot of work to do. Yeah, I'd say 80 percent of the work is still to be done. So what did you take away as one key learning being in house? It's all about communication. Often I have my project starts with a specific sponsor and I have to just communicate to other internally to other stakeholders trying to identify who who to reach out to. So it's I'd say my day to day is mostly about communicating with other and trying to just identify how our initiative impacts their project and try to build some sort of a community around that topic and maybe a mega project in which it's like it touches a lot of different team. Yeah, so it's a lot about communication. I would 100 percent agree. And was there anything that you were able already, maybe a tool or framework or method that you were able to use inside your organization to better communicate about the value of what you do? Yeah. What I liked is the structure, the step by step structure of like trying to sell service design. So so trying to come up with the definition understanding the the sponsors perspective or what he wants to reach and also trying to find a common ground. So like Prova said, we're not teach that in design school. Like they build you a nice tool, the toolkit like a design framework and like you're you're out on the the job market and you have to figure out how to navigate in that. And for a couple of years after that, it's been trying just to adapt to it and like having a framework about like a tangible framework I can use like as as a as a gear like what I need to know what to do is really helpful because before I was able to do it like informally based on intuition. But I feel like I have the tool and I have more confidence in what I'm doing when I'm selling service design. And this is also what I've been hearing a lot like it's a lot of service design professionals that the strategy to sell the work is either very improvised or it's by intuition. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. But if you have like a plan, a strategy, some tools, a method, something you can rely upon, something that you can test out, improve, like that's a thing I encourage in the program like here's a tool, test it out, see if it works for you. If it doesn't adapt it, change it. And then you slowly but surely start to figure out, OK, this way of communicating about my work works for me. And then at some point you have your toolkit, like you say. Exactly. Also, the question to you, which tip or piece of advice would you give to somebody listening and who is maybe in a similar situation? I'd say like just treat any prospective relationship like a service design project. Like we have the tool to build empathy. We have the like we have anything needed in order to just understand the perspective of the customers and what they want to achieve. And basically, that's just that. Like I've been a product designer before and a lot of UX community or a lot of design community. Like there's some rambling about oh, the customer doesn't understand what we're doing. But like we need to take we need to own up that and try to figure out a way for him to understand because like they they might not care as much as as we do. And we need to just shift the way we sell it. Yeah. And we also need to eat our own dog food. Like we need to understand the people who need to understand the people. Like if we don't understand them why they aren't interested or that they believe that they understand the end user. Like we need to understand that dynamic and empathize with these people and help start where they are rather than having them force themselves to come to our mindset. Does does that make sense? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Good. Ben, thanks. Thanks for sharing. And I know a lot of people who are listening right now are in a product centric environment, whether it's digital or not or hardware. I know a lot of service design professionals in those contexts and just getting more and more. So I hope you gave them some encouragement to brush up their communication skills and get better at this. Thanks, Ben. And I'm going to move to another part of North America. We're going into LA. Hey, Sue. Hi, Mark. Good morning. Well, good afternoon for you. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good night. Depending on when you're listening to this. Sue, I'm sure that people are also curious about your background. Are you a day-to-day service designer or is it something else that you do? Actually, I came to learn about service design in quite a non-traditional way. My background is in health care and public health. That's where I started my career. Currently, I work for an automotive startup and I'm not presently in a service design role. However, I do work independently on freelance contracts. And so that's how I came to service design. And what I've found is that, like Maluse and others who sat on this call, service design is such a challenging thing to describe when you are not in that practice. However, if you truly looked around, there are so many opportunities to improve services. And when we talk about a world that needs more sustainability, we have so many products. And as we look forward into the future, how many more products can we develop? And if we sort of just transition that mindset into something in terms of how might we instead improve services so that we can make things just so much more beneficial to the world around us, I think that's where the opportunity lies. And that's what brings so much interest to me in service design. And also with that mindset shift is in terms of, instead of selling, I started to think, as we were going through this course, because selling, there's so much about convincing. You're trying to win someone over, so to speak, and gain their faith that you are going to achieve something different than what they presently have. And so the more I really thought through this, the more I kept thinking, well, maybe there's a mindset shift here that we can have. And I think Ben might have also alluded to it when he was talking about, now I'm in-house, but I still have to share with my colleagues what the benefits are. And I started to think more about telling a story. How might we instead tell stories of what it is that we do? And in telling a story, it's very non-confrontational. It's very neutral, so to speak. You're just explaining to someone what you observe and how your observations and changes leads to a better outcome or a better future. So from that perspective, I think that's really what I've come to start to think about when we're considering challenges in service design and even in my present company, when I talk to others about service design, people often think, oh, you mean servicing a vehicle. I'm like, well, not exactly. Yes, the same words, but not exactly. So it's trying to really think about what type of story can I tell here that will lead others to really understand what service design does. And that's great. I love that. Selling is definitely not about convincing. The moment you start convincing you've already lost the battle, well, it's not a battle. You're trying to find common ground, and you're trying to help somebody. And the quest is really how to tell better stories and better, more engaging, more compelling, easier to comprehend stories. And that's something, like Ben said, nobody teaches us actually which stories to tell and how to tell them and how to do it well, right? Yep, yep, yep. Yeah, and it really takes just being patient and practicing, and the more that we do it, the better we get at it. And it's deliberate thing. It's not like suddenly you have the story, like all the work you did throughout this six weeks, it's like finding those pieces of the puzzle, finding those pieces of the your story, because it's not that story, it's your story. And then slowly but surely, yeah, putting those pieces of the story together into something that works for you. And again, it's a deliberate act. It doesn't fall out of the sky. Yep, yep. Yeah, and the other thing too, I think is that the more we talk about what it is that we do and the more that we engage in storytelling, I think it also, in some ways, it helps to texturize the story. Because, you know, meaning, texturize meaning, you know, you can't just one day wake up and have this amazingly beginning to end story. But as you begin to tell your story, someone, it might spark an idea in someone and someone might say something. And so that adds an element that you can then include into your story next time you tell it. And so over time, you craft this more and more refined story and it then becomes even better. It's kind of like comedy, you know, a comedian working on their jokes. You know, they don't just, you know, come on stage one day and tell this amazing joke, you know, they craft it over time. And so I find that, you know, it's very similar to that. That's going to be the title of my next program, explaining services and through jokes. That must be, that's going to be my next program. That can be, thank you, thank you already. And this is exactly what happens, like in a conversation, you inspire each other. So maybe the best question I can ask you is after these six weeks, how has your story evolved? How has it changed? Yeah, so, you know, I, because I come to service design in such a non-traditional way, I just had so many feelings about it. And I think meaning feelings, meaning, you know, I'm not doing it right, I'm not doing it well. But as we've, you know, progressed through these weeks and being able to hear what others are saying, I realized, you know, what I'm hearing others say is the same exact thing that I'm hearing myself say to myself, you know, that chatter in my head. So, you know, it's quite natural and just to ease into it. But what I find so valuable in, you know, having this experience, being able to ask questions, hear questions, hear what other people say, and then, you know, be in conversation with others. And also role play, you know, we did all those role play sessions and be able to chat through it afterwards. I think that's quite valuable because it does add to the story. It adds to, you know, your understanding of the bigger picture of where others are also coming from. And it becomes a less lonely path from the perspective of, you know, you're not the only one thinking this or, you know, others are also, you know, experiencing this. And I think the other thing that I also thought was quite fun is just the spontaneity of being able to experience our coaching calls in the way that we did because each week was so different, each week was structured in a slightly different way. And I thought that was, you know, quite fun and engaging. And I think one thing that you had mentioned during one of our coaching sessions in terms of improv, a number of years ago, before the pandemic, I had also gone into improv doing some of those sessions just because I'm more of an introvert by nature. And so I thought, you know, going into improv might, no, help me get out of my shell a little bit, so to speak. And it's so true where, you know, the more you improv and sort of get outside of your comfort zone, you then can interact and do sessions, you know, so much easier with others. So I found that, you know, that was quite helpful with some of the coaching calls and just, you know, just be fun. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it can be such a heavy topic to discuss, but what we try to do is to make it lighthearted and to create a safe space to experiment with these things and share doubts, play around in a positive sense because it is serious, but you know, we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves and try to stop out them. I definitely can recommend improv to everybody. That's a great, great experience. One final question. So before I move on to our last participant, if you had to summarize your learnings into one piece of advice you would share, what would that be? Oh, wow. I think I mentioned it earlier on the call. I would say be patient because there's just this feeling sometimes of wanting to just, you know, either get to the end or get it done or get it right. Whatever that, you know, thing is, there's this want to get to the other side, but I find that, you know, as I go through, as I went through this course and also through the learning process is that the journey is really where, you know, a lot of the great value is, it's not the end point, but just each step of the way. So be patient. Yeah. Thank you for highlighting that. And the, maybe one of the biggest misconceptions people have with regards to explaining service design or communicating the benefits is that it's a transaction. You say something and somebody gets it. Like it doesn't work that way. It takes time. Like you said, it takes patience. Just look at your own experience, how you developed a belief that this is the thing you're so passionate about. It was probably a process of weeks, months, maybe even years, and you cannot expect somebody else to buy into this after you've said one thing. So yeah, patience is super important. Thanks, Sue. And I'm going to continue with our final participant. So we've been in the public sector. We've been in a product-oriented organization. We've discussed somebody who's independent and I probably already forgot something. But you, Jules, are also in a different context. So could you share what you do these days? Yeah. Hey. Yeah, my name is Jules Maitland and I am the founder of, I'd say brand new, but we're a whole two years old, a new agency based in New Brunswick, which is in Atlantic Canada. And yeah, we are focused on the social sector and we help them increase their impact through the human standard of design of public services and social change. So yeah. Yeah, there's your pitch. Yeah. Oh, so, OK, agency owner. I know that experience been there. I know how challenging it is sometimes. But what would you say was your biggest challenge with regards to communicating the benefits of your work? Well, yeah, I mean, I'm a reformed academic turn designer. And so I'm certainly not a saleswoman and I'm learning to be a businesswoman. And so in the past two years, we've been looking at all of our workers come through early adopters in the community who already understood what we do. So kind of selling hasn't been a problem so far, but I'm kind of anticipating a time where it's going to become more of a challenge for those especially who don't know us or don't already kind of, in quotes, get it. So yeah. And we've hit on most of the kind of challenges and that transactional comment you just made, Mark, that's the... Yeah, at the first hurdle, I have found myself falling because I will dive into this monologue of the things that I'm most passionate about with respect to design, which is engaging people who are most impacted by these challenges in the design process. And it's like, I see that people just... I lose people kind of not even halfway through the wrap-up. I go on. Yeah, after the first two sentences. Okay, so it's great that you did this as a pre-emptive step, as something that might help you later on to actually communicate the benefits when sort of the early adopters have already adopted your work. Now, you have a different background and a context than the other participants. I'm curious, what was the thing that you found the most interesting inside the program? Yeah, I... I think a lot of it has come up in the conversation already, but it actually, like, there was a kind of sigh of relief when I realised this isn't actually about selling. It's about exploring... It's very meta. It's the design process where, you know, it's meeting people where they are and understanding the challenges they're facing and then figuring out together, is this the right approach? That was the bit, you know, it's like, yeah, in some instances, this isn't the right approach and it's okay for that to be the case. So I think for me having both the... Both a new set of language through which to kind of talk about these... These issues and also activities where I can work together with potential clients to figure out, okay, yeah, is this worth the investment for you? You know? So it totally... It wasn't what I expected and I'm really, really happy with the kind of lessons I've learned on the way and how I'm going to approach those conversations when they happen moving forward. So what were you expecting? If this wasn't something that you were expecting, apparently you did join and sign up. So what were you expecting? Well, I don't know, I'm not... It's sales, you know, it's like sales feels like a no offence. It's going to be completely offensive when you say it so... But sales feels like a bit of a dirty word, you know? And I was expecting more persuasion and that's absolutely not what it's been. Not what it's been at all. And there was lots of, oh, moments, you know, from that kind of first conversation, you know, that where I started, you know, my focus is on that first conversation when I'm speaking to people, you know, when we don't even necessarily have a relationship and just very, very simple lessons to learn. Like don't focus on the process, focus on the outcome. But this is why service design can help not dive into the weeds of how we do our work, because that's... Yeah, yeah, awesome. I love that you already let it change your perspective. And I think maybe with sales, it's just like with the word design, there's so much heritage and baggage around it that it's sometimes hard to get people excited about this and see it from a different perspective and reframe it to what it potentially can be or what it actually is and sort of take, yeah, take some of that heritage away from it. And what I also appreciate about your comment is like the insight that sometimes there isn't a good fit. Like it doesn't have to work. Like it also needs to work for you as a service design professional. If there isn't a situation where you feel that you can add value, well, then step away. Like, yeah. And so, yeah, and so having that, you know, there was, you know, talks, you know, the tool of, you know, of kind of, you know, mapping out the operational objectives and KPIs, which is, you know, just not that, that wasn't necessarily, certainly not on top of mind. It may have been in my vocabulary, but it's not top of mind. But, you know, having tools with which we can kind of sit with clients and kind of help figure this out together. And, yeah, and learn together about what each person brings to the table, you know, both kind of priorities and strengths and constraints, so. Yeah, and it almost becomes a co-creation process, right? That's, at least that's how I've experienced it. And that makes it much more fun for both sides. Yeah. And then it's, and then it is, it's like a double, you're showing, not telling, while you're figuring out the way forward. You know, it's, yeah, it's smart. And it would probably take me years and years to learn these lessons. So I'm really happy that I've been able to take this course instead. Now you, yeah, now you got them in six weeks. And I'm confident that this is not the end of the journey. This is sort of the beginning. And it gives you a head start, but there's still a lot of work to do. Also, the question that I asked the other participants, piece of advice, like maybe if you look at yourself and wish that you got this piece of advice two years ago, what would that be? Well, take the course. I think everybody, since most people just said that. And yeah, it's all about applying the same kind of, you know, human-centered design approach to the conversations that you're having with people. And this, from where I started and my kind of the challenge I was having about losing people in the first conversation is, you know, meet them where they are, like take the effort. This is much more of a conversation and asking questions while you're explaining so that you can give people examples that are most relevant to their context. Yeah, it's all about that. How you approach the conversation, not a pitch. Yeah, it's a conversation, not a pitch. I like that. And the thing that we also talked about in the program is like maybe the best way to actually sell is to ask questions rather than to tell. So, yeah, I'm going to switch back to get a review. Everybody's back in the picture. Thanks for that, Jules. Those were six very different stories, very different backgrounds, very different perspectives. That's what I enjoy about this program. It's really diverse. You all see that you don't have to have a service design title to benefit from this. I want to thank you for being part of this conversation. Thank you for sticking around for the last six weeks. I know it was intense. And I'm sure that this will be continued. So, everybody, thanks you, thanks you. No, thank you for hopping onto this goal and sharing your stories with the community. As you've made it this far, I really hope that you enjoyed the stories and got something useful out of it. Communicating the benefits of service design is really a skill that we should talk about more often in our community. So, once again, I'm really thankful that these six courageous professionals were willing to come forward and share the journey with us. If you also feel that you're sometimes stuck and don't seem to be able to communicate the benefits of your work clearly and feel that this is preventing you from working on more meaningful and fulfilling challenges, well, then maybe learning how to sell service design might be the skill that is going to help you to take the next step in your career. As I've shared at the start of this episode, the next cohort is just around the corner. And depending on when you're listening to this, you might also still benefit from the early bird discount. For all the details and instructions on how to apply, head over to servicedesignshow.com slash selling. And as we have a limited number of seats available in the cohort, there is an application process. So head over to servicedesignshow.com slash selling, find all the details there and instructions how to apply. You'll also find the link in the show notes of this episode. My name is Mark Fontijn and I really want to thank you for being part of this community, keep making a positive impact. And I'll get you very soon in a brand new episode of the service design show. See you then.