 Wouldn't it be great if instead of having to convince your clients and stakeholders of the benefits of a human-centered design approach and having to defend its value all the time that the same clients and stakeholders would be lining up to work with you, that you would get the opportunity to move away from small and incremental projects to work on much bigger and more interesting challenges that make much more impact. The problem is that most business stakeholders don't really get or really care about design. They speak a different language and have a different mindset. When you take their background into consideration, you really can't blame them. So yes, a lot of service design professionals struggle. They struggle to make themselves heard inside the organization. They struggle to connect with important decision makers. And this struggle is unnecessarily keeping them back from reaching their full potential and eventually they miss out on opportunities to work on meaningful challenges that would benefit the company and its customers. I said a lot of service design professionals, but not all of them because there are some who manage to craft a story that speaks business without losing the design soul. Sure, once you know what you're doing, it's not hard to craft this story, but I'll admit it can be challenging to get started. So to give service design professionals a head start in building this clear and compelling story that gets the attention of business stakeholders, I've created a training program. This program is called Selling Service Design with Confidence and it guides you step by step through the entire process. In the program, you learn what to say, when to say it and how to say it the next time you find yourself in a conversation about the business impact of your work. In this episode, you'll hear the real stories of six service design professionals who recently completed the program. They open up and share the challenges they faced selling service design and share also the key insight that helped them to overcome these challenges. If you want to learn more about the program, head over to servicedesignshow.com slash confidence for all the details. The doors for registration only open up twice this year and there is a limited number of seats available. So if you want to increase your chance of securing a spot, make sure you submit your application as soon as possible. To learn more about how to submit that application, head over to servicedesignshow.com slash confidence and you'll find all the instructions over there. I know that in our busy schedules, it can be really hard to find the time and most of all, permit yourself to invest in your professional growth. If you want to break through that glass ceiling and take your career to the next level, this program helps you to do that. But don't just take my word for it. Listen to the people who have gone through this. Let the show begin. Welcome to the show, everyone. Hello. That's a warm welcome. Awesome. Thank you. I'm looking forward to diving into all of your stories today. I know that there are some interesting and fascinating stories there. We'll be talking about how to sell service design with confidence and I'm sure we'll be able to share some valuable tips today. Let's not waste any more time and sort of jump into the first conversation. Can I invite you in Caroline? Hey there. Hello. Hey, Caroline. Good to see you. I'm going to switch over my view to this one so that we all have a better picture. There we go. Caroline, I'm going to start with you. It's always the most exciting part to be the first sort of guest or graduate because that's what you are in this case. Could you start by sharing a very brief introduction like who are you? What do you do these days? What is your role? I will say it. So I'm Caroline. I work for a consultancy for my sins and working on all sorts of projects, you know, small, medium, large, private sector, public sector, you name it. I could be switching domain week from week, month from month. But yeah, quite complex projects and very varied. Cool. And you are on quote unquote the agency or the consulting side, right? That's right. Yeah, yeah, a service designer and that helps to sort of set the stage because now my next question is what is a typical challenge related to selling service design that you experience or experienced? I think it's dealing with people with different levels of service design maturity. So because I'm sort of jumping from clients with either they've got a lot of knowledge about service design to ones that don't. I'm having to make that context switch quite quickly and understand their level of maturity and that that can lead to some things like they want to do recruitment for users and they've never done that before. And I don't quite understand what's involved in a lot of handholding and helping them through that. So so what's the impact of that? Would you when that's a challenge like I think it's trying to get them to understand the risk that if they haven't done something before, it's that sort of you don't know what you don't know. So for example, if they want to do their own recruitment, you know, you're obviously having to flag to them the implication of that. That's also at the beginning of the funnel of the project in a way. And it has a lot of consequences for the project further downstream. So yeah, I find that's quite a big challenge to try and talk them through that. Yeah. And and how does that impact your work? So you try to get them to understand the things that are known unknown. How is that impacting you? Well, I'm obviously it's user-centered design. So if, you know, it all starts with users, so if you can't get the users and the risk is that it can't really do a service design project without user input. The quality of the users may be sort of jeopardised if they haven't done the recruitment before, whether they're using an external recruitment agency, whether they're going with their own database. So it's sort of quality, it's time. And I guess it's a risk to timelines as well. Basically, what I'm hearing you say is if you sort of fail with this, you're on the risk that you won't be able to do your job in a way that you want to do or deliver the quality that you want to deliver. Is that right? Yeah. And the time frame in the time frames as well. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. OK. So yeah, there is something at stake here. Now, have you found something in the program that helped you maybe that you've already tried to overcome this challenge? I think actually, we've been having some coaching calls, which have been very useful. And I think it was the main thing was I probably took the the viewpoint of talking about quality or, you know, impacts on timelines. But I think through the coaching, we sort of talked about flagging the risks more and sort of being more explicit in what the actual risks were and sort of I guess that's linked to the sort of, you know, if we don't get the right users, you know, what's the implication of this? You know, what can we go on to not find out and solve for you? So I think it's a kind of a combination of the objectives. I'm sorry, the objections of clients, but they were my objections really in this instance versus also understanding what problems they once solved and how them taking on the user research means we might not get to solve their problems. So it was kind of a combination. I had my own my own reasons for wanting them to do the user recruitment correctly. Yeah. Is this different than how you used to approach the problem? Yeah, like I said, I think I probably would have talked more about quality of the users rather than the impact on the timelines and the risk to the actual problem that we were trying to solve. So sort of talking more about the value and how it impacts the value that we can deliver to them versus just getting the wrong wrong sort of users or not having enough users. Yeah. So again, I'm trying to sort of translate this in my mind, but you just took it one step further. Like, OK, if we don't get the right users, like, so what? How is that going to impact the, quote unquote, the bottom line or the project stakeholder? Yeah. Yeah. So how that will actually, you know, whether we're trying to use the users to understand, you know, a discovery piece of work or whether to understand the problem deeper. So trying to link the impact of not getting the users with the problem that we're trying to solve for them and making that more explicit. Yeah, making that more explicit and helping your stakeholders to see the connection between like it's not it's not you just caring about getting the right users to do research. They should care like it's in their best interest and helping them to connect the dots why it's in their best interest. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Ninking it back to the objectives, I guess, of the project. Yeah. And and maybe Oh, is this something that you didn't do in the past or not enough? I think it's just sometimes you just talk about the use of value and the user engagement. But sometimes it can be a bit detached from the actual business objective. Yeah, I think it's just bringing it into the conversation and talking more with a business mindset rather than just a sort of user-centered design mindset. Yeah. Now, the next question and the last question I have for you in this round is if you could share a tip or a lesson to someone who's listening right now and maybe struggles also to sell service design. Which tip would you share? Is it the same one that you just shared or do you have something else that might be helpful? I would say it's this one is being braver and more explicit about the risks and not sort of skirting around that. So definitely spelling out the risks of, you know, if the client decides to do the user recruitment or if they decide to cut back on time or budget, but being very explicit about the risks of something that maybe they want to change. It's probably further down the selling funnel and that that end piece where, you know, you're just about to do the project and then suddenly it changes from what you thought you'd sold originally. So, yeah, I say more explicitly, pulling out the risks. Yeah. And you mentioned it's at the end of the project. I can imagine that if you're an in-house or an internal service designer, you're facing this challenge all the time. So, yeah, it really depends. OK, being explicit about the risk as a strategy to sell service design or to easier sell service. I like that one. Thank you, Caroline. And I'll move on to our next graduate. So thanks for sharing, Caroline. Halina, are you there? Yes, hi, Mark. This feels a bit like the Eurovision Song Festival. The Netherlands. Colin and Halina, are you there? Yes, you are. I'll start with the same question I had for Caroline. And that is if you could share a bit about your contacts. What do you do these days? Yeah, sure. So I'm working in a big company with presence in different parts of the world, like United States, Europe, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, and so on. And it has actually quite a big design office, which operates as a studio within the company. And we offer our design services to different units of the company, which work with clients. So we kind of are injected in projects. And really quite for quite some time, I've been involved in pre-sales kind of work and discovery work, which is different from just doing some product design work and implementation work. And this brought me to thinking that I probably need to improve my skills in communicating with business people, with people who have other mindset than myself. And yes, this brought me to this course. And I want to dig into this, of course, when you say you felt that you needed this program, why did you feel that or stated differently? Which challenge were you running into? Well, actually, I felt like being involved in this early stage of working with customers, I'm doing two parts. I'm doing design work as well as actually showing some kind of customers actually don't know why we are doing what we do. And this implies that we also need to educate them and to explain like, OK, we need to do research because later in the later stage of work, this will be available because this and that. So I just felt that I need to be able to explain that because if they don't understand, if no one explains it to them, they will not do it. So I will not be able to do research myself if I am continuing with a project or a person who comes to work after me will not be able to do research. And this will put the quality of work in danger on the later stage of the project. Yeah, that makes sense. And when you say you wanted to be able to explain that to non-designers, that's what I'm getting from your story. What did you miss? Which skill maybe didn't you have that you felt you wanted to gain to be able to do this better? I would say confidence. So it's just to have courage to speak up, to be prepared, to be calm and to be persuasive about the value of the work that I do. Because if I cannot explain it, then no one else can do it because there are many other roles involved usually in the project. So and people are competing to some extent for the client time. So I need to be very explicit about what I do, why I do it, why I need this time as a client, or why I need to talk with users and so on and so forth. So it's like making this first step and being prepared to this and then going further with all the questions or maybe objections that I may hear from clients and also internal team. So this was what I felt I lacked. So I needed to be better in this, yes. And this is what I also hear often like you mentioned confidence and courage to speak up. Like most of the time you sort of have all the pieces of the puzzle. It's just like turning them into a coherent and clear and a consistent story. Like you don't have the luxury to ramble on or to spend a lot of time with people explaining it. You just you need to have something that works quickly, right? That's what is noise and what is like the signal? Yes, of course. And I would add that doing the service design piece of work will also impact and help other people involved in the project like technical people. They will also benefit from it, right? They will understand what needs to be done and why and what value will it bring either to customers or business. So it also helps everyone. So I felt like, OK, I need to explain it to them because if they don't understand, I just need to be more patient and just try, right? For a greater good. Yeah. So if you can you take one thing from the last weeks that you learned that you feel that was maybe one of the most helpful things? Oh, maybe it was more than one. But that's big from the top of my mind. I really like what would strike me the most is like being able to ask the right questions, hearing the answers and then build the conversation depending on what I hear. Not only with business, but with everyone, right? With my teammates, just to try to understand them better. What is their thoughts? What is their mindset? And then trying to talk to them like as a normal conversation without selling anything, basically, but just to build this report with them and then to be able actually to reach this greater good, as you mentioned, like that will just result in just better quality of work and like in many ways. So asking right questions. Yeah. Now I'm listening to this podcast and I'm thinking, yes, you're asking the right questions like how obvious, what do you mean with asking right questions? Can you give an example? Well, it's like we were practicing on our conversation simulations. It's usually the better way to build the conversation was starting with questions, not making assumptions. So it's just being really curious about what is going on with, in our case, it was business stakeholders in their roles because they're in business. What are their challenges? Why do they want to do it? Why is they are not sure about something? Like just trying to understand them and using questions as a tool, as a method to build this understanding and also do this research from this very first conversation with them. Now that you have this inside, again, I'm also curious, how did you do this before the program? Well, I was probably not as good as I may have been. So I'm trying to improve. Did you also ask questions? I'm sure you did. So I'm curious, how is that different than? Maybe I was making assumptions to cost. I was trying to be an expert versus just being open. Now, also, the question I ended with Caroline is a tip for somebody who's listening and maybe also struggling to sell service design. If you could share one thing, what would it be? Okay, relating to this asking questions skill, I would suggest not to be afraid to ask even stupid questions, like even to ask for permission to ask questions. This is fine. It's not scary, right? And also listen carefully to what the person has to say to answer and not to wait until asking the next question, but really genuinely listen to what they have to say and then build the next question upon what they say. It's interesting that I would say in the last year, maybe in the last two years, the skill of listening has been sort of elevated and new books have come out. It seems like we're rediscovering what it means to listen and to have a conversation. I think that's going to help us tremendously. Thank you for addressing this point, Halina, and I'm going to move on to the next course program. Participants, Sapna, are you there? Hey, Mark. Yes, I'm very much here, except for my soldier. It's not too bad. All the way from India. Sapna, also the question for you is, could you share a bit of context with us? What do you do these days? Well, actually, at the moment, I've taken a break from my professional life, let's say the corporate life. I've been doing my studies, my service innovation design. I'm hoping to graduate by end of this year, just before Christmas. And currently looking at opportunities for service designer or probably similar role as service designer. Well, that's interesting. So you're sort of looking for opportunities finishing a master's program. And you still signed up for a program which is about selling service design. How does that work? Like, why did you feel that this could be a program that would be helpful for you? That's a good question, Mark. Interestingly, let's say when I'm doing my master's in service innovation design, it is a practical course. It's for professionals, yes. But it's more theoretical. So to kind of get something very practical, you don't get the bookish knowledge, but I think the small tips, techniques, and the knack to kind of, let's say the convincing skills or the communication, the right communication is what I was looking for. And to be honest, I've been seeing some of your shows which I found very, very, I was very inclined towards it. And I just felt I would get some kind of a practical, you know, on a daily basis kind of situational ad hocly things because I think getting this theoretical knowledge or even like practical based on experience, but tackling those sticky situations or ad hoc situations is also something that I'm looking to learn from everything around, everybody around. So, yes, the thinking on your feet and being in the moment and being able to sort of respond to those challenging questions non-designers have, rightfully so, about what we do. Was there a thing that you found specifically interesting in the program? We go over different chapters, different modules. I'm curious if there was anything that stood out for you. Actually, most of them, as you said it, but I think for me what stood out was because my background is use experience, custom and usability analyst. So, to kind of move into the service design domain is much more getting involved with the mindset. So, looking at what only consumers were looking or customers were looking at is what was the focus. So, when you kind of, I was looking at a customer journey, for example, but if I have to add a business case with it, then it's a good combination, it's very compelling to the client in terms of trying to get value, even small little things are cost effective or improvements because my previous experience was also in the customer service oriented, especially the last part of my experience. So, how the value, the customers are coming to us at a point of support and how do you kind of really support them and helping the benefit or helping the company for a long term, looking at your existing users and trying to see how the process evolves with the customers. So, what stood out for me, to just come back to your question again was I think the hand in hand building business case with the customer journey was very, very impactful because it would also reflect on the ROI questions or the value related stuff. So, and that was the reason I wanted to join this program so that I get those tips and techniques and maybe conversations as well. Yeah, it's not just about the user's case, it's also about the business case and I think we have the holy trinity of what is it viable, feasible and desirable and we often talk about the desirability part and we sort of have the viability there but we often don't talk about it and I think what you're highlighting is that we also need to become more fluent and more articulate about that specific area and it's not that hard, like if you dig in a little bit. I hope so too, Mark. I'm just crossing my fingers because it's gonna be my first venture after this program into this field of service design practically, yeah. We'll see where you are in six months or a year. Sapna, also, if you could give one tip to someone who's listening and struggling to sell services, what would it be? Very similar to what Halina said as well but I think and as what you spoke about, listening but then listening to not respond, listening to understand it's more about understand the customer's needs well enough. It could be challenges, pain points, it could be the expectations, et cetera. I think there's a lot even on the terminology as they use to actually get in sync. It's also could be the company culture, to kind of sink in well with it as a matter of fact. And then I don't know, it's more about even me as to listen, to be an attentive listener and just to be myself. Because if I find something intuitively working, something not right or something not clear just be bold enough and have the courage enough to ask. Even if you don't know to be silly and you don't know, it doesn't matter. I mean, I think that's the confidence again that I also gained from this program, especially it's good to ask questions, the right questions. I'm learning a lot about that as well, reading a lot about that as well. But I like the way when you're very attentively listening and within that context, you could come out with some doubts and questions and then it leads to a conversation which then comes to be very effective and fruitful overall. Yeah, and we come back a lot to asking questions and sort of having the courage and it seems that asking questions is an undervalued skill or underappreciated skill. And one thing that helps me to flip this around is I'm asking these questions in service of the person I'm talking to. So I wanna help them and in order to help them I need to be relevant and I need to know something about the situation. So not asking questions is actually being very selfish and doing them a disservice. So I need, that works for me, like flipping the narrative in your head. Like I'm just asking these questions to help you. And yeah, that helps me. Subnaut, thank you. Sorry, Maxi, I learned even that again, not that I don't. Thank you. We have to keep repeating this self. Like it's a mantra that I also have to remind myself of as often as possible. Yeah. Thank you. And we'll move on to our next graduate and we'll take the airplane from India to I think UK, London. Are you in London, Andy? My agency is Mark, but I kinda flirt from the north of England to London. So yeah, yes. All right. So you mentioned already your agency, Andy, that gives a little bit away about your context, but can you share a bit more about that? Yeah, sure. So my role at the agency is in client services, which some people may feel like a bit of a vague term and it kind of crosses kind of delivery and commercial. So it's really looking after or keeping an eye on existing projects that are going on and checking with the client that they're happy along the way. Being responsible for the overall relationship we have with our clients in terms of holding that relationship and building on it and also involved in kind of commercial discussions and being the kind of lead on sending costing new work and scoping it and getting kind of sign off from the client. So sales is very much a big part of what I do. Yeah, you're an interesting persona in this program because a lot of people who join do have like maybe a more of a services design. I wanted to say design background, but you're actually in account management and sales in a agency that does service design, right? That's... Yeah, well, the reason I joined and wanted to be on the course was to really benchmark myself and have discussions with other people specifically around sales because I think service design has been a growing industry over the years, but it's quite difficult to find very seasoned sales people in this arena. So yeah, I wanted to kind of test my knowledge and benchmark myself and hopefully improve in my selling performance. You never stopped learning how to do things better. And yeah, I was keen to be involved for that reason. I'm curious to your experience with selling service design as you've already been doing that. What is maybe the hardest part to sell service design? Well, one of the biggest challenges with all sales is competition. And one of the things I've found is you often get briefs from potential clients and it doesn't say service design on it. And what you tend to go through is a process where you've been invited to respond and there's a whole bunch of other agencies out there, all from different backgrounds, all from different perspectives. And the traditional way a lot of design agencies go about things is in the pitch. If there's a formal pitch process where you have to present to the client a number of people on the client. A lot of agents will go straight to the possible solution. And they do a big flash bang, lots of time spent on pretty visuals and nice looking decks. And for some clients, that's very alluring because they feel like, wow, this agency is ahead of the rest because look, they've got these great, amazing concepts. Now, that's always a challenge when you're a service design agency because inherently you never solutionize first. It's almost in our DNA not to come up with solutions first. And it's actually sometimes very hard to compete in these situations with these other more traditional design agencies. So I think understanding or qualifying is a big part of sales. And sometimes you need to make the decision that is service design, the amount of time and effort that you will put into the design process and for the pitch is your chance of success. Do you have a good chance of success or are you likely to do a ton of work and ultimately be unsuccessful? So I'd say that's one of the biggest challenges is sometimes you don't get briefs that say service design and you're in these environments where there's other agencies with different approaches. Yeah, and you just have to be just as careful qualifying your clients and the challenges you take on as the client should be qualifying their suppliers and their agencies, the consultancies they work with. And so yeah, I haven't articulated it that way but pitching against solutions, that's a tough battle if you, yeah. Yeah. Was there anything in the program that you were able to take away and maybe prototype experiment in your sales process? Yeah, well, this is what I wanted to come onto because some of the stuff we have discussed kind of really helps when you're competing against more traditional design agencies. So they'll, as I said, they'll maybe come up with flashy solutions or kind of concepts. But the way I think the way to combat that from a service design perspective is to really drill into the ROI and to have those conversations around what value you can provide, how success is gonna be measured and what is the potential upside for a successful project. Because traditionally, more traditional agencies are not good at that. So by actually going into the deeper questions of how do we measure success and what does that look like? And you start your pitch with slides on that, you almost blow or you make them realize that going straight to the solution is not the best approach. So in a way, you turn what traditionally is a strength of more normal design agencies into a weakness. So I think being prepared to spend that additional time on the ROI stuff really makes you stand out. And I have to think about a conversation I had with someone who sort of the conversation was about how much risk are you willing to take again risk or are you a gambler? Like how sure are you that this is the right problem we're solving? So if somebody is pitching a solution, you have to be very, very sure that that's the right problem. And I think as service designers we are sort of like you said, almost obliged or it's in our DNA to sort of first question that and to say maybe we shouldn't do some time diagnosing what's wrong with you before we amputate your arm. Like that might be a big bet. So yeah, if your client is open to that and if there is some doubt if that's the right problem, you definitely have a chance a very good chance to land the right clients. Exactly. I mean, sometimes I tend to try and follow service design principles on the actual clients we're trying to do the service design work for. So if you're in front of a panel of five people who are selecting an agency and none of them have, if you look on their LinkedIn profiles and none of them have service design, anything related to service design, I think sometimes that's kind of a red flag that they're just looking for a whizzy flashy kind of concept. But the maturity is not the level where you may build a kind of long-term valuable relationship. What kind of advice would you give someone who is in similar situations or conversations? Qualify the opportunities you decide to take on and then, yeah, do that, spend the extra time to really drill into the value that you could potentially provide and framing and understanding the problem in terms of framing that correctly with the client. So if they're not willing to have that conversation around what success looks like and what value is, it's sometimes wise just to sort of maybe not pitch for that piece of work, but definitely try and push for a conversation before submitting kind of responses to briefs and spending all that time getting ready for pictures. Yeah, and there's always an opportunity cost. Like if you say yes to pitching to a client, you're saying no to the next client who might come by and also ask you, am I the better fit? So being selective and we can have a different episode about how you get into a position where you can be selective. I think you always need to be selective, but being comfortable with saying no when there's not a good fit. Again, that's not even in a long-term in the short term that's going to benefit everybody. So yeah, gonna agree more, Andy. Thanks for sharing your experience. It was awesome to have you on the program as somebody who comes in at a different angle to these questions. That was definitely enriching. Let's move on. And we're staying in the UK this time. Julia, are you ready? Hey, Mark, absolutely. Happy that you're here. Also, you have a quite distinctive background compared to the other participants. Can you tell a bit more about that? Right, yeah. So I did quite a few turns in my career. So I started off in marketing and I was leading marketing departments and small businesses before I started the PhD to research customer experience quality. So I feel like I was moving away and away from sales in a sense. And then I discovered service design in kind of a higher education context when initially I found out about it when I started teaching kids. So it was a little bit different for me. So eventually I got to a point when I realized that I actually want to practice it as well and not just talk about it. So I feel like I was looking for this kind of way to organize my knowledge and see how everything fits together. You're currently, you're starting, you have your own business and you're also teaching, right? So that's the interesting combination you have. Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a lecturer at the university. So I'm teaching service innovation, product innovation. And I just recently started the service design agency as well and probably another thing which kind of came out of the course is championing service design in high education at my university as well. So I have a few projects starting in that direction as well. That's awesome. Now, with all these different hats on, I don't know which one is most relevant or most interesting to you, but I'm curious from the head of the business owner, what is a typical challenge you encounter trying to sell service design? Right. So I think generally talking about service design can be quite confusing to other business owners, I would say, because as I think you mentioned it before as well, when you start talking about service design, people tend to focus on the design part of it and then it gets a little bit confusing. So I think it was, yeah, that was probably the main challenge, how to actually talk to people about those things without overwhelming them with different terminology. And have you experienced situations where you noticed that people were overwhelmed? Absolutely, yeah. One time I got a comment from somebody and they say, hey, wait a second, I think you come from the academic background just because of the way you're talking. Absolutely. And I'm sure that that isn't the best way to open doors to collaborate with people by confusing them, right? Absolutely. That's not what you want. Now, you also have been through the entire program. There was a lot in there, but was there anything that you already could take out and maybe try to apply in your own practice? Yeah, absolutely. So I'm still quite early on in my practice. So I'm working with a few clients but I'm also looking for the correct clients for myself. So I was applying this approach of asking the questions and not jumping into overwhelming people with a lot of information. And I found it really helpful. Also using particular language, for example, talking about being an expert in improving services, helping organizations to improve services or innovate services or serve the customers better. I feel like that's really something that people can affiliate way better than jumping into service design and confusing them a little bit. And I had very good experience in some networking events, talking to people with regards to service innovation, asking them about the specific challenges in that sector. So I feel coming into the conversation with a genuine curiosity about the industry, about the business's challenges. And the people is really, really helpful to get you started because selling is such a scary word. I feel like for everyone and puts a lot of pressure on you because you can measure the outcome of selling as easy as you sold something or you didn't, right? And if you didn't sell something, it means that you failed. But if you approach it from the point of view that you are learning about the companies, learning about the arena, learning about what potential challenges are even interesting for you as a service designer, as an entrepreneur, I feel like that's completely reframes what you're doing and completely changes your conversations as well. And how does that, how was the change for you? Like how did you experience it? What was the before and after? Yeah, I think after the pressure was kind of liftable off my shoulders. And yeah, I mean, to a degree, I do see people I'm talking to as prospects, like potential clients, but I don't put the pressure on myself to sell something to them, you know? It's more about seeing how I can help them. Because sometimes, I mean, there is definitely a service design challenge in a conversation in a company and then we can move on to conversation to like a different date and have a bit more sorrow chat. But sometimes I feel like it's really valuable for you maybe building your confidence if you can help them with some thoughts, maybe some ideas, write in the conversation, you know? They don't need to pay you for it for us to feel quite good. I think that's the biggest mindset shift that happens or that needs to happen is that you see selling as helping someone. And as you said, it's not per se a financial transaction like that can be part of it, but you're trying to genuinely help somebody. And first you need to figure out if they have a problem that matches your skills. And if it doesn't, then maybe you should refer them to somebody else, but that's the whole point. Like, can I help you? That's maybe the best sales question to ask. Is there something else that you feel would be a very good tip to share with the community about selling service design? I think it's just generally caring about people and trying to understand them. That's probably the best advice. I know some people mentioned already asking the questions. I feel like that's really important. And also trying to see whether there is a fit between you and the person you are talking to, whether you could potentially work together or help them. I think that's quite important. So taking it as a two-way street, not just you trying to get something, but seeing whether it's actually good for you outside of the monetary kind of reward that you might get for a project. And I would be able to see if somebody is listening here and thinking like, yeah, but what are those right questions? It's too much to go into just in this podcast. I think we spent eight weeks figuring out what these right questions are. So I would encourage everybody who is interested in getting better at that to consider also joining next time. But there are right questions. There are good and better questions that you can ask. Thank you, Julia. And enjoy your ride and journey as a business owner. And let's see where that ends up. Now, let's move on to our sixth graduate who is very nearby me, Daniel. Hey, Mark. Hey, Daniel, good to see you again. Daniel, I already mentioned that you are very near me. That's a spoiler, but can you share a bit more about what you do these days? Yeah, I've been based in Rotterdam. So I moved to Rotterdam around 2019 and where I joined an organization in the energy sector. And I joined them as an in-house designer initially as a UX designer, but along the way I made my way into the service design path, I would say. And that is interesting because I know that there are tons of people transitioning from UX to service design and that is a bumpy ride. Sometimes it's not the easiest, especially if people see you as the UX designer, which is on its own already a very messy and confusing term in a lot of organization. You're on that path for sure. So trying to establish and sell service design internally. What were some of the challenges? Now, let's stick to one. What was an important challenge that you were running into? I think there's one which we keep hearing from many colleagues in the industry. One of them is being able to convince stakeholders to do research before building stuff. Yeah, and what makes- No, I think that's a recurring issue, which is quite interesting to see. But yeah, that for sure was one of the ones that I faced. And also Caroline at the start mentioned this a bit, but what was the problem for you? So when you can't get stakeholders to invest in research, like how does that impact you? Yeah, I would even say that in- because of the organization that I'm in, that there are ways of working. There's some degree of being a bit old fashioned on how to do things or really think solution first. And sometimes it's not even the budget to do research, but it's actually being there advocating and saying, like, listen, we need to do this first. We really, there's a reason for that and trying to come up with arguments or logic to try to convince them about this. That was one of the biggest challenge. And it still is. Yeah, I can imagine, and it will be for a long time, and you mentioned traditional, but there is a certain way of working and a certain belief system and people bringing design into an organization which is not used to it. Like there are some things that are less compatible with the existing way of working. Also, the question for you, did you find something in the program that could potentially help you to overcome this challenge? Yeah, many things. One thing for sure is around, and I think that has been said today a few times, is about how to practice a bit of the active listening in the sense of I've understood and experienced that most of my struggle to convince stakeholders was related to the fact that sometimes I was trying to push a conversation and trying to steer in a direction without understanding what were their concerns, what are the values that they had, and so my speech didn't resonate with that expectation that they had. So basically one of the things that we explored in the course that helped me is how to really frame our conversation or to really be more, ask more questions and let them steer the direction so that they will tell you the path of what is it, where the value lies and what are the challenges, so that you can, from there craft a story using their own words, right? So I can imagine that that's the scary part because you already know research is important. You just wanna sort of push your stakeholder into that direction, like nudge them to do research and when you take a step back and start asking questions, you don't know which direction this conversation will go. So it might feel like, oh, will I be wasting my time? Do we have time for this? Do I have the time to listen now? We just need to do this, like it's pushing somebody and maybe if we wanna go too fast and don't take the time to, like all of you mentioned, to listen, to be respectful to the other person, take them seriously more, not just in thoughts, but in actions and listening to their concerns. At first, it may seem like we're making less progress, but the theory is that everything, at some point, will become much easier, right? Yeah, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. Have you been able to already practice this and put this into practice and see if it actually works or if it's just a nice theory that we're putting out here? No, I would say, well, it's still work in progress, but there has been some things in my work that I've been able to have a different approach. So, and that I could already observe certain benefits of it. So, for instance, approaching, so one of the things is really along the way of any initiative that you're able to show to link back to the value of what the stakeholder has brought initially, right? So, throughout the, it might be a bit annoying and repetitive, but it's about really making clear that, hey, that's why we're doing this to a point where you don't actually need to say this. And when you see someone repeating that in the meeting and you don't need to say this, it's just like, okay, that's a good thing. When you say stakeholders that are saying, oh, but wait, don't we need to do a specific, don't we need to research this or don't we need to go through the specific phase or validating some assumptions before that? And that's, yeah, I think that's a positive outcome of the work. And I've been able to experience with the feel of the folks who told my work. Yeah, when other people start adopting your language and start using your slide deck and sharing your story, like that's almost the ultimate form of success, like, yeah, something resonated here. Finally, also, if you could share one tip to sell service design, what would you say? Be patient and pathetic with stakeholders, especially those with little or no experience with designers. So really put some effort to build this connection and really try to use their language, they're also like, what are their values and use that to create this connection and advocate for the work that you need to do, right? And I think by being patient, I mean, of course, like being active, asking things, but understanding that it takes time to change this. So yeah, it's aimed for the long run, I would say. So I like that as a takeaway, being patient. And I think what's really easy to forget is that when we all first learned about design, it wasn't an overnight thing that you wake up and then you sort of like, yeah, design is a thing. It was also a gradual process, but now that we're here, it's really hard to appreciate the transition that we also had. And we are trying to sort of have people like that light bulb moment, but that's not the way it works. Like it's a process and it takes time and people have to see things, people have to hear things multiple times before like sort of slowly but surely the story starts to sink in. And I think we really quickly forget that it was the same for us as well. Yes, absolutely. As you've made it all the way here, I really hope that you enjoyed this conversation and also got something useful out of it. How to communicate the benefits of our work clearly is a topic that needs to be discussed more often in our community. So once again, I want to thank these courageous professionals for coming on the show and sharing their learnings with you. If you also sometimes feel stuck and that you're not able to get the message about the value of your work clearly across and that this is preventing you from working on bigger and more meaningful challenges, well, then developing the skill to sell service design might just be the right next step in your career. In 2023, we will only run two cohorts of the Selling Service Design with Confidence program. Depending on when you're listening to this conversation, you might still be able to get on the waiting list and benefit from the early birth discount. As the number of seats is limited in each group, we have an application process. To learn more how to apply, head over to servicedesignshow.com slash confidence. So that servicedesignshow.com slash confidence, there you'll find all the details and instructions on how to apply to the next round of the program. My name is Mark Fontaine and I want to thank you for being part of this community. Keep making a positive impact and I'll catch you very soon in a brand new episode of The Service Design Show. See ya then.