Land and Expand Strategy

Episode 16: Land And Expand Strategy, with Robert Rose

Land and expand strategy can enhance forward-thinking with ‘what’s next,’ and the ‘smile strategy’. Learn the land and expand strategy here.

The land and expand strategy, a discussion by Robert Rose in this podcast episode. For more than 25 years, Robert has helped marketing leaders balance the art and science of marketing, and tell their story more effectively. Over the last ten years, Robert and his firm, The Content Advisory, have advised more than 500 companies, including 15 of the Fortune 100.

Robert has served as the Chief Strategy Advisor of The Content Marketing Institute since its launch in 2010 and, helped guide it to be the leading global content marketing education and training organization. Robert was CMO of CrownPeak – leading the marketing and product development of one of the world’s first enterprise Software-as-a-Service web content solutions.

Robert is the author of three best-selling books on marketing and content strategy and is the co-host of the popular marketing podcast This Old Marketing, which has been downloaded more than two million times in 150 countries.

What you will learn in this episode is about the land and expand strategy:

• How we can use the “what’s next” idea for more effective forward-thinking
• What is the “Smile Strategy,” and why is it important in business development
• Ways to put into practice the “So I can” methodology
• Ways we can get our clients to perceive us as strategic advisors
• How we can achieve the “land and expand strategy” instead of being commoditized

Resources:

• Learn the land and expand strategy in detail by knowing how we get it all done
• Website: https://contentadvisory.net/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robrose/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/tcadvisory
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsmqoUbLSGHd3JZQA1LnyuA
• Enhance your land and expand strategy knowledge from this blog by The Content Advisory

 

Land And Expand Strategy: Full Episode Transcript

 

In this episode, we will discuss the land and expand strategy so welcome to the Sell with Authority podcast. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI, and my team and I created this podcast specifically for you. So, if you’re an agency owner, a business coach, or a strategic consultant and you’re looking to grow a thriving, profitable business that can weather the constant change that seems to be our world’s reality, you’re in the right place.

 

Do you want a proven land and expand strategy for attracting a steady stream of well-prepared, right-fit prospects into your sales pipeline? Yep. We’re going to cover that. Do you want to learn how to step away from the sea of competitors to stand out on the ground you’re standing on? Yeah, we’re going to cover that, too. Do you want to future-proof your business so you can navigate the next challenges that come your way?

 

Well, absolutely. We will help you there, too. I promise you each episode of this podcast will contain valuable insights and tangible examples of best practices. Never theory from thought leaders, experts, and owners who have done exactly what you’re working hard to do. So I want you to think practical and practical. Never any fluff. Each of our guests have built a position of authority and then monetized that position by claiming their ground, by growing their audience, by nurturing leads, and yeah, by converting sales.

 

But all the while, they did it by being helpful. So every time someone from their audience turned around there, they were with a useful answer to an important question. So their prospects never, ever felt like they were prospects. I also promise you that every strategy we discuss and every tool we recommend will be shared in full transparency in each episode so you can plant your flag of authority, claim your ground like I mentioned, and fill your sales pipeline with a steady stream of right-fit clients.

 

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Land And Expand Strategy: Robert Rose’s Introduction

 

Okay, so I am super excited for you to meet our very special guest expert today, Robert Rose. If you’re meeting Robert for the first time, for more than 25 years, he’s helped marketing leaders balance the art and science of marketing and tell their stories more effectively. Over the last ten years, Robert and his firm, the Content Advisory, have advised more than 500 companies, including 15 of the Fortune 100.

 

Robert has served as the Chief Strategy Advisor of the Content Marketing Institute since his launch in 2010 and helped guide it to becoming the leading global content marketing, education and training organization. He’s also the author of three bestselling books and co-host of the This Old Marketing Podcast. With over 2 million downloads in 150 countries. So I invited Robert to join me today because of his point of view on why and how agencies are getting commoditized and what to do about it.

 

Without a doubt, Robert would challenge you. He’s going to nudge you, maybe even push you to think differently. But I promise you, any discomfort that you feel will be good because Robert will walk you through what he calls the smile strategy, the smile method, so that you, too, may smile when you think through the possibilities that the strategic shift can have on your business.

 

And a strategic shift is what Robert and I want for you as a result of listening to this conversation. We want you to courageously unlock the strategic possibilities inside your agency, your business coaching practice, or your strategic consultancy. Because when you do, you’ll rethink the nature of your relationships with your clients. I often hear the same complaint from agencies, coaches, and consultants that you want to have a strategic seat at your client’s table, but you’re not sure how to merit the invitation to join the discussion.

 

Or you used to have that strategic seat. But somewhere along the line, the work you were doing became more tactical, less valuable, and now you’re considered the quote-unquote vendor. I promise you, what Robert shares in this conversation will give you what you need to rethink and reshape your next steps forward. So, without further ado, welcome to the Sell with Authority podcast.

 

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Land And Expand Strategy: Robert’s Path and Journey

 

I mean, first of all, you have the most mellifluous voice. I mean, what a lovely voice to listen to all of that introduction. So it’s great to be here. I am so psyched that we get to be together again. I’m psyched that we get to have that opportunity again and thank you for your generosity and schedule and also sharing your smarts.

 

But before we dive in land and expand strategy, I can’t wait to unpack a smile in front of our audience because it is so cool. I’ve seen you present a couple of times, and each time, I walked away with new nuggets. Great questions. It’s very thought-provoking, so I can’t wait to get there. But before we do, even though I shared a few of the context around you and your path and journey, take us behind the curtain and tell us a little bit more.

 

Tell us a little bit more about your path and journey, Robert, and then we’ll dive in. Well, you know, so I have been doing the marketing thing, as you noted in the introduction. And, you know, I mean, I have now the gray hair to prove it. I’ve been doing I’ve been working in the field of marketing for almost 30 years now.

 

So and really most of that, aside from a eight and a half year stint that I did as a CMO of a software company is in the consulting space. So I’ve worked for agencies, I’ve worked for big consulting firms, and of course, I’ve had my own business for the last, well, 12 years. And in all of those ways I sort of have leveraged my background, my background was, you know, I came out to Los Angeles, which is my hometown, to be a writer and a musician and an artist and a creator. I moved to L.A. in a helpful safety tip in 1987 as a keyboard player.

 

Not the most brilliant move. And you know, when grunge rock and gangster rap is the most popular music, showing up as a piano player is not going to work out for you very well. And so I got into marketing and have spent my time trying to figure out a way to work with my clients independent of who they were in any given context to help them, you know, ultimately evolve into what’s next.

 

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Land And Expand Strategy: Being A Forward Thinker

 

The land and expand strategy has been sort of my mission in life to help my clients. My businesses evolved as best I could and into telling a better story, telling it more effectively, measuring it more effectively, and ultimately just getting sharper around the practice of marketing. And, you know, it’s really been a blessing for me as I’ve worked over the last 12 years in my own business as a small, you know, really solopreneur-oriented business, although I do have a couple of colleagues that I work with on various projects really to work on the strategic side of working with brands to help them tell their story a little better.

 

And so, yeah, we’ve got to, you know, as everybody does, have a very prideful, chick-lit slide of all of the logos that we’ve worked with. But honestly, my biggest pleasure in life is working with the people within those brands and, in many ways, sort of helping them move and evolve into whatever they want to become next.

 

And so it’s a real joy, I find real joy in this strategy. When you said what’s next? And then and then you labeled that as a mission in or mission in your life. I quickly wrote that in my notes into the left of it. You laugh if you saw that. But I wrote a big in the reason why I wrote that is because in all the time that we’ve spent together I’ve been through your workshops and teachings and seen you on stage multiple times and in the podcast interviews that you and I have recorded, like, my gosh, it really cemented into place for me when you said, “What’s next mission in life?” Because I’m like, of course, like I literally had one of those sort of like flashback moments of reading through killing marketing and attending your workshops. And I’m like, “Yes, because sitting there listening and learning from you,” I’m like, “He orbits this distant moon of awesome. I’m like, How is he so forward thinking?

 

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Land And Expand Strategy: It’s About the Number of People You Helped

 

So when you said, What’s next? I’m like, “Duh. Of course, that’s like pervasive. That’s like stealing something from Tamsen Webster. That’s like the red thread through all of the things that you do so brilliantly.” Well, thank you for those kind words. But it has when we think about it, I really look at the, you know, the real core of what I do.

 

You know, I’m a big believer, as you’ve heard me espouse many times in the design thinking and jobs-to-be-done framework and and all of those things. And when somebody would ask me or when I would ask myself what my real job was, it wasn’t ultimately helping them deal with the problem that they had, like sitting in front of them.

 

It was the problem they were going to have after they solved the problem that was in front of them. And it’s that next idea is always helping to the extent that I can change someone into what they can become and that it can sound a little esoteric. I mean somebody asked me one time they said, “You know, how many of the brands that you work with when you work with them in land and expand strategy or you work with them in planning and what they’re doing? How many of them actually execute against what it is you advise them to do?” And I say it’s relatively few actually, and it’s not because they don’t want to. It’s just because bigger brands have challenges and change. I mean, it’s just a challenge and change full stop, which doesn’t devalue what I do. And I have evolved myself to learn that it doesn’t devalue what I do because the flip side of that is and the sort of longer answer to the how many brands actually make the changes you recommend making is how many people actually then make those changes.

 

It is not uncommon for me, after 12 years of doing this for years, five years later, to have someone come up to me at a conference and say, Hey, you worked with us at such and such, and we couldn’t do what we wanted to do because of all of these things in politics and our technology or, you know, we just got in our own way, but it was helpful at the time.

 

But really I was able to take your ideas of land and expand strategy to the next thing that I was doing the next job. The next promotion win or whatever it is. And because I came in with a clean white board, I could actually execute against it. And so to me, the biggest feather in my cap is not how many brands I’ve helped, but how many people I’ve helped.

 

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Land And Expand Strategy: It’s Not About Buying the Quarter-Inch Drill

 

So, you mentioned a couple of really cool things in there. And I’m thinking, but I want to ask you, like if I asked you to define or give us a little bit more context around design thinking in the jobs to be done, I’m thinking that actually might be for the lack of a better word, like a good setup into Smile.

 

What do you think? Sure. Yeah, we can talk about that for the jobs to be done. I mean, I do a whole module of a workshop on it. I’m a fanboy for sure. It’s definitely not my thinking. There’s some deep thinking on the jobs-to-be-done framework that is well beyond even my capacity to teach it.

 

But I know enough about it to be troublesome. So I can certainly explain it and then certainly recommend places where people can go dive deeper into it. Sounds awesome. Okay, so give us some context there, and then we’ll move into Smile. Well, the simplest way to think about it is I go back to I’m a big believer in learning from the greats.

 

And so one of my marketing heroes is a guy by the name of Theodore Leavitt, Professor Leavitt, who was a marketing professor at the Harvard Business School. And most people won’t be familiar with Leavitt because he just wasn’t terribly famous, in terms of mainstream famous. But if you get into being a marketing geek, you’ll you’ll you’ll definitely know the name.

 

He wrote a bunch of books. You probably have heard two things. One is that he wrote a paper, a very famous paper called Marketing Myopia, which I won’t go into, but the quote that comes out of it is what everybody remembers, which is, you know, railroads didn’t understand. They were in the transportation business.

 

They thought they were in the railroad business. And anybody goes, right, I know that quote. And you go, “Yes, that’s Theodore Leavitt in marketing myopia.” And the second quote that he’s often that that often is is thrown around and, you know, rarely attributed to him. Unfortunately, is the idea of people don’t buy a quarter-inch drill. What they’re buying is a quarter-inch hole in the wall.

 

And, a lot of agencies actually quote that a lot. And so the idea there is that when people buy something based on marketing, what we’re buying is not the actual thing. It’s the thing that the thing produces. In other words, we’re not buying that quarter-inch drill.

 

What we’re really buying is the job that needs to be solved, which is putting a hole in the wall that will let us hang a picture. Around that, there was a whole framework of ideas called the Jobs to be done methodology, which is getting to what we really are solving because it’s usually not the need, the need that we have.

 

In other words, if we have to buy something to eat, it doesn’t compel me to buy a particular brand or even a type of food. It just means I need to eat or I’m going to die. And so you have to add in context to that and get to. So if you think about it, I need to fill in the blank with something I need to eat.

 

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Land And Expand Strategy: The Explanation Behind “Smile”

 

So, because of some context of land and expand strategy, usually social or emotional context, I need to eat, but I’m lonely and I have a long commute or something like that, so I can fill in the blank.

 

I need to buy a drill so I can put a quarter-inch hole in the wall. And so that’s what we’re trying to solve for: the jobs to be done. And there’s a whole way of looking at customer interviews and data and framing, working that out into what it is you do.

 

What problem do you solve that is differentiated, and do so in a way that sets you apart from the competition? If you really understand the jobs to be done, it’s all about developing your product or your service in a way that separates you out from your competition. And that’s sort of the idea of the jobs-to-be-done framework.

 

And it’s a great way to get to a unique content positioning, a unique product positioning, or a unique service positioning. And so you think, okay, great, “What is it that I’m actually positioning, right? You know, is it my product, my service, whatever it is?” And of course, that gets us to thinking about the Smile when it comes explicitly to agencies and consultancies.

 

And indeed it does. In fact, I just drew a Smile in my notes and I love the piece of this so I can ask what are we solving for that? That’s awesome. So how do you want to cause smiles big and awesome? How do you think we ought to step into that and start breaking it down?

 

Well, we can add a visual to the show, if you know, but I can explain it pretty quickly, which is, when you think about a smile. You think about it as starting in the upper left and then sort of dipping down and going to the upper right.

 

You think about somebody smiling. And so if you plot that and you plot the sort of vertical access axis there and you say that the upper right is the most valuable, the most useful thing, and then in the lower left would be the least valuable, the most commoditized. And then you have the left or right or the horizontal axis representing time.

 

So the length of time, meaning is it a one-off project? Is it a one-off thing, or is it a process that is usually delivered as some kind of service? Then what you do is when looking at your smile there, you’ve got something that is high value and very short-term project. Then, as it moves down to the very bottom, where your chin might be in this smile, you’ve got something that is probably more of a service but is really highly commoditized.

 

In other words, not that very valuable. And then it starts to go up again where it is at the upper right of your smile is and a service that is delivered over the long term but is highly valuable and differentiated. And so what we do is we start plotting the different kinds of services that we see agencies offering there in the upper left.

 

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Land And Expand Strategy: Figuring Out a Way to Deliver a High Level of Service

 

Just to give you an example, because you can plot just about every service that you have along the smile graph in the upper left, it might be something like a strategy engagement, land and expand strategy. Where it is a project, usually not very long, but helping them roadmap out a strategic project that needs to get executed. This is basically my bread and butter of where my agency lives in project based strategy engagements, and that might be at the very upper left end of the smile.

 

In the upper right, the end of the smile might be something like measurement, where over time, it’s a service that you provide that shows how performance-based marketing, advertising, content management, whatever it is, is a measurement-based process that every week, every month, every quarter, every year, you’re giving your client a strategic set of insights around measuring the performance of whatever it is they’re doing.

 

And then at the bottom of the center, where you have a highly commoditized idea would be something like, you know, doing HTML on a website or writing content or, you know, and as we maybe move up toward the right-hand side, maybe something like SEO services or, you know, those kinds of things and technology development and all of these kinds of things where it is much more tactical and is either delivered as a one time project and or ongoing service and plotted against the smile graph accordingly.

 

And, you know, there are different levels of strategy. The key and the reason we do it is that we find that clients value the sense that the horizontal graph is in the upper levels of the smile graph and will pay for and look at strategic that, and they don’t value and are not loyal to those at the lower end of the smile graph.

 

As an agency, we find that delivering against any part of the upper part of the smile graph is child’s play; it’s easy to move down the smile in order. You can monetize different services quite easily if you’re at the lower end of the smile graph; it’s almost impossible to climb up to either side.

 

It’s very, very difficult to get out of the eyes of your client if that’s where you start or remain at that tactical level of service. And it’s just really, really difficult to move up. And so that becomes your goal is to look at that, see where you are with any given client, and then either plot some way of trying to climb up very, very difficult or ideally, as you start engaging new clients, figure out a way to begin delivering much higher in the slight smile graph so that you can move down and monetize those tactical things as you want to.

 

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Land And Expand Strategy: Presenting Yourself as An Advisor to The Strategy

 

I would really love to get your perspective here because you described it as almost impossible to essentially claim the sides of the smile if you’re down at the bottom. So why? Because those are pretty strong words—almost impossible. Why do you believe that to be true? Because, well, one is experience, right?

 

So my experience with this might be no, it’s not that much hyperbole. It might be a little hyperbole to say it’s almost impossible, but it’s really difficult in my experience to move up. And the reason is that when clients engage us, they engage us with a certain lens, and that lens, that perception that they engage us with, is really difficult once we have started that service.

 

And the reason is because, one, they will have a lens, but even if they believe, even if they believe that, yes, we’re engaging them now for helping us write some blog posts and helping us, create some copy for some ads. But really, if we want to, they have the land and expand strategy available to us. But even if even if they believe, unfortunately, the business develops the lens as well.

 

So the CEO, the senior leadership, other people in the organization, and it becomes really, really difficult to start to convince those people that, yeah, I know we started out writing blog posts for you. Still, you want to trust us with your marketing strategy, independent of how strong your people are. It’s just tough to get through that initial perception of value.

 

And it’s not that it can’t be done. It absolutely can be done, but it’s just much, much more difficult than if you start with that level of land and expand strategy. Even if you have to just create the perception as part of your business development or sales experience to get more tactical, the company may only be looking for you to write blog posts or create an SEO process or look at you as a copywriter for the front page of the website or whatever it happens to be.

 

But if you start to insert yourself and say, “Yes, I know that’s what you want, but let’s talk about your strategy first”, you’ve then at least created that perception regarding all of the actual services you ultimately get paid for. And that’s the real beauty of this idea as a model is always presenting yourself as an advisor to the strategy independent of what service you deliver.

 

Super smart. So then the agencies, let’s say that, have been able to move out of the bottom of the smile or maintain the bottom of the smile while working up the sides of the smile. And I want to come back to that in just a minute. But for the ones who did it, as you said, the advisor to the land and expand strategy, and then there’s probably something that they did over time. They may have also needed some sort of best strategy to say, “Well, we’re going to have to start attracting these types of clients.”

 

Am I making good assumptions or something different? Indeed, what I would say is that there are two. Yes. And that idea that is to say it comes down to this as a marketing and positioning idea more than anything else. Because as I mentioned, some of you may decide with any given existing client that it’s just not worth the effort.

 

In other words, we’re deep in this client’s relationship, and they see us as the people who optimize their email campaigns. And that’s kind of it. We’re not getting into their brand, marketing, business, or anything like that because that’s how they see us.

 

And we just don’t, you know, feel like it, right? They’re just not that good a client. Now, there may be clients that you feel differently about, that you actually do want to attempt to climb up. However, the more important lesson coming out of this is for new businesses. When we start structuring our new relationships, you may have someone who sends you an RFP, or you may have someone who calls you and says, “I’m looking for someone to write blog posts or a white paper, or I’m looking for someone to do an influencer program, or I’m looking for someone to send an email for us as a newsletter every week or build our website or whatever.” Those things are plotted at various points. On the lower part of the smile graph, the reaction should be great, fantastic. Our methodology for doing that is straightforward and here it is, and this is the way we do those things and blah, blah, blah. But before we do that, we want to talk to you about your strategy.

 

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Land And Expand Strategy: Inserting Your Methodology on How You Handle Projects

 

Even if you give it away, even if I would advise you not to give it away. But even if you give it away, the idea is that what people are paying you for if you’re an agency, just realize that what people are paying you for is your point of view on the way the world works.

 

And so even if you have to give it away, your point of view on the way the world works affects the way that you’re going to write those blog posts, structure those email programs, structure your SEO. So even if the only positioning you have with that client is I just want to understand your land and expand strategy. You are presenting yourself as a strategic advisor to help them understand your point of view on the way the world works.

 

So even if you never give them a land and expand strategy, engagement, or strategy project through the lens that you’re creating in the initial parts of your relationship, they see you as strategic. So it enables you to charge more for that email program, but it also enables you to start at the smile graph at the very top and move your way down, backward, and forwards.

 

And it becomes much easier because now when you go back and you go, “Hey, we’re doing this email program for you.” By the way, when we talked about your strategy, you also talked about a challenge here and there. We can help you with that and here’s the ways we can help you with that.

 

It enables you to execute the land and expand strategy in your client’s business much more quickly. Lastly, and then expand. But that’s great because you’re not only positioning yourself differently now, but then you’re also selling two words that you shared at the beginning about what’s next. You’re setting up future conversations and putting yourself in the advisor’s seat to be able to talk about strategy.

 

But you haven’t pigeonhole yourself at the bottom of the smile. You’re now setting that up so that you can be helpful when they want to have a “what’s next conversation”, right? That’s right. So, inserting that into your methodology of how you deliver any kind of project is the key. And you know, just as an example of that, one of the things that I often do in our business is we’ll set up if we’re going to get hired for something tactical, which is rare these days, but not unheard of.

 

And they want to come in and hire us for something tactical. And you know, what will the way we’ll pitch it be? We’ll say, well, as part of our methodology, we have this strategy review that we like to do and set up with you etc. And we usually charge this much for that. And here’s how much we charge for the tactical thing you’re asking us to do.

 

And by the way, by going through the strategic part, I know you said you don’t need it. What we’ll do is it’s part of the way that we work, so we want you to go through it and we’ll decide anything that we discount or, excuse me, anything we find out coming out of that will help us discount the amount we’re going to charge you for doing the tactical thing.

 

And I know that sounds a little bait and switch, but it’s not because if you think about it. One of the things that often gets us most into trouble is that we don’t understand the broader picture of that tactical thing a company is asking us to do. You know, they want us to build a website, and we start building the website, and then all of a sudden, we understand there’s this huge thing that they are going to do or that they want to do or that we just weren’t aware of when they asked us to build a website.

 

They didn’t think to tell us. We didn’t think to ask, and now it puts our website behind the project, you know, timelines and budget and all that sort of thing. And by fleshing that land and expand strategy out and understanding it, you will inevitably help the client understand something they didn’t before even if you’re just having them go through why they’re doing this tactical thing.

 

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Land And Expand Strategy: Knowing Where to Position Yourself

 

Now, what you’ve done is two things. One is that you’ve made your tactical project clearer for scope so that you can either upsell it, cross-sell it, or whatever, or scope it appropriately. But more importantly, in terms of our discussion on the smile graph, you have now positioned yourself as a strategic thinker.

 

The reason I like to charge forward is because then they have the perception that it’s valuable from you. And so if you can get them to pay for it, great. If you can’t get them to pay for it because then what you’re doing is you’re actually saying, well, we’ll discount the tactical thing accordingly, but it’s just part of our process.

 

That’s the way we work. But let’s say that someone in our audience has a shop that focuses on either the high end or the bottom of the smile. So they’re doing either high value for the short term or high value for the long term, or perhaps a hybrid of both. And in the end, they want to go down to the bottom of the smile to get some of the tactical things.

 

But is there in your experience that you have seen an agency do that and then get accidentally stuck at the bottom of the smile? So is there a danger that you would caution people to like if you’re going to do that, these are the things you need to think about to do that correctly?

 

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, look, this is not to say that you never go into a relationship that you are in, that you say no to someone who says no thank you to land and expand strategy, no thank you to measurement, no thank you to anything strategic at all. I only want you to write blog post, so thank you very much. But what we want to do as an agency, then, is to consciously acknowledge, even if it’s just to ourselves, that the client is unlikely to be loyal and is unlikely to move.

 

In other words, when we’re doing our own resource planning, let’s understand where we really are with that client and not pretend. And you know, it’s not going to be difficult for us to change that relationship. It may be fine, right? We may be making great money doing that tactical thing on a week-by-week, month-by-month basis.

 

But just understand that, when we’re doing our forecasting, it’s going to be really hard beyond any contractual period that we have to say they’re there. They will easily find a replacement for us. And so the more tactical, the closer to the bottom of the smile graph, the one that’s very popular these days is, of course, like writing blog posts and white papers and influencer marketing and that sort of thing.

 

It’s just not hard to find. And so, you know, it’s one blog post, one white paper, or one social media tweet that goes awry, and you’re getting replaced. And out of there, it is developing that stickier relationship at the advisory level. That is really the place where it becomes harder to extricate us from the relationship.

 

And so it’s not that we never take those relationships. We just acknowledge what they are. And so how would you, I’m going to use a word that you used a few minutes ago. The positioning piece. So if you’re in the high-value activities, how do you take some of the like if a client asks you like like you’ve been executing on the land and expand strategy piece and the measurement piece and all of that and the client says, “Hey, could you handle maybe this blog post or this new white paper?”

 

So it’s at the bottom of the smile activity. How do you position that correctly so you don’t accidentally slide down the smile? Yeah, well, that’s the key, right? You have established yourself with that great perception that you are strategic, you know? Thank you so much. You know, we appreciated that land and expand strategy and engagement or the advice that you gave us, and you helped us see these things.

 

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Land And Expand Strategy: Delivering High-Value Stuff at The Tactical Level

 

But we really need your help. Do you provide the service of writing some of these things? One, by the way, they’re going to look at those blog posts and those white papers in a completely different light, just FYI. You know, because think about that for a minute, right? When you hire somebody really strategic who’s giving you great advice, and then you ask them for something very tactical, how much more value do you put on that tactical thing that they provide you with total sense?

 

You know, it’s like asking someone, one of your trusted friends for a movie review rather than some person off the street for a movie review. You trust that value is going to be so much higher from the tactical thing. So one, it’s easier to deliver higher value stuff at the tactical level if you have that strategic relationship.

 

But two, you would say to them, fantastic, let’s have a quick land and expand strategy session and let’s talk about what you want to do over the long term so that we’ve positioned this blog writing or this white paper writing or content creation service for you just precisely bespoke to your needs. So let’s have a quick one hour, 90 minute, whatever it is, session to plan out what we want to do, because as you know, that’s the way we work.

 

Client X and basically then put that into your service agreement with them that once every month, once every you know, you’re going to add a meeting that says basically, how are we doing, right? We’re looking at performance, now we’re going to add performance measurement to that as well because we want to understand how we’re doing and so on and so forth.

 

They start to build on each other, right? For every one of those tactical services, there is a corresponding strategy, land and expand strategy and engagement. They can go along with it. Yeah, that is so smart because you’re not. And I think that this happened is that when I was talking about in the introduction and why I was so excited for you to join us. When we get commoditized they they complain about gosh, I wish we had a C, or we used to have a seat at the client’s table and now we don’t.

 

Now we’re treated like a vendor. What you just posed there was really smart. You have a seat at the table and they say, “Hey, could you do this tactical thing?” And then you said, “This is like holding on to the seat at the table by saying, sure, let’s have a strategy session.” You’re always running it through that frame.

 

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Land And Expand Strategy: Delivering The Best Version of The Tactical Service

 

So even though the execution might be tactical, you’ve never left your seat at the table. That’s that’s exactly right, always. And that’s a great way too. I love the way you just phrase that, and run it through that frame. That’s always run it through that frame. If you’re the CEO of the agency or the director or the VP at the agency and you’re like, “Wow, but I don’t have that day-to-day communication with that.”

 

You know, it’s my project manager or my account manager who has that relationship. It’s fantastic, but they should also run it through that frame. Remember, they’re not engaging your clients. The value you provide is that they are engaging the institution of your agency, not the account manager. Even if you’re an agency of three people or two people or one person, like when I engage with a client, I’m not engaging as Robert Rose.

 

I engage as the content advisor. The content advisor provides you land and expand strategy, which just happens to come from me because I’m the guy here. But you’re engaging the institution. It’s the institution’s knowledge, and experience that gives you the ability to provide that level of and that frame. Everything runs through that frame. And what you’re then doing is saying, “Great, I just need to put that into context for the institution to be able to deliver the best version of that tactical service you’re asking for.” Then, you never lose that seat at the table independent of your service.

 

That’s just so smart, my gosh. This has been great. I know that we’re quickly running out of time, Robert, and I am just so grateful for your generosity. Before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, do you think we might have missed anything? Do you have any additional advice or recommendations that you would like to share?

 

And then please do tell our audience the best way to connect with you, my friend. Well, the only thing I would say is that the pitfall here, the sort of, you know, pothole that you can fall into here, is that this can be a very fearful thing for you to do. To position yourself this way with some of your clients because it’s not what they ask for, especially with new clients.

 

New clients come in, they ask for a particular thing, and it can be a little overwhelming in fear to say, “Okay, I know you asked for this, but I want to sell you this but don’t position it that way.” Don’t position it as if you’re trying to sell them something different than they ask for. It is.

 

Yes, we understand what you’ve asked for. This is the way we deliver that thing and basically use it as part of your approach to solving whatever it is the right way. You framed it with the idea that running it through that frame is the right way to say it. You’re not changing what they’re asking for.

 

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Land And Expand Strategy: Getting In Touch and Closing Remarks

 

You’re just saying, “Here’s the way we deliver what you’re asking for.” And then you can decide and a business decision to give the client and the relationship you have and how it’s come in the front door about whether you want to try and sell it, give it away, offer it up as, you know, as a freebie that discounts against the ultimate tactical thing or whatever it is.

 

But always run it through that frame of the high end of either providing a strategic service or a strategic project. And you’ll know, and as you know, you’ll always be smiling. In that case, to reach me, I’m on Twitter and LinkedIn. Easy to find. And of course, my email address is [email protected].

 

So please feel free to email me if you have questions or anything else. Okay, everyone, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and re-listen to the words of wisdom that Robert so generously shared with you, you have to take in and apply them.

 

You have to take this land and expand strategy that he gave you, which broke down into all of the pieces, take it and apply it and accelerate your results. And Robert, thank you again for saying yes to coming onto the show to be our mentor and guide. Yet again to help us move our businesses onward to the next level. Thank you so much, my friend.

 

Absolutely a pleasure.

 

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