Predictive ROI CEO Stephen Woessner Maps How Intentional Experiences Help Prospects Across Your Trust Bridge

The transcript below has been edited lightly for clarity, speaker identification, and proper names. The audio remains the authoritative version of the conversation.

Stephen Woessner [00:00:08 – 00:00:54]

Over the past decade, we’ve hosted more than 1,200 conversations with CEOs, bestselling authors, respected researchers, and agency leaders. And that body of work has generated nearly 1 million podcast downloads and YouTube views from listeners and viewers in more than 100 countries. 100 countries. And here’s the red thread running through the insights we’ve collected. Agencies that have built an authority position no longer struggle to be seen. Instead, they struggle to activate latent demand. Agency leaders have said to us, is exactly where we’re sitting right now, authority without demand. So welcome to the In Demand Agency Podcast presented by Predictive ROI.

Stephen Woessner [00:00:55 – 00:02:08]

Sparked by research from the Harvard Business Review, Edelman, Gallup, Agencycore, all showing that trust has moved upstream. In today’s marketplace, authority earns attention. Yes, but demand, demand is what turns attention into action. Each episode deconstructs the science of demand from behavioral psychology, decision-making research, and the cross-industry strategies behind why in how B2B buyers make their decisions. We interviewed the world’s leading behavioral scientists, agency network leaders, and strategists from industries far beyond ours— experts who are reshaping how demand works. I’m your host, Stephen Wessner, and in each episode, we’ll translate their insights directly into the agency world. And these conversations are now being heard By a community of over 30,000 agency owners and their teams. Hello friends, and welcome to another episode of the In Demand Agency Podcast.

Stephen Woessner [00:02:09 – 00:03:35]

And today’s episode is a solocast, so there’s no guest today. It is just you and me. In today’s episode, today’s solocast is going to serve Let’s call it a bit of a bookend. So you may recall that back in episode 6, I asked you a question, and that question was, what causes a prospect who already trusts your agency to take the final step, to finally act and become your agency’s next new client, to walk across your trust bridge and step into demand, the demand side of the ecosystem? I shared at the end of episode 6 that 3 of the world’s leading authorities from outside the agency space would help us answer that question. And those experts were Scott McCain, Don Yeager, and Neen James. And candidly, these 3 episodes ended up turning into 7, a 7-part series instead of a 3-part series. Because as I sat across the virtual table from each guest, I kept noticing the same red thread running through each conversation. So I invited several more experts like Simon Bowen and Terry Seitz, Brett Gilliland, and Guillermo Orellana to add their insights and wisdom to the series.

Stephen Woessner [00:03:36 – 00:04:10]

And I wanted to give that red thread a name. So we’re going to give it a name today. And that name is experiences. So here’s what I mean. Your agency is creating experiences for your prospects and clients every single day. Your content is an experience. Your first email, your meeting invitation, your first conversation, your proposal, your follow-up, your onboarding, your delivery. Every one of those moments, friends, is an experience.

Stephen Woessner [00:04:11 – 00:05:29]

Some of those experiences you and your team designed on purpose. You architected them with intention. And from your client’s perspective, I have no doubt those experiences feel world-class. And then some of those experiences simply happen. And during my wrap of episode 12, after my conversation with Dean James, I shared with you We can spend years building deep expertise and then make the mistake of sending a right-fit prospect the same sort of meaningless invitation that everyone else sends, which kind of negates then your years of scar tissue, years of you and your team delivering client results, years of hard-won expertise. And the first experience your prospect has with all of it is a calendar invite that looks exactly like the one they received from the last 3 agencies they decided not to hire. And that’s the gap we’re going to close today in this bookend. So here’s the thesis, if you will, for the Experiences series that we just finished and that we’re kind of putting again the bookend on today with today’s solo cast.

Stephen Woessner [00:05:29 – 00:06:25]

That series is episodes 7 through 13. You’re listening to episode 14 right now. When you and your team architect the experiences your prospects and clients have with your agency intentionally, those experiences create intrigue, curiosity, and desire. And intrigue, curiosity, and desire are what help a right-fit prospect, one of your right-fit prospects, Accept your invitation. They take you by the hand, take your hand that you’ve extended, and walk across your trust bridge to become your agency’s next new client. That’s how your agency becomes an in-demand agency. So today, you and I are going to walk back through the 7 conversations in this series. I’m going to pull the most important insights.

Stephen Woessner [00:06:25 – 00:07:06]

From each one. Now, again, that’s my lens and what I think are the most important insights. You may have a different list and I would love to compare lists with you. So I’m going to do that so that you and your team can put these insights and wisdom that these amazingly awesome, generous guests shared during their episodes so you can put them into practice right away. We have a lot to cover. I’m giggling because as I’m looking at my notes, I know how many pages of notes that I want to share with you. So we have a lot to cover. So we’re going to dive in here by starting with a quick rewind.

Stephen Woessner [00:07:08 – 00:08:06]

So during episode 1, you and I sketched out— episode 1 of this podcast, you and I sketched out together what we call the authority-demand Ecosystem. And you may recall that authority was on the left, demand was on the right, and I’d asked you to draw a box on the left, write the word authority in it, and then a box on the right to write the word demand in it. And then to connect the 2 boxes on the left and the right, connect the 2 boxes with a straight line, and then label that line the trust bridge. Because the trust bridge Is what connects authority on the left and demand on the right, or on the right, excuse me. Authority earns attention. Awesome. Demand, demand is when your right fit prospect prefers your agency, chooses your agency, and becomes your next new client. And trust is the bridge that connects the two of them.

Stephen Woessner [00:08:06 – 00:09:04]

Then in episode 6, we looked at Why a prospect who trusts your agency may still not take that next step. We talked about curiosity gaps. We talked about barriers. We talked about making your expertise visible to your prospects, as well as making it visible to the AI tools they’re using that your prospects are using to not just find you, but to help evaluate you. Your prospects are using tools to not just find you. But to help evaluate you all before you even know that they’re out there looking. So for today, instead of walking through the episodes one at a time in the order they were published, I’d like for you and I to walk across the ecosystem itself from left to right. This is the same path your prospect walks, whether they realize it or not.

Stephen Woessner [00:09:05 – 00:09:47]

So first we’re going to take a look at authority, the left side of the ecosystem. This is where your agency earns attention. Awesome. And where the insights from Don Jaeger, Guillermo Orellana, and Terry Seitz will help us. Then we’ll step onto the trust bridge where your prospect truly begins to experience how your agency thinks. And this is where Simon Bowen, Scott McCain, and Neen James will help us. And then we’ll cross over to the demand side of the ecosystem, the right side of the ecosystem where the promise you made has to be kept. And that’s where Brett Gylliland is going to help us.

Stephen Woessner [00:09:48 – 00:10:46]

Then I’ll share a story, a brief story, what I’ll call a story from the field where all of this came together in a single moment with a single word change. All right, so that is the plan for today’s solo cast, today’s bookend in episode 14. Okay, friends, here we go. Uh, let’s start on the left side of the ecosystem, authority. So I’d like to begin with our most recent conversation in the series, episode 13 with Terry Seitz. Terry is partner and chief operating officer of the Nuance Collective. In addition to his depth of agency expertise, Terry worked in senior marketing leadership roles at Visa for 12 years. So he has sat on both sides of the agency-client table.

Stephen Woessner [00:10:48 – 00:11:48]

And Terry opened our conversation with 3 words. He said, Stephen, attention is fleeting. Then he, Then he went even further. And this, this kind of took me back a little bit. And he said, attention for attention’s sake is a false god. And candidly, friends, that one kind of stung a little bit because so many agencies, and I’m including predictive ROI here, measure their content or maybe the initial effectiveness of that content By how much attention it earns. We look at views and downloads and likes and followers, email subscribers, countries, and the list goes on. And during my conversation with Terry, you know, I made an argument that I still believe, and that is if attention by itself builds a business, every movie starring an actor with a massive social following would be a blockbuster.

Stephen Woessner [00:11:48 – 00:12:42]

And As we know, friends, that social media followers do not directly translate at least 100% of the time to box office ticket sales. So then what’s beyond the metrics? What does attention need? So Terry shared that your agency needs to stand for something, a shorthand memory and association. that people carry around about you. And that memory has to be compounded over time. And that idea connects beautifully to something Scott McCain taught us in episode 7. Scott said, it’s not just about standing out anymore. It’s about what we stand for. What do we stand for? 4 friends.

Stephen Woessner [00:12:42 – 00:13:24]

Terry and Scott arrived at the same destination from 2 different directions. Your prospect needs a reason to remember you. Yes. And that reason has to be something that they care about. Then Terry and I talked about Jesse Cole and the Savannah Bananas. The spectacle that is the Bananas earns attention, no doubt. But in my opinion, the bananas grew because of their fan-first experience that Jesse and I talked about back when I interviewed him for Onward Nation. Their fan-first experience that surrounds the spectacle and experience their fans tell other people about.

Stephen Woessner [00:13:24 – 00:14:18]

Then those people tell somebody and then they tell somebody else. That’s what attention with a job and a purpose To Terry’s point, looks like attention earns the first look, but the experience your prospect has with you after that first look is what they remember and want to repeat. So let’s bring that into your agency. What does your right fit prospect remember about your agency after they read your newsletter? After they listen to your podcast, after they watch one of your YouTube videos? If the answer is, and candidly, the honest answer is, wow, this team is smart. Okay. Yes. That’s awesome. But smart is just the ante in today’s biz dev game, friends.

Stephen Woessner [00:14:19 – 00:15:09]

And that brings us to episode 11 with Guillermo Orellana. Guillermo is the founder of Glitch Media Group, and he’s a strategic content partner to Don Jaeger, our guest in episode 8. And Guillermo looks at content the way a great host, you know, looks at an evening. He said, I look at everything about content in a customer journey, through the lens of a customer journey. Then he gave us one of my most favorite lines from this series. And he said to me, if somebody asks you for water, you don’t fire hose them. You give them a sip of water. Then you offer them a glass of water.

Stephen Woessner [00:15:09 – 00:15:54]

And only then maybe do you give them the fire hose. And for Guillermo, in the world of of content that lives oftentimes in YouTube channels. For Guillermo, that sip is a YouTube Short. Then the glass is more of a focus compilation video, like a compilation of several other longer-form videos on that channel. And then a fire hose is a full-length conversation. In each step, each step, the sip, the glass, the fire hose, each of those steps makes a small promise. Mm-hmm. And keeps it before inviting the person, your prospect, before you invite your prospect into then the next step.

Stephen Woessner [00:15:56 – 00:17:03]

Guillermo also taught us that every title, every title makes a promise, and the opening of the video has to keep that promise. And that was a big aha for me. If your title offers an answer to a business problem, and the first 2 minutes of your video wander somewhere else, you’ve made your prospect wait for the thing that you promised. And that feels like a whole lot of not awesome, friends. So now think about where else your agency makes a promise in the first few seconds. The subject line of an email, the title of a webinar, The name of a meeting invitation that is sitting on your prospect’s calendar. Every one of those is a title, and every one of them makes a promise, albeit maybe subtle, about the experience they are about to see and feel with you and your team. So, uh, full transparency moment here, friends.

Stephen Woessner [00:17:05 – 00:17:39]

This lesson from Guillermo was a tough one for me. And so here’s why. You know, my predictive team and I, we’ve published over, gosh, let’s call it 1,200 podcast episodes now. It’s a little bit more than that, but let’s call it 1,200. You know, hundreds of videos on our YouTube channel. We’ve written 6 books and dozens and dozens of ebooks. We’ve hosted lots of live events over the years. And all of that equals authority.

Stephen Woessner [00:17:40 – 00:18:47]

But Guillermo helped me see that publishing a video and helping a right-fit prospect find the next piece of our teaching are 2 completely different jobs. The first job, yes, is, I mean, the first job is having the courage to publish, like get out of the starting gates. Yes. But the second job is designing an experience. And when Guillermo walked me through that lesson, my heart sank a little bit. And because I could see that, yeah, we’ve published a lot of content, but we have— but we haven’t been, and this is raising the bar, but we haven’t been as intentional as we could have been in connecting one sip, then to a glass, and then to a fire hose. Like, we could be much more intentional about that. And so as I was thinking about that, as he was sharing that, I was thinking, have we done a good job here? Absolutely not.

Stephen Woessner [00:18:47 – 00:19:43]

Like, there is room for improvement. So I knew that we had work to do, and we, like, as soon as I finished my interview with Guillermo, We immediately put that advice into action. So then Guillermo added one more piece that I would like you and your team to really think about. And that piece is consistency. He said breaking consistency is probably the worst thing you can do because your audience is going to expect the thing, whatever the thing is, whatever that experience is. And when it isn’t there, you lose their trust. So your content cadence is a promise. And every time you keep it, your prospect experiences a small part of what it would be like to work with you.

Stephen Woessner [00:19:45 – 00:20:32]

All right. So let’s, let’s rewind now and go back to episode 8, uh, with my friend. my weekly accountability partner and mentor, Don Yaeger. Don is a 13-time New York Times bestselling author, and his newest book is entitled The Business of Storytelling. And that’s— that is the focus, or that was the focus of the conversation when Hannah and I interviewed Don. And so Hannah and I asked Don during that conversation, How a story moves someone to act. And Don took us back to Thanksgiving dinner in the house where he grew up. And he opens the story with a very simple line.

Stephen Woessner [00:20:33 – 00:21:10]

And this is me quoting Don. I don’t know what Thanksgiving looked like at your house growing up. And then he paused with Hannah and I. So he said that, I don’t know what Thanksgiving looked like at your house growing up. And then he paused. And then in that pause, the reader, Hannah and I, as we’re listening to Don, we’re no longer thinking about Don’s Thanksgiving story. We’re thinking about our stories or collection of stories. And Don called that being intentional.

Stephen Woessner [00:21:10 – 00:21:50]

He said, good storytelling is intentional. It’s not accidental. And then he taught us how to do it on purpose. One of the tools that he recommended, uh, or one of the strategies that he recommended that he’s developed over the years is what he calls the I-U ratio and reversing it. So he says, reverse the I-U ratio. So go through your story, the story that you’re going to share with one of your prospects. And find every reference to I, meaning you, me, and my. Those words, I, me, and my, that are in your story.

Stephen Woessner [00:21:51 – 00:22:45]

And ask how your listener can step into that moment with you by what you’re going to do is replace the I’s or the me’s or the my’s with you’s. And when you do that, the story becomes about your audience and not about you. And that is a powerful shift, my friends. And so then before you tell any story, before you share any story, decide what you want your listener to do, think, and feel when it’s over. Don said, if you leave do, think, and feel to chance, that’s your failure with the story. Do, think, and feel. Don also shared how he prepares before he ever tells A story or even asks a question. He calls it his 3 concentric circles.

Stephen Woessner [00:22:46 – 00:23:27]

The outer circle is research. Learn what your listener cares about. The middle circle is connection. Find the place where your story and their story intersect. And at the center is the breakthrough. Because once you’ve done the research and found the connection, You’ve earned the right to ask a better question. Don told us about when he was preparing for a conversation, for an interview with Michael Jordan around Michael’s 50th birthday. And Don had interviewed Michael many times before, and he could have walked in and asked the easy questions.

Stephen Woessner [00:23:27 – 00:24:32]

That would’ve been the easy thing to do. But instead, Don doubled down and did some new research. He found a new point of connection and he asked a question that Michael had never been asked before in the thousands of interviews that Michael Jordan had done. And Michael told a story he had never shared before, obviously, because he’d never been asked the question. So Don shared an idea during that part of the conversation that Hannah and I had with him That I’d like you and your team to hear. Nothing makes someone more interested in you than when they find that you’ve taken time to be interested in them. Think about what that means for your next biz dev conversation. Nothing makes someone more interested in you than when they find that you’ve taken time to be interested in them.

Stephen Woessner [00:24:33 – 00:25:36]

Friends, how you research your prospect and what you share, how you share it with them, is in fact you creating an experience. Your prospect feels it the moment you ask a question, which proves you did your homework. During my post-interview debrief with Hannah, She said something that I believe sums up Don’s entire episode. When you turn a story into an experience that people feel invited to participate in, that’s what makes it powerful. A story your prospect can step into becomes an experience your prospect remembers, friends. So 3 conversations on the authority side of the ecosystem. Terry taught us that attention needs a job to do. Guillermo taught us to design the path, a sip, then a glass, then a fire hose, and to keep the promise every single time.

Stephen Woessner [00:25:38 – 00:26:46]

And Don taught us to invite your prospect inside the story. Attention, path, invitation. That’s how the authority side of your ecosystem Starts to create intrigue and curiosity instead of, you know, polite nods from your prospects. So now let’s step into, or step onto, I should say, the trust bridge. This is where your prospect stops observing your agency from a distance and starts experiencing how your agency thinks. And there’s no better guide for this part of the journey than Simon Bowen from episode 10. Simon is the founder and CEO of The Models Method, and he has spent nearly 3 decades helping leaders turn sophisticated thinking into visual models people can understand and use. So Simon gave us a direct challenge during that conversation and a real shift In how we value what we’re putting on the table, friends.

Stephen Woessner [00:26:47 – 00:27:35]

It’s not deliverables. I know we talk about that a lot in these conversations, and in that it’s not deliverables, that it’s outcomes. There’s even going to be a little twist here that you’ll hear in Simon’s words. And this is a quote of Simon. He said, your thinking is your product. Your thinking The logic underneath, friends, the logic underneath the process, the process steps that you include on, you know, slide 4 or slide 14 of your capabilities deck. Your thinking is your product. And then Simon showed us how to let a prospect experience that thinking instead of the standard 3 boxes or 4 boxes or 5 boxes in the 360-degree process.

Stephen Woessner [00:27:37 – 00:28:21]

During our conversation, Simon drew out an iceberg, and I hope that you will go to our YouTube channel and watch this version of the interview because we took the video and all of Simon’s drawing and so forth, and we published it in its full-length form on our YouTube channel. So you can find that at YouTube. I think it’s just @PredictiveROI, is our YouTube channel. So during our conversation, Simon drew an iceberg. And then he turned to me and said, hey, how about we do a role play? You be the prospect. And then he asked me a bunch of questions. He listened to my answers. He reflected my own words back to me.

Stephen Woessner [00:28:22 – 00:29:28]

And then together, he and I built a model of the business issues that I had shared with him. I think I was playing the role of a manufacturer maybe, and he was playing the role of an agency. So he built a model of the business issues that I had shared with him from the surface problem down to the hidden problem, all the way to the ache and pains, which was at the base of the iceberg. And at the break, I shared with you what I was feeling in real time. At the break during that episode, I shared with you what I was feeling in real time. And if you were to take what Simon brilliantly demonstrated during that role play, And you were to put that into a conversation with one of your prospects, you will create intrigue, curiosity, and desire as you bring your prospect into an experience with you. And so Simon’s instruction, or I should say instructions, there were a number during that conversation, but one of them was stop selling. And start facilitating.

Stephen Woessner [00:29:28 – 00:30:22]

And here’s why that works. Simon said, when someone helps you build the model, it’s hard for them to disagree with it once it’s finished, right? If you help your prospects step into the building process, it’s hard for them to disagree then once they see that finished work. So think about that, friends. Your prospect is no longer evaluating Your agency from the outside, your prospect is helping build their path forward from the inside, and they’re building their path forward likely with you from the inside. That’s the trust bridge being built in real time. And Simon also told us what every buyer is looking for underneath all of it. They’re saying to themselves, or maybe even audibly to you, Make me safe. Help me win.

Stephen Woessner [00:30:24 – 00:31:21]

When your prospect experiences your thinking instead of just hearing about it, both of those needs start being met. They can see how you’re going to help them be safe, how you’re going to help them win. Simon also helped us see why trust by itself may not be enough. He said, Trust gets you in the door, but believability gets you sold. And believability comes from structure, friends. When your prospect can see how your thinking fits together, the problem, the hidden issues beneath it, and the path forward, your recommendation becomes easier to believe. In Simon’s Futures model, Made the point beautifully. So again, you’ll see this if you haven’t watched Simon’s episode yet on YouTube.

Stephen Woessner [00:31:21 – 00:32:17]

I would highly recommend that you do that because he visually maps out 3 different models during that conversation. The first one is like a 2 by 2 matrix, kind of a quadrant. The middle model, the second model is the iceberg, and the third model is what he calls the futures model, which I’m Highlighting right here, and in the futures model is a great illustration of where your prospect sits today. And there are essentially two paths. One one of those paths, so think of like a straight horizontal line visually, and that’s sort of like the kind of the status quo. And then there’s a line that curves or and arcs downward. And Simon calls that downward arc, he calls that drift. Because problems don’t sit still, they compound.

Stephen Woessner [00:32:18 – 00:33:00]

So there’s an illusion of the status quo. Problems don’t sit still, they compound. And so it curves downward or arcs downward. That’s drift. Then the other curve arcs upward. And that path is decision. And Simon said during our conversation, the difference between winning and losing is the difference between decision and drift. So our job, friends, is to help prospects see both futures clearly so they can see the benefit of decision and they can see the impact of drift.

Stephen Woessner [00:33:00 – 00:33:56]

And then help them experience what it would like, what it would feel like to choose the better future with your agency working alongside them. So now let’s go back to where our experience, uh, experiences series, excuse me, began back in episode 7 with Scott McCain. Scott is the world’s leading authority on distinction. And the opening line on his website makes me smile. Whenever I read it because of how spot on it is. And this is the quote, if customers can compare you, they can replace you. How powerful is that? And so during our conversation, Scott said, people are going to buy based upon the feeling that you create. The feeling, friends, the feeling your prospect has when they interact with your agency.

Stephen Woessner [00:33:57 – 00:34:50]

Then Scott said something that I believe every agency owner should write on a sticky note and put on their monitor. And this is the quote, your customers experience you horizontally. And here’s what Scott meant by that. Your agency is built with strategy over here and creative over there, account service or account management in a different lane. Maybe finance someplace else, but your client never sees your org chart. Your client experiences one agency, one series of moments, and those series of moments equal one feeling. So if the handoff from your biz dev conversation to your kickoff feels clunky, your prospect doesn’t think, oh, that’s just a different department. They think that’s what this agency is like.

Stephen Woessner [00:34:51 – 00:35:56]

So Scott also left us with a line that I believe captures where our industry is headed, and that is, tasks are for technology, tasks are for technology, and the experiences are for humans. AI can help your team do more tasks, no doubt. Awesome. But the experience your prospect has with your people, That’s yours to architect. And that brings us to the namesake of this entire series, and that is episode 12 with Neen James. Neen is the author of the book Exceptional Experiences, and her work sits at the intersection of intentional attention and luxury-level experiences. In episode 6, I previewed Neen’s work, With this idea that true luxury is about the moments that make someone feel seen, heard, and valued. And Ning delivered on that promise and then some.

Stephen Woessner [00:35:57 – 00:36:50]

Why was she amazing? She said, luxury is about the human connection. And then she asked the question that sits kind of beneath her entire body of work. And that question was, how do you truly make people feel seen, feel heard, and feel valued? Seen, heard, and valued, friends. Neen opened our conversation with a story about her mom. Neen took us back to that small town in Australia where she grew up. Her mom worked incredibly hard cleaning houses, picking lettuce, selling fruit on the side of the road. And after every shift, her mom would pick a flower and put it in a glass of water and set it on the table. The family called that glass a vase because they wanted to make it feel a little bit more fancy.

Stephen Woessner [00:36:51 – 00:37:26]

A single flower in a glass, and that small gesture made their home feel special. That’s where Neen first learned what luxury feels like. And that’s why she teaches that you don’t need a luxury product to create a luxury experience. Your agency doesn’t need a bigger budget to make your prospect feel seen. You need intention. Neen also gave us a metaphor for this. She calls it the bellhop and the concierge. A bellhop moves your bags efficiently, reliably.

Stephen Woessner [00:37:26 – 00:37:52]

Both of those tasks matter. And then a concierge, in mean words, is creating moments. The concierge learns what matters to you and then creates possibilities you didn’t know even to ask for. Your agency needs both. Meetings need to start on time. Handoffs need to be clean. Work needs to arrive when promised. Yes, bellhop.

Stephen Woessner [00:37:53 – 00:38:43]

But the concierge mindset is where your prospect starts to feel the difference. Neen put it this way, delight is where you show someone you know them. And she took it one step further. When you can speak to the concerns your prospect hasn’t even thought to voice yet and share the solution before they’ve even articulated the problem, in Neen’s words, people are blown away. And that’s the trust bridge in action, friends. So 3 conversations on the trust bridge. Simon Bowen taught us to let your prospect experience your thinking by building it with them. Scott McCain taught us that your prospect buys the feeling and experiences your agency horizontally.

Stephen Woessner [00:38:44 – 00:39:19]

And Neen James taught us To make every person feel seen, heard, and valued. Thinking, feeling, being known. That’s where intrigue and curiosity start turning into desire. Okay, so we’re gonna take a quick break. And when we come back, we’re gonna do, uh, we’re going to pick back up onto the right side of the authority-demand ecosystem. We’re gonna walk through demand. So I will be back in just a minute. Okay, friends, welcome back.

Stephen Woessner [00:39:19 – 00:39:55]

And before the break, we walked along the authority side of the ecosystem, and then we walked across the trust bridge. Now let’s step over to the right side, the right side of the ecosystem, which is demand. And this is where a lot of agencies assume— it’s really easy to assume That the biz dev work is done. When we get to the right side, the biz dev work is done and there’s cause for celebration because new clients have been won. The prospect said yes. Awesome. Let’s go. Which, yes, of course, that does feel amazing.

Stephen Woessner [00:39:56 – 00:40:37]

But you knew there was going to be a but in there, didn’t you? But Brett Gilliland in episode 9 reminded us that the yes is where a different kind of work begins. Of course. Brett is the CEO of Elite Entrepreneurs, and he has spent years helping agency owners and other 7-figure teams build companies that can carry their own growth. And here’s how I framed Brett’s episode. Demand creates opportunities for your agency. Yes. And that’s awesome. But demand also creates expectations, expectations your agency must be ready to fulfill.

Stephen Woessner [00:40:38 – 00:41:21]

During biz dev, the agency owner or leaders, whoever’s running point on biz dev, they’re often the ones creating the experience. Amazing. Leading the strategy, building the relationship, helping the prospect feel understood. And then the prospective client says yes. And the promise moves from the front of stage to the back of stage. Now your entire team has to deliver the experience the prospect was promised. And Brett said it plainly, your agency cannot outgrow your leadership. And then he shared a principle he learned from Arthur Jones.

Stephen Woessner [00:41:22 – 00:42:24]

And so this is me quoting Arthur Jones. All organizations are perfectly designed To get the results they’re currently getting. And so when he shared that, friends, my time with Brett turned into a little bit of a mentorship session. I always love spending time with Brett because I know that every single time that I do, I’m going to step away better than I was stepping into that conversation. And so I told Brett, About a newer member of our predictive ROI team, who asked me a very simple question after reviewing our onboarding process. And my teammate said to me, “Why wasn’t this part of my onboarding?” And they were asking about our values here at Predictive: who we are, what we stand for, how we serve our clients. In a full transparency, I felt. A pit in my stomach.

Stephen Woessner [00:42:26 – 00:43:09]

Because the answer was we had stopped rinsing and repeating our values. We had a beautifully architected experience for our prospects, and somehow we allowed ourselves to drift on the experience we are creating for our own team. And the experience your team has is the experience your clients will likely also have. So Brett called it the law of drift. People wander, they forget. So setting the vision, setting the values, and articulating them one time, it’s not enough. It’s not a one-and-done thing. It’s ongoing.

Stephen Woessner [00:43:10 – 00:44:19]

And so my teammate’s question, although painful to hear, was a gift to receive. And Brett gave us another insight about the demand side. That I believe every agency leadership team needs to hear, which is why I’m sharing it with you, which is why I’m underscoring it from episode 9. When an agency owner attends an event, let’s call it maybe a leadership event, or reads a book or listens to a conversation, maybe like this one, the owner may walk away with a completely new way of seeing the agency or a list of things to do or Some big strategies to try to implement. But if that experience stays with the owner or leader, the agency doesn’t change. The agency doesn’t benefit from it in its entirety. So Brett encourages leaders to invite the team into the conversation, share what you learned, decide together what matters most, then decide together what will change. Brett shared a line from Simon Sinek that captures why this works.

Stephen Woessner [00:44:20 – 00:45:04]

So I’m quoting Simon here when I say this: when people invest financially, they want a return. When people invest emotionally, they want to contribute. So your team needs to experience the vision for themselves. And I share that with you in full transparency because I would guess your agency may have a version of that same gap somewhere, maybe behind the curtain. We’ve all been there. I know I certainly have, as I just shared with you. And, and I wish that that were the only instance where that were true, but it isn’t. So now Scott and Neen also left us with insights about the demand side of the ecosystem.

Stephen Woessner [00:45:04 – 00:45:53]

So I’m going to pull those into this conversation now too, this bookend. Scott shared research on promise and performance. Many agencies want to try to under-promise and over-deliver, thinking that that creates delight. And when he said this, when he walked Hannah and I through this, I was like, wait, what? And so his point was, over time, under-promising and over-delivering, it erodes trust because eventually your client wonders, Why you didn’t just tell them the truth in the first place. Whoa. And so Scott’s answer was beautifully simple. He said, just do what you said you would do when you said you would do it. And I’m going to pull in a piece here from Terry too.

Stephen Woessner [00:45:54 – 00:47:06]

Terry Seitz, he added a layer to Scott’s teaching that I think is also helpful. Terry said, We are in the probabilistic business, meaning your agency can explain the outcome you believe is possible, the evidence behind it, and the risks involved. What you can’t do is guarantee an outcome when the, when it involves so many variables that you can’t control. When an agency promises certainty to win the work, the experience after the yes is set up to disappoint. So Terry and I talked about Having the expectations conversation, sort of air quotes there, the expectations conversation upstream before the proposal, before the kickoff. And I would argue during the sales process, right before the proposal, having that as maybe one of the conceptual agreement deal breakers. And here’s how I put it during our conversation. If you don’t have that conversation upstream, you can be darn sure you’re going to have that conversation with your client downstream.

Stephen Woessner [00:47:06 – 00:47:57]

So credible expectations build a stronger trust bridge than promises you can’t support. And Neen reminded us where all of this leads. She said, I believe the money is in advocacy. Neen’s 5 luxury levers, what she calls the 5 luxury levers, Move from entice to invite to excite to delight all the way to ignite. And ignite is where your client becomes your advocate because they have an experience they can describe to someone else. Nene shared a perfect example of that. Her new kitten needed a procedure, and afterwards, her white rug unfortunately needed to be cleaned. Uh, and the company she hired gave her a quote that was very easy to understand.

Stephen Woessner [00:47:57 – 00:48:37]

They moved the furniture. They told her exactly what would happen next. They sent her a video showing the work being done. And they returned the rug exactly when they said they would. And it wasn’t an expensive service. But now, Neen recommends them every single time someone needs a rug cleaned. Because she has a specific story to tell. So ask yourself, when one of your clients refers your agency, do they have a specific story to tell or just a list of the services that you provide? And she gave us a simple system for keeping that experience alive.

Stephen Woessner [00:48:37 – 00:49:21]

She calls it systematized thoughtfulness. And it is very simple and she broke it down and explained it in great detail during our conversation. She said, I get a spreadsheet and I write names down the left side and months across the top. And on the first Monday of every month, Neen sits down and decides how she’ll deepen each relationship. It could be as simple as a handwritten note, a personal video, a relevant introduction. The system protects the follow-through, and that’s the point, friends. The gestures always stay personal. But she tracks it and she put it into a system to make sure that it never falls through the cracks.

Stephen Woessner [00:49:22 – 00:50:11]

So on the demand side of the ecosystem, Brett taught us that your team has to deliver the experience your biz dev promised. Scott taught us to keep the promise exactly as made, and Neen taught us to turn great clients into advocates with intention. Intrigue, curiosity, and desire, friends. So now, now I want to show you what happens when, when all of these conversations, when all 7 of them meet in the field. And candidly, it happened with a single word. So Libby Stinson on my predictive team was working alongside one of our agency clients. If you’ve not yet met Libby, she’s one of our strategists. Hi, everyone.

Stephen Woessner [00:50:11 – 00:51:23]

Uh, and she’s absolutely brilliant at what she does. And the agency that she was working alongside is also brilliant at what it does. They have a strong niche, great people, decades and decades of serving clients well, all impressive indicators. So Libby was helping the agency team build their version of the Focus Finder, which is a short visual diagnostic that we teach that we help agencies build so that their prospects can see and use it and see where their business stands, where the prospect’s business stands, and where they need help. And one of the agency leaders asked a really important question. Would a prospect ever be willing to admit they were struggling in a certain area? Would someone really look at a scale, a color scale, and identify themselves As being critical risk and being red. So think about that for a moment, friends. We were asking a prospect to confess that something in their business isn’t going well using language that sounded maybe a bit like judgment.

Stephen Woessner [00:51:24 – 00:52:30]

So Libby suggested a change. Instead of severity levels, what if the scale used language from the agency’s own model? From what we call the business blueprint, 4 stages that describe how a business is moving from, let’s call that maybe stalled on the left side or at the bottom, all the way up to fueled to move at the top. Same diagnostic, same questions, different words. And that’s when one of the agency leaders said, if I were our prospect, it would be easier to admit, yes, that we were stalled versus Were failures in this area, and that was the aha, friends. So the agency kept every bit of its expertise and it changed the experience of what it felt like for the prospect to be diagnosed. So let’s look at that moment through the 7 conversations in this series. Terry would tell us the agency started with the prospect’s need. The need to feel safe enough to tell the truth.

Stephen Woessner [00:52:30 – 00:53:28]

Awesome. Guillermo would tell us the diagnostic became a sip, an easy first step instead of a fire hose of judgment. Don would tell us the agency reversed the I/U ratio. The language now describes the prospect’s situation in the prospect’s own terms. Simon would tell us the prospect is now helping build the model and feels safe doing it. Scott would tell us the agency changed the feeling it creates. Neen would tell us the prospect now feels seen, heard, and valued instead of graded. And Brett would tell us that because the language comes from the agency’s own model, The whole team can deliver it the same way every time from one word change.

Stephen Woessner [00:53:29 – 00:54:57]

And your prospect experiences your agency completely differently. So take a look at the language you and your team use with your prospects in your diagnostics, in your proposals, in your meeting invitations, in your follow-up emails. Is that language helping your prospects recognize what’s happening in their business and to feel safe enough to say it out loud? And maybe even more importantly, to raise their hand and ask for your help? Or is all of that language making it harder for them to admit that there’s a problem in the first place? So, friends, I know we need to come in for a landing. But before we do, I’d like you, or I’d like to leave you with one line from this series that I believe ties all 7 of these conversations together. I said it at the beginning of my conversation with Nien, and the more I’ve thought about it, the more I believe it’s the one sentence I’d like you to remember from this entire series. And here it is. The experience your prospect has with your agency way upstream is the proof of what working with you will feel like after they say yes. So let me say that one more time.

Stephen Woessner [00:54:58 – 00:56:03]

The experience your prospect has with your agency way upstream is the proof. Of what working with you will feel like after they say yes. Your prospect cannot yet experience your delivery. They cannot yet see your results for them, but they can experience your newsletter, your meeting invitation, your first conversation, your diagnostic, your proposal, your follow-up. And every one of those moments is evidence. Evidence of how you’ll listen, evidence of how you’ll think, evidence of how they’ll feel. That’s why architecting these experiences intentionally matters so much, because when you do, you create intrigue, curiosity, and desire, and your right fit prospect accepts your invitation to walk across the trust bridge. So before we close, I’d like you and your team to ask yourselves 3 questions.

Stephen Woessner [00:56:04 – 00:57:34]

Question 1, what experience is our agency creating for our right-fit prospects right now by design or by default? Question 2, where in our biz dev process does our prospect experience our thinking instead of hearing us describe it? They experience it. How do they experience your thinking? And 3, if the experience before the yes is the proof of the experience after the yes, what is our current experience proving? So I’m going to go through that one just one more time. If the experience before the yes is the proof of the experience after the yes, What is our current experience proving? Answering these 3 questions will put you and your agency on the path of moving from authority to demand. And if your list of takeaways from this series is different than mine, please know I would love to have an opportunity to learn from you. So please email me, uh, any ideas, any takeaways, any big ahas from this series. You can email me at stephen, S-T-E-P-H-E-N, at predictiveROI. I promise that email comes directly to me and I look forward to, like I said, having an opportunity to learn from you. So now I’ll be pulling back the curtain on our next new series soon.

Stephen Woessner [00:57:34 – 00:58:22]

I’m kind of formulating that and knitting together the guests and how the red thread runs through each of their areas of expertise. And I can’t wait to share that with you. As the conversations line up. In the meantime, if you missed any of the 7 episodes in this series, they’re all waiting for you, and we’ll link every one of them in today’s show notes. Scott McCain, Don Yeager, Brett Gilliland, Simon Bowen, Guillermo Orellana, Neen James, and Terry Seitz. 7 of the most generous experts I’ve had the privilege to learn from, and I’m grateful to every single one of them. I hope you found this solo cast helpful. I am grateful for your time as always, and I enjoyed being here with you.

Stephen Woessner [00:58:22 – 00:58:45]

We all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day, and please know how grateful I am that you chose to spend some of your time with me today. If this episode was helpful, please subscribe to the podcast wherever you happen to listen to podcasts so you don’t miss where we’re going next. Until next time, onward with gusto.