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 – 00:00:52]
Over the past decade, we’ve had more than 1,200 conversations with CEOs, bestselling
authors, and agency leaders. And here’s what we’re seeing. Agencies that had built an
authority position no longer struggled to be seen. Instead, they struggled to activate
latent demand. Agency leaders have said to us, it’s exactly where we’re sitting right
now— authority without demand. So welcome to the In Demand Agency Podcast
presented by Predictive ROI. It’s 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.
Stephen Woessner [00:00:52 – 00:01:52]
Yes. But 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 and how B2B buyers make their decisions. We
interview 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. Today’s episode is a
solo cast.
Stephen Woessner [00:01:52 – 00:03:10]
No guests today. It is just you and me. And my goal for today is pretty straightforward.
An agency can be known, an agency can be respected, and an agency can be trusted
and still not chosen. So today I gathered for us 3 research sources from outside the
agency world that, in my opinion, will help identify where the movement from authority
into demand may be breaking down inside your agency’s biz dev process. For example,
can your right fit prospects easily find the depth of your expertise? Do your ideas create
enough meaningful curiosity for them to lean in? And what barriers May still be
preventing a prospect who trusts your agency, but somehow they’re prevented from
taking the next step. Then you and I will connect each of these new research sources
back to the conversations from the first 5 episodes of the podcast, so you and your
team can gather all of the insights and put them into practice straight away. So we, we
have a lot to cover.
Stephen Woessner [00:03:12 – 00:03:49]
So, so let’s dive in. Uh, during episode 1, you may recall that you and I sketched out the
authority-demand ecosystem. Authority was the box that I asked you to draw on the left
side of your sheet of paper if you were drawing with me. Authority was the box on the
left. And then I asked you to draw a box on the right, and then I asked you to label that
box demand. And then I asked you to draw a bridge, a line that connected the 2 boxes,
that connected the box on the left with the box on the right. So it connected authority
with demand. And then I asked you to label that bridge the trust bridge.
Stephen Woessner [00:03:50 – 00:04:08]
It’s the trust bridge that connects both of them. It’s the trust bridge that connects
authority with demand. We know an agency can build an audience. Yes. We know that
they can earn respect. Awesome. We know that an agency can become known for its
expertise. Amazing.
Stephen Woessner [00:04:09 – 00:05:10]
And while its right-fit prospects still remain stranded on the authority side of the
ecosystem. Authority earns attention. Awesome. Demand is when a right-fit prospect
prefers your agency, chooses your agency, and then takes the next step and becomes
your next new client. And trust is the bridge that connects authority with demand. Then
across episodes 2 through 5, Hannah Roth, Eric Jensen, Susan Byer, and Libby Stinson
helped us examine specific parts of your prospect’s journey from authority over to
demand with greater depth. Hannah Roth showed us what separates prolific content
from Profound expertise. And we took a closer look at the gap between being admired,
which feels awesome, being admired and then being chosen, which feels more
awesome.
Stephen Woessner [00:05:11 – 00:06:16]
Eric showed us how proof then makes an invisible trust bridge visible and how the
responsibility of demonstrating and showing that proof is on us. It’s on you. It’s not your
prospect’s job to figure it out and piece it all together for you during the sales process.
And then Susan Byer showed us why specialized strategic expertise must be
demonstrated upstream. Susan shared data from the 2026 Agency Corp Report that
showed an alarming gap between the number of agencies that know What needs to be
done to grow revenue, reputation, and so forth, but they’re just not taking action. But
candidly, friends, in my opinion— now you may adamantly disagree with me, but in my
opinion, this is great news for you and your agency. The data shows the ocean out there
is a lot more blue than it is red. Your competitors have set the bar pretty low.
Stephen Woessner [00:06:17 – 00:07:15]
Because of their inaction. And then Libby Stinson showed us how purposeful questions
turn a biz dev conversation into a trust conversation. If you take and apply the
framework that Libby shared during the episode, it will be a game changer for every biz
dev conversation you and your team have going forward. I promise you, you will never
waste another answer if you follow Libbie’s advice. 4 exceptional conversations. Each
one helped us see the authority-demand ecosystem with greater depth and specificity.
So for today, you and I are going to review a Harvard Business Review article about how
AI is changing B2B buying. We will also spend some time reviewing several central
takeaways from the bestselling book, entitled Made to Stick, Made to Stick.
Stephen Woessner [00:07:16 – 00:08:40]
And then we’re also going to look at some additional takeaways from another
bestselling book entitled The Catalyst. And I selected these 3 sources because each one
helped me look back on our opening conversations on the podcast in new and
interesting ways. So for example, the HBR article, so Harvard Business Review article,
Raises an urgent question, in my opinion. And the question is this: can your right-fit
prospects and the AI tools helping them evaluate you find the depth of your expertise?
That’s a tough question. And it’s an important question. I’m going to share a story with
you in just a few minutes about how we embarrassingly, I embarrassingly realized We’re
failing in this area here at Predictive, and I’m going to share that with you in full
transparency because of something that just happened recently in our BizDev process.
Then the authors of the book Made to Stick raised another important question that I
want you to consider in this conversation together. And the question is this: do your
ideas create enough meaningful curiosity for your prospect to lean in and then reward
that attention with depth? A very important question.
Stephen Woessner [00:08:41 – 00:09:50]
And then Jonah Berger, who is the author of The Catalyst, the book The Catalyst, takes
us back to this question. And this question runs underneath the entire show, the entire
podcast, the entire thesis of this podcast. And that question is, What causes your buyer,
your prospect, your right fit prospect? What causes a B2B buyer who already trusts your
agency to finally act? So we’re going to explore those 3 questions. We’re going to
explore those 3 sources and then tie it all together. So throughout our time together in
today’s SolarCast, I’m going to connect each of these sources Back to the conversations
with Hannah, with Eric, with Susan, with Libby. And I should also say that in today’s
show notes, we’re going to include some endnotes at the bottom of the page and links
to each of the sources in full transparency so you and your team can review the sources
in depth. Okay, friends, buckle up. Here we go.
Stephen Woessner [00:09:51 – 00:11:03]
Okay, so in June 2026, The Harvard Business Review published an article entitled How
GenAI, or generative AI, is disrupting B2B buying decisions. So that is the title of the
article. And again, it’s going to be linked in the show notes. So the authors of the article
in the research described a fundamental shift in how B2B buyers discover, evaluate,
and recommend potential providers. So in the author’s words, generative AI is, quote,
shifting discovery, evaluation, and recommendation into AI-mediated environments,
end quote. So that companies do not or even fully understand how all of this is going to
implicate or be applied to the biz dev process. AI assistance and procurement systems
are influencing which providers surface, which expertise gets summarized, and which
credibility signals make it into the buyer’s consideration process. And candidly, this
takes the fact that your prospects trust you.
Stephen Woessner [00:11:03 – 00:12:03]
It takes the fact that your prospects need to see trust upstream. It takes it to an entirely
different level. Your right-fit prospect may not begin by asking their colleagues, or
clients or friends or whomever for recommendations. They may not begin with Google
any longer. They may begin by asking an AI tool, hey, who are the leading firms that
can help us solve this business issue or problem? Or what should I look for when
comparing them? Or what do these firms believe and where are they meaningfully
different in a comparison sort of way? And the first filter evaluating your agency may
not be a person. It might be a machine. And today the shortlist may be built by a
human with help from a machine. Now, I, I realize that you may have just rolled your
eyes at me thinking to yourself, uh, duh, Stephen.
Stephen Woessner [00:12:04 – 00:13:18]
We help our clients all day, every day with AEO, GEO, or whatever acronym you want to
put on the AI-enabled search these days. I get that. So here are 2 important questions
that I truly want you to think about. Number one, if, if you teach, if you advise, or you
implement GEO on behalf of your clients, are you also doing it for your agency? So are
you eating your own dog food? And number 2, if you are indeed doing it for your
agency, Awesome. But could you be doing it even better? Could you be doing it even
deeper? Could you be doing it with even more excellence than you are currently? I
realize that what I just shared with you from the Harvard Business Review, you are likely
aware of, and which is why I’m asking you these 2 questions. If you teach it, advise it,
implement it on behalf of your clients, are you doing it for your agency? Knowing about
it and not doing it is exactly the gap that we talked about in episode 4. Knowing the
plays and then running the plays are 2 completely different things. Knowing the
playbook and putting it into practice are 2 completely different things.
Stephen Woessner [00:13:18 – 00:14:21]
If you’re not eating your own dog food, then you score a zero. And number 2, if you are
indeed doing it for your agency, again, awesome, but could you be doing it even better,
deeper, and with greater excellence than you currently are doing it? So you probably
heard like sort of an uptick in my passion around this topic, and I’m about to share why.
Because candidly, friends, I shared this HBR research with you because my predictive
team and I, we recently experienced this exact issue inside our own biz dev process.
Embarrassingly, in full transparency, I’m going to share it with you. So we’d been
talking with the ownership team of a right-fit agency about them joining us for a Biz
Dev Sprint, what we call Biz Dev Sprint 3.0, to be specific. And we had a successful Help
Me Understand session. Amazing. Followed by a really awesome Align and Prescribe
session.
Stephen Woessner [00:14:21 – 00:15:38]
Fantastic. And it felt like as a result of the AMP, the Align and Prescribe, that Biz Dev
Sprint was indeed the correct prescription. And the owners had reviewed our program
overview, the, you know, the overview document of Biz Dev Sprint. They had listened to
multiple episodes of this podcast, of the Sell with Authority podcast, and they had
studied, you know, client reviews and asked peers for recommendations and completed
one of our diagnostic tools in one of the episodes of this podcast, the In Demand
Agency Podcast. And they had read several of our ebooks and the content we share in
email. So all of this combined, all helpful indicators about the experience they could
expect working alongside our predictive team during Biz Dev Sprint. Then one of the
owners asked me whether we had published, and that’s the keyword, published Any
helpful resources around a specific business issue that their agency was struggling with.
Now, would BizDev Sprint help against that business issue, help solve that business
issue, turn that business issue into a business outcome? Yes.
Stephen Woessner [00:15:39 – 00:16:26]
But the reason for their question was pretty simple. ChatGPT was not giving their team
much to work with when it searched for predictive publicly available expertise regarding
that specific business issue. In generality, sure. But regarding that specific business
issue the agency wanted to solve as a result of working with us during sprint, it wasn’t
there. It wasn’t as deep as it should have been. And so when I asked some clarifying
questions, I learned the agency was using AI to research firms that provide biz dev
training and programs to agencies. And the ownership team was comparing
commonalities and differences so they can make a thoughtful decision regarding who to
work with. Yay.
Stephen Woessner [00:16:26 – 00:16:51]
Who to choose. Awesome. AI had not replaced peer recommendations. It had not
replaced client reviews. It had not replaced the podcast episodes. AI had joined the
buying committee and it was helping frame a comparison. Holy bananas, friends. So
here’s the lesson that I want to impress upon you.
Stephen Woessner [00:16:52 – 00:17:18]
It’s not that Predictive wasn’t showing up due to a lack of content. Over the last decade,
we’ve published over 1,200 podcast episodes between Onward Nation, between Sell
with Authority, and now with the In Demand Agency Podcast. We have hundreds of
YouTube videos. We’ve published 5 books. Dozens of ebooks. We teach all the time and
the list goes on. All of which equal authority. Yay.
Stephen Woessner [00:17:19 – 00:18:36]
But what we were missing was ensuring that each aspect of Biz Dev Sprint, each
business issue that we solve for, for an agency, each business outcome that we deliver,
and each step in the process that we have perfected over years was also connected to
visible demonstrable proof. Like ironically, Eric Jensen broke down for us in episode 2. If
you don’t know Eric, Eric is president here at Predictive ROI and our chief operating
officer, one of my business partners alongside Hannah Roth. He and I have owned the
agency for together for well over a decade. And here’s the critical piece that it wasn’t
all of that body of work. It wasn’t served up in such a way that AI could easily read it,
ingest it, and recommend predictive ROI as a result of it. Embarrassingly, friends, the
HBR article described exactly what just happened to predictive in real time inside our
own biz dev process. Side note here, you know that inside Predictive, we run what we
call the Predictive ROI Lab.
Stephen Woessner [00:18:36 – 00:19:22]
And when we teach our workshops and intensives, we share with you in full
transparency that we’re going to share the full dataset, good, bad, or otherwise.
Sometimes there’s some successes and sometimes there’s a dumpster fire. Well,
friends, I think we can put this in the category of a dumpster fire. And that is our
commitment to you is to share the good and the bad. And sometimes it’s painful to
share the bad, but that’s the whole point. And so when we look back on this process,
the responsibility was ours. The responsibility was in particular mine to make sure that
the invisible became visible for our prospect. So needless to say, my predictive team
and I, we are fixing that immediately.
Stephen Woessner [00:19:23 – 00:21:00]
And that experience in the biz dev trenches, like thinking through all of that, the
research, what just happened, that took me back to my conversation again with Susan
Byer during episode 4 of the podcast. Susan, again, you may already be familiar with
Susan, but if you’re not, she’s the co-founder of Agency Core and one of the most
rigorous agency researchers that I know. And during our conversation, uh, you know, for
the, for the episode, during our interview, I should say, she said, uh, quote, futureproofing for an agency right now, based on the data, depends on building a trusted
reputation for this specialized strategic expertise and demonstrating it Before your
prospect has to talk to us. Let’s key in on one portion of Susan’s brilliant statement she
said there. So, in quote, demonstrating it before the prospect has to talk to us, end
quote. The HBR article affirms exactly what Susan just said. And as of right now, your
agency needs to demonstrate It’s specialized strategic expertise before your prospect’s
use of AI, your prospect’s AI assistant decides whether your agency belongs in the
consideration set. That does not mean necessarily publishing more content.
Stephen Woessner [00:21:01 – 00:21:46]
It does not mean adding another channel or trying to be prolific so you’re everywhere. It
means Making the depth that you already possess, the frameworks that you’ve already
developed, the business issues and challenges, the problems you already solve, and
then the evidence behind that work, making it specific and making it findable. Susan
also said during our time together, quote, it is no longer enough to be great. at what
you do. Other people have to know and say that you are great at what you do. End
quote. And that’s reputation. And it’s third-party validation.
Stephen Woessner [00:21:46 – 00:22:48]
And increasingly, that’s the evidence an AI tool may use to understand what your
agency should be trusted for, à la the story that I just shared with you. This experience,
again, as I shared a few minutes ago, took me back to my conversation with Eric In
episode 4, Eric used the bridge scene from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The
movie is kind of old. It came out in 1989, but he used that movie to describe what one
of your prospects experiences when they step into conversation with you, perhaps for
the first time. You know, Indiana Jones is standing at the edge of a chasm. The bridge
exists, but from Indy’s perspective is camouflaged. He cannot see it. He simply has to
trust that it’s there, that he will step on it if he steps out toward the chasm, and he’ll
step on the bridge instead of, you know, falling to his death, which falling to his death
looks like what’s going to happen.
Stephen Woessner [00:22:49 – 00:23:50]
But once he steps forward, his faith and trust are rewarded, and the path then becomes
visible. Indy then throws some sand on the invisible bridge, and it becomes visible so
he can find it again. Eric’s point was that the proof your agency shares is the sand. Case
studies, specific examples, client results, third-party validation, invisible application
help your prospect see your trust bridge. But now AI may be standing near the entrance
to that bridge, helping decide whether your prospect ever sees Or experiences your
proof. But AI cannot see the expertise sitting inside your team’s heads. AI cannot see a
framework you have not taught publicly. AI cannot see your scar tissue that is locked
inside a private workshop or an unpublished client conversation.
Stephen Woessner [00:23:51 – 00:24:49]
The HBR authors recommend strengthening credibility signals, creating machinereadable content, and monitoring how AI systems represent your brand, and you may
already be doing this. And if you are, awesome. In my opinion, this is a mandate for all
of our agencies. And the mandate is super clear. Yes, you need to make your most
valuable expertise visible, specific, and easy to find, but your agency may already be
visible and you may already be producing a ton of helpful content. And as I recently
learned, and this is the key piece, the amount of content doesn’t matter as much as
how each piece is connected to a specific business issue and challenge you solve for
your prospects. In my opinion, simply optimizing your content misses the mark. You
need to link X piece of content.
Stephen Woessner [00:24:49 – 00:25:30]
So I’m going to break this down into a formula here. You need to link X piece of content
with Y business issue and Z business outcome. You must create a specific path for AI to
follow. A plus B equals C. If you don’t create that specific path, you’ll lose out to another
agency that does, that does create that level of specificity. So you better believe that
we’re learning from this lesson. In raising the bar of excellence here at Predictive. So
that brings us to the second source that I wanted to, that I wanted to share with you.
Stephen Woessner [00:25:30 – 00:26:33]
I’m going to take a quick drink of my water. I feel like I’ve been going at this now for
quite, quite some time. So give me just a second. Okay. So the second source, Chip and
Dan Heath explored the anatomy Of memorable ideas in their New York Times and Wall
Street Journal bestselling book, Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.
So the authors who are brothers decided why some— or studied, excuse me, not
decided, studied why some ideas are understood, why some ideas are remembered,
why some ideas are repeated, and why some ideas are capable of changing what
people believe or do while other ideas just disappear. And so their work identified 6
traits that make an idea more likely to stick. And I’m going to share the 6 with you here,
and then we’re going to break them down further.
Stephen Woessner [00:26:33 – 00:27:10]
So the first one is simplicity. The second one is, or the second trait is unexpectedness.
The third trait is concreteness. The fourth trait is credibility. The fifth trait is emotion.
And the sixth trait is stories. So I’m hopeful the authors will accept my invitation to join
me as a guest on a future episode of the podcast. But for now, I want to focus on
unexpectedness and what the authors call a curiosity gap.
Stephen Woessner [00:27:11 – 00:28:11]
They write that we can sustain curiosity by systematically opening gaps in someone’s
knowledge and then filling those gaps. And here’s what I mean. Intrigue is not created
by hiding the answer, using clickbait, or being vague in hoping your prospect decodes
what you meant. A meaningful curiosity gap appears when your right-fit prospect
recognizes that something important is missing from the way they currently understand
a problem. You help your prospect see a connection that was not visible before. You
give language to a condition your prospect has felt but couldn’t name, that is, before
talking with you. Or you show how 2 familiar ideas are connected in a way your
prospect had not considered. So I decided to share this book with you, this resource
with you, because we saw that dynamic play out across the opening episodes of this
podcast.
Stephen Woessner [00:28:11 – 00:28:47]
For example, one episode, one of our episodes was downloaded, was downloaded,
excuse me, 4 times more than any of the other episodes. 4 times more, friends. The
episode title was How Proof Activates demand. Proof was not a new word for you.
Demand was not a new word either. Agency owners and their teams certainly
understand both, but connecting those 2 familiar ideas opened a gap. And in the gap
were some questions. Oh, wait a minute.
Stephen Woessner [00:28:47 – 00:29:43]
How does proof activate demand? And what kind of proof creates action? And what
happens when an agency has plenty of testimonials and case studies, but the evidence
still does not help their prospect move from authority in the left side of the ecosystem
and walk across the trust bridge and reach the right side of the ecosystem demand?
When my team and I saw the 4-to-1 difference in downloads, we looked closely at what
may have happened. And the subject was not easier. The episode was not shorter. And
my guest for the episode Again, was Eric Jensen. He’s Predictive’s, you know, president
and one of my business partners. Eric is certainly well-known inside our community, but
he’s not a celebrity or social media influencer. So that wasn’t the draw. In my opinion,
the title opened a gap that some in our audience felt was worth closing.
Stephen Woessner [00:29:44 – 00:30:23]
Then the episode delivered. It filled the gap. Eric explained that prospects are looking
for patterns. They’re looking for evidence that what happened in the past is likely to
happen again in the future. The pattern cannot merely be, we are smart, or we do great
work. Your proof needs to help your prospect answer a more specific question. Can
these people solve our problem for an organization like mine in a situation like ours with
an outcome we care about? The title created curiosity. Then within the episode, Eric
supplied the depth.
Stephen Woessner [00:30:24 – 00:30:59]
And that distinction matters, friends, because curiosity without substance is simply a
broken promise, candidly. And thinking about that also took me back to Hannah Roth in
episode 2. Hannah said knowledge has become cheap. AI can help an agency produce
more content in a week than the team used to create in a quarter. Awesome. Maybe.
But our content does not automatically create more authority, as I shared with you in a
story earlier. And it certainly does not create demand.
Stephen Woessner [00:31:00 – 00:31:18]
Hannah’s standard was simple. It is not enough to be prolific anymore. You have to be
profound. That’s an exact quote from Hannah. I should have said quote and end quote,
but I didn’t. It is not enough. So, quote, it is not enough to be prolific anymore. You have
to be profound, end quote.
Stephen Woessner [00:31:19 – 00:32:04]
Then she gave us 3 criteria, and I think these criteria are absolutely brilliant. And if you
don’t know Hannah, Hannah Roth is also one of my business partners, and she’s our
Chief Strategy Officer here at Predictive. These 3 criteria are absolutely super smart,
and these are the criteria that she has developed for what it means to be profound. 1,
insightful. 2, relevant. 3, on-the-nose helpful. So insightful means that the work adds
something your right-fit prospects did not already know. Relevant means the insight
applies to the prospect’s exact world, not a generic audience standing 30,000 feet
above the problem.
Stephen Woessner [00:32:04 – 00:32:52]
And on-the-nose helpful means the prospect can use what you taught against a real
challenge that the business is facing right now. And that is what fills a meaningful
curiosity gap. Unexpectedness may earn, you know, the first moment of attention.
Awesome. But depth rewards the attention. It gives your prospect a reason to stay. It
moves the reaction from, these people are smart, as you heard Hannah say during
episode 2, toward, these people understand my challenge, and eventually, these
people can help me solve it. And candidly, friends, many agencies skip that standard of
excellence.
Stephen Woessner [00:32:53 – 00:33:59]
The team publishes content that may be accurate and the advice may be useful, but
the message is familiar enough. That the prospect believes the ending is already
known. There’s no important connection to discover. And so if you don’t create a
curiosity gap, your prospect isn’t pulled forward. They’re not invited to walk across the
trust bridge. The content earns a polite nod and then disappears. So before you publish
your next cornerstone article, before you record your next podcast, Before you invite
your ecosystem, your audience to a webinar or a workshop, ask yourself this. What
does my right fit prospect already understand? And what important connection might
be the prospect missing? And how, how can we fill the gap in such a way that is
insightful, That is relevant and that is on-the-nose helpful.
Stephen Woessner [00:34:00 – 00:35:05]
Hannah and I mapped out the gap between being admired and being chosen during
episode 2. And, and that’s the standard that your content needs to meet right now and
how preparation becomes a deposit in the trust bank. You can hear all of it in episode 2,
and I encourage you to go back and give that a listen if you haven’t already. The ideas
that Hannah shares during episode 2 orbit a distant moon of awesome. And if you want
to hear how the phrase, how proof activates demand, becomes a practical system of
evidence, please, I encourage you to also listen to episode 3 with Eric Jensen, because
Eric describes what proof your prospects need to see, how transitional moments work,
and why even a negative pattern Oddly may feel safer than the unknown. You and your
agency are the unknown. So again, we’re going to be sure to link all of the episodes, all
the resources, everything in today’s show notes. And that is going to bring us to the 3rd
source.
Stephen Woessner [00:35:06 – 00:36:12]
But before we step in, um, for the 3rd source, we’re going to take a quick break and
then we will be back and we’re going to dive in to the 3rd source. So give us just a
minute here, friends. And we’ll be right back. Okay, friends, uh, now let’s dive into the
3rd source, uh, or resource that I mentioned, um, right before we took the break. So the
3rd source, you may recall, um, Jonah Berger is the author of the New York Times and
Wall Street Journal bestselling book, uh, entitled The Catalyst, uh, How to Change
Anyone’s Mind. And Jonah’s central argument is that creating change is not about
applying more pressure. It’s about, quote, removing barriers and lowering the hurdles to
action, end quote. So instead of asking, what else can we say to convince someone?
Berger encourages change agents to begin with 2 more useful questions.
Stephen Woessner [00:36:12 – 00:36:50]
And the questions are this: Why has the person not changed already? And what is
standing in the way? So I decided to share this book with you because 2 messages from
agency owners helped shape the premise of this show. The first was a text from an
agency owner in our community after listening to the trailer, and the owner said the
show was speaking directly to what the— or to where the agency was sitting. Authority
without demand. The agency had built the authority. Awesome. The team had done the
work. Amazing. But the authority was not producing enough movement.
Stephen Woessner [00:36:51 – 00:37:38]
Then another agency owner sent me an email and the agency was receiving more rightfit opportunities. Awesome. The team was doing great work in the room in front of the
prospect, and yet the agency kept or continued to finish second. And so feedback and
insights like these beg the question, what causes a buyer who trusts an agency to
finally act? And Berger’s research helped me see that question a little bit differently.
The buyer may not need another reason. Instead, the buyer may need one remaining
barrier removed. And Berger identifies 5 recurring barriers to change. So I’m going to
share all 5 of them here.
Stephen Woessner [00:37:39 – 00:38:12]
And then we’ll start to break some of them down. So the first barrier is reactance. The
second barrier is endowment. The third barrier is distance. The fourth barrier is
uncertainty. And the fifth barrier is the need for corroborating evidence. And together,
these 5 barriers, they form the acronym, and I’m such a sucker for acronyms, I love
them, But they form the acronym REDUCE. And reactance protects your prospect’s
freedom to choose.
Stephen Woessner [00:38:13 – 00:39:01]
Endowment favors what your prospect already has. Distance makes the recommended
change feel too far away for your prospect. Uncertainty wraps the unknown in risk for
your prospect. And corroborating evidence helps the decision feel Safer for your
prospect. So does any of that sound familiar? Your prospect may be frustrated with their
current provider. The current approach may not be working especially well, but it is
known. Your agency is the unknown. And this realization from the catalyst from Berger’s
research took me back again to Eric Jensen’s advice in episode 4 of the podcast.
Stephen Woessner [00:39:02 – 00:39:40]
Eric said, quote, we trust both positive and negative patterns, but even negative
patterns we trust more than unknowns, end quote. So think about that for a minute,
friends. Your prospect may remain with an underperforming agency because the
disappointment is predictable. As ridiculous as that sounds, your prospect knows What
the meetings feel like. Your prospect knows which deadlines are going to slip. Your
prospect knows which problems will remain unresolved. Agreed. I agree with you.
Stephen Woessner [00:39:41 – 00:40:28]
It is not a good pattern, but the pattern is known. Your agency may be more capable.
Your strategic thinking may be stronger. Your team may be a better fit, but choosing
your agency requires Your prospect to exchange a known pattern for an unknown
outcome. So endowment and uncertainty can keep your prospect exactly where they
are. So adding yet another deliverable to your proposal may not help. Sending another
generic follow-up email will definitely not help. And pushing harder in the sales process
may only increase reactance instead of moving in your direction.
Stephen Woessner [00:40:28 – 00:41:28]
A better question for you and your team to try and answer on behalf of your prospect is
this: what barrier is making the current choice feel safer than the better choice? And
this took me back to Libby Stinson, who is our strategist and forensic interview expert
here at Predictive. Back to her episode, episode five, and Libby taught us that people
are not natural narrators. We summarize. Your prospect says to you, “Our sales have
been slow,” or they may say to you, “The team is usually pretty good at follow-up.” And
those statements, in Libby’s words, are headlines. They are not the full story. Libby
taught us to listen for the clues inside the answer, and then. Form the next question
from what your prospect just said. A purposeful question might uncover that the
problem is not follow-up at all.
Stephen Woessner [00:41:29 – 00:42:16]
The real barrier may be that the team does not know which prospects deserve
attention, or that the owner remains the only person trusted to lead the conversation,
or that every proposal feels like a large leap. Because there was no smaller transitional
moment before it. If your agency accepts the first summary from your prospect and
starts prescribing, the team may do a really good job of solving the wrong problem for
your prospect. So Libby’s 3 openings help prevent that. The openings are, uh, that, that
she shared during episode 5. These are the 3 openings. Uh, quote, take me back. Uh,
looking back, and then the third is, how did you decide? So let’s look at each of these.
Stephen Woessner [00:42:16 – 00:43:22]
So take me back asks your prospect to retrieve a specific event. Looking back tests
whether the event is part of a pattern for your prospect. And then lastly, how did you
decide reveals your prospect’s decision architecture. Purposeful questions help your
prospect feel understood. They turn a biz dev conversation into a trust conversation
and will help your agency discover what it is still preventing your prospect from taking
those next steps. A buyer facing uncertainty may need to experience how your team
thinks by witnessing a diagnostic, a workshop, or a strategy conversation. A buyer who
needs corroborating evidence may need a client’s story from a comparable situation. A
buyer experiencing distance may need a smaller next step, and a buyer protecting the
freedom to choose may need space, not another push.
Stephen Woessner [00:43:23 – 00:43:59]
This is why the book The Catalyst belongs in this conversation. Demand activation. Is
not another generic follow-up. It certainly is not pressure. It’s all about trying to
understand what is standing in the way. Then, friends, helping your right-fit prospect
take a next step that feels relevant, credible, and safe. Okay, friends, so those are the 3
sources. that we’ve just looked at, you know, one source at a time.
Stephen Woessner [00:44:00 – 00:45:03]
And the Harvard Business Review showed us why your specialized expertise needs to
be visible before the first conversation. The book Made to Stick showed us how a clear
idea can create a meaningful gap and why depth needs to fill it. And The Catalyst, the
book The Catalyst showed us Why a buyer who trusts, you know, even if they trust you,
they still may need one more barrier removed before they take the next step with you.
So now I want to show you what happens when all 3 ideas meet in the field where
deliverables create comparison, but outcomes create value. So let me say that again.
Deliverables create comparison, but outcomes create value. So my predictive team was
working alongside one of our agency clients and the agency, I, they are brilliant. They
are absolutely brilliant at what they do.
Stephen Woessner [00:45:04 – 00:46:06]
The agency has a clear niche. They have a very strong reputation and years of
experience serving clients well, all impressive indicators. But like a lot of agencies, too
much of the agency’s strategic value was hidden inside a list of deliverables. The team
was selling content campaigns, PR, social media, and ongoing support, all valuable, of
course, but not the full story because the agency was also bringing strategy, guidance,
decision-making expertise, and a clearer path to the business outcomes That its clients
wanted. Awesome. The agency was doing the strategic work, but the team was not
making the strategic depth easy for a prospect to see, understand, or value. Much of
the expertise remained hidden inside the team’s heads until the proposal stage. And by
then, the prospect had already begun evaluating the agency through the category of
deliverables.
Stephen Woessner [00:46:06 – 00:47:19]
How many pieces of content? How many campaigns? How many hours of support, all
the things. And what does your agency charge compared with the other firms offering
similar services? That’s what deliverables, friends, invite your prospect to compare. And
this is where the HBR research that I shared with you earlier becomes even more
practical for in-the-trenches biz dev work. A buyer, or in the case of the article, the AI
tools Helping that buyer can only evaluate the expertise that has been made visible. If
your website, your content, your conversations, and your proposal all lead with
services, then your agency may be categorized as just another provider of those
services. And if your website, your content, your conversations, and your proposal all
lead with services, then your agency may be categorized As just another provider of
those services. Your strategic depth can be profound, but the prospect cannot value
what the prospect cannot see. So we helped the agency pull the expertise out of the
team’s heads and made it visible.
Stephen Woessner [00:47:19 – 00:48:18]
We helped the team clarify the exact outcomes the agency creates for clients. We
helped turn its strategic thinking into visible frameworks, and we mapped the
opportunities already sitting inside the agency’s ecosystem. And we shifted the
conversation away from things like, here are the deliverables, to, here is the business
outcome we can help you create. The agency helped prospects understand the
difference between investing in a collection of services and investing in the strategic
expertise behind a business result. And the contrast became deliverables create
comparison. Outcomes create value. When our client previously led with deliverables,
their prospects naturally compared quantities, activities, and price. But when our client
led with the outcome, their prospects could see what the strategic work was designed
to make possible.
Stephen Woessner [00:48:19 – 00:49:15]
The team was no longer asking the prospect to infer the value hiding behind the work.
The agency made the value visible. And in my opinion, that helped remove 2 barriers
that Jonah Berger wrote about in his book, The Catalyst. Distance, because the prospect
could see a clear path between the engagement and the business outcome. And then
the second was uncertainty, because the agency’s frameworks, expertise, and
recommendation made the path more understandable. That shift changed the
conversation. The agency closed the biggest win in its history, an engagement worth
$420,000. And after closing the engagement, one of the agency’s leaders told us,
quote, I would have never been able to sell something at this size based on
deliverables, end quote.
Stephen Woessner [00:49:16 – 00:50:13]
The prospect did not choose a larger list of services. The prospect chose our client’s
strategic expertise and the business outcome that that expertise would create. So let’s
go back to one of Susan Byers’ insights from episode 4 when she said, quote, futureproofing for an agency right now based on the data depends on building a trusted
reputation for specialized strategic expertise in demonstrating it before the prospect
has to talk to us. Our client already possessed the expertise. The work was to make that
expertise visible, specific, and connected to an outcome that the prospect valued. So
here’s what I encourage you to do. Take a critical look at your website. Your content in
your current proposals.
Stephen Woessner [00:50:13 – 00:52:04]
Are you leading with a list of services? Are you helping your right-fit prospects see the
business outcomes your strategic expertise can help create for them? If your proposal
reads like a menu of deliverables, you’re unintentionally inviting your prospect to
compare your agency against others. But when your agency makes your expertise
visible, connects it to a meaningful business outcome, and removes the uncertainty
surrounding the path, you change what your prospect is evaluating. Remember, friends,
deliverables create comparison, outcomes create value. Okay, friends, before we come
in for a landing, and holy bananas, we have covered a lot. I’m going to pull back the
curtain here and share a preview of our next 3 episodes. I cannot wait for you to hear
them. So if deliverables create comparison like we just talked about, what makes an
agency so distinct that comparison becomes less relevant or perhaps even impossible
because your agency has become a category of one? If proof makes expertise credible,
what stories could help your prospects see themselves inside the business outcomes
you create for them? And if trust can still stop short of action, how do intentional
attention and experiences make the next step feel personal and worth continuing?
Those are the questions. Scott McCain, Don Jaeger, and Neen James will help us explore
next.
Stephen Woessner [00:52:04 – 00:52:39]
So next week’s episode is with Scott McCain. Scott is one of the world’s leading
authorities on how to create distinction. And the opening line on his website is directed
to the point, quote, if customers can compare you, they can replace you, end quote.
Only bananas, friends. And That line extends the field lesson that we just explored
earlier, right? That I shared with you in full transparency. Deliverables create
comparison. Outcomes create value. Scott Standard is becoming unmistakably
valuable.
Stephen Woessner [00:52:39 – 00:54:07]
So your clients and prospects see your agency as the only choice. That also connects to
Susan Byers’ research showing that clients want specialized strategic expertise and will
pay a premium When an agency demonstrates that depth, we explored one central
question with Scott. What makes an agency so distinct and its strategic value so clear
that comparison becomes less relevant? For episode 8, uh, the following week after
Scott, we will be joined by my accountability partner, uh, one of my mentors, and also
one of my very best friends, Don. Don is a 13-time New York Times bestselling author
and one of the most gifted storytellers that I know. In his newest book entitled The
Business of Storytelling, Don teaches storytelling as a learnable business discipline that
helps leaders communicate ideas, create connection, and inspire action. Your prospect
Does not only need evidence from someone else’s result. Your prospect needs to see
enough similarity to think, if that happened for them, it can happen for me. So our
conversation with Don will explore what stories help your right fit prospects see
themselves inside the outcome your agency can help create for them.
Stephen Woessner [00:54:08 – 00:55:11]
The right story carries trust from your experience into theirs. And then in episode 9, I
will be joined by Neen James. Neen’s work sits at the intersection of intentional
attention and exceptional experiences. In her book Exceptional Experiences, she
teaches that luxury principles can transform any business, not only luxury brands. At
the center of her work Is a beautiful human idea. True luxury is about the moments that
make someone feel seen and feel heard. And that extends The Catalyst and the book
The Catalyst and Libby Stinson’s teaching about purposeful questions in episode 5.
Libby showed us that purposeful questions help a prospect feel understood, turn a biz
dev conversation into a trust conversation, And separate an in-demand agency from
everyone else.
Stephen Woessner [00:55:12 – 00:56:30]
Neen will help us explore the experience surrounding those moments. How does
intentional attention make every interaction with your agency feel relevant, personal,
and worth continuing? Scott will extend the conversation from comparison to
distinction. Don will extend it from proof to a story your prospect can enter. And Neen
will extend it from trust to an intentionally designed human experience. 3 of the world’s
leading authorities from outside the agency world, 3 extensions of the same question
we’ve been asking from the beginning. What causes a prospect who already trusts your
agency’s authority position to finally act and to walk across your trust bridge and step
into demand? That’s where our conversations are going next, and I cannot wait to share
them with you. So before we go and before we close out and say goodbye, friends, I’d
like you and your team to ask yourself 3 questions. Question 1, can our right-fit
prospects in the AI tools helping them find the depth of our expertise? If the answer is
no, You’ve got some work to do.
Stephen Woessner [00:56:31 – 00:57:36]
And just like I shared in full transparency, we’ve got some work to do here at Predictive
too. Question 2, do our ideas open a gap worth closing? Then fill it with work that is
insightful, relevant, and on-the-nose helpful. And question 3, what barriers may still be
preventing a prospect who trusts us From taking the next step and choosing us?
Answering these questions, friends, will put you and your agency on the path of moving
from authority to demand. I hope you found this, uh, solo cast helpful. Please know I am
incredibly grateful for your time and I enjoyed being here with you. We all have the
same 86,400 seconds in a day. And I’m incredibly grateful that you decided to choose to
spend some of your time with me today. And if this episode was helpful, please
subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don’t miss where we’re going next.
Stephen Woessner [00:57:37 – 00:57:40]
Until next week, onward with gusto.