Opportunity Creation: Building A Strategic Advantage

Tessa Burg: Hello and welcome to another episode of Leader Generation, brought to you by Mod Op, I’m your host, Tessa Burg. And today I am joined by Simon Severino, he’s the CEO of Strategy Sprints, and we have a lot to talk about as we navigate a very dynamic, economic, technology, and people environment. So Simon, thank you so much for joining us today.

Simon Severino: Hey Tessa, hey everyone. Thanks for having me.

Tessa Burg: So the topic we’re exploring is how to create a culture of opportunity creation and, you know, create, create, create. It’s a big subject right now as we look at all the ways to create images, create texts, create experiences, create value, so this is gonna be a really rich topic. Tell us a little about yourself and your background.

Simon Severino: You know, I’m Simon Severino and it’s 22 years that I do only one thing, and that is go-to-market strategy with people. So how to enter a market, crush it in the market, stay in the market. And the reason why I do only this one thing is that I love how emotionally involved the other side is when we talk about, hey, what’s the plan on how to win in the market? If I tell them, “I need more budget, I need more people.” They go, “No problem, how many more days do you need? You need my top 50 people? No worries, where should I send them? Do we meet in Europe or in the US? Oh, you need three more days in the workshop, no problem.” Because they feel that the topic is relevant. If I don’t have a plan of attack and a plan for executing on that go-to-market strategy, everything else is undecidable, it’s irrelevant. So I have full attention, it’s emotionally important. We are absolutely dedicated, it’s tough as hell and we love it. And we are so proud when we get out there and we have a plan on how to win against competition, so that’s why I’ve been doing just this thing for the last 22 years.

Tessa Burg: That’s impressive and tell us, what kinds of companies have you worked with? Who have you worked with in the past?

Simon Severino: Yeah, so we have worked with most of the Fortune 500 companies that you know and use, with the brands that you know every day. And in those 22 years, the industries have been mainly professional services, so consulting services, marketing agencies, financial services, and educators, financial educators, marketing educators and design agencies. Those are the people that had their best sprint results. We work in cycles of 90 days, so a 90 day strategy sprint improves three things and together they double revenue. And mainly it’s professional services, agencies, and more and more online business, full-remote businesses that have to sell online in a Zoom situation.

Tessa Burg: Well then you’re the perfect person to help us navigate what is happening today. What we’re hearing in the media about largely, people who work in professional services, also described as knowledge work. Accounting, attorneys, agencies, marketers know that their work is gonna be replaced or that they need to start using and really leaning into AI and ML. How in this environment where there feels like there’s so much pressure and so much need to move fast. Tell us, do you have any examples of where you’ve been able to help organizations take a step back to address the challenges in front of them and what does that process look like to find the opportunity?

Simon Severino: Absolutely, so for example, a large financial institution that we have been working with, they had the problem that the buyer has now many more options. You don’t have to go to a brick and mortar bank, you can do banking on your phone and you have 20 options available, and they’re all one click away. And this is probably applies to everybody listening right now. Your buyers have more options, quicker options, they have more knowledge and they can jump away. Most of the people here don’t have switching costs. So I’m working with you and I’m one click away from working with somebody else. So that’s one thing that agencies, design, professional services, service-based businesses have they don’t have much of a moat or switching costs. So, and the same thing was happening to that financial institution. Now that the buyer has more options, they’re hopping away. And the problem was they’re hopping away for the highest profit margin products. So they go, “Simon, we need to… We need to work on this. We need to regain market shares here, we need to regain the clients.” One thing is to become obsessed with the buyer. So everything, how can we think from the buyer, feel with the buyer, really feel what they’re feeling, what they need and starting from there instead of from our offer? The other thing is to create a culture of opportunity creation. How do you do that? By changing the way the meetings are. So we have installed two meetings, one at the beginning of the week called pipeline meeting and one at the end of the week called the deal review meeting, and that was very new for them. The Monday meeting, pipeline review meeting, really starts with the sales manager having every person say, “These are the opportunities that I have created this week.” And then the sales manager was the last person talking saying, “Alright, this is the current pipeline number, this is the pipeline health status, green, yellow, red, and these are the two deals that we pick for the deal review on Friday, where we will double click into them, we will rehearse them, and I will coach you so that you can close those deals.” And we are talking deals of $300 million because when a pension fund invests in you, that’s a high… That’s a big ticket so you want to rehearse that and make sure you are very well prepared for that conversation. So on Monday, the shift that happened, they weren’t used to report opportunity creation, they were just reporting each other’s staff, but nobody was saying, these are the opportunities that I have created this week. So for some it was the first time that they were asked to be an opportunity scout or an opportunity creator. Some of them said, “I’m not even in sales and I didn’t create an opportunity.” Okay, which opportunities did you observe? Did you notice in current clients where is there there a possible upsell, cross-sell? What else do they need? “Oh, problems.” They told me seven new problems. “Okay, did you tell sales?” “No, that’s not my job.” So we’ve changed the culture to be a culture of opportunity, noticing in every role, independent of what your role is in the organization and of opportunity creation. Because if everybody becomes an opportunity noticer and an opportunity creator, now the resilience of your business has increased enormously.

Tessa Burg: So I’m definitely very personally interested in this because we have a lot of clients and professional services. We have a lot of clients who heavily rely on their sales teams to bring in prospects. So what is the difference between creating opportunities and simply just calling or cold calling, or trying to find more prospects?

Simon Severino: Starting a conversation is the beginning of creating an opportunity. So calling, calling cold, starting a LinkedIn poll, following up on the people who vote on that poll, that’s the beginning but it’s not an opportunity yet. So you have to start a conversation, then you have to qualify them in or out. Are they in your five criteria of your ICP, ideal client profile? Do they fit all five of the criteria that you have defined? And then if they are qualified, now they’re a qualified lead, now you move them on and try to get them on the calendar of a salesperson. So, and now you have created an opportunity. So on the cold side, on the prospecting side, there are an opportunity as soon as there is a meeting, an appointment scheduled. This is what you expect from salespeople, right? Appointment setting and new business. Now, if you are in the delivery team, maybe you are a key accounter, maybe you are the designer who actually is designing the product and you think you are not in sales. Well then it’s just noticing, you are talking to current clients and they’re telling you about three more problems that they have. Now you can decide, you either go… “They have so many problems.” Or you go, “Oh, opportunity, they have three more problems. Let me tell the guys who can solve these problems.” This is this-

Tessa Burg: Yeah.

Simon Severino: The shift that we want to have. And yes, prospecting, starting new conversations, getting them on the calendar, that’s opportunity creation right there.

Tessa Burg: So it’s really about sort of breaking down those silos. And when you say becoming buyer obsessed, it’s also thinking a lot more intentionally about the value create and the value create for the buyers right in front of you and not-

Simon Severino: Yes.

Tessa Burg: Just… And you know, are we… Have we just been so stuck in like what we’re doing and delivering that we’re… Sometimes we lose sight of the other value that our expertise and services can bring?

– Yeah, there is an agency, marketing agency specialized on hospitality and they focus on cities. They used to pick the coolest cities and say, “I can do your marketing.” Was working for a while, then times got tougher, they are getting tougher for everyone. So pipeline drying up, cities having less of a budget. And they go, “Simon, our our pipeline is dry, no city wants to spend on marketing right now.” And I go, “Okay, how many cities do you have on your email list?” And the number was pretty, pretty strong. I say, “Okay, when is the last time you brought them together?” “Oh, we never brought them together.” I say, “Okay, easy, easy thing. One hour workshop in two weeks, let’s do an online workshop. Every mayor can come to that workshop and the topic is, how are you running your city? What’s going well, what’s tough?” So yes, some cities are in competition, right? Miami tries to be better than LA, and LA tries to be better than Miami, but they also want to discuss stuff. It’s not an actual competition, it’s different cities.

Tessa Burg: Yeah.

Simon Severino: There is some form of positioning competition, but everybody wants to actually, you know, also talk about things that are hard. Like, how do you measure the traffic department? How do you measure the progress in health? It’s tough to run a city, there are 17 different problems that they have to tackle. And so we started doing those online events and the first thing was, that of course it filled pipeline again but the point was they were buyer-centric. They was like, “Guys, this is a space where you can talk about what you need to talk about.” There was no selling in that meeting but it was of course, strengthening the relationship to the host of the event. And so because it was online, it was easy for everybody to come. And then we also said, “Other people from the team, you also joined that event.” “Why should I join the event? I’m not in… I’m not in online events, that’s not my job description.” “Okay, but these are the buyers and so this is who you are here to serve. So when they speak, you listen, you sit there and you take notes.” And they were like, “Oh, that’s what I’m supposed to do?” Yes, because it’s the buyer. You want to be very intimate with what’s going on in their world because that will be what you write on your website. “Yeah, but I just build landing pages.” “Yeah and what do you write on these landing pages? You have to use their exact words.” “Oh yeah, you are right.”

Tessa Burg: Yeah, I love this theme that it’s not about the what we do anymore. And in fact, this also aligns with the trend we keep hearing around the importance of first party data. And I think a lot of professional services tend to think of the first-party data only in terms of first name, last name, title, and email address. Like this is the lead, this is what I know about them. But what you are proposing is that in order to be buyer-obsessed, we have to think of us collecting data as us observing, and really learning and hearing from an experience we’re having with our buyers. And how that-

Simon Severino: Real data… The real data is what’s keeping you up at night right now? What problems are you trying to solve but they’re so tough to solve, they are that you are almost giving up? What is the cost of inaction if you do nothing? What else have you tried? If you had a magic wand, which problem would you solve first? If you could cut activities in half, which half would survive? If you seven-X the number of clients that you take on next week, which part of your business breaks first? Those are the kind of data, those are the words I want to see in the CRM. If I’m in sales, I want to call them and talk about that first. “Hi, I am Simon, I know that this is on your mind. I’m here to talk.” That’s my line if I’m in sales, if I’m in marketing, that’s what the first sentence on the website is. “Hi, great that you are here because this is what we can solve for you.” And they find their own words. You see, whatever I’m doing in the team, that’s the data that I want to look for.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, so you’re putting the human first and the human in front. And then when you’re getting the data, then you can use… Leverage some tech to automate, to pull out patterns and trends, and to help kind of drive your creativity around the value you can create for them.

Simon Severino: Yes because if we are not doing this, we are basically just spamming folks. We have to talk the things that are relevant, timely, and valuable. If what I am telling you is not relevant for you, timely for you, and valuable for you, that’s just spam. So if I call somebody, I have to know what’s on their mind already. I’m very well prepared, I’ve researched their industry, their company, their size, and because I’m an expert in their field, otherwise, I wouldn’t call them, right? But because I’m an expert, I know what’s going on generally, what’s coming for them and my question will be, how are you preparing yourself for that? Are you ready? Fine. You have questions, can I help you answer those questions? That’s the best sales pitch and probably the only helpful sales pitch to use in modern marketing.

Tessa Burg: Have you seen any major shifts in where people are buying from? So even if I’m having sales conversations or I’m creating experiences with my buyers, is where I actually buy, when are the frequency, has that at all evolved?

Simon Severino: The buyer’s journey is changing, it’s spaghetti-ish. So we’re working with Google and we see the data in real time. It’s spaghetti-ish so it’s not linear, it’s spaghetti-ish. It comes back a couple times that they… So it starts mobile, it starts on the phone. And then even if a friend tells you, “Oh, call Tessa, she’s amazing at this.” First thing, you pull out your phone, you check her out. So Tessa LinkedIn, Tessa website, first check. If it’s more complicated and also reviews, Google reviews. Then second thing is if she has a YouTube channel, you follow, if she’s on X, you follow, you will get some information, right? So over the next days you forget about her, you move on, you forget that you were even searching. But if she has created a good website, now she has emails coming to you every day and they will remind you. So and if they’re good, you are looking for them, they’re relevant, they’re timely, they’re valuable. So you go, “Oh wow, cool yeah. Oh, I have to talk to her.” And so hopefully the call to action is let’s talk. Then you click it and you start like… This is a current modern buyer’s journey and it’s full of forgetting that you were doing this, but being reminded by something. And a good email has a video in there, for example, I was working today with a team that does webinars. So we’ve created for them a series of 12 emails in the first 12 days of a buyer’s journey. And the first email is, “Hey, this is my own latest webinar, just steal my secrets. This is how I did it, here’s the recording. And by the way, tomorrow I’m gonna send you a checklist on how I did prepare for that webinar. Maybe you want to use my checklist and save some time.” So day two, the checklist on how to prepare. Day three, and we are also already telling them, “Hey, tomorrow I’m sending you my follow up checklist. How do I follow up on participants of the webinar without being a pest?” So that’s a great buyer’s experience. In three days you have received three times value.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, this is the twirls that you described and people coming in and out, and forgetting, is really different than what we hear salespeople want from the website. Like they’re like, “Just gimme the leads who filled out a form? I want more, better leads, your leads stink.” You know? And what you were describing is, hey, start… Create the opportunity, start the conversation, and then make sure that you are telling a story that is valuable, that is reinforcing, that is validating to the big problems they’re trying to solve. And understand and let them sort of come in and out until they, you know, initiate that next contact. But make sure you stay top of mind and the website’s more about the experience, not about, you know, is it the first initial contact?

Simon Severino: And I feel with you a lot because the salespeople, of course, they have their own rhythm and they’re fast, right? A salesperson is ready to close. Now the buyer is getting slower and slower, for multiple reasons, one is they don’t know if they have a stagflation coming or a slower growth of their economy, or negative growth of their economy. So the buyer is getting slower in deciding and is involving more people for important B2B deals. And the sales person is getting more and more impatient. “I’m not hitting my numbers, come on, sign this.” And so that is one thing that we are also experiencing ’cause I’m getting six, seven sales recordings per day. And so I’m seeing the seller becoming more impatient and more seller-centric, ’cause when you’re under pressure, you become more seller-centric. And then the buyer becoming even slower because they feel it immediately and they go, “Oh, they want to push something on me. Let me delay this.” So that’s one spiral that we are seeing. And there are eight steps of changing that pattern into a more buyer-centric pattern and then they buy faster, but there are eight things that we have to do there.

Tessa Burg: That is really interesting and then what… Can you give us a preview on what are those eight things? Because-

Simon Severino: Oh yeah, sure.

Tessa Burg: It’s a very big shift for I think salespeople to make.

Simon Severino: Yes, so in a 90 days sprint, we attack those. And the order of things is month one, we have to improve by 25% the price that you can charge for the same offer. So if you’re a marketing agency and you are offering to improve their branding and website, we will help you increase by 25% the price the you can charge for that without losing the clients. And that starts with showing your strategic value. Your strategic value is not the website, it is not the logo, that’s a commodity. The only… And especially with AI, I mean, Midjourney can do that. So your strategic value is, I know what is coming for you in the next 12 months, 18 months, 24 months. And I see how far you are prepared for that and where you are not prepared for that. My offer is I will make sure you are ready for what’s coming for you. So you see the relevancy and the timeliness, and the value, all three tied together. Now you say the price is 37,000. They go, “Sure, when can I start?” Cause it’s not about the logo and it’s not about the website. It’s about them being ready for what’s coming for them. Highly relevant, highly timely, very valuable. They won’t discuss price anymore. They will discuss how quickly can we start. So that’s the first piece, month one of the sprint. Month two of the sprint, can we increase the win rate by 25%? Now this ties back to not being impatient. First thing to increase the win rate is reducing talk time of the seller. Highest win rate is when the seller is talking 28% of the time, 28.5% of the time, that’s the highest win rate. That has a high… A win rate of above 70%. So you need a set of very good questions, and then to shut up and listen. So we practice that with our teams and then that’s talk time. The second thing is typical, and this is the eight steps. Step one is to visualize, are you showing them their, the words? Like are you actually on a whiteboard showing them that you are hearing, seeing what they’re saying? Next step is frustration. Are you talking about really on the body level, what they feel frustrated with? Not just, “Oh, you know, I can bring AR into your world.” “Oh yeah, I should do AR.” Nope, you are not… You are not on a good track there. “I am losing people, Simon.” “Oh Bob, why are you losing people? And what have you tried and have you given up?” Now we are in the body, you see the difference? And if now VR can help me with that, now I can continue talking. Otherwise, I cannot move to step three, step three is the importance. How important is this in the context of everything that you have going on? Step four is the cost of inaction. What happens if you do nothing? Step five is now the deliverables. This will be the scope of work and this will be the results. And most professional services, they get fuzzy with the results so we help them be very clear. You either reduce costs or increase revenue, if you’re talking to businesses. So we help them usually refine and repackage their offer in a way that has deliverables. Cause they are there but they’re kind of hidden and fuzzy, so we help them package that better. And then step six, the investment of time and money. They usually don’t talk about the investment of time, but the other side needs to invest also time and money into those deliverables. And then the starting point, seven and eight, the statement of work. Many people get to the statement of work and then it’s so unprofessional. The legal part is unprofessional, the design of it is unprofessional and then you lose them in the last bit. So we optimize that with them, and those are the eight steps. And when you optimize those eight steps, now you solve the problem of the inpatient seller and the slowing buyer, ’cause now they are dancing the same tune. Let’s say it’s tango, they’re moving along in sync. And so it’s easy, it feels natural and there is no stalling. But as soon as you skip one of those eight steps, it stalls. It doesn’t feel flow anymore. You have to either chase them and get a new meeting or they’re canceling the meeting or not showing up. Those are all symptoms that we are not doing the eight steps in the right order.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, I think that’s a really powerful statement is that… I had a bit of a chuckle before you started on the eight steps because I think eight sounds like a lot to people. I think everybody wants, what’s the one step, what’s the three, max five? And you’re like, there’s eight steps, you know, it’s like, well that sounds like way too much.

Simon Severino: Oh my god, so much work.

Tessa Burg: Right. And then you’re like, “Well you have to do all of them.” There is no shortcut, and not only that, you have to be buyer-obsessed at each step. You can’t… And I think it’s so easy, especially when you get down to that last step, the statement of work. I know, for myself, like someone whose spent a long time in executing work, I get very worried about scope creep. What happens if they start asking for more features? What happens if you spend way too many hours? And I love that you simplified it down to the value you’re bringing is one of two things, you’re either driving more revenue or cutting costs and keep it simple. And if you stay centered on that, then that can translate down to helping to control the scope. Because you can determine based on how important it is to them, where does that fall? How much does that help us meet one of those two objectives? Because often scope creep happens just coming, just ideas. And it’s the… When we let the ideas float around or we, you know, just go with it and just do as said, instead of stop and think, that that’s really where it comes from. It’s not the client not understanding. Who doesn’t understand those two objectives? So I really like that thought it was very powerful.

Simon Severino: And some listeners might come to you and go, “No, no, but I don’t do any of those. I am decreasing their risk.” For example, I do cybersecurity services, I’m just decreasing risk. And so, okay, let’s step why is decreasing risk important? I agree that decreasing risk is important, but why? Because if something happens to their data, they’re gonna have cost losses and their pipeline is gonna stall for a while. So they… It you are actually helping both sides. So whatever your offer is, think it through from the buyer’s perspective. Is it increasing their market share, their revenue? Is it decreasing their risk, their costs, their time to delivery, their friction of delivery. So think about those two main vital lines for the buyer and then you have a much, much better offer.

Tessa Burg: I like this conversation because it is different than our other episodes where we’ve been really focusing on trends and artificial intelligence, and machine learning, and bitcoin, cybersecurity, Web3, like all of this… All of these things that are happening and it kind of helps center us on, what is still most important and true, and valuable to the buyers is just that, is the value of the work you do. How you do it might change, but are you being clear in how you communicate and deliver that value consistently in a way that your buyers care. So this has been like just a very refreshing conversation that I think a lot of listeners get a lot of value out of and hopefully help them de-stress a bit about all of the other headlines. So I didn’t want to end the conversation without asking you though, in the headlines, there’s a lot of attention given to work being replaced, people being let go, you know, marketers, accountants, attorneys, cybersecurity, developers, all being replaced by AI and machine learning. What is your perspective or prediction on the future of work, specifically in knowledge work?

Simon Severino: If I’m a knowledge worker, I want to focus on the eternal things, the things that will never change. And those are mainly two things, and I want to really jump into the rabbit hole of the things that are changing and become very good at it. So what are the eternal things? The, what will never change for you. If you are a lawyer, if you are an accountant, what will never change for you? First, who you are here to serve, so your ICP, your ideal client profile. Because with every year you will get more intimate, more deep into their world. And by that alone you will be more valuable because you know more and AI will not take that from you, but a person with AI can take that from you. So we come to the second part, become the person who is really quick at using AI to do research, to do documentation, to do follow up. I’m using AI 20 times a day, but it’s not doing the really human tasks of good listening, of asking those eight questions. That’s really human stuff, I train it like an athlete. I train every day those eight steps and getting better at those eight steps, every day like an athlete for hours, I record my sales calls, I improve my sales calls. Like a basketball player records their game because those are the eternal things. Buyer will always have a conversation before buying high ticket items so that’s eternal. On the other side, what’s changing? I don’t do my own research, AI does the research. I have like 20 McKinsey people on my desk, why not using them? I use Poe, I use Gemini, I use Llama 3 and heavily because I prepare for every meeting with those things. I have AI document all my meetings. I spend zero seconds in putting info into CRMs, that’s done by AI. And also the follow-up email is now much more… Much better since the AI is doing is because it takes… It’s so much more nuanced, it uses their exact words. So we’ve built a little CRM with AI for ourselves and for our clients and that is giving us real time info. So before I hop on a meeting, it tells me this is the person, this is the industry, this is what’s going on, this is what’s coming for them, this is what you should talk about. And it analyzes the last three posts on LinkedIn and it tells me exactly how I should talk to them. You know, also the language patterns and if I should go directly to results or if I should be slow and gentle. So really it tells me everything that I need to prepare for. Then during the conversation, I have those eight steps here and it’s telling me green, yellow, red, if I’m skipping them. It’s telling me my talk time and I know I want to be around 28% so if I see the 29. And then afterwards, documentation and follow-up email is done by the AI, and I double check the email before it goes out and it’s usually better than I could write it because it really uses their words, and it’s a longer email than I would usually write, I’m not that patient. So it’s a really good email, the follow-up email, and that’s all done by AI, so it’s Simon plus AI. So can AI replace our services? Nope but a person with AI could, that’s why I stay with the eternal, who am I here to serve and which problem do I help them solve? Either the revenue or the cost problem that’s eternal. But the way we do it, of course we will use AI, blockchain, and everything that’s creating more value, more relevance, and more timeliness for the buyer, to be that person that’s one step ahead.

Tessa Burg: I love that answer and I agree I’m the exact same way. I love trying and testing new tools and we’ve created our own little stack of… And integrations that make it more seamless and we’re finding ways to be even more efficient with AI and it’s really, I think, inspiring and has also helped us see things from different perspectives. You know, when you take your ICP and you start to ask AI to interpret a message, to interpret a problem or a situation from the perspective of your ICP, that has also been really interesting because I think we all think we know our customers really well, but if you can even get the AI to look at it from the multiple angles, you’ll have more of those a-ha moments. Like, “Oh wow, I didn’t think of it that way.” So I agree, it’s actually created more sort of humanness and better human-

Simon Severino: Yes.

Tessa Burg: Connections.

Simon Severino: Totally. So if they have a product, my AI goes through Amazon, reads all the reviews about that product, clusters into, you know, the most positive and the most negative reviews. So when I get there, I am much better prepared. I’m a much better listener ’cause I have more information.

Tessa Burg: Yeah, that’s a great use case. So this has been an awesome conversation. If people, if the listeners have questions for you or they wanna learn more and dig deeper into these eight steps, where can they find you?

Simon Severino: They can find these eight steps at strategiesprints.com. Most of our models are open source, so they can download them for free. They go to strategysprints.com, click Tools, can download a lot of stuff. If they want to go a little bit deeper into real case studies of knowledge workers like them, they can buy the book on Amazon, it’s called “Strategy Sprints”. And it has real agency owners and knowledge workers with their problem, how can I raise my prices? That’s the story of Ali a YouTuber, who wanted to increase his prices for his first cohort, Ali Abdaal, chapter one. Chapter two is an agency that wanted to have a higher win rates and how they did it. Then chapter three is a sales trainer that wanted to land Fortune 500 companies and how they used the sprint to do that. And then some of them they want to go even deeper and talk to us, they can go to strategysprints.com, click Land on Our Calendar and then we can talk.

Tessa Burg: That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much, Simon, for joining today. And if you want to hear more episodes from Leader Generation, you can find them on modop.com. That’s M-O-D-O-P .com. And until next time, I hope we get to talk again soon, Simon. Thanks for being our guest.