Tag: video

This is a series I’m starting where I share the stories behind high stakes sales, negotiations, and presentations for major companies.

The mission is giving you a peek behind the curtain at how big opportunities are won (and lost), so you can accomplish bigger dreams in less time.

What follows below this intro is the time-stamped subtitle text if you prefer to read.

TRANSCRIPT

1
00:00:01,200 –> 00:00:07,520
@jonathan: Hello and welcome, I am Jonathan Pritchard, and this is a video in a series that I

2
00:00:07,760 –> 00:00:14,400
@jonathan: am cautiously calling Behind the boardroom, because a lot of my work I deal

3
00:00:14,720 –> 00:00:21,600
@jonathan: directly with C, E, Os and board members and the executive suite of very large

4
00:00:22,000 –> 00:00:27,840
@jonathan: companies. So a lot of folks uh, want to know what high stakes business involves

5
00:00:28,160 –> 00:00:34,400
@jonathan:: and what it looks like, So I want to share some of my stories that that uh, I’ve

6
00:00:34,640 –> 00:00:41,680
@jonathan: got to well share. So, anyway, this story has a lot of moving pieces, a lot going

7
00:00:41,920 –> 00:00:48,400
@jonathan: on, and multiple lessons that you can learn from it. So there’s a lot of context

8
00:00:48,800 –> 00:00:54,320
@jonathan: to create, which is, I’ve been working with a marketing company for a couple of

9
00:00:54,400 –> 00:01:00,320
@jonathan: years. They are absolutely phenomenal at what they do. They build websites, and

10
00:01:00,480 –> 00:01:04,480
@jonathan: then well, they, They’ve been around for about fifteen years, started building

11
00:01:04,640 –> 00:01:08,160
@jonathan: websites and then their clients after about two months will go. Hey, we love the

12
00:01:08,160 –> 00:01:12,480
@jonathan: website. Where’s all the traffic though, And that’s how they got started into the

13
00:01:12,640 –> 00:01:17,760
@jonathan: marketing side of things, Uh, paid advertising through Google and S. E O, and

14
00:01:18,160 –> 00:01:23,440
@jonathan: social media and email? Basically any way that you could make money on the

15
00:01:23,680 –> 00:01:29,600
@jonathan: Internet as a business? Well, they can help you get more eyeballs on what you’re

16
00:01:29,760 –> 00:01:36,400
@jonathan: doing. So they, uh, they are fantastic to work with, and they’ve asked me to

17
00:01:36,560 –> 00:01:42,640
@jonathan: basically architect their entire sales process from the conversation structure to

18
00:01:43,360 –> 00:01:50,080
@jonathan: the scripting the presentation skills, kind of top to bottom, uh, reorganizing the

19
00:01:50,320 –> 00:01:57,520
@jonathan: way that they land big opportunities. So there is one lead that I I worked with

20
00:01:57,760 –> 00:02:04,320
@jonathan: directly personally to talk to Because they are a company that has theyve. they’ve

21
00:02:04,400 –> 00:02:10,880
@jonathan: got some like eighty plus locations so they’ve got a lot of businesses all over,

22
00:02:11,360 –> 00:02:17,120
@jonathan: kind of the Southet of America. So they had an outdated website and they have some

23
00:02:17,360 –> 00:02:23,440
@jonathan: special considerations in that they wanted their website to be able to manage a

24
00:02:23,520 –> 00:02:29,520
@jonathan: lot of what their business does and what it needs to do. And they’ve got two

25
00:02:29,840 –> 00:02:32,240
@jonathan: brands that are pulling from the same

26
00:02:33,600 –> 00:02:40,400
@jonathan: database of resources, so I, I kind of have to stay a little uh, vague in these

27
00:02:40,720 –> 00:02:46,160
@jonathan: parts. Um, but y, you’ll get the idea, so they need their website to be able to do

28
00:02:46,400 –> 00:02:51,040
@jonathan: everything that one of their customers would want to do with the company, And

29
00:02:51,280 –> 00:02:55,840
@jonathan: whether it is brand A or brand Beep, doesn’t really matter because it’s all the

30
00:02:55,920 –> 00:03:01,600
@jonathan: same resource pool as far as they’re concerned, So it a lot of moving pieces. A

31
00:03:01,680 –> 00:03:04,400
@jonathan: lot of difficult, uh challenges, um,

32
00:03:05,600 –> 00:03:10,640
@jonathan: design wise and technology wise, and it wound up being that there’s this super

33
00:03:11,920 –> 00:03:19,440
@jonathan: superniche product and plug in for a website that allows our client to do what it

34
00:03:19,520 –> 00:03:26,640
@jonathan: is that they wanted their website to do. So I, I landed the opportunity and they

35
00:03:26,800 –> 00:03:32,800
@jonathan: said, Yep, we want you to build this thing And since I’m the relationship and

36
00:03:33,040 –> 00:03:37,920
@jonathan: vision guy, Well as soon as they say yes, Well, let me get you in touch with the

37
00:03:38,480 –> 00:03:43,200
@jonathan: the team who will actually do the work. I, I don’t actually implement anything.

38
00:03:43,600 –> 00:03:50,240
@jonathan: Let let’s just talk vision, so hand it off And then, as far as I know, a couple of

39
00:03:50,320 –> 00:03:52,720
@jonathan: months go by and it’s all good.

40
00:03:53,380 –> 00:03:54,380
@jonathan: Great

41
00:03:55,200 –> 00:03:56,720
@jonathan: About six months after,

42
00:03:57,700 –> 00:03:58,700
@jonathan: actually

43
00:04:01,600 –> 00:04:06,080
@jonathan: Sh. About nine months after I first started talking to them

44
00:04:07,360 –> 00:04:12,000
@jonathan: and then we agreed to do work together, and then nine months from day one that

45
00:04:11,920 –> 00:04:14,880
@jonathan: that we started talking. I get a call from

46
00:04:16,240 –> 00:04:20,720
@jonathan: one of the owners of the company saying hey, Um,

47
00:04:22,000 –> 00:04:23,840
@jonathan: you guys launched the website

48
00:04:24,960 –> 00:04:26,240
@jonathan: and it tanked our business.

49
00:04:27,520 –> 00:04:34,080
@jonathan: Um, I don’t know what’s going on, but I know for about the past month that the

50
00:04:34,240 –> 00:04:41,040
@jonathan: phone used to be ringing a lot. and now it’s not at all maybe one tenth as much as

51
00:04:41,200 –> 00:04:43,040
@jonathan: it used to. Um,

52
00:04:44,080 –> 00:04:47,680
@jonathan: I have no clue. but you guys need to fix this.

53
00:04:49,200 –> 00:04:55,680
@jonathan: Well. that’s not an easy phone call to get. And one. I’m going. Why, Why is he

54
00:04:55,760 –> 00:05:00,560
@jonathan: calling me on the ideas guy? but, oh right, I’m I’m the guy that told him that

55
00:05:00,800 –> 00:05:03,360
@jonathan: everything would be perfect. Well, okay,

56
00:05:04,640 –> 00:05:10,720
@jonathan: now that lights a fire under my ass to figure out what in the world is going on,

57
00:05:11,920 –> 00:05:18,000
@jonathan: So I use some tools. I don’t even talk to the the team that was doing the work.

58
00:05:18,400 –> 00:05:24,480
@jonathan: yet I wa to go in with a little bit of context of of what I’d be walking into, so

59
00:05:24,640 –> 00:05:31,280
@jonathan: use some tools to take a look at their their search rankings and how Google is

60
00:05:31,680 –> 00:05:38,320
@jonathan: seeing them, and for years they’ve been getting about fourteen, fifteen thousand

61
00:05:38,800 –> 00:05:43,200
@jonathan: visits per month. That translates to a lot of business to them,

62
00:05:44,220 –> 00:05:45,220
@jonathan: And then

63
00:05:45,920 –> 00:05:53,200
@jonathan: it’s basically the day the website launches their traffic tanks to fewer than a

64
00:05:53,340 –> 00:05:54,340
@jonathan: hundred per day.

65
00:05:56,400 –> 00:05:59,440
@jonathan: Almost overnight it goes from fifteen thousand

66
00:06:00,480 –> 00:06:02,480
@jonathan: to a hundred a day,

67
00:06:03,260 –> 00:06:04,260
@jonathan: which is

68
00:06:05,200 –> 00:06:11,680
@jonathan: deeply unsettling That that’s a huge huge issue. Big problem. So I reach out to

69
00:06:11,760 –> 00:06:17,280
@jonathan: the team and go. What in the world is going on? A Big Part of why they decided to

70
00:06:17,280 –> 00:06:24,480
@jonathan: go with us is that we know what is needed for S. e O and making Google happy. So

71
00:06:24,800 –> 00:06:27,040
@jonathan: what in the world did you guys do

72
00:06:28,080 –> 00:06:30,320
@jonathan: that made Google so mad,

73
00:06:31,360 –> 00:06:36,000
@jonathan: And then the team basically says we didn’t do it. It wasn’ us was say well, Okay,

74
00:06:36,160 –> 00:06:41,360
@jonathan: that’s nice, but you guys ah, need to have a better answer than that

75
00:06:42,380 –> 00:06:43,380
@jonathan: long story short.

76
00:06:44,480 –> 00:06:51,680
@jonathan: Turns out that we did the design work of the website and then the plug in guys

77
00:06:53,040 –> 00:06:59,200
@jonathan: locked us out of the website back end, so we didn’t even have hands on the website

78
00:06:59,600 –> 00:07:05,520
@jonathan: for about three months, as the plug in guys were working with the end client.

79
00:07:06,640 –> 00:07:12,560
@jonathan: And this relationship of us and the plug in team was very clear from the

80
00:07:12,640 –> 00:07:17,360
@jonathan: beginning. It. it wasn’t a underhanded or sneaky kind of white label thing. The

81
00:07:17,600 –> 00:07:22,160
@jonathan: Cim is very clear that this is a a separate team and this is the team that you

82
00:07:22,320 –> 00:07:26,960
@jonathan: have picked in order to build out this functionality And we’re bring. we’re

83
00:07:27,040 –> 00:07:32,400
@jonathan: building the framework and then they’re just gonna fit it in. Okay. Cool well,

84
00:07:33,520 –> 00:07:39,440
@jonathan: turns out that we hadn’t even touched the website in three months, and the owner

85
00:07:39,600 –> 00:07:45,920
@jonathan: that had called me was saying, And the the plug in guys say that it’s it has to do

86
00:07:46,080 –> 00:07:52,240
@jonathan: with with something you guys did. And so I’m finding out Okay, So we’re getting

87
00:07:52,480 –> 00:07:59,440
@jonathan: thrown under the bus by these plug in guys saying. Well, it was Jonathan’s team

88
00:07:59,940 –> 00:08:00,940
@jonathan: that that

89
00:08:01,760 –> 00:08:05,760
@jonathan: made this a dumpster fire. right, So

90
00:08:08,160 –> 00:08:14,240
@jonathan: the challenge then is to not look like you’re going. Well, na, it, it’s them.

91
00:08:15,440 –> 00:08:21,840
@jonathan: So part of the challenge was for me to help our client understand was like we’ve

92
00:08:21,920 –> 00:08:28,240
@jonathan: been locked out of the site for three months, so when it launched we wouldn’t have

93
00:08:28,640 –> 00:08:36,000
@jonathan: even been able to make those final checks. So this is when or these are the folks

94
00:08:36,160 –> 00:08:41,680
@jonathan: that pushed it live. Was something seriously wrong and we can’t even log in to see

95
00:08:41,840 –> 00:08:43,600
@jonathan: what that is, because

96
00:08:44,720 –> 00:08:49,360
@jonathan: they’re the folks that that pushed it live. and you are entirely correct that

97
00:08:49,920 –> 00:08:51,920
@jonathan: something here is very very wrong

98
00:08:53,920 –> 00:08:57,200
@jonathan: In having said all of that, I’m on it. I,

99
00:08:58,240 –> 00:09:02,400
@jonathan: I’m going to have some very strong conversations on your behalf. Let me go knock

100
00:09:02,640 –> 00:09:05,760
@jonathan: some heads, and I will. I’ll be in touch

101
00:09:06,880 –> 00:09:08,080
@jonathan: and this was about

102
00:09:09,280 –> 00:09:15,920
@jonathan: about uh, twenty minutes before I had a a scheduled, uh lunch on the books with my

103
00:09:16,080 –> 00:09:19,760
@jonathan: wife, because if if it’s not on the calendar, it’s not real, so schedule

104
00:09:19,840 –> 00:09:25,440
@jonathan: everything guys. So I go to have lunch with my wife, and

105
00:09:26,640 –> 00:09:32,800
@jonathan: and we’re literally in line to get barbecue, and it hits me I go. wait a minute.

106
00:09:33,600 –> 00:09:38,720
@jonathan: It can’t be. it can’t be this. It can’t be the simple because

107
00:09:40,320 –> 00:09:44,720
@jonathan: their website had tanked and it had stayed tanked for a month

108
00:09:45,840 –> 00:09:51,040
@jonathan: before the owner of the company reached out to me to say Hey, what’s going on? and

109
00:09:52,080 –> 00:09:58,640
@jonathan: from that fifteen thousand visits per day across the the website for two websites

110
00:09:59,120 –> 00:10:03,840
@jonathan: and the amount of money that they’re doing this is over a million dollar problem,

111
00:10:04,880 –> 00:10:11,600
@jonathan: and this is a million dollar problem with what I’m pretty sure might be a one

112
00:10:11,620 –> 00:10:12,620
@jonathan: dollar fix

113
00:10:13,680 –> 00:10:16,080
@jonathan: because part of my background was

114
00:10:17,120 –> 00:10:23,040
@jonathan: about fifteen years ago. I built websites for entertainers. My educational

115
00:10:23,200 –> 00:10:28,400
@jonathan: background is in traditional art and painting. So I’ve I’ve always loved visual

116
00:10:28,560 –> 00:10:30,080
@jonathan: communication and

117
00:10:31,200 –> 00:10:35,840
@jonathan: a lot of my friends are world class performers. but they don’t have good design.

118
00:10:36,160 –> 00:10:41,840
@jonathan: Since they. they don’t know how to create visuals. So we would be at a conference

119
00:10:42,080 –> 00:10:46,800
@jonathan: and I would see their promotional materials And it looks like somebody made it on

120
00:10:46,960 –> 00:10:51,360
@jonathan: Microsoft Word. and I would ask them like, Who’s who’s your designer? Who made

121
00:10:51,440 –> 00:10:55,120
@jonathan: this And they’re like, Oh, I did on Microsoft Word. I’m like Okay, it because it

122
00:10:55,200 –> 00:11:00,240
@jonathan: looks like a you. You really need need some help. So I started building their

123
00:11:00,320 –> 00:11:05,040
@jonathan: websites and then their show posters and their postcards and their D v d cases

124
00:11:05,200 –> 00:11:11,040
@jonathan: back when D v Ds were a thing, so that they would have a unified branding. Well, I

125
00:11:11,120 –> 00:11:18,000
@jonathan: had always used Word press, so I’m really really familiar with Word press, and I’m

126
00:11:18,160 –> 00:11:24,400
@jonathan: in line with my wife, and and it clicks nego. I think I figured it out.

127
00:11:25,580 –> 00:11:26,580
@jonathan: Let let me see.

128
00:11:27,500 –> 00:11:28,500
@jonathan: So I send

129
00:11:29,520 –> 00:11:34,880
@jonathan: the c. e o in email from my phone while I’m in line to order barbecue.

130
00:11:35,920 –> 00:11:39,200
@jonathan: By the time lunch is done and I get back to

131
00:11:39,780 –> 00:11:40,780
@jonathan: here.

132
00:11:41,580 –> 00:11:42,580
@jonathan: He tells me

133
00:11:44,000 –> 00:11:47,920
@jonathan: the problem was there and I fixed it. We’ll see what happens

134
00:11:49,280 –> 00:11:57,200
@jonathan: and it turned out that there’s this option in word press. It’s a single check box.

135
00:11:57,680 –> 00:12:01,280
@jonathan: That’s a, a single check box that says Discourage

136
00:12:02,800 –> 00:12:07,840
@jonathan: we web crawlers from crawling the site or however, it’s worded, It’s basically a.

137
00:12:08,560 –> 00:12:13,840
@jonathan: Do you want Google to be aware of this or do you want Google to ignore you?

138
00:12:14,880 –> 00:12:16,000
@jonathan: And somehow

139
00:12:17,280 –> 00:12:24,160
@jonathan: both of the websites had been launched with that little check box? Checked. That’s

140
00:12:24,320 –> 00:12:27,440
@jonathan: it. That’s the. That was the whole. That was the whole issue.

141
00:12:28,580 –> 00:12:29,580
@jonathan: So this company

142
00:12:30,720 –> 00:12:34,160
@jonathan: had lost out on more than a million dollars of revenue,

143
00:12:35,200 –> 00:12:39,200
@jonathan: and the fix was knowing which check box to uncheck,

144
00:12:40,060 –> 00:12:41,060
@jonathan: and then

145
00:12:41,920 –> 00:12:47,600
@jonathan: that was on Friday, like at one or two in the afternoon, and then Monday rolls

146
00:12:47,840 –> 00:12:54,480
@jonathan: around, and their organic traffic had already started to to come back. So it was a

147
00:12:55,120 –> 00:13:00,640
@jonathan: a literal example of that probably apocryphal story about the the guy getting

148
00:13:00,960 –> 00:13:06,240
@jonathan: brought into the to the factory who hits a machine with a hammer and it starts

149
00:13:06,400 –> 00:13:09,920
@jonathan: back up. And then when the owner asked them okay, what’s the charge? Goes ten

150
00:13:10,080 –> 00:13:13,440
@jonathan: thousand dollars, Becausees ten thousand dollars, he goes absolutely one dollar

151
00:13:13,600 –> 00:13:17,120
@jonathan: for the hammer, nine thousand, nine hundred, ninety nine dollars, to know where to

152
00:13:17,200 –> 00:13:23,280
@jonathan: hit it, And that is literally what happened with this multi millionll dollar

153
00:13:23,600 –> 00:13:32,400
@jonathan: company. So those tiny tiny details have huge impacts on the success or failure of

154
00:13:32,640 –> 00:13:34,480
@jonathan: a company or relationship.

155
00:13:35,680 –> 00:13:38,240
@jonathan: So the fact that the relationship guy

156
00:13:39,280 –> 00:13:40,320
@jonathan: solved this problem

157
00:13:41,440 –> 00:13:43,200
@jonathan: in line for lunch

158
00:13:44,560 –> 00:13:51,600
@jonathan: was a clear demonstration that Okay, this team is the team that we need for long

159
00:13:51,840 –> 00:13:54,240
@jonathan: term help. So from there

160
00:13:55,600 –> 00:14:01,440
@jonathan: we we landed a opportunity to help them on the business stability side and making

161
00:14:01,760 –> 00:14:08,080
@jonathan: sure that Um, their s e o is resilient and not just coasting from good practices,

162
00:14:08,320 –> 00:14:13,600
@jonathan: but actively putting in energy to get even more eyeballs. So me being able to

163
00:14:13,680 –> 00:14:19,520
@jonathan: solve that issue for them was a huge trust builder by demonstrating competence,

164
00:14:20,320 –> 00:14:25,840
@jonathan: which gave them the confidence that we would be able to help them on the the

165
00:14:26,160 –> 00:14:33,120
@jonathan: marketing and and lead flow side of things as well. So that’s just uh, an example

166
00:14:33,680 –> 00:14:39,440
@jonathan: of kind of high stakes business. And how sometimes the answers are ridiculously

167
00:14:39,840 –> 00:14:47,200
@jonathan: simple, but ▁ultra important. And if you don’t know those details well, then the

168
00:14:47,280 –> 00:14:52,880
@jonathan: answer is a mystery to you, so kind of like from my background in magic and

169
00:14:52,960 –> 00:14:58,400
@jonathan: mentalism, Oftentimes the way that it works. The method is very simple, but the

170
00:14:58,500 –> 00:14:59,500
@jonathan: effect is

171
00:15:00,560 –> 00:15:05,680
@jonathan: disproportionate to the amount of effort required. So it’s it’s kind of uh. There

172
00:15:05,760 –> 00:15:10,640
@jonathan: was a magician. I think it was Marshall Brodine who used to say Magic is easy once

173
00:15:10,880 –> 00:15:15,920
@jonathan: you know how if it wasn’t Marsha Brodine, Uh, well, I’ll look it up on Google

174
00:15:16,160 –> 00:15:20,480
@jonathan: after this, but anyway, uh, the the idea of being that magic is easy Once you know

175
00:15:20,560 –> 00:15:26,720
@jonathan: how well so is business. So is success. So is life, and as one of my mentors told

176
00:15:26,880 –> 00:15:30,800
@jonathan: me, Uh, no better, do better. don’t beat yourself up if you didn’t know any

177
00:15:30,960 –> 00:15:33,600
@jonathan: better, but now you do, so take care of it.

178
00:15:34,720 –> 00:15:41,200
@jonathan: Yeah, so there’s a. There’s a lot packed into that story and, and it’s kind of a a

179
00:15:41,360 –> 00:15:48,160
@jonathan: great case study for the very strange kinds of problems and situations that I

180
00:15:48,480 –> 00:15:54,560
@jonathan: really really love helping my clients with. So if you’ve got a very strange

181
00:15:55,440 –> 00:15:59,920
@jonathan: business challenge or opportunity that you would like another set of eyeballs on,

182
00:16:00,640 –> 00:16:05,520
@jonathan: feel free to reach out. Um, you? you’re not going to weird me out. I dare you to

183
00:16:05,600 –> 00:16:11,520
@jonathan: bring me a problem I haven’t seen before, So that’s that’s it for now. And uh,

184
00:16:11,760 –> 00:16:16,720
@jonathan: yeah, I guess this will be the the first installation of the Behind the Boardroom

185
00:16:17,200 –> 00:16:23,040
@jonathan: series. And if you have any kinds of topics or questions about sales negotiation

186
00:16:23,440 –> 00:16:30,000
@jonathan: presentation skills, Um, anything like that, shoot me a message on Twitter through

187
00:16:30,240 –> 00:16:36,720
@jonathan: email. ridiculously easy to get a hold of at. I can read Mines Dot com, So yeah,

188
00:16:37,040 –> 00:16:40,160
@jonathan: that’s it for now, and I will see you in the next video.