What Designers Do to Close $10K+ clients w/ David Fastuca | The Futur Podcast Ep. 346

You can't be halfbaked. You can't be halfassed in your efforts now. I think design is essential to business today. Ever more so than before history. I mean what we do is being commoditized, devalued, often forcing many people to underell their work undervalued. I believe the riches are in the niches. So really understanding you know your customer, the industry that they're in and being really known for that. I'm Dave Fuka and you're listening to the future. I have the opportunity to talk to my next guest about why he believes design is a differentiator. And my core uh identity is one of a designer. So when somebody says that, my ears are up. You can't really see them through all the headphones and the head gear that I'm wearing. But I'm really intrigued because I think a large portion of our audience, dear listener, you are wondering how we compete in this world, especially in the age of AI and all the noise that's going on. How can design be a differentiator? Is there a business component to it or quotient, how do we communicate that value to others? And beyond just theory and abstract talk, I'm hoping that we land in a place today with my next guest, uh, David. Uh, he's going to share with us some examples of what he's done and what he's seen. David, welcome to the show.

Chris, it's a pleasure and honor to be here with you, mate. Wonderful to have you. So, let me just start off with this question. Uh, I mean, what when you say design as a differentiator, can you breathe life into that? Can you fill that out a little bit so everybody's on the same page? Yeah, definitely. So, if you think about design as a differentiator, it's design is a quick way to build trust uh with your audience and with a prospect. Like, I put it to you like this. If you're looking at two of the same products, both priced, you know, very, you know, in the same way, call it a dollar or two here or there, but one website and the product itself looks like a lot more care and thought has gone into the design versus the other. My question to you is which one are you going to choose? And you haven't spoken with anyone from either company. It's just based on first impressions. Now, my gut is going to say and my head will say that 90% plus will go to the one that's better designed, right? So, it's a way for you to form that trust with someone at a real quick level because of the thought that you put into every aspect of that. A great story uh that comes to mind is the company Zero, the accounting software. Um, quote unquote, quite a boring industry. Sorry for any accountants watching this or listening to this episode. But they entered a real sort of stagnant industry. Came with a different approach where, you know, they did the same thing that everyone else does with their accounting because it's a very black and white industry, but they everything that they produced from their website, from their product, even their terms and conditions pages was beautifully designed and they really lent into that and really captivated the market based on the look and feel and the effort they put into their design platform. Um, so that's, you know, to kick us off why I believe design can be a real differentiator for your business. And design can create preference. It can start a conversation. It could build a meaningful, long-lasting, loyal relationship. It could be utility. It could be purely aesthetic. There's lots of ways to unpack this. And when we say better design, I think that is where my subjective ears start to perk up because in our world, if we look across all industries, all sectors, both virtual and physical, the most beautifully designed products don't always win. In fact, there are more ugly products and services out there than there are beautiful ones. And if the argument is that to be said that better always wins or better is preferred, how come it is that we don't live in such a beautifully designed aesthetic world? Yeah, that's really interesting. Right. I come across a story that I a founder told me around 10 years ago. Now they were running one of the biggest online and retail retailers here in Australia called JB Hi-Fi and so they were positioning themselves as the budget uh type of digital company uh to go to whether you wanted a TV fridge and so forth. So when I was chatting with them, I'm like, "Your website looks like crap. You know, why, you know, this is the head of marketing, with all the money and resources, why don't you create something that's beautiful? " And I'll never forget this conversation. He sat me down and said, "Dave, we spend over $5 million a year redeveloping, testing our website, and it's made to look cheap by design because that's the impression that we want to give, right? Even though all the products we sell are topnotch, your Samsung, your Sony's, and all that sort of stuff, it's that we want to give the impression that when you come to us, you're getting a better deal. So, they're using design as a as an influence to make it feel like you're coming to, you know, a budget site that you're going to get a great deal. And they did provide great deals, but it was to give that impression from the outset. So it was to guide the user where if they made it look like a luxury site because they had all the resources in the world then instantly you would think that this product this website is more expensive than the other. So I agree 100% that design is subjective. Every designer has their own sort of way of doing things and some people either like that or don't like that. It's one of those tough things. It's not a black and white uh industry or space that's for sure. So design from the viewpoint of pure designers tends to be a battle that is won or lost purely on aesthetics. Like I don't like the way that looks or they round that corner. Whatever it is, it's purely aesthetics. And I've used this term before. I've gotten some heat on it, but I still stand by it. It's like when creatives talk about design on a purely aesthetic level, they're taking the highle conversation and they're taking to the streets, to the slums, if you will, and this is not where we need to do our battles. So you've added an additional component to this which is design besides being beautiful needs to solve a specific problem and design needs to be reflective of the positioning of the product or service and align to the customers in which they want to attract. So better in some cases is not looking more premium but better is more budget friendly because that's the position that they're in. And that's in direct contrast to how luxury brands want to present themselves. And the mistake that a lot of our listeners make is they think everybody wants to be

positioned as the most luxurious brand. In just a few moments, we're going to hit our 400th episode of this podcast. And before we get there, we want to take a moment to really listen to you, our loyal listeners. If you're open to chatting with my producer, Rich Cardona, or someone on his team, we'd love to hear from you. Just fill out the short form in the show notes. It takes less than 20 seconds. Now, let's take it into another place here. And that was a great example. Thanks for providing that. Let's just say between Apple and Microsoft, they both make technology products, consumer electronics, very powerful computers, and can enable lots of people to do their jobs better. In the world, it seems like once Apple got its mojo back when Steve Jobs returned and rebuilt up Apple, I don't think Apple's ever lost it. It's become one of the most valuable companies in the world, a trillion dollar company. But Microsoft continues to do really well. Now, without assuming what side of this war you're on or side, are you an Apple guy or are you a Microsoft guy? I'm just curious. I am an Apple guy. Um, and I'll can probably share why. And this is probably my, you know, design background influence is that I love the aesthetic of everything that Apple does and the simplicity and mainly because, you know, Apple, you know, for me has never failed me versus uh with Microsoft for any Microsoft fans, I often would get the blue screen, especially when dealing with Adobe. So, look, they really picked their niche from the early outsets. I remember you know originally Apple was a that premium product which still is to today they targeted that creative mind um which you know now has become more mass market versus your Microsoft where there's a lot more wouldn't say complexity but you have a lot more options you know if you wanted to fully customize your setup and all the bits and pieces that you received of your device you go down the Microsoft route if you want something where there's only two or three choices and it's just click click and you're out. Then you go down the Apple route. So, but if we bring that back to the call, they had two different, you know, ideal customer profiles and buyer personas. One was the more tech and complex. The other was more sort of simple and creative. And they've both lent into that quite hard and have still, you know, in that same way today. simplicity, you go, you know, down the route, I would argue, down to Apple. For more uh technical setup and more options, you'll go down the Microsoft route. But that comes down to really understanding who it is you sell to and what it is they care about and then designing your products, your messaging, everything around that persona. That's the key. You said when things are designed well, design is a differentiator. It's a way to engineer trust and it shows that the end user that you care. So let's bring it back to the Dave show here. When have you used design to show a customer, a whole group of people that you care? And be as specific as you can be, please. Yeah, sure thing. So in my previous company that I co-founded with my uh cousin Ross, we had built a business travel tech company. Now what is that? It's basically uh a tool that enables you to plan, book and manage your business travel. You know, it was comparable to the like of trip actions, nan conquer. Um when we came out with this product, my cousin and I been on a business trip ourselves. We had always worked for ourselves. So had never had to use any sort of legacy platforms. So when the problem came to us and when we were designing what this optimum you know platform should look like we hadn't even seen and maybe very naive at the time but we hadn't seen what the tools were in the market. We just said you know what let's make a decision here. Let's not look and be influenced by anything that's out there and let's just create something that we believe should be the way that you would manage this process within a business. So we were inspired a lot of by a lot of the great tools that are out there. you know, your Facebook, your uh your zero platform, all the great tools that were coming out and we're like, let's just create something from a clean slate. Then we went and presented that uh to potential customers that we were looking at converting from those legacy tools and all of them their eyes just lit up purely by the way of we took a real

simplistic approach to what was always something that's quite complex and the experience uh that we provided within that tool. Now, we didn't have all the functionality that these big players had. They've been in the market for decades, had engineering teams into the hundreds. We had two people. So, we had to lean into something different. What was going to differentiate ourselves from everyone else out there in the market. So, we decided that the design and the simplicity of the user experience, that was going to be the thing that we tip our hat on. And why would someone want to change from where they're you know existently using a product which still worked but they were getting a lot of gripes and frustrations of how clunky and long it took someone to actually make a trip versus the experience that we provided within locomote. If I transition that into my new company now Growth Forum you know it's a sales training uh platform where we help B2B founders create a sales operating system install that then recruit. you'd argue that there's not a lot of design required for that. But then when I was discussing this with my now co-founder Luigi, we're like again if we look at all the people that are doing something similarish in the market, the design, the way they present themselves, their products, you know, are quite stale um haven't changed for quite a long time. So let's come out with a bit of edge. Let's create things that are really simple uh to adapt from our templates, our messaging frameworks, the way we present ourselves. Let's just put something out there that we're super proud of. Let's put something out there can look like a movie poster, you know, from our new book, The B2B Sales Playbook. You know, let's create something that doesn't exist like this hard black with a nice contrasting white font that really stands out. You know, if you're looking at a sea of business books, what's going to catch your eye? you know, you'll come across that. So, we put a lot of effort into, you know, differentiating ourselves by not just by what we do, but the design aesthetics that we put out into the marketplace. Is there any specific that you can point to either in the travel company that you're talking about or this new thing of the growth forum where you could have gone X, but you went Y and here's the result that you got to try to paint a much clearer picture besides saying it's a better designed product. Yeah, definitely. So a lot of people a lot of the sales trainers and coaches in the current market will have their uh templates and everything like in just a simple Google doc um Google doc with you your basic formatting and writing because the premise and the thought pattern behind that is you know the content is king. So if I went to, you know, I can name three suppliers, um

their process and the look and feel of their templates and everything look exactly the same, different content, of course. So we decided to go, you know what, let's create our material that we share with our members in a different way. So we did that within beautifully designed uh Canva templates which guides the user which provides you know clear imagery along with the text um that guides them along the process of how to build their sales playbook versus just a generic you know Google doc white sheet black text. So we decided to spend more time and effort creating something that would guide the user in a much more efficient way. And if I bring that back to locomote as well as a different story. What we would the general sort of way that people would book travel would be everything on one page. And what I mean by everything, it will ask you questions like what hotel, what car, what flight. So they're your generic things. Then it will ask you company specific questions. Um why are you traveling? Who's your uh your manager line manager that's going to approve this? So, it's probably like one page with about 30 questions. So, we decided to let's create this as a better experience. Let's break it down into a few screens and save the progress along the way on the core items that you need. So, first it'll ask you what type of trip are you going on. So, then it'll define okay, you just need a flight, you don't need car and hotel. So, let's not ask those questions. All right. Then it will go down to ah we remember last time you selected John Smith as your manager you know is that still the same manager now click. So now I don't have to search and type he or she's name it would remember. So what we did there was design an experience that wasn't just great the first time that will become better the second third fourth time because it will start to remember what you did previously. So that was the clear differentiator that we did there. leveraging design and experience by understanding that this is a tool that people need to get in and out as quickly as possible. It wasn't like your Facebook and Meta that want to track and keep you in there for a long period of time. We did the opposite, tracking how quickly can David go in, make a booking, and then get back to his normal job. So, the lower the time, the better it was for us. That sounds a lot like user experience design that you're talking about here to use contextual clues or information to change the flow of the conversation. So if you've answered these questions before or building some kind of logic flow. So if you're traveling for a day trip, you don't need hotel obviously. So don't ask people questions like that. That's the kind of design you're talking about, right? Correct. And it's just creating that in a real simple way that it's intuitive. So this is where you know the user interface design needs to be clear and not confusing. If you look at two consumer sites, so Virgin's website, uh, Virgin Travel versus Booking. com, you'll see some very clear differences where if I'm selecting dates on Virgin site, the whole page will just become a calendar and it's asking me to select from one to the other versus a drop down that's got a lot of other things popping around it, ads and so forth that can be distracting. you know, there's quite a bit of pressure when you're doing something of that uh of that nature because if you select the wrong dates, could cost you more, you get there a day early, a day later. So, these are quite, you know, quote unquote high pressure type of processes. So they've looked to release the anxiety from the end user by having an intuitive user interface obviously led by design to make it a lot more proficient for you know the person making that booking. Um we certainly live in uncertain times right now because of the rate of change that everyone's having to deal with. We seem to be on the brink of war, another war or perhaps World War II. I don't know. I hope that's not the case. increasing climate change and pressure from AI. So designers are going to need to know, well, how do I use this design aspect to win new business? How do I use design to be more conversant with business owners and what I can do there? But before we get there, um I you shared with me earlier about how you started a company and exited and then purchased that company back. I think it's called Travelport. And yeah, so that's the company we sold it to. The company uh that we sold and bought back was uh a locomote. Okay. And now you

bought it back. Are you still running it? Correct. Yes. So we bought it back. So we sold it in started in 2011 if I give the timeline here. Um sold it in 2016 to travelport. com. Um my cousin and I Ross had the golden handcuffs. I had to stay for 2 years to do the manage to transition. Um we left in August 2018. did a bit of investments and more time with the family for a two-year period. Got the itch uh obviously to get back into entrepreneurship and business. Uh then co hit obviously and a lot of uh companies were affected and families were affected by that. I'd argue none more so than the travel industry cuz not only did travel come to a grinding halt, a lot of travel is booked in advance, especially whether it be holidays, business trips. So now you know you'll need all those a travel agencies will need to refund all those credits. So they will go in not just no revenue but in reverse. So Travelport at the time of co were a listed uh company on the New York Stock Exchange. They made the decision to start divesting a lot of the investments that they have accured over the last 10 years. Um we got wind that they were looking at um selling off locomote. Ross and I looked at each other and we said, "Who knows like we could do this locomode version two. " You know, we never thought in our life that we'll go back into business travel, but we had that sort of deep desire that we had unfinished business. So, we re over a bit of a year period, we reacquired the business back in 2021 and then sort of relaunched it uh coming out of that. It's still uh operating now. I had left the business in 23 to start growth forum. I found my passion was on the sales and marketing and Ross is uh CEO and still kicking dolls with locomot. What is it that you knew how to do that you could buy back the company and have some kind of degree of confidence that you can make it work where they were happy to get rid of it for a dollar? I mean nobody wants it then. Yeah. It's one of those things where obviously it's costing money. Um so it was costing Traport to maintain the product. There were customers on there. Obviously they weren't transacting but there were customers on it that relied on it. We were still connected to the industry. It's a very small industry. It doesn't change fast like you probably every 10 years some event will occur. So going back into the industry and talking to people before we acquired back realized that the same issues were there, the same pain points um and you know we had built a good brand in the industry and the founder Allure has a good impact on brands. As soon as we started to talk to existing customers and they got a bit of a sniff that we were coming back, it excited them. So that gave us confidence and we knew the product was a great product. It was a great asset. So there was two options for us. One, we acquire it back and we look to hold on to it and then just do a quick sale uh bouncing out of CO or do we look to try and sell during CO which was you know bit of a crazy thought um selling something that no one really needed and then come out of CO with a nice story that we can then garner investment from. So we kept we tried both angles. Ross was focusing on angle one to see what we could do there from a sale perspective. And then I was focusing on angle two. Can we sell and develop a pipeline um of ready to go customers once travel start to kick back on? And but now you're no longer involved. It's your cousin, did you say? Correct. Yes. So I'm still one of the major shareholders in Locomotes, but um I had moved on. We' built out a good sales team. Um great marketing function. Like it felt time for me to move on. I was never passionate about um business travel. We sort of fell into that

industry where Ross really dived deep dive deep into it and all to the nuances of that space and you know quite love that space. For me, I enjoyed the sales and marketing uh front of it. We weren't cracking into the US uh yet. We're probably a year or two away. So, my impact was probably limited at that time. and I felt it was time to move on and pursue a new passion. All right, let's get back to the thing where the designers who are listening to this who can see like there's a business opportunity here. So I' I'd love for you to share about how you use design to win a new business deal. Yeah. So that would come down to again the approach that we would use to reach out to customers uh prospects. I would often design uh a little bit of a demo of the platform with the company's logo on there, understanding the type of travel they would do based on speaking to some of their salespeople within the company or people who I knew would do travel. So the way I would use travel uh as design as a bit of a differentiator is I could create something a proposal and a video demo that they would never get from anyone else cuz no one was willing to put in the time uh to do that. So, I would almost create like a little bit of a micro site and call it like a micro proposal that was beautifully designed, had their branding all over the place, and it made it feel like it was their platform. It wasn't someone else's platform. It was built for purpose for them based on some research that I've done on the way they travel. And using that as a differentiator got me through the door. All right? because it was really hard to get through the gatekeeper to get a meeting because if you're using something like locomotive time it's hard to you know move someone across platform think of it as like moving bank it's a painful process they all do similar sort of things is it worth it moving so I just needed to get my foot in the door to have that conversation to showcase why it's worth the investment in moving across to locomote both in cost but also time and the personnel within the business to allocate time as a new project to migrate across. So that was a key thing that we did during that phase. The next phase was obviously onboarding. So when you're onboarding a new customer, doesn't matter what you do, whether it's a design agency, marketing, technology, that process of what does that look like from the meetings that you have to the follow-up material that you send to all those steps in the process, that is an indication of what it's like working with you. So what is your communication look like? What are the assets that you send them in? What do they look like? What is that process? So that's another sales journey there. The onboarding where it gives the customer potentially a way to say this is not the right thing for me or yes, I've made the right decision here. If this is the way I'm being treated now during the onboarding, I can just imagine how good my experience is going to be once we're live and once the project's going or once the design project is in play. This is the type of communication I can expect to get the way that I get uh my mockups and things like that. So that that's something there that I've seen a lot of designers, even people who we've engaged with to help us with projects that have failed by not showing me what great looks like and leaving things up to my own assumptions because they're not being clear on their communication and

process. So it sounds to me like you made extra effort to not just give them information, but to package it in a way that looks good to shows that you've made some effort there, right? Correct. I think that design is not just in the end product or your website. Designers should be in everything that you do, right? And what I mean by everything, yes, it takes time and effort, but again too, it just shows me that if I click your terms and conditions and I go, "Wow, jeez, this is really nicely designed versus 99% of uh brands and companies just leave it as an afterthought. Um, leave it as just text on the page. " that just shows that you really care about all the little things um that happen within your agency or product. So I think you know spending the time to focus on all those little 1enters over you know 3 4 years they all add up and it can you know it's a bit of a moat around your business because other companies may not focus on that but if you can just tackle a little bit here and there and focus on those things there that can be a differentiator for you. So, behind you, in case you're listening to this podcast and not watching the video version of this, there's a number of pictures that are framed behind Dave's head. Uh, one word says beautiful. I think another one says it god soaring. What does that say? These are my uh I'm a football quote unquote soccer uh fanatic. So, these are beautifully designed posters around uh the world of uh of soccer. So, it's one of those things where again too, I like know nice looking things. Um, especially in my office space. So, yeah, again too, I made a lot of this bit did a lot of research to find posters that I actually liked that deserve to go up on my wall. And he's arranged in kind of a salon style where there's five or six things. They're not perfectly lined, but there's like there's a flow and symmetry, I guess, asymmetrical layout, but it feels like it's balanced and it's well thought out. So when we talk about design, we're not talking about just about the way things look. We're talking about the experience of it, showing people that you care, the thoughtfulness and anticipating certain things. And you also said that it is a trial, I guess. Uh what is this relationship going to look like at all ends? So how you do one thing is how you do everything. And you were talking about doing that 1% different compounded across multiple touch points actually can have a really big impact. The question I have for you, and it's not going to be an easy one to answer, but I'm hoping that you can venture a guess at this, which is what if you just submitted the proposal the way that most people in your space would submit a proposal. What percentage would you assign to this that was a contributing factor to them moving forward with you versus saying, "No, not right for us. " Tough one to answer. I guess that's um you know thinking about that you would need to so if if there's three proposals that have come my way and they all look the same similar sort of priceish I am now needing to think of other ways to go to understand who am I going to trust more so now if you've taken design off the table as a differentiator now I need to revert back to other ways and that might be the engage engagement that I had with the individual. What how big is the

company? What are the customers that they've dealt with? So, if you're a new startup and you're in the ring with someone that's been in the game for 5 to 10 years and then an established player and all your proposals look the same, instantly, you know, I would argue that your proposal is now off the table. you know, you've been removed because, okay, you look like all these, but you don't have the logos um that you know, some confidence building and you you're new, so I'm going to swipe you out now with the next two that have been in the game longer. So, but if your proposal, if your submission is far more, you know, thought out, meaning that there's more thought gone into it, the design of it is great, it's capturing my attention, and then I'm getting that sensation that I think you're going to care more about this project. So just by having something that's you know much more thought out and beautifully designed can often position you as the leader even though that you might not have the experience there. The other two proposals that look you know stock standard but have been out you know the companies have been out there for quite a long time that can often then position themselves out purely from a okay well I'm probably just going to be another number within these uh organizations. I'm gonna put in my trust with the upandcomer because I believe that they're going to go in above and beyond. So say if it's a $10,000 project for argument sake or proposals come in at $10,000. The if you've got some experience in this, you're probably thinking, okay, within the mid tier to large tier, I'm probably going to get someone junior working on my project where in the smaller agency space, they're probably going to give me 20 $30,000 worth of value for the 10. So that's the one I want to work with. So that's how I would sort of answer that question there. Chris, how much of a differentiator did design make in your estimation because we can never really know but it's just more on a self-evaluation thing. We within the locomote process there because we were quite analytical within our setup of CRM. So I do remember um like a rough guide that I can give you on you know the percentage wise. So we would have a around a 30 to 40% uh in the positive chance of winning through what we through our process and our design that we laid out versus those who didn't. Now that's taken out any sort of tender processes where it becomes an elongated sort of thing. But if we're going, you know, toe-to-toe with a another provider proposal out doing the meeting, we would often win 30 to 40% more of the time than we would have. The reason why we have to ask this is because I think a large portion of our my audience is design driven and so they would never even consider sending in a proposal that didn't look perfect that wasn't laid out with the best type face and the spacing and looking for all that because that's just who they are and they might be in a position where they're not winning a new business because that's what is expected of every design firm to be able to do. So, is there anything you could share with us like if you're a designer who's caring about all these little details and thinking about all the touch points that why aren't they still getting the business? What kind of insight can you offer to them if any? Yeah, perfect. So, I was talking about this the other day with one of our members and there's three ways that you can send a proposal, right? So, the bottom and the easiest that most people do is they have the discovery meeting with you. I get the design brief. Then I put in all this effort to do a, you know, beautifully looking a proposal and I send it to you Chris via email and I say, you know, let's catch up once you've had a chance uh to look through this. Right? So, that's bottom of the barrel and we do not recommend uh doing it like that. The second is that I create a Loom video of sorts walking through the proposal so you can hear my you know, voice. I'm guiding you through the proposal talking about why we did XY Z. So that way they if the proposal is shared internally with other people that it you're not leaving it up to the individual to just to flick over a PDF. They're sending the video and whether it be the CEO, CFO, head of marketing, whoever wasn't in the initial conversation can hear and develop trust with you uh and then walk through that proposal there. That's number two. The best way to send a proposal. So this is, you know, in all three of these scenarios, you've I'm just taking it verbatim that you've got an amazing, beautiful proposal leveraging one of your awesome templates that people can build out. So the third one, the best way, the first way that I'll be

sending it is going, "Chris, I've got the proposal ready. I want to jump on a call uh with you for 15 minutes is I can walk you through it. Then I'm going to send you uh I'm going to record that and then I'm going to send it to you as a follow-up. " So you're not doing extra effort there by having to, you know, do the meeting then record a separate video. You're recording that meeting. So the reason why that way is the number one way is that I'm looking at you right now. As I walk through it, I can see if you're puzzled about a particular slide or page that I'm going through and then I can adjust for that and I can ask you a question. We can dive deeper into that live while we're chatting. Then more most importantly when we get to the pricing side I can see your level of comfort right through the visual cues whether you're leaning back on your chair whether you're scratching your head I can interrogate you a little bit more to understand where are we in the scope of things that way there I can make adjustments before sending over the final proposal I've had a conversation with you then I can book a meeting following that call so I can say okay I'm going to send this to you now you know within the next hour. Um, when should we book in a follow-up call? Then you've got that action plan in place. You've shared the proposal. You've gone deep and uncovered any sort of concerns or questions they have. You're sending them the follow-up video of the recorded session. So, if they pass that proposal on to anyone else within the business, they've got context and you've booked in the next meeting. That is the number way number one way uh to close more deals with your design agency. Okay. So your preference is to present it live to adjust as you go to read the person's emotions and in case there was something that they ask for more of or less of you can quickly tune that up and then send that over following the conversation. Correct. You get a good understanding as to as you're walking through the proposal as well. Um you can ask a few more buying questions as to you know who else within the business needs to get involved in this or see this proposal? What do they care about more? because then you might make some little tweaks. These little finesse tweaks there can often, you know, it might come down to, you know, typically you might have the finals page or like a proposal page that has all the costings there, but then you might when you're when I'm talking to you Chris, you might say, "Yeah, it's going to go to the CFO and they're very analytical. They want to see a breakdown line by line on where every scent is going. " You can say, "Cool. " So then on each page of a project you might have uh this is what this element of the project costs and then on the final page you got the summary but as they're going through and as you're talking through you know during this stage of the project we're going to do x y z and this is the value and the investment that's required for it you're developing trust as you build up to the final price and the CFO or whoever within the business is going okay I can see where the investment is coming and where it's going to in this project. I believe that they can deliver. Yes, let's go. Versus uh here's everything we're going to do. Bang, final price. Wonderful. Okay. I want to use the last question I have for you today to be probably maybe one of the most pivotal and te you up for this is uh this idea of like why you think design is essential to business today ever like ever more so than before history. I mean designers I think are feeling this pressure where what we do is being commoditized, devalued, often forcing many people to underell their work undervalued uh in the marketplace. So why do you think design is such an important part of business and how can we leverage that? It's such a creative field, right? If we think

about all the fields that are out there, design is one of those things where again very subjective of course, but it's very creative. Um, so why is it the most pivotal than it's ever been now is that you can't be halfbaked. You can't be halfass in your efforts now. If you can develop something similar to an AI output, then you you can become commoditized, right? So, how do you differentiate yourself from that? It's about depending on who you're targeting and who you're going after. I like I believe, you know, the riches are in the niches. So, really understanding, you know, your customer, the industry that they're in, and being really known for that. I think moving forward in the next 5 to 10 years, you're going to see those wide ranging design agencies that can do a logo to a business card to a website start to become, you know, more focused on one or two particular uh niches. It might be that we're the best in user experience. We're the best at, you know, branding, whatever it might be. But then really owning that space and showcasing that you're leveraging AI. I think would be you know cognizant of you know mentioning that you should be leveraging AI to enhance what you do uh to promote what you do to make you more effective so you can stay in your zone of excellence no matter what that might be within your design agency and it's embracing that and then talking about with your customers and addressing it head on right because you know that these questions are probably in the buyer's head as to can I just get like a midjourney you know output and get something similar for $10 versus paying pay you a,000. So leveraging in that conversation into your buying process and saying that you know these are the tools that are out there. Here's what we leverage but here's where our team come into it. It's the creative thinking it's the you know the research that we do in the space that's going to position you know as number one in your market. So I think more thinking more creativity which is you know most designers zone of excellence needs to come into play. And it it's like many industries, you know, there's you can either look at AI and the changing in dynamic as a fearful way or you can have that abundance mindset and go, I'm going to embrace this. This is going to help me and I'm going to really lean into this and use it as a differentiator for my business. So, you're in either one of those two camps. And I definitely implore you all uh listening to be in that abundance mindset. There is plenty of work out there for all of us. You just need to embrace it. Find, you know, your zone of excellence and who you want to serve and go really deep into that. There are a lot of people in the creative space that are anti- AI. We see posts that say this was made by human am anti- AI and the hashtag. So for people who are concerned about the ethical training source material that a lot of AI is trained on and how it may or may not infringe on copyright. Do you have any words of wisdom for them? Again, it's being aware of the tools that you're using and who you're working for. Some brands may not care. Other brands would have a high standard of, you know, we can't be seen to leverage any or have any copyright infringement. I think was it Nike not too long ago, about a month or so ago, did a full uh TVC ad using AI. So, obviously, you know, brands are there testing and interrogating these tools themselves. So, one, again, I'll bring it back to the customer. do they care about if there's any sort of slight plagiarism or you know leveraging you know the unethical side of AI versus those who really do care and then understanding what tools can you use what parameters can you put in place what are your guard rails for ensuring that doesn't leak out because that's going to hurt you and your design agency if you know it always takes is one bad person to say put a post on LinkedIn saying I just went to agency X and all they did was spit out some AI stuff that's similar to my competitor and they wanted $10,000 for it. It could that can really hurt your image. So, it's being cognizant of the outputs of these tools and not just leaving it all up to them. Yeah. So, there's two sides to this. One is I'm anti-As. And then there's the other side, the extreme opposite, which is I don't want to do any thinking. I just want the AI to do all the work and I'll go collect the checks. And that's not what we're advocating for either. It

should be used to enhance what you do, not replace what you do. Exactly. So this is where, you know, you look at a lot of the tools that we use today, whether it be Figma, Adobe, they're integrating AI into their tools to help make your work a lot simpler. I'll never forget years ago trying to, you know, remove a background from someone's image with their hair and it taken like 4hour process and now it's two clicks and in 4 seconds and the whole background's gone to perfection, right? So why wouldn't you leverage all these tools that are out there? Again, that process there can reduce your time. So then you can put more effort into the creative thinking of the project and making sure that's going to resonate for your buyers audience rather than on the doing uh side of things. So yeah, you'd be silly not to engage with AI in the right ways to enhance your offering to give you more time and more creative space to think about how can you execute this project in a way that's going to blow the socks off your customer that's going to deliver them crazy results for their brand. That's where more of your time should go into. As we start to lay this plan and this conversation I'm having with you today, let's give the people Dave's three things that you can do to use design as a differentiator and be as prescriptive as you want so that it's super tactical for people. Definitely. So what I would do from a design perspective is your primary asset being your website. I would leverage some like a tool like user testing. com some something similar to those where you can get some external people real humans who are similar to the buyers that you target to go through and test your website out and what you get from here you'll get a series of videos of them clicking through your website and if they're getting stuck so you give them a goal I want you to book a meeting with me that is the goal of this uh task now if you find it's taken someone 5 minutes to book a call on your website, you got some design issues there that you need to fix. Your website might be beautiful, but if it's not converting and not delivering you leads, then you need to tweak some things there. So, that would be one of the key things, too. Second, I would do the same on your proposal. Do people understand the flow of your proposal? Is it making sense to them? You might go through the same process of getting some externals to review your documents, your mainly your proposal. So you can see firsthand because when you're dealing with a customer, they're not going to tell you a lot of the times I didn't understand the proposal. It's left to the unsaid and the unsaid was being that you lost the deal. So that is a key thing to understand. One thing and then the final probably less on the designy but more for your design agency to help you grow. Have a look at all the closed lost deals that you've had over the last, say, two years. Whether using a CRM like HubSpot or Gohle, I hope you're capturing the reasons why you lost these deals. Do a big export, run it through your favorite chats, LLM, and then have a conversation with that back and forth to understand why have I what is the main cause of me losing these deals? Was it price? Was it this? Was it that? start to understand this is a bit of a self- coaching exercise. You might even start to do this every quarter to understand, you know, why you're losing uh opportunities. But on the flip side as well, then start to bring in all your closed one deals to understand why you're winning, who it is, the type of customer that you're winning most of the time. Why are they choosing you? Then you can lean harder into that. This is where leveraging AI for your agency, not for the output of your customer, but more yourself and your growth, can really power you to win more deals, focus more effort on what you're doing, right, and to avoid making the same mistakes over and over again. I thought that was really practical. Uh, and you turned me on to something I'd not used before, user testing. com, which is real people kind of ideally suited for your demographic who are going to then look at whatever it is that you're doing. You can watch them as they're going through a proposal or website. I think that's great to get valuable information. And I like that you're very kind of really pragmatic about how to look at design and taking it away from the subjective space and just looking at more objectively. Looking at your lost deals and running it through an AI engine to kind of analyze, poke holes and make strategic recommendations. We live in an amazing time because two years ago that's not a conversation you can have. That's a highle consultant who's going to go through that at a high cost to you. And now we can use the LLM to analyze, to make suggestions, to ask us questions, to kick the tire, if you will, and get some pretty high level strategic coaching at a fraction of the cost. That was super helpful. Are there any additional resources you want to share with our audience? Yeah, look, I'd love to obviously talk about our book that we go into deep in all of this. It's called the B2B sales playbook. It's available from the 25th of March on Amazon. Um, check it out. Uh there's getting in every version possible there. Um if there's any questions that any of you have from a design perspective, in my first 15 years of business, I had a design agency. So I understand the pains in starting and growing that. So I'd be happy to have a conversation and help the design community grow. It's an area that I'm super passionate about. Well, if they have questions for you, where should they reach out? Hit me up on LinkedIn. I'm super active there. So just look me up. David Fuka u mentioned this podcast so I know where you're coming from and then we can start a one-to-one chat. Now David, I'm gonna ask you this question. As you can see behind me, there's lots of books. I don't need another book to read. So give us your best elevator pitch as to why I should even order one more book. Well, we believe that this book that we've created is the best sales playbook you haven't read yet. The book that we've created is very tactical. Bit like this conversation we've had today. Very tactical. You can read it from front to back or if you have an issue of anything within your business from a growth perspective, you can go directly to that particular chapter, read the story, read the tactics, and get the templates. In every chapter, we've got resources that you get free access to, and then you can install and apply that to your business within a few hours. Right? So, it's a very tactical book that we've created here. We want this to be on the desk of every founder and revenue creator out there in the market where it's got sticky notes coming out of it where they've got an issue whether it be generating leads or closing more deals. They can go get the advice within 10 15 minutes and then start to apply to their business. Today we try to move away from the fluffy side of things and go really into the practical because when it comes to business sales is the engine that fuels our growth and that gives you the freedom to work on things you want to work on. So we want to unlock that freedom for everyone that we that gets access to this book. I'm going to ask you a very specific question. The book looks pretty thick. Can you hold it up again? Show people. Okay. It's a beefy looking book, guys. I don't know if it's 85 point. Type in it or not, but let's do this. Go on. We're going to look there. There's a lot of stuff in that. Okay. It's dense. Okay. Um if we had to and pick a chapter for our audience, what is the hottest idea in that book? If you don't mind, if you can just get to that chapter through your table of contents and tell us what chapter it is and what it's about and give us the high level. No problem. So, if you can see here, I'm holding up the book to the screen. The chapter that I will go into is number six, earning the rights. And what I mean by earning the right is that you need to earn the right to get time with your prospect on their calendar. They they're getting hit. They're getting pitched a thousand1 different ways. So what why have you earned the right to talk to me in order to pitch your desired agency, right? Until you've earned the right, you shouldn't be sending any cold messages or any LinkedIn connections. You need to provide some insight, some value to me so that I'm willing to invest 20, 30, 60 minutes of my time to talk to you about why you want to pitch to me. There's the number one thing that we see people in business fail on. They just reach out without knowing me deeply enough to earn the right to speak to me. Nail that and your business will grow. And not that I've not said this before, but those of you who are reaching out to me in the DMs trying to pitch me your service or your product without having a relationship with me. You know what I do? I block and report you. I mute you on messages because I'm sure you have something great, but I don't like to work with people who are not thoughtful and considered my time and really are too quick to transact with me versus building a real relationship. So, on that note, it's been a pleasure talking to you, Dave. I found some super helpful tips and I just love your matterof fact way of speaking about these concepts. Thank you very much for coming on the show. Thank you Chris. It was a pleasure.