How to Sell Consulting

Tom Nixon (00:02.065)
Thank you all once again for rejoining us on the Bullhorns and Bulls Eyes podcast. Curtis, I have a little bit of housekeeping that we need to attend to before we welcome our guests on today. Number one, there’s three items on the agenda. Number one, I am now the proud owner of a bullhorn.

Curtis Hays (00:11.392)
Let’s do

Okay.

Curtis Hays (00:19.539)
You are. I guess I should be busting this out

Tom Nixon (00:23.645)
Okay. You get your bulls eye. I’ll talk into it like this. It’s not on because I don’t have batteries. There’s the bulls eye. So this comes to us courtesy of our producer, Alan. So he sent this to you around Christmas time and here it is August almost. And I’m finally busting it out because he sent it to your house and I recently had a pleasure of visiting your house and meeting your family and finally became the proud owner of this year bullhorn.

Matt Griffin (00:30.44)
nice.

Curtis Hays (00:50.109)
Yeah. Yeah. was, that was a, thanks for visiting. That was a great time. And, we should have recorded an episode while you were here, but I think we were, we were onto other things more fun. yeah.

Tom Nixon (01:00.089)
That’s right. Yeah, we’re off the clock. Yes, I saw the garden before it got attacked. So that was good. All right. Item number two. We have an announcement to make in that is we need to reveal the new officially licensed bull horns and bullseyes hairdo that you’re now sporting. So you might have to doff your cap to show the people who are watching the new look.

Matt Griffin (01:03.98)
Garden crushing.

Curtis Hays (01:28.839)
Hats off to you for holding this comment until we actually recording a podcast as well. I wanted to, know, we were just recording a episode with, gosh, Dave Tier. We were talking about mirroring and matching. And I just wanted to mirror and match you, Just, you know, like you so much that I wanted to be more like

Tom Nixon (01:35.953)
Yes.

Matt Griffin (01:36.962)
Wow.

Tom Nixon (01:48.828)
Yes.

Right. Flattered. Yes. Yes. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I think next season, cause we’re about to wrap up season one. So next season, we might consider renaming the podcast Bullhorn’s Bull’s Eyes and Baldheads. It just flows off the top. Yeah. All right.

Curtis Hays (02:06.955)
It sounds perfect.

Matt Griffin (02:09.834)
Well guys, I’m gonna try to find some other ways to flatter you.

Tom Nixon (02:13.883)
Yeah. Okay. Well, then we should, without further ado, we should welcome on our guests because item number three was we see you’re wearing your vest insight analytics again. And we’ve joked kind of, don’t know if Matt’s ears were burning, but we joked, but they were an unofficial sponsor because they’ve gotten so much screen time on our podcast. It’s your favorite vest. Why don’t you welcome our guests on and explain why you’ve been sporting his vests for all these months.

Curtis Hays (02:36.947)
Yes, we’re finally going to get our unofficial sponsor on the show. Finally got Matt Griffin booked here, but excited to have him on the show. So Matt’s a good old friend of mine who was a customer originally. I think I mentioned the story in another episode, but Matt was a customer back in my IT days and was a great guy to work with. And we became friends through being colleagues and a customer.

And Matt went and started a business in the data analytics and BI space, which is called insight analytics. As we can see here, and I’ve mentioned before, and, through the years, Matt has introduced me to many, additional people who become, you know, mentors and, and other colleagues. And of course referred me to, businesses who have become customers. And so really, really value.

the opportunity to bring Matt onto the show today and talk to him about sales and marketing. hopefully our guests get to hear some good valuable insights like he shared with me over the years. So welcome, Matt. Thanks for coming on the show.

Matt Griffin (03:49.742)
Thanks Curtis and thanks Tom. It’s good to be here and look forward to a great conversation. Yep, going back to, think it was 2007, 2008 around the time that we met. So it’s been a while and I think, you know, I’ve obviously learned quite a bit from you over the years and I’m very excited at where you are with your business and you’ve carved out a really

Curtis Hays (04:02.603)
This is all the time we got.

Curtis Hays (04:06.965)
Yep.

Matt Griffin (04:19.15)
impressive and wonderful spot for yourself and your family and it’s been great to see over the

Curtis Hays (04:25.931)
Thanks, Matt. Appreciate that.

Tom Nixon (04:28.177)
Yeah, and Matt, since you are the unofficial sponsor, the only one we’ve got. So, you’re our best and most loyal sponsor. Tell us, you get a chance to tell us what is insight analytics so that we’ve been seeing so much of on the podcast so

Matt Griffin (04:40.686)
Sure. Yeah. Well, we are a, really a consulting and technology solutions provider. We’re based in Northville, almost 15 years old. And yeah, I guess in short, we help large companies solve critical business issues with a combination of consulting,

and kind of problem framing and experience design and platform development. Heavy data, of course, heavy data analytics

I think from a, you know, the majority of the work of any engagement is around the engineering and the science of data, but the more important aspects are around the consulting and the problem framing and kind of organizational consensus and alignment around the criticality of the business issue.

Tom Nixon (05:49.733)
Yeah. In Curtis, you and I are both selling consulting in a lot of ways, right? In addition to maybe execution of some tactics. But when you introduced me to Matt, you sent an email actually just yesterday. So I had already been introduced, but you said that has this idea and it real just the words intrigued me. Do you remember what that

Curtis Hays (06:11.339)
Yes, that our services and consulting services are not sold, they’re bought. And this was Matt’s idea, so I can’t certainly take credit for it, but it certainly resonates with me. But requires a little bit of explanation.

Tom Nixon (06:26.704)
And me too.

Yeah. So, Matt, what does that mean to you? And I totally agree with it. Like, the reason it resonated with both of us is because it just immediately it felt exactly right. But why don’t you explain what you mean by that? We could dive into it a little bit because what we do on this podcast, as you know, is we’re helping people try to figure out better ways to sell and market their products and services.

Matt Griffin (06:48.47)
Yeah. Well, that was told to me a long time ago by a friend and mentor. And you, it’s something that you hear and you interpret differently over the years, right? As you get into the business, I’ve been doing consulting

Gosh, I started in college and I don’t know who would trust a consultant who’s in college, but I’ve been in this business for a long time and that’s almost 30 years ago. And 15 of those years, almost the last 15 has been in really the sales side, know, growing a business in consulting. And what I mean by that, and I think what was meant by my friend at the time is

It’s the ability to create value for someone else in your space, whether it’s a professional problem or a personal problem, creating value is really how you end up capturing business opportunities. It’s not through traditional sales tactics or techniques or really

even a lot of the traditional marketing and advertising tactics that we have found. so, you over the years we’ve tried everything. We’ve tried hiring purebred sales guys. We’ve tried, you know, digital and email campaigning. We’ve tried some of the more traditional approaches to sales and, you know, the results have shown that it really

always comes down to the ability to create value and a willingness to kind of give it away for a period of time to develop trust and credibility. So you’re not selling, right? You can’t be out there selling something that, especially in our space, something that’s critical, oftentimes personal in the sense

Tom Nixon (08:51.377)
Another, yeah.

Matt Griffin (09:06.126)
The people that we work with are often senior executives of Fortune 500 companies and they’re facing problems that they need to resolve and they don’t want to spend a whole lot of time talking about it with people that they don’t know and don’t trust. And so you’ve got to really spend time building relationships, demonstrating trustworthiness and so

Tom Nixon (09:30.425)
What it meant to me, means I’m curious to get your take Curtis, because how it resonated with me, it’s interesting that you say Matt, you can interpret it a bunch of different ways. It reminded me of another sort of expression that I read and I said, yeah, that’s spot on in talking about marketing professional services, sophisticated professional services like consulting. And I said that you cannot put your prospect into market. The prospect puts themselves into market and you need to be there.

the time and point in which they do. So that’s how I interpret it. Curtis, how about

Curtis Hays (10:04.191)
Yeah, very similar to Matt. mean, the majority of business that I’ve gotten throughout the years has been through referrals and through people who trust me. The services that I provide, you can get from a number of different people, a number of agencies, many of which who maybe are doing it longer than I am or have bigger clients and a bigger portfolio and those types of things.

why they do business say with me or with Matt or with you, think yeah, it comes down to the relationship. Can I relate to or can I understand their business problem and help them get to where they want to go to? Not just can I run an ads campaign for them? Which just about anybody can to some degree. Heck, you can do it yourself if you want to go in and spend an hour just setting it

But do you have that domain expertise and then that ability to understand their problem and connect those two together again, to get them to where they need to get to. And that’s really where I think the consulting, you know, comes into. And I think that’s where we talk a lot of times where we’re managing a lot of the marketing activities. We want this shared relationship and shared responsibility. Made a post today, you know, talking about rev ops, which is the combination of sales, marketing and service that all need to come together.

to drive revenue growth, right? So while we might be doing the marketing activities, we need sales aligned. We need fulfillment service aligned so that we can get to where we need to get to. And all of us need to understand what that end goal is.

Tom Nixon (11:47.365)
Yeah. So you mentioned trust, which is of course the cornerstone of any relationship, certainly professional relationships. How are you able to earn the trust so that clients maybe who don’t know you and haven’t worked with you, it might not be preconditioned to trust you like a family or friend might. How do you get them to trust you so that they’re more inclined to seek out your services when they do become problem aware and in market?

Matt Griffin (12:13.932)
Yeah, that’s a good question. Curtis referenced referrals and that’s obviously when someone has a good experience with you and is willing to refer you to someone as a professional colleague, then there is a certain amount of trust that goes with that. trust isn’t something

comes naturally or easily in our space, right? Again, working with senior executives at large companies and it’s something that has to be built over time often over a series of interactions and you really you end up doing the basic kind of human interpersonal things, right? You do what you say you’re gonna do you show

Indirectly and directly that you are trustworthy by protecting relationships, protecting information, being vulnerable yourself with the goal of creating a situation where the other person is willing to be vulnerable and open up about their personal situations or professional situations and being patient, not being pushy.

And those are really basic human interpersonal, inter -relational aspects that I think we all like and aspire to, and the same holds true for business. And as you demonstrate that over time, and also have the corroboration of overlapping networks and individuals that are mutual friends, mutual acquaintances, et cetera,

There’s a pretty good track record that’s established

Tom Nixon (14:13.051)
Yeah, that reminds me. was thinking of just this just the other day, Curtis, when we had a, when we were on the Franco podcast, actually, we were the guests on another podcast called frankly. And one of the things that we recommended people do, especially young professionals in terms of building a reputation is we told them you got to get old. Okay. So some of what you’re describing is takes time, right? Curtis. And so we, then we said parenthetically, if you can’t get old quickly,

Matt Griffin (14:31.95)
It does take time.

Tom Nixon (14:40.071)
then you do these other things. But do you remember that conversation, Curtis?

Curtis Hays (14:42.909)
I do. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about networking and getting a mentor and having people hold you accountable and, you all of those types of things are going to help you grow early

Tom Nixon (14:54.845)
Do you remember how the two of you, your relationship started? You mentioned that, it started as a client first, right?

Curtis Hays (15:01.375)
Yeah. So Matt was a client of mine and I think that relationship went pretty well for the most part. And Matt was going, so I would say going well enough that when you were going to start this business, Matt, I remember you and I went and sat down for lunch and you kind of presented your business plan or vision value mission.

You know, here’s where I want to take this. What are your thoughts? So Matt respected me enough to get my opinion and feedback on what he was about to embark on. And it wasn’t shortly after that, that then I decided to do something similar, maybe three years later. And Matt was, we had Lindsay on the show. Matt was the other person other than Lindsay who I told very early on, Hey, I think I want to do this on my own. I want to start a business.

And, I want to do consulting. What, what are your thoughts? And, I remember the first thing Matt told me, or maybe it was the last thing you said before I left was, well, whatever ends up happening, I’ll try and keep you busy. So, so, which, which is good to hear, right? That either, either Matt’s going to have some things for me to do, or, he’s, he’s got some people in mind who he’s going to share my name with. And I think that’s really important in having, and

That was a relationship that goes 2007 to about 2014 almost to the 2013 that you’ve you’re developing that relationship. Matt’s inviting me to leadership organizations. got me into Vistage, introduced me to his mentor who was mentoring me at the time. And so you start to establish these rapport with individuals who then know that they can trust you. They know when you say something, you’re going to do

they respect your opinion and those types of things that then when you enter into those situations where like, Hey, I want to start a business or I want to take a change in my career. You have people who can help you because you’re not going to do this on your own for sure.

Tom Nixon (17:12.391)
Yeah, right.

Matt Griffin (17:12.709)
Yeah, the interesting thing was that the business that you started had nothing to do with how we first met and the services that we purchased from you back in 07, 08. And that was obviously more of a calling and a passion for you than just core IT type services. But you did both for a while. You you got to have the runway, the springboard and

Tom Nixon (17:34.843)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (17:37.845)
Yep.

Matt Griffin (17:41.846)
You’ve transitioned that into your core offering now, which is fantastic. But yeah, you really you have to have a skill set. You have to have something that markets want and are willing to pay for, obviously, in order to have a chance of being successful. But like Curtis said, the markets that we’re in and the markets that he’s

Tom Nixon (17:48.517)
Yeah.

Matt Griffin (18:10.26)
most markets are pretty crowded. And so being able to differentiate and in the consulting space, especially in business development and sales comes down, in my opinion, to being able to articulate your craft or skill set in a way that

demonstrates credibility, but also in a way that is relatable and isn’t always just about me and my business, right? It’s what’s going on in your life, what’s going on in your business, active listening, problem solving on the fly. And like I said earlier, being able or being willing to give it away for a period of time to, to allow that person

to put his or her neck on the line within his or her organization and say, hey, I think we should take a shot with these guys.

Tom Nixon (19:10.619)
I wanted to go back to that because you mentioned, you know, back to the idea that consulting is bought, not sold. And you mentioned giving it away for free. I often had clients who sell professional services of any stripes say that, you know, ours is a very consultative sale. We have to consult with the client before they’re willing to buy. And then when I went through sales training myself, that was a big no no. Like giving anything away for free, like cooking the soup before you’re already signed up

Matt Griffin (19:34.606)
Mm -hmm.

Tom Nixon (19:40.157)
paid for kitchen time, whatever it was, spilling your candy in the lobby. They had a lot of great expressions. That was a big no -no. you know, trying to square that circle as somebody who’s always believed kind of what you believed and then having somebody who’s very expert at sales say you don’t need to do that. So what do you mean by when you say giving it away for free or do you use the expression consultative

Matt Griffin (20:03.406)
Sure. Well, that’s certainly something that we are executing every day is that consultative sale. And I would contrast it with more of a transactional sale or transactional interaction,

we’ve seen in our space this notion of I will do this if you do that or when I do this I expect you to do that and setting up a conversation and a relationship that way for the purpose of selling never goes well because you are you’re setting an expectation and

You know, these words were not mine. They were yours, I think, today.

I’m not going to put any of my prospects into market. And so because I want to sell something to generate a client and business and revenue, it doesn’t mean that you are going to be that person because I want you to be that person or that company, right? You’ve got to be ready. We have to be there at the right time. Are there things that we can do to make it easier for you to come back to us when the time is right? For sure. Absolutely. The consultative sale is being willing to listen.

over a potentially long period of time, some of our sales cycles, well, most of them are at least 12 months, some are 18 months and some are longer. And during that period of time, you’re establishing the trust and the credibility. You’re responding to the kind of situational dynamics, whether it’s specific to a problem or specific to a critical business issue or just specific to the circumstances.

Matt Griffin (21:58.602)
in which that person is trying to get things done. And they might want a solution as quickly as I want a solution, but their organization isn’t ready for it for a variety of reasons. And so what we do a lot of times is we coach them through what are the right words, what are the right visuals, what is the ROI, right? Helping put an ROI framework together that our client can participate in.

and add some of the variable content into an ROI framework. Would we like to get paid for that? Absolutely. And sometimes we do. But sometimes we don’t. And it’s just part of the game of moving conversations along and getting to the point of when we’re both in market at the same time with funding.

Tom Nixon (22:48.741)
Right. Curtis, you’re such a natural problem solver. I’ve seen this in action. We’ve talked about in recent episodes where you’ll pull up in real time, a screen, a dashboard, anything, a backend of a website, even that you’re not even managing. You’re able to show some things. So, I find that you do it very effectively. You do it out of a place for that because a, you’re not giving away anything, but you’re not afraid to be giving away anything at the same time. If you know what I mean.

Curtis Hays (23:15.903)
Yeah, I actually earlier this morning had a call to review an ads account for a prospect. And I have a call later this afternoon with the client to sort of review my findings. So I am going to share. suppose how I would approach their current, their account differently, what opportunities I see where I think they could, optimize.

improve their return on ad spend and all of those types of things. So I am giving some things away. yeah. Yeah. you know, I think my approach to some things is, is unique. I hope it is in some ways. I certainly don’t want them to think like, well, I’m just moving from one advertising agency over to another advertising agency.

Tom Nixon (23:49.949)
Cause your work that’s doing work.

Curtis Hays (24:11.583)
I sort of have to prove what’s going to be different about our approach. And, so to be able to communicate and articulate what is, how it is going to look different when working with us. I think one of the biggest lessons though that I’ve learned from Matt in that, like, I, I’ve tried to refer business to Matt quite a few times. as Matt said, he’s typically working, working with fortune companies. I’m not typically interacting

these larger companies, so there’s not always that opportunity. But I know he’s always asked, can you articulate to me first, the business case? And that’s oftentimes what we’re running into with clients is they can’t articulate the business case. The initial part of the ask is just, can you do this activity? Can you do marketing for us? Can you run LinkedIn campaigns? Right? But it’s

No, what’s, what are you working towards? What is the end goal? What are you trying to do? Can you articulate that? Can you articulate the roadblocks that currently exist? Can you articulate the history that you, what’s prevented you from getting you to where you’re going? That’s the consultative part of it, I think. And that you can have that conversation go deep. And if that customer is willing to have and partic, participate in that conversation with you, I think then there’s an opportunity.

Matt Griffin (25:14.478)
Mm -hmm.

Curtis Hays (25:40.159)
What I’ve been thinking about as we’ve been having this conversation is that like in consulting to not give it all away for free, we have to sort of evaluate our prospects first. They say like, is this somebody who is just looking for some free advice or how real serious are they in solving their problem and potentially having us solve that problem? And then you start working on that relationship.

Tom Nixon (26:06.609)
Yeah, that’s a good point. And you know, if the sailor folks were here, they would say, yeah, so you got to qualify the lead first, probably even have the money conversation first, which you know, if there’s no money conversation, then there’s no real inclination to buy. And so you shouldn’t be giving it away free. So I would like to be a typical. Did you have something you wanted to add, Matt?

Matt Griffin (26:25.71)
I was just gonna say, thankfully, the types of problems that we solve, our clients will find money for, right? It may not be funded or budgeted explicitly from one year to the next at the early stage of whatever it is we’re about to solve. when you’re talking about, you

engineering executives saying we need to be able to deliver automated driving software features to the market faster.

That’s a big problem. It involves hundreds, if not thousands of engineers working across the world with vehicles that are generating terabytes and petabytes of data. If we can move the needle just a few points for them, that’s hundreds of millions of dollars. They’re going to find the money for us to do that. If we can demonstrate a credible solution and success elsewhere. We’re spending

tens of millions of dollars in digital advertising and I have no idea which channels are the most effective. Right? Well, if we have a solution that can say, Hey, we’ll give you that visibility and we’ll make recommendations on where to pull money and put money. They’re going to find money for that. They’re going to find a way to pay for that because it pays for itself almost immediately. So those are some of the types of problems and they involve big dollars. Our services

they’re not cheap, but they’re not at the same magnitude of the size of the problem that we’re solving. And so thankfully, it makes the money conversation a little easier.

Tom Nixon (28:07.719)
Yep.

Tom Nixon (28:13.211)
Yeah, great. Alright. Well, I was about to say too. So that’s great. Thank you for chiming in. a little atypical. So I’m going to give my final thought first and then ask you to react to it. So, we’ve been talking about how not always the prospect has put themselves into market. By that we mean maybe they’re not problem aware or maybe there’s not enough pain to solve the problem. so they’re not in the market for your consulting services. So what do you do in? I I’ll speak for myself.

The suggestion is not to sit around and wait for people, know, don’t do anything until they pick up the phone. Here’s where I plug what I think is the most effective way to do this. mentioned 18 months, 24 months sales cycle throughout that entire 24 months, your thought leadership and your expertise should be out there in publicly available in consumable so that you are sharing your best ideas in your approaches. And this is where I give away free stuff is I’ll solve problems out in the open so that people can understand.

what value I might possibly bring to their organization someday if they are ever in need. And then I’m hopefully top of mind, or at least on a short list. So this is where content lives. This is where podcast lives, blog articles, newsletters, all that stuff that people who are in the sales world are a little bit apprehensive to do because there’s no immediate ROI. And it’s like, well, this doesn’t feel like lead generation to me. And it’s not. So that’s my recommendation for people who are calling consulting services on a long sales cycle.

Matt Griffin (29:32.056)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Tom Nixon (29:39.523)
reactions to that or additional thoughts on what to do when people are calling

Matt Griffin (29:48.536)
Well, I would agree with your suggestions there. we are starting to dabble in that a little bit more, realizing that the campaigning, kind of the outbound execution of campaigns and ads and marketing and so forth is only going to do so much for us. So it’s being out in the market. It’s finding opportunities to speak.

whether on a podcast like this or at a conference session or what have you, not being afraid to talk about specific solutions, obviously anonymously, but what we’ve realized is the solutions that we build are very tech heavy. They’re sophisticated, complicated, et cetera.

No one’s going to be able to replicate something that we do because they heard me or somebody else talk about it. But at the same time, one of the biggest problems that we were able to help our clients with is just the organizational dynamics of people and getting people on the same page about what a problem actually is and that it’s worth investing to solve that problem. so no matter how much ad or case study

speaking or what have you, do, you’re still going to have those kind of those basic organizational dysfunction or chaos or alignment issues to deal with. And that’s skill that can be addressed or demonstrated throughout some of those early conversations.

Tom Nixon (31:38.727)
Yeah, that’s great. Curtis, final

Curtis Hays (31:42.345)
Yeah, I think if you’re consulting, you’ve got some domain knowledge of some sort and how you communicate or participate maybe in the groups of people who also have that domain knowledge or interested in that domain knowledge, I think is really important. So it’s at conferences, if it’s certain groups.

online and those types of things. If I recall, Matt, like you’ve got some domain knowledge and some specific tools in the industry or you have in the past where those companies have sought you or your company out because you’re good at solving problems with their tool. Right. So, but if they’re going to refer you, they’re not necessarily the end customer per se, but if they’re going to refer you, you…

Matt Griffin (32:30.37)
Mm -hmm.

Curtis Hays (32:41.511)
showing that domain knowledge and that you’re trustworthy and using their platform. Now you become a referral source for them. I’ve done this through my hosting platform. So that the hosting company that, that I use, I’ve an account rep there. We talk every single month. We talk about what I’m doing with my business, what I’m trying to grow the problems I’m solving from my clients. I sometimes get referrals, but he’s, he’s there to support me. and, I’m there, you know,

to support and provide feedback to them. He knows, hey, if he ever comes across somebody else who’s experiencing a problem that he knows I’ve solved. Well, at the end of the day, all he wants to do is take care of those clients. So why not call me and say, hey, Curtis, you were telling me a couple of months ago, you solved this problem for another client. Can you help this client solve that exact same problem? And I think you mentioned before Tom that you sort of know me as a good problem solver. say that from time to time,

That’s all I’m trying to do and I think that’s where I’ve gotten a lot of referrals is just other people saying, hey, I have somebody who solved that problem before. Let’s call him.

Tom Nixon (33:49.211)
Yeah. Right. Exactly. We know, I know, and Matt likely knows that you’re willing to take that call and quote unquote, give it away for free and help solve a problem right there on the spot. So great stuff, guys. All right. Well, Matt Griffin, CEO of Insight Analytics, the website is Insight Analytics dot com. Insight is spelled I N C I T E. But if you weren’t writing that down or you’re driving or you’re watching this on YouTube and you’re getting bombarded with one of Curtis’s ads.

Matt Griffin (33:50.904)
Mm -hmm.

Tom Nixon (34:20.138)
We will put that in the show notes as well as a link to Matt Griffin’s LinkedIn. final announcement. I’m going to use my bullhorn just to remind people consulting. Is it sold? It’s bought more on the next episode of Bullhorn’s Bulls Eyes and Baldheads.

Matt Griffin (34:36.546)
Nice job guys, thank you very much. It’s great to be here with you.