Leveraging psychology to improve agency sales with Charlie Poulson

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Agency Management Institute Community, where you’ll learn how to grow and scale your business, attract and retain the best talent, make more money and keep more of what you make. The Build a Better Agency Podcast presented by White Label IQ is packed with insights on how small to mid-size agencies survive and thrive in today’s market. Bringing his 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Drew McLellan:

Hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Build a Better Agency. Super grateful that you are back with us again, if this is not your first time. And if this is your first time, welcome. For the last almost four years now we’ve been producing a weekly podcast where we try very hard to give agency owners and leaders something new to think about, a different direction, a new idea, a new way of getting something done, maybe a new philosophy or theory, but certainly always try and keep it in the realm of the very practical and the very actionable. And this week’s episode is certainly going to do that.

So some of you may already know this about me, but my actual first major in college was psychology. I wanted to be a therapist and it turns out in some ways I get to use those skills in the work I do today with clients in my agency, and certainly as I work and coach agency owners and leaders inside AMI. But that was really my passion, was I find people fascinating. I love to be helpful and to help people sort things out for themselves. And so that was the first path I went on and someday over a drink, if you want to hear the story of why I didn’t take that path, I’d be happy to tell you the story.

But this episode is sort of near and dear to my heart because we’re going to talk about psychology and the psychology of people, particularly around sales. And so I’ll tell you a little bit more about that in a second, but I’m super excited to talk to our guest today because it’s right up my alley. Before that though, a couple of quick announcements. Number one, I haven’t talked to you for a while about our client’s sweet spot filter.

So I am a firm believer that there are right fit clients out there for every agency. And the more we can clearly identify who those right fits are and find them, the better. We spend less time chasing after people who are a wrong fit, which also will fit into today’s topic, but we’ve developed a tool for you to go out there and figure out exactly what kind of clients are best for your agency, that you are really able to delight over and over and over again. So if you go over to agencymanagementinstitute.com/client-filter, you will find a place where you can download that sweet spot client filter. Super easy to do. It’ll probably take you and a couple of folks, I don’t know, an hour, maybe to get it done. And then I think it’s great fodder for discussion. So I highly recommend that you go and grab that free tool and put it to good use.

All right. So in the vein of psychology, let me tell you a little bit about our guest and what we’re going to talk about today. So one of the things that I think we all know is true from our personal life and our professional life is the more you know somebody, the more you understand how they tick, the more you are able to tailor the way you communicate with them in a way that is going to be best receipt. So it’s not about being authentic. It’s not about being fake. It’s just about understanding how to frame things in a way that gets through the filters, that there are fewer barriers between you and the other person you’re communicating with. But when it comes to sales, when we’re selling to strangers, especially when we are maybe answering an RFP or we are putting together a deck for someone maybe we’ve only met once or twice, now all of a sudden we don’t really have all of those social cues and we don’t have the history with that person. So we tend to default to communicating in the way that perhaps we think would be most effective, or we may communicate in a way that has worked for us in the past, regardless of who we’re communicating to this time.

And so that’s what we’re going to talk about today. We’re going to talk about how do you learn more about a prospect in particular or someone you don’t know very well? And how do you leverage what you learn about them in terms of their personality, to tailor your communications to be more effective, to really resonate with them in their native language, if you will? So our guest today is a gentleman named, Charlie Poulson. And Charlie owns a company called the Americano. So he comes out of, and I’m going to ask him a little bit more about this, but he comes out of big agency experience where he was embedded into their biz dev team. And he learned very early on how to start structuring proposals and presentations in a way that resonated with the audience.

And then recently he has also applied some of his learning and added a Chrome plug-in tool that we’re going to talk about to get even deeper into the psyche of the audience that agencies may be talking to in a new business situation. So this topic is going to be all about psychology, and people, and biz, and presentation. So buckle in, this is going to have a lot of great takeaways for you. And without any further ado, let’s get to Charlie. So without further ado, Charlie, give us the insights, the secrets of how we can know the inner workings of the minds of our prospects. I mean, that is something every agency owner craves, is to understand the person across the table from them literally or figuratively. And you have the solution.

So I know we’ve got everyone sitting at the edge of their seats, or maybe they’ve even paused the treadmill if they’re on the treadmill, because they want to know this. So let’s just jump in. First of all, tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to figure all this out.

Charlie Poulson:

Yes. So my background actually comes from graphic design. And I graduated from Iowa State University and I decided there’s not a whole lot for me in Iowa. I’m just going to go bigger or go home. And I moved to New York city and I went there with just the intention of hitting the pavement and getting like whatever work that I could. And one project in particular fell in my lap where I’d never really had the intention of working with ad agencies before, but this project was being the presentation designer for Ogilvy, had made this new business team. So it was literally just designing PowerPoint and Keynote just for the sole purpose of winning new business.

And while I was there, I learned a lot. One, that people really eight agencies really need really good proposals and two, I’m the type of person where I learn a lot by observing. And so that gave me the opportunity to observe what types of content decision-makers are more receptive to, or what types of content do they not really enjoy and learning from the wins and losses of that new business team and along with other agencies how to best tailor content in order to get the decision that you’re looking for.

So fast forward to today, my visual design studio, Americano almost solely niches down to presentation design for agencies. What’s really unique about it is that we’re not just putting together a PowerPoints and Keynotes, is that we’re actually using artificial intelligence in a way that we can get deeper insights on the decision maker and then be able to use those insights to tailor the content specifically for them, so we can essentially have like a checklist of everything that that person needs in order to make a decision that they feel good about.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. So tell us a little bit about how you’re using AI to gather that data and then what insights that data gives you, and then we’ll dig into how you actually weave that into the decisions you make about how to construct a presentation.

Charlie Poulson:

Yeah, so what we do is we use a, it’s like a Google Chrome extension called Crystal, and I’ll send you a link for that. But essentially this extension will work on people’s LinkedIn profiles. What it does is it will take just millions of data points, like from how somebody fills out their bio, a history of their job titles, just quite a few many, many, many data points of when a person is posting and what is public information? And then based off of that, it will tell you their disc personality type. And what’s great about Crystal is that it actually has a section called a conversation coach and it’ll tell you, it’ll give you all these options of like, hey, I want to let’s say, pitch Drew on a sale or something it’ll go through and tell you how to word things that are more specific and tailor to your personality type.

Drew McLellan:

So give me an example of the kind of direction or the kind of coaching or insights that this data set gives you. So what would it tell you to do or not do based on all of the data points about this person?

Charlie Poulson:

So for example, it’s actually interesting. I looked up your personality type before this and you and I are actually both motivators. So that means if I were to prepare myself for a pitch to you, then I would know that for one, you and I are both motivated by having conversations with strangers, which is like this podcast is a very good example of that.

Another thing too with motivators is that if I were to use this conversation coach, it’ll have things like say this, and a list of like do’s and don’ts. So for example some dos would be like joking around a little bit, building that personal rapport.

Drew McLellan:

That’s a do, if you’re trying to sell someone like me. So what you’re saying… Yeah. Okay.

Charlie Poulson:

Yep. So getting more on like a personal-

Drew McLellan:

Absolutely.

Charlie Poulson:

… Sending visual aids through email, or Screen Share like being expressive and like using colorful language, but also trying to keep the conversation focused are some really good tips for trying to converse and sell with a motivator.

On the opposite end, some of the don’ts would be using overly descriptive language or providing too much additional data. Which is really interesting because I see a lot of proposals that will outline all of the data when they’re giving a presentation or a proposal to a CEO, which in most cases CEOs fall within the captain and driver personality type, which is very close to motivators and they actually prefer to make decisions with as little detail as possible.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, right. Let’s just get to it. Right.

Charlie Poulson:

Right. Exactly.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah, that’s Very accurate. Yeah.

Charlie Poulson:

Yeah. So another few things of what not to do is talking about costs immediately or talking too much about past experience. Whereas if you were on the opposite side of this personality wheel, like let’s say maybe you were an analyst or a skeptic or a questioner, then you would want to know about costs right up front. You would want to know all the small details.

Drew McLellan:

And you’re right. I mean, everything you’ve said, I will say is accurate. I don’t… I really want to know that it’s going to work first and then we’ll deal with the price. But at first I want to feel like it’s actually going to be a tool that I can use to help other people or whatever the discussion is. So that’s accurate. Right.

Charlie Poulson:

Yeah. I think a lot of people will take some of the presentation skills that they learned in elementary and middle school, of like seven bullet points per slide and like sight words for bullet point. Which I think is great for elementary kids and middle schoolers to learn how to make presentations. But I think once you start getting into college and beyond, being able to tailor content based off of someone’s personality type is going to give you a whole lot more direction of, okay, if somebody doesn’t want to hear all the details, let’s not fuss all of the small details and try to jam all those in.

Drew McLellan:

So when you’re doing this for agencies, a lot of times it’s not a single decision maker on the client side or the prospect side, but there’s a small committee of some sort. Right. So how do you use this data when there’s three or four decision makers, or you don’t know who all the decision makers are? So if many agencies use PowerPoint or Keynote as the poor man’s layout software for even written RFIs, right?

Charlie Poulson:

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Drew McLellan:

So I’m not actually giving a presentation, I’m just creating a written document and I’m doing it in a visually pleasing, air quotes, visually pleasing PowerPoint. Right. So how do you help clients if you don’t know all the players or if there’s multiple players? Because in theory, if I’m a motivator, but my lieutenant is the opposite side of the personality wheel as you called it, how do you build a deck that suits both of them?

Charlie Poulson:

So let’s go through when you have multiple decision makers [crosstalk 00:14:27]. It’s a lot like conducting an orchestra. So the objective of multiple decision makers is that you want to make sure that not everybody in the room has mentally checked out at the same time, because once everybody’s checked out, it’s really hard to get them back. And you want to tailor certain parts of the content in different ways. So if you have somebody, I mean, for starters, it’s actually quite rare that you’ll have people on opposite ends of the personality wheel in the same room making the same decision.

Drew McLellan:

So they tend to cluster together is what you’re saying.

Charlie Poulson:

Yes. So for example, a lot of CEOs and C-suite level leaders tend to be within the range of as far as architects all the way over to motivators or encouragers. So like you and I fall within that half of the personality wheel. So what’s cool about this wheel is that the way that it’s organized is that there are similarities that overlap each one.

Drew McLellan:

Sure.

Charlie Poulson:

So even if you use the Crystal extension and maybe they used a template to build their LinkedIn profile, so it’s not actually their exact specific personality type, it’s very close to what it is. So there are a few like tactics that you can use to overlap between the two, but essentially yes, it is like a symphony where if you do have people who are on the opposite ends, where maybe upfront you give somebody who doesn’t need a whole lot of details and just needs the overall objective, maybe you give them a summary slide upfront of like, “Hey, here are all of the ideas that you have and the benefits of each one of them.”

Whereas somebody on the opposite end maybe further into the proposal, like you give the actual details they’re asking for in an RFI and that person just needs the high level information, that’s their chance to rest and check out. Whereas like the high level stuff, the person who needs the details, that’s their point to rest and checkout.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. So let’s go back to now the construction of the PowerPoint. So when do you recommend, so of agency owners are going to check out Crystal and do you recommend that they do that before they ever meet with a prospect? So they get a phone call, they get an inbound inquiry, they get a referral. And because there are a lot of agencies listening who probably don’t go to the full formal deck proposal every time with a client. Right. So my guess is even for you, sometimes when you’re talking to prospects is really a conversation and a buying decision is made in that conversation. Right. So how do you translate what you do in PowerPoint? So let’s say you were trying to sell me on your services and I’m not asking you for a written proposal. I’m not asking you for a deck. Would you still use the Crystal extension learn about me and then how would that tailor your verbal conversation?

Charlie Poulson:

Yeah, so I think it’s very important to be using Crystal as early as possible, partially because if you don’t somebody then, of course anybody is going to want to know how to speak to a stranger. Right. If I were to not know you and I wanted to be selling to you, then if I don’t even ever get to the proposal phase and I just want to know how to talk to you, then Crystal will guide you through and not only tell you like do’s and don’ts of conversing with you, it’ll also give you templates for emails.

Drew McLellan:

Oh, really?

Charlie Poulson:

Yeah. So part of that whole process of pitching idea, there’s also a lot of in-between of talking on the phone or emailing. And what’s cool about Crystal and I don’t have any obligation to them. I just hated the office thing. What’s really cool about it is that in the conversation coach it’ll give you options like, “I need to call someone, I need to email somebody. I need to make a presentation to them.” So it gives you, it slightly changes depending on the mode of your delivery. So having the options to see if like, okay, if I’m going to email Drew, this is what I’m going to say. This is how long did the call needs to be. This is a good idea for a subject line. That’s going to be different from, okay, I need to call him and I need to keep it focused, but crack a few jokes. So it’s a really good one from the whole entire process.

Drew McLellan:

When you look at the profile of the motivator that you say is who I am, does it say you should call or email or text or carry your pigeon? What does it suggest?

Charlie Poulson:

So it doesn’t give a recommendation per se of communication. However, if you have somebody who just really likes to cut to the chase and doesn’t like to go into deep personal conversations, then you know that sometimes communicating our ideas is just faster by calling someone, or if you know that they’re busy and it’s not something that they need to take immediate action, then emailing somebody but keeping it brief would probably be a better recommendation.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. So part of this is understanding their communication style. How does that actually translate into a deck? Because what you’ve talked about is not specific to a visual presentation. So how do you marry what in terms of how to make effective presentations with this insight to your audience to actually make decisions around? Because I talk to a lot of agency search consultants, I talk to a lot of agency owners, and I’ve seen a lot of presentation decks and a lot of them are not awesome. Right?

Charlie Poulson:

Right.

Drew McLellan:

So how do you translate this insight into the actual deliverable that is the deck?

Charlie Poulson:

What we do is we take the information from Crystal and based off of our experience prior to Crystal, we used to look at presentation design either from a left or right brain perspective, which we know that left or right brain thinking isn’t particularly as specific as we would like it to be. So this left and right brain starts to become more of left side of the wheel, right side of the wheel. And then based off of that, even deeper into what part of the other then. So what we do is we take our expertise from the left and right brain thinking, and we went through and looked at every single personality type and determined, okay, what are the top three things that this personality type needs to make a decision? And then what does that look like in terms of the type of content and how that content is designed and what order the content is designed?

So for example, a really good way to look at this is we know that CEOs are typically like captain drivers, but a lot of the times a CEO is actually not in the room for a proposal. And it’s actually somebody else who might be, the chief marketing officer. In which case a lot of the time they are the influencer personality type. So while captains and drivers kind of need a summary slide to see all of the ideas and not a whole lot of details, an influencer needs a lot of imagery and conceptual ideas and understanding the emotional impact that a change has on people. So translating it into design, let’s say for an influencer, the type of content that would change would be okay, we’re going to use a lot more visuals video if we have it and if it’s possible and we’re going to trim down the text as much as possible, make the text huge and then changing how it’s presented.

So instead of the typical proposal set up where it’s like, okay, here’s our opening slide, our agenda slide, and section one, two, three, an influencer has to think about that proposal as a story. So the organization of that proposal might be something where it’s like a movie plot, right, where you start out with a problem and then there’s an emotional drop. And then you hit rock bottom so that they can go on that emotional ride with you and then bring them back up of like, okay, and here’s our solution. And here’s how this would impact other people if you were to make this decision.

Drew McLellan:

So in the example you’re giving, in this case the director of marketing or the CMO is going to have to sell to their CEO, right? So it’s a two layered sale, which it often is for agencies. You have to sell the buyer, the prospect, but then they have to get somebody to approve the budget, the agency choice, whatever that is. So if the person you’re actually presenting to is as you said, an influencer, so they want to go on this story arc, but they’re going to also take your deck then and use it to get their boss, typically the CEO or COO perhaps to approve the expenditure and the agency choice, how do you build a deck that satisfies both audiences, especially if the influencer is going to have to be the sales person? You’re not going to be probably in that second meeting where the CMO is pitching his or her choice of agencies to whoever controls the purse strings.

Charlie Poulson:

Right. So one way to do this is thinking of it as when you get on like Hulu or Netflix and you’re going to watch a series and you zip through and be like, “Okay, like how many episodes are there?” And you can tell from the previews and the thumbnails of the episodes what’s about to come. So in that case, you might also include just a quick summary, like a five page marks summary of that proposal that they can then take and give to their CEO. A lot of what you would do for an influencer is talking through and building that story verbally. So having an abbreviated version to give to somebody that is more tailored to their personality type would be much more helpful than just handing off the deck that you gave to the influencer.

Drew McLellan:

Okay. So what you’re saying is I would in essence develop two decks, one that I would actually use in the presentation with the CMO type, and then I would have a tailored version that is more built for what I know, because I’ve used Crystal or my assumption that because they’re a CEO, they’re more of a captain or a driver. So I would give them a different version of the deck to sell up the food chain.

Charlie Poulson:

Right. So you would essentially give them a super short version because what usually happens when you email a proposal or you hand it off to somebody and you don’t have control over how that is pitched, most likely they’re going to just zip straight to the cost page, and just make a decision from there of whether it’s an insultingly low amounts for it’s just way too much.

So by having this shortened version to be like, “Hey, here’s what it is at a glance,” then that mentally prepares them for if they want it to look at the full version of the deck, then they would have that precursor of like, “Okay, I know how many episodes are in this series and I know exactly what to expect.”

Drew McLellan:

Okay. So I want to ask you a little more about that. And I want to ask how you present the different deck. I want to talk about the talk track of that in a minute, but first, let’s take a quick break and then we’ll come back and dig into this a little bit more.

Hey there, sorry for the interruption. But I wanted to just remind you that we’ve got a killer workshop coming up in March. If you want to join one of our peer groups, one of our agency on our peer groups, this is one of the two workshops that serves as a prerequisite for that. So if you’re interested in a peer group, this would be a good time to go to this workshop. So this workshop is called the Run Your Agency for Growth and Profit. And it is in March 24th and 25th in Chicago. And at this workshop, we’re going to talk about all of the backend parts of running the business of your business, making your agency more profitable, run more seamlessly and operations go better. That biz dev is better that you are growing and nurturing your team in a stronger way, that you have all the systems and processes you need.

So what we’ve done is we’ve collected all of the best practices of the agencies that we serve and the agencies that we work with on whether they’re in a peer group or we just see them in workshops and just our 25 years of experience. And we’re going to teach you all of those best practices so that you can indeed grow your business and run it more profitably. So we would love to see you at that workshop in March, you can sign up by going to the AMI website, agencymanagementinstitute.com and under the training tab, you’ll see a workshop list and you can sign up there. So we’d love to have you let’s get back to the show.

Okay. So before the break you were saying, basically, if you’re presenting to a quasi decision-maker like a CMO level or a group of people that you want to take on this story journey because of the personality type that the disc profile and what Crystal tells you that they’re more of an influencer or whatever, but they’re going to have to sell it up the food chain to their CEO or COO who is probably more of a captain, a driver, maybe a motivator, that you would give them a different deck. So I’m curious. So you’ve just presented to me, I’m the influencer. What do you say to me? How do you explain the different deck? How do you explain that you don’t want me to use the deck because I loved the deck you just presented, right? Because it’s aligned for me, but what you really want to do is give me a deck that’s aligned for the boss, which may be different. So what does that conversation look like?

Charlie Poulson:

So this is a lot like this old school idea of giving a leaf behind. When I worked at Ogilvy, a lot of those times this was back in the big USB key days. But we would get custom USB keys that had the entire deck on it that was presented in a nice box or something. And they would take that key back to their office and make their decision. So if you are the motivator and you said, “I love this presentation, like I can’t wait to show it to my boss.” Then you could say something like, “Great, I’m so excited and happy that you got that presentation. We actually prepared a version of this summarized proposal that you can give to your boss that will be a little bit more digestible for them.”

So I think looking at the bigger picture that they’re thrilled that they had a proposal that was basically tailored to them, whether they did not realize it once. But if you’re giving them a shortened version to give to their boss, then that does a lot of the selling for them. So they’re kind of thrilled, like, “Okay, great, that’s one last thing that I kind of have to do the work on.”

Drew McLellan:

And they’re not going to feel like, “Oh, it’s missing the video or, Oh, it’s missing whatever,” that they sort of resonated with because there are different personality type. What you’re saying is they don’t object to you. And I know it’s not dumbing down, but it’s simplifying the presentation. Would they not want to show the one that they loved, I guess is my question.

Charlie Poulson:

So they can totally show the one that they loved. And a lot of the times people might show them one that they loved because they were really excited about it. But I think it’s also having some level of self-awareness of how you work with people on your team. So for example, I have a client who is a captain, and I know that if I tried to explain the emotional impact of something, that he’s not really going to care and that he just wants to really cut to the chase, get a high level perspective. So the thing is, once it’s out of your hands, it’s out of your control and you can tell them like, “You’re more than welcome to show them the full version of it. But I think like going to get the most impact out of this shortened version just if they can get the high level details.” So I think it’s like giving them the option to show the full one, but also understanding that that is beyond your control at that point.

Drew McLellan:

Really it’s about saying to them, “Okay, on the jump drive or whatever. We have the presentation we just walked you through, but we’ve also paired it down to the core facts that we think probably is what your CFO, your CEO or COO is going to want to see. So feel free to review both and use the one that you think is.” So you’re sort of counting a little bit on their emotional intelligence about their coworker to know, oh, you know what he is not going to want to hear or see all that. Or she really does like to cut to the chase. I’m going to use the truncated version.

Charlie Poulson:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. And the way that you can frame it too, is like, this is maybe the paired down version, is just a more sharable version instead.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. Okay. So as I’m listening to you, and part of what I’m thinking about is at AMI we talk a lot about finding your sweet spot clients and really working with people that it’s fun to delight and that you have a great of creating rapport with and creating a synergistic relationship and all of that, that there are right fit clients out there for all agencies. So as I’m listening to you talk about this, part of what I’m thinking about is it seems to me that there are probably certain personality types, whether it’s matching AEs with clients, or it’s a CEO to CEO match, how do you see agencies or how do you help, or coach agencies also use these tools to find the clients that are going to stick around the longest, that they have a shot at really creating a relationship with, and can really align with in terms of making them happy?

Charlie Poulson:

Yeah. So one of the things that we also help with is helping agencies find clients that they actually really like working with, and that don’t turn their hairs gray. So I’ll give you a really good example. And this is still one of those things that I think about as I’m gently falling asleep, but had I known about Crystal when I had first graduated college, I was freelancing at a design studio that I really loved and admired. And I finally got a chance to freelance with them. And if I had Crystal then and I used it to figure out their personality types, I would know that they were probably more on the opposite side of the wheel that I was, because I essentially had made a mean girls joke referencing that movie and nobody got it.

And I was like, “Okay, I will see myself out.” But it doesn’t necessarily mean that people on the opposite side of the personality wheel wouldn’t be a good fit. It just means, oh, I just have to tailor what I’m saying and what I present to be more on par with them. So one of the ways that we help agencies find clients that are a better fit, are adding client filters. So for example we actually have in our process coffee with a client which might be something similar to agencies in their qualifying phase. One of our filters is, if I can’t have coffee with a client or lunch with a client and genuinely enjoy it, then that’s probably not somebody that I want be working with.

Drew McLellan:

Right. But that you’re testing by actually having coffee or right? I mean, it’s not something that Crystal tells you, you are not going to enjoy 30 minutes of chit chat with this person. Right?

Charlie Poulson:

Yeah. Right. So it’s more of like using Crystal as a means to prepare for that coffee. So if I know that somebody is probably on the opposite side of the personality wheel than I am, then I know maybe I shouldn’t crack a couple of mean girls jokes. Maybe I should be a little bit more of straight to the point and asking them like, “Okay, what’d you do? What value do you bring to the table?” Because that person on the other end of the coffee table is going to be thinking of that as like, “Oh, I really like this person, they really just cut to the chase.” So it’s more so of using Crystal to figure out how to converse with that person and what to expect from that conversation. And then using the filters to filter down, “Okay, do I not want to work with people who have a massive amount of ego?” No. Then that’s another client filter that we can help agencies define.

Drew McLellan:

So when you think about all the presentations, because agencies make presentations all the time to clients who they’ve worked with forever, they still use PowerPoint or Keynote or something like that to sort of prepare ideas. So is this as applicable? In theory, you would like to think your clients after you’ve worked with them for a while and maybe you don’t need a tool like Crystal, but it sounds like the conversation coach and some of those things would be equally beneficial, not in the new business setting, but in any setting where you are presenting an idea, or a suggestion, or an improvement, it sounds like it would be a useful tool in all of those cases.

Charlie Poulson:

Yeah. What I like to explain to people of when they look at our book, The Psychic Proposal, they’re like, “Well, I’m not really an agency. So, is this really applicable to me?” And the answer is, “Yes, as long as your job involves getting people to make a decision or get them to take an action of some sort, then it is super helpful.” And a lot of people will use Crystal. And it’s funny because I’ve used Crystal all-in on clients that I’ve had forever. And I still learned new things about them. So I learned that one of my clients is a skeptic. So not only does that, give me a lot of insight into some of their reactions over the years. But it also helped me a lot to be like, “Oh, okay, I know this is nothing personal, that’s just how they operate.”

Drew McLellan:

Right. Well, I would guess that is true. That it does help you temper your reactions to how they communicate as well. It’s not just about how you communicate to them, but it also gives you a filter of understanding how and why they communicate back at you. And perhaps that does avoid you being overly sensitive or taking it personally or whatever, because as you said in this example, it’s just how this person is. Right?

Charlie Poulson:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

And it would be that way with you or anybody. It’s not about you at all. It’s just how they’re wired.

Charlie Poulson:

Exactly. Yeah. And a lot of the time when people have a hard time communicating tone through email, so this is a really good way, especially that conversation coach and especially that suggested templates they get for email takes that guesswork out of, does this sound right? What if they read this incorrectly? But it’s super helpful from all points in the process.

Drew McLellan:

And have you ever found that the data you got from Crystal was just wrong? Because I will say everything you said about me was accurate.

Charlie Poulson:

Yeah.

Drew McLellan:

But I know it’s a tool and I know it’s artificial intelligence. I know they’re using millions of data points, but have there been times where you’re just like, “Nope, that is wrong.”

Charlie Poulson:

Yes. So another factor to this is also being self-aware of some of the shortcomings. Right now Crystal is about 80% accurate and they state that on their website, and they state that to the people who are using it of like, “Hey, [inaudible 00:39:35], as of right now it’s about 80 to 85% accurate.” And you have to look at that and say, “Okay, I would rather be 80% accurate, then 0% accurate.”

Drew McLellan:

Right. And just guessing. Right.

Charlie Poulson:

Right. The other factor too, that you have to take into consideration is how self-aware a person is. So a lot of the do’s and don’ts of conversations, maybe there are certain don’ts that is considered, like a shortcoming of that personality type or something that stresses them out. So let’s say an influencer, one of their shortcomings is not wanting to look at analytical data and making a decision from a lot of details, but maybe perhaps their job requires them to look at analytical data and they have overcome that stressor and to overcome whatever it was that stressed them out from looking at a lot of data. So maybe they’re capable of looking at that and maybe that’s something that you can include in.

Drew McLellan:

Or you have to include because it’s part of what we do today. Right?

Charlie Poulson:

Right. Maybe it’s part of an RFI of like, “Hey, we do want to submit the analytical data behind your solution.” In which case, because it’s asked for. Of course you include it. But perhaps it’s not something as big of a focus until you know that client really well.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. This is fascinating. So you mentioned your book, tell us a little bit more about it.

Charlie Poulson:

Yeah. So The Psychic Proposal is essentially a book that I wrote, that it details how to use Crystal and how to use that in a way that you can make a proposal template that you can use repeatedly. So a lot of the times I’ll see agencies that make proposals custom for every single client, which I think it’s worthwhile noting the difference between something that is custom and something that is personalized. So if it’s custom, you’re essentially taking a product that already exists and you are changing out maybe the color or something like that. Whereas something that is more personalized is like making a proposal templates specifically for influencers, because that’s the primary type of decision maker and client that you deal with. So The Psychic Proposal integrates both the personalized and custom aspect of proposal templates.

So it’ll tell you, “Okay, this cluster of personality types needs X, Y, and Z to make a decision.” So therefore to more technically set up the master styles of your proposal template to accommodate those types of content.

The other cool thing about it that I really like, and it’s something that I’ve used for a really long time, but setting up the master styles in a way that sets you up for success down the road. A lot of the most common way that people will customize a presentation to their client is that they will use the client’s brand colors. So by setting up these master styles, instead of going through every single slide and changing the colors of everything, which is incredibly time consuming, the book teaches you about master styles and within a few clicks and 10 seconds or less, the entire presentation is then populated.

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. So one of the things I liked about the book was that it is theoretical in places that describes the theory, but it’s mostly, a how to book. Yeah. Very practical, very like, do this, do this, do this. And voila here is the result.

Charlie Poulson:

Exactly. Yeah. And I also just wanted to help people as much as I possibly could. And there’s also incredibly long lists of resources that I use on a daily basis. So instead of having that shiny object syndrome of testing out a new thing here and there, and not being totally certain if it works, it’s also just I’m big on efficiency as motivators are, and just compiled the list of everything that I use in my years of experience. And it’s just so much easier for people to implement when they don’t have that curiosity of, is this going to work or not?

Drew McLellan:

Yeah. This has been a fascinating conversation. Thanks for coming on the show and thanks for teaching us a little bit about Crystal and how we can actually have data around people that we haven’t met or we’ve only met once or twice so that we can present ourselves in a way that they’re most receptive to this. I think this is incredibly practical, useful information, and I’m grateful that you took the time to be on the show to share with us.

Charlie Poulson:

Yeah. Thank you. It’s been an honor.

Drew McLellan:

So if folks want to get the book, reach out to you, connect with you, learn more about the work you do for agencies, what’s the easiest way for them to do all that?

Charlie Poulson:

So I’ll send you a link to the book where you can buy that. There’s also a Facebook group where folks who have bought the book, and when I ask questions about that, that’s the best way to converse with other people and get multiple inputs, I’ll send you a link to that as well.

Drew McLellan:

Okay.

Charlie Poulson:

Yeah, that’s probably the best way.

Drew McLellan:

And if folks want to talk to you about the work you do for agencies, what’s the way for them to reach you directly around that?

Charlie Poulson:

The best way is through email, which I’ll give you that. It’s just [email protected].

Drew McLellan:

Okay. So we’ll include all of those links in the show notes. Folks, if you are on a treadmill or walking the dog and can’t jot all that down, so you’ll find it in the show notes and it sounds like Charlie’s pretty accessible. So feel free to reach out as needed. Charlie, thanks so much. This has been great. Fascinating.

Charlie Poulson:

Yeah. Thank you so much. I’ve really enjoyed this.

Drew McLellan:

You bet. All right, guys, this wraps up another episode of Build a Better Agency. Thanks for listening. Thanks for joining us. Remember we now have a Facebook group just for podcast listeners. So if you head over to Facebook and look for The Build a Better Agency Podcast group, you are welcome to join. You just have to answer a couple questions. We’re just letting agency owners in there. So we’re having an interesting dialogue right now around job descriptions and functional things like that that came out of an episode a few weeks ago. So feel free to join us there.

Also remember that we are gearing up for AMI’s first annual conference The Build a Better Agency Summit in May, that’s May 18th and 19th in Chicago. So we would love to see you there. No, sorry, I lied. I think it’s the 19th and the 20th, Tuesday, Wednesday is what it is, right before Memorial day. Amazing speakers, great round tables. You get to be both a teacher and a student at that conference. You’re going to be learning. You’re going to help other people learn. I think it’s going to be a great interactive place for you to hang out with other people who do what you do every day.

We would love to see you there. You can head over to the website agencymanagementinstitute.com and the very first NAB button is the BABA Summit. You can learn more about it there and register. And I will be back next week with another guest like Charlie, who’s going to get us thinking about, “Oh, that’s an interesting way to do something different.” So come on back, join us in the conversation.

In the meantime, if you’re looking for me, you can always track me down at [email protected]. All right, I’ll talk to you next week. Big shout out to our friends at White Label. Thank you very much for your sponsorship. They make this show possible. If you are looking for somebody to white label dev design or PPC, they are your guys. I have agencies email me every week, thanking me for an introduction to them. So check them out, whitelabeliq.com/ami for their special deal, just for you as a podcast listener. All right. That wraps us up. I’ll see you next week.

That’s a wrap for this week’s episode of Build a Better Agency. Visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to check out our workshops, coaching packages, and all the other ways we serve agencies just like yours. Thanks for listening.