How to ask like an auctioneer when making negotiations with Dia Bondi

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Running an agency can be a lonely proposition, but it doesn’t have to be. We can learn how to be better faster if we learn together. Welcome to Agency Management Institute’s Build, a Better Agency Podcast, presented by White Label IQ. Tune in every week for insights on how small to mid-size agencies are surviving and thriving in today’s market with 25 plus years of experience as both an agency owner and agency consultant. Please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.

Hey everybody. Drew McLellan here with another episode of Build a Better Agency. I am really excited for this conversation. So today’s guest is actually one of our keynote speakers from last year’s Build a Better Agency Summit. So some of you may be familiar with her, and I’ll tell you a little bit more about her in a quick second. This is gonna air in mid-November. So I wanna just take a minute and say thank you. Here in the States, we are quickly approaching Thanksgiving, which is one of my favorite holidays. One of my sort of core tenants in life is gratitude. And so I, I love a month that is dedicated to, to giving thanks and being grateful for all that we’re given.

And I just wanna take a quick second and, and really underline how grateful I am that you all listen. I do not take it for granted how busy you are, how many podcasts there are, how long we’ve been doing this, and you keep coming back and you keep helping me find new guests. You suggest guests, you let me know when a episode is really resonated with you. When I see you in person, we talk about the episodes and your takeaways, and I’m just really, really grateful that I get to have these conversations with all these smart people and that I get to bring them to you and that you find value in them. So I am, I’m just sort of overwhelmed by how glad I am that we get to spend this time together.

So thank you very much. Really, really, really appreciate it. Okay, Dia Bondi is an amazing speaker. She’s an amazing coach, but she’s also just a fascinating person and you’re, you’re gonna love her story of how she came to write the book, ask Like An Auctioneer. And the book is really her insights after she was trained to be an auctioneer. Her insights in how when we approach big moments when we’re putting out a big proposal, or we’re asking for someone to share some influence with us, or we’re asking for a budget, whatever it may be, when we have these big moments that we kind of ask in a backwards way.

And she has outlined in workshops at the keynote, at the summit last year, and now in a book that’s just coming out This week, she outlines basically the methodology of how we can ask for more and actually get it in many cases. So I think you’re really gonna enjoy the conversation and her energy, and I’m excited to introduce her to you. Hey Dia, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us.

Hi Drew. Hi everyone. So happy to be here.

So we have not seen each other or talked since a very brief passing at this summit in May before my kidney stone took me out. So you’ve been kind of busy since we last chatted, writing a book and all those things. So tell folks a little bit about your background, the work you do, and the book that is just coming out.

Sure. So it’s so funny, my, my book is so, feels sometimes so far away from the everyday work that I’ve done in my career. But we can explore how they’re actually connected, sort of, right? You know, behind the scenes. So I have been and am a long time leadership communications coach. I work with senior leaders in organizations and VC backed founders. Usually when they’re like series B and beyond, you know, they have a product, they have customers, they have big teams, and it’s starting to feel a little out hand for them, you know? Right, right. I mean, in the best way, right? And both of those folks really need to think about how they use their voice to lead, because they can’t touch product. They’re not building necessarily anything directly. One of the big leadership tools they have is their own developed leadership voice.

And so I work with those folks to help them speak powerfully at really critical moments. I’ve had the great opportunity to work with Nobel Peace Prize winners, you know, folks who are in social impact folks that are, you know, building things that address some of humanity’s biggest problems through the Clinton Global Initiative. I helped Rio de Janeiro win the right to host the 2016 summer games, you know, know high stakes moments is really what I’m all about. These high leverage moments, and we all have them in our own scale, right? Not all of us are gonna be Nobel Peace Prize winners, but boy, all of us, maybe folks who are listening have those really critical presentations, pres critical conversations, critical leadership moments in front of their own team that can rock their world in the right direction. Yeah, absolutely.

and that, that’s I’ve, and that been for a long, timely, yeah. And a handful of years ago, I took a sabbatical because even though I love my work, you know, like life is mom sounds like it’s a lot, right? Yeah. Yeah. It can be a lot. And so I stepped away and took a break and I did something. I did two things. I did the, I did the artist’s way end to end for folks who are listening. If you’re not familiar with that, or maybe you are, I did that end to end just as a way and a framework for sort of guiding my own internal exploration. Again, as I went back inside so I could get back outside. And I went to auctioneering school for fun of, of course you did. Many years before I had threatened at a dinner table that, like, we were all doing bucket list stuff.

And I was like, Hey, I, I, I might go to auctioneering school one day because I’d been invited to be the fundraising auctioneer at my kids’ preschool annual fundraiser. And when I was done, I was like, that was fun. Right? Years later when I was on sabbatical, my husband said, Hey, remember that thing that you said you were gonna do? Maybe now’s the time to do it. So I did it. I, and I, you know, I didn’t have any expectation that it would do anything for my career or life beyond, like, let’s go on a weird adventure, right? Two of the things that are big drivers for me in my career are, you know, the pursuit of highly connected experiences and adventure, right? And it connected the adventure box. So I went to auctioneering school, me and a hundred cowboys, learning how to auctioneer everything from, you know, cattle to art to, to $5 box lots.

And I’m not a very good auctioneer, but I’m a good enough one. When I got back to the Bay Area, and I know this is sort of storytelling here, but it will connect with the book to what I do in, in my communications work. I started doing fundraising auctioneering for women-led nonprofits and nonprofits benefiting women and girls as an impact hobby. So for folks who are interested in going on a little adventure, and they don’t know why, I would say, go ahead and go on it. ’cause you never wanna, right? You never know what it’ll lead to. 20, 25 auctions later, I realized that everything I was learning in front of the room was really valuable to how we think about asking for more and getting it in our careers, our businesses, and in life.

And so I launched a project called Ask Like an Auctioneer with the goal to help a million women and underrepresented people in their industries ask for more and get it. and that initially started out as a workshop and a keynote, and now it’s a book called Ask Like an Auctioneer coming out November 14th. Now, how that’s connected to my leadership communications work is making a, a strategic ask in your business along your entrepreneurship journey and leading the life you wanna live is a high stakes moment. Yeah. Much, much like standing in front of a critical audience and, you know, pitching your ideas, looking for investment, pitching your ideas, looking for engagement from your, from your teams.

Both of those are high leverage moments. And so, well, they didn’t seem connected in the beginning. I can see how they are now.

Yeah. So as you were writing the book and as you, and, and I know you’ve been doing keynotes and coaching around this for a while, what do you think surprises people the most? The correlation between what an auctioneer does and what we do in our professional life or our personal lives when we have to ask for something in a high stake moments? What, what surprises people?

I think what surprises people is what it means to ask like an auctioneer. ’cause I kind of flip the model on folks and I’m wondering if you’ll let me explain.

Oh yeah, let’s do that.

So when, in my communications work, when leaders, founders, and I’m really active in the world of, you know, I love working with entrepreneurs, solopreneur, small business people who really, like they’re looking for any way to accelerate, right? Right. And, and I do a lot of low bono, pro bono work in the world of women in entrepreneurship. When my clients come to me, I have to, and we’re gonna put together a compelling story, you know, for product launch or for whatever. I’m not part of the brand team, but them, their own leadership voice, which is not necessarily the product pitch. Okay? Right. You know, I, I’m like, what is it that you want from your audience? What kind of impact are you having? What, what do you want? And you know, in your audience’s language might be like the CTA, you know, what is your call to action, right?

Which essentially is an ask. And in my case, it’s often when I work with founders, it’s often, you know, advisors joining their board. It’s looking for fundraising, it’s landing a really critical client. They’re looking for, you know, a lot of times they’re looking for investment, whether it’s 25 million, 1 million or 125 million. In, in workshops where I’m teaching these skills, people ask or ask for things like a raise a promotion, an opportunity to lead a really critical project to elevate their visibility in the organization like that. Okay. And the answer they give back to me is, well, I don’t know how, what do you think I can get? Hmm. And I was like, great question for many years, what?

Great, great question. Oh, I don’t think I can really, there’s no way I could build, I could get budget to put together a team of, you know, 10, but I think I could probably ask for six heads and then get some contractors and then borrow 20% time from the engineering team and cobble together the thing I need. Right? And so what we would do is go, I, we’d build a story around going to ask for six heads or a million dollars instead of two. ’cause they’ll never go for that or whatever it is, you know, 10% raise. ’cause that feels possible instead of the 21, which is, you know, really probably what might get rejected. But we always ask for what we think we can get. And I didn’t realize until I started auctioneering that that is inadvertently leaving money and opportunity on the table. That is not what we do as auctioneers.

As auctioneers. What do I do? I look for a, no, I can’t sell anything until I get a no. And I know not everybody is in a competitive bidding situation. That’s fine. But we can ask the question not what do I think I can get and then design and ask that answers that question. But instead we can say, what do I think will get me a no?

Oh,

Go for that. Right? Get that No and then negotiate down. We don’t do that though because everything that lives between a guaranteed Yes. Or a mostly guarantee, what we perceive as a pretty good chance we’re gonna get a yes. And what we think will get a rejection lives in a place I like to call the zone of freaking out or the ZOFO. Right?

Right.

But once folks see, ah, when I go for yes and I get it and congratulate myself, I don’t actually know what I could have gotten.

Right. Right.

The only way I can do that is to ask for much, much more, get that no. And have the courage to have a conversation about what is possible. Right. And good chance that even if you get a no and negotiate down, you’re gonna end up with more than you would have if you just go for a yes. And that’s what makes people go Oh,

Right. When yeah. When you explain it that way, when you explain it that way, it’s like, that makes perfect sense.

When I hear people say, yeah, Dia, it’s like, what? What’s the worst thing they could say? They, the worst thing they could say is no. And I’m like, actually the worst thing they could say is yes. Right. ’cause if I, if you listening, send out a proposal for a brand strategy project for $25,000. I don’t know if that’s big or little for you, but for 25 grand and they say yes

And you, and you thought it was you were gonna get your no,

You probably left a couple grand on the table.

Yeah. Right? It’s

The worst thing. You now, when I send a proposal out and I do a lot of bespoke work that isn’t just like my sort of regular published, you know, pricing. When I, when I send out a bespoke project and I, and I get an instant yes, I’m like darn it.

Right?

The best thing they can say is no, not that. Let’s have a conversation.

Right.

Because that lets you know, you’ve maximized the potential of that ask. So I’m basically telling all of you agency owners right now, you send a proposal and look, I understand there’s moments where you’re in an RFP situation, you know, if you’re doing government work and other and other cases like that, right? But when it’s up for grabs everybody, right? I want you to shift your perspective from the first Yes I get means I’m winning to challenging your assumptions about what’s possible, actually actively going for what you don’t think you can get. And then negotiating down you are gonna be in a better position, understanding completely. And I swear I’m gonna stop talking, understanding completely that you might go for what you think you’ll get a no to and they’re still gonna say yes.

Right? Which again, would be a better problem to have than if you ask for what you thought you were gonna get a yes for.

Yeah. You put that proposal if you’re like, oh my God, I’m gonna, 25 is what I, I’ve been charged 25 grand for this kind of brand project is what I’ve been, you know, charging for four years. If I ask for, there’s no way they’ll go for 35, but I’m gonna ask for it anyway. You ask for 35 and they say, sure, can you send over the scope?

Right.

You know, you probably could have got bored,

Right? Right. But at least you got the 35 Right.

Hundred percent. You’re already in a much better place. Beautiful.

So if we do it well and right, and we get that, no, what do I do next?

Well I want to, that’s a great question. Hang on. Hang to hang on to that for one second. Okay. I know we just talked about money. Okay. And I shared it at the Baba event that like money is not the only thing we can be asking for. That advances us to our goals. Goals, right? Right. You can need, you know, there’s a lot of other things we can ask for and we can talk about that. But I want people to not just think of this as they’re maybe questioning their own like proposal they sent off last week for probably less than they should have. Right? I don’t want you to be thinking that this is just for money gets, okay, this can be for other things too. So what do we, what do we do next?

So for example, it could be a timeline ask or it could be an access to a leader ask or beautiful something else, right?

Yes. And since, since you know, the book kind of wrote itself when it was time to sit down and actually write it, because I started this as a set of workshops and keynotes. I didn’t do a lot of coaching. I did some coaching on the side, private I coaching in the room. I did, yeah. But it’s not part of my formal coaching practice. I sometimes would open up free jumpstart sessions for people to do one-on-ones with me. ’cause I was doing research like what comes up for people, you know? So it turns out that sort of, there’s four different ask types that are big moves that help us get us to our goals. Does your goal need money? That’s the first one. It could be in the form of investment pricing. You know, it could be in form of discounts you’re negotiating for yourself.

and that notice, that’s the first word. First time I’ve said negotiation ’cause I, this is really pointed at the ask right? Negotiations. What happens after that? And there’s a lot of other people who are great at talking about where do you nego, you know, negotiation, right? I’m talking about, let’s focus in on the ask right as the launching place for the conversation you may have. The second category is, would your goal do, would your goal, would you be closer to your goal if you had more influence? Would influence help you get to your goal? And I’m not talking about being an influencer, I’m talking about access to networks, right? Mentorship, getting a certain, you know, participating in a certain network you otherwise wouldn’t have access to getting in front of an audience. That is really critical to you. Are you low balling yourself when you’re asking to be in front of an, on a particular stage, maybe at the Baba Summit, right?

And other places? Not that that’s a lowballed. Just saying, if you’re saying, Hey, I’d like to do a small round table, when really you can say I want a keynote, right? Like that would make a huge difference to me. So think of influence as a place where you can make asks that help you get your closer to your goal. This third category is authority. And sometimes this is about promotion and you are the one that gets to sign the checks, okay? It could be about, about going from being an in-house creative to starting your own agency. That means you also get to still rent, rent, you know, write your own checks. It could be about how having authority over your time, the way in which you work with someone. And then the fourth one is about balance, which is about bringing into alignment who you are in the work that you’re doing.

So that we are actually living in alignment with who we are. Yeah. and that can look like a role, move a story of somebody that came through one of my workshops. She was in a sales function at a large tech company and really wanted to move into the creative side, wanted to go to design school, wanted to work in, in the design function. And she had assumed that that could never happen there. And we were like, no, they’ll never go for it. She thought we were like, no, go ask like an auctioneer. And she did, she talked to her manager and he said, sure, I’ll give you some budget to get, you know, enrolled part-time and we’ll start working on a plan to get you over there. Why? Because he gets to retain the institutional knowledge she has as a field sales expert now in the marketing design function.

Who doesn’t want that?

Right?

So these are the four categories. Yeah. Now you ask

The question all really important in their own way,

Hundred, sometimes they’re even more important than, than the dollars, the money, right? Absolutely. Yeah. I had, I mean think about like, maybe folks who are listening right now, you’re gonna grow your influence if you, if you alter potentially what your client portfolio looks like,

Right?

So what kinds of clients are you pursuing or not yet pursuing that can help you grow your influence in your domain? Are you going for the slam dunks? We need to have that ’cause we need to have revenue. But are there a few ZOFO ish clients that maybe now’s the time to go out and get rejected,

Right?

Because that will grow tho Those to me is like, yes, the money will come, they’ll be, it’ll be work you’ll get paid for. But very importantly, it’s actually an influence play because what your portfolio of clients look like has an impact on what your portfolio of clients will look like.

That’s right. Absolutely.

So you asked me a minute ago, if I get a no, then what?

Right?

Well then a lot of things then we get to, a couple things happen. We get to have a conversation,

Right?

And guess what? In the conversation you get to ask a lot of questions about what’s important to the person that you’re the per person, the team, the decision maker, the advocate. ’cause sometimes when you’re pitching work, you are not actually talking to the decision maker. You’re talking the person. That’s right. Yes.

Right.

You also get to learn a lot about what they’re fearful about because, so let’s stay here for a second. So the, the top line question is, the top line answer to your question is you get to learn a lot and you get to build relationship, right? That can create an elasticity that can serve you as you continue to negotiate and find a place that works for you both. So one thing that has shown up a lot, and maybe folks who are listening, this feels resonant for them. And I think it came up at one of the round tables that we, that I guided at the last Baba conference that when you write a proposal, and I, I hope this is the right language for your audience. True. but you know, y’all are writing lots of proposals, lots of retainer agreements.

You’re, you know, you’re doing that, you’re gonna go, and I do it with my clients as well. You know, you’re gonna go out to your client, I don’t know who they are, they’re, you know, their Salesforce, their Intel, they’re whoever they are. And there’s layers and layers of approvals that need to happen. And you’re gonna make a big, courageous ask you, you’re gonna say, you know, that project is 40 grand, so that project is 140 grand. That project is 400 grand. I don’t know what it is. And you’re gonna, you’re that person that is sort of the one that is in charge of procurement or maybe it’s an ongoing relationship you’ve had, I don’t know. They’re now gonna have to go get that. They’re gonna have to show it to somebody else, right?

That’s right. Yeah. They have to sell it, right?

Absolutely. And we can’t always be assume that everybody is as comfortable. Even if you were uncomfortable in making that ask, imagine what that person now has to take that to someone else and, and they’re not advocate, they can’t advocate for it in the same way you can because it’s not their baby. You know, your work is your baby. Right? So I guess what I’m saying is when you get a like no and you get to have a conversation, you get to learn a lot about where their anxieties are, how to help them be successful, how to, how to understand where they say no and why they say no. Because sometimes they’ll say no, not because they don’t have the budget. They’ll say no because they’re afraid to ask because they have in their mind, Ugh, leadership will never go for that.

Right?

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said, look, I get it, that they may, they may just bar fall over it and I’m okay with that. Go ahead and ask.

Right?

I did that with recent this last year and the guy I was talking to was like, never that like, I can’t, it’s like, I can’t even, we won’t. And I was like, look, I’m okay with rejection, so just ask and find out. And he came back and he said, oh my God, we got a yes to that. He was

Shocked.

Shocked. So, okay, to go back to your question, what, then what happens? A conversation where you’re gonna use curiosity, empathy, you’re gonna learn a lot and you’re gonna help the person across the table be successful and in whatever they’re pursuing, engaging with you. Now, I understand completely that you know what they’re, you’re gonna still have to know where your bottom line is or the, in the language of AAU auctioneering, you’re gonna need to know what your reserve is, even as you

Can’t sell it for less than that. Right?

Exactly. You might go in at 40 grand and you know, I can’t do this for less than 26, I don’t know. But you’ve decided that ahead, ahead of time and you’re, you’re going to honor that and you’re gonna honor that while you stay in reform relationship because guys, everybody ’cause of the Boomerang effect.

Okay, so, so I wanna hear about the Boomerang effect, but first we’re gonna take a quick break. So this is gonna hold everyone in suspense when we come back. DIA’s gonna tell us about the Boomerang effect. So don’t go anywhere, we’ll be right back. Just a quick reminder that every week we send out a newsletter. We brilliantly call it the weekly newsletter, comes out every Wednesday and it is filled with just some ideas that I have around something that’s important to you. So I of the lead story is always something that I’ve been talking to a lot of agency owners about or something that I wanna sort of put in front of you to get you thinking. A lot of times there’s questions to think about or, or some resources. And then there’s always a link to the weekly video and then a list of the workshops and whatever else is going on.

We also, we get a lot of promotional offers from, you know, friends who are running agency programs like Macon or other folks like that with discounts. And so that’s also where we share all that information. So if you’re not hearing from me every week in your inbox and you wanna do that, just go to the AAMI website and scroll down to the footer and you’re gonna see a link to our newsletter. Just click on that. All you have to do is give us your name and email and we will start putting that in your inbox. Okay? We would love to be a resource for you every week. So if that would be helpful, sign up today. Thanks. Alright, we’re back. And as I promised, now we get to hear about the Boomerang effect.

Boomerang effect is when you ask and you get a hard no, they can’t meet your reserve or maybe they’ve even ghosted you, but the ask that you started with never turned, turned into an ask that we can both say yes to. The Boomerang effect is you never know when they’re gonna come back.

That’s right.

You just don’t know. You might not work with that client now, but 18 months later they might have budget and something perfect. That’s for you. Let me give you a tiny example. I was just thinking about this the other night. I’m sure those of you listening right now are like, Hmm, I had a client that did that to me once. Right?

Right.

They come back and sometimes they even come back at a better price because guess what? You’ve, and by the way, don’t be afraid to raise your raise the second time you write that same, that same organization a proposal. ’cause guess what? It was 18 months ago. It was three years ago. It was five years ago. You’re different now. Things are different now.

Yeah,

Things are different now. I was thinking about this the other night, like, what are other places in my life where I’ve asked like an auctioneer and didn’t even realize it? And I think that when we ask like an auctioneer, when we challenge our assumptions about what we think is possible, we go for that. No, those asks end up being ones that change everything. And I can point to a couple of examples in my early life every like way before I even became an auctioneer, as a hobbyist, again, a good enough auctioneer, not a great one. And when we bought our house, we did this, I drove past this house. I live in the East Bay, in the San Francisco Bay area. It’s very expensive to live here. I was, I had a one year old and we were, we were homeowners before.

We actually owned two homes when we bought. But, but they were far away. We needed to be closer to my husband’s work. We were renting in the, in a neighborhood and we were like, we gotta, we don’t rent, we haven’t rent for 15 years. We gotta buy something. And we’re driving around the neighborhood and we made offers on lots of houses. There was one house. I drove past it constantly, especially in the evenings when the front porch lights were on. And I was like, I want that house. And I was like, they’ll never go for it. They’ll never go for it. Like we don’t, we don’t have the money. There’s no money. The money they want is not the money we have. And it wasn’t even a little bit far away, it was very far away. Okay? It was a total ZOFO house for me. And we had made houses, you know, offers on other homes that were kind of good enough and whatever. My realtor said, look, Dia you, that’s the one you keep going back to.

What do you wanna offer them? And I said, they, Angela, they will never, it’s an ins, they will never. And she said it was so wonderful. I remember she said to me, she said, I’ll ask anyway. I have no pride.

Right?

I was like, okay. So we wrote the offer. It was guys, it was, can I say the number? Yeah. It was $300,000 under their asking price.

Yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s not a small bag of money.

Not a small bag of money. Angela gave them the offer and they said, no way. How about this? They came back with a counter offer that was still, we were like, there’s no more money, right? This is all the money there is. And they said, pack your bags and walk away. And we were like, okay. Kept looking for homes and five weeks later they said, please renew your offer, remove all contingencies and we’d like a 30 day close please. They boomeranged us.

Yeah,

We boomeranged.

Yeah. And now you’re in the house.

That’s right. We’ve been there for 15 years. so, you know, the Boomerang effect is real. So we want to, when we get a no and we end up in conversation, we want as off when as possible to stay open, stay curious, understand what the needs of the other people are, see how our ask that is above our reserve. Can be a, above our reserve, can be adjusted. Or maybe you hold strong in a way that, and you can demonstrate and, and see how them saying yes to you gets them more of what they need. Maybe they need to look like a hero ’cause they’ve had a lot of losses at work lately. Maybe they’re new in their role and you need to make them look like a rockstar. Maybe they Right. Find out. and that conversation lets you do that.

Yeah. Yeah. Maybe they need a quick turnaround that they don’t think is possible. Right?

Absolutely. Beautiful.

So I know in the book you talk about a framework. So if we’re gonna, if we’re gonna embrace this idea, a framework for us to craft sort of the ask planned so that we walk in feeling confident in this scary thing that we probably haven’t done very often, or we do it with great trepidation. So how do we, what is the framework that will give us more confidence to do this more often?

Okay, I love this request because this framework does not promise confidence. I don’t promise confidence. You know why? Because confidence comes after action. Hmm. What I promise is preparation. Okay. and that you’ve actually, not to push back Drew, but like everyone wants confidence and we never feel confidence. Then we jump off the diving board and we go, oh my God, I could do that again.

Right? Right.

After we have that feeling after. So we can’t go for confidence. We have to go for preparation. And also I want everyone to have a framework for making sure they’re not tactically, they’re just not artificially low balling themselves. And you know, the premise of asking like an auctioneer is that you’re gonna go for what you’re not sure you’re gonna, you could get, so that in itself brings some stuff up, right? That you’re gonna be in your own personal ZOFO when you do it. And this the sign that you have that yucky feeling, that scary feeling, that thrilling feeling is a signal that you’re not doing something wrong. In fact that you’re standing up for yourself, standing up for your dreams, for yourself. And you’re challenging what you, any limiting thoughts about what you think might be possible, right?

And so that, let’s reread that feeling, that thrilling, scary feeling as something positive. So what we wanna do, so step one in this little framework is to identify a goal. ’cause if we’re gonna use asking as a success strategy, then we have to ask ourselves, well what are we trying to make successful? And there’s a particular goal, in my case last year, it was like, this is gonna be a book someday. You know? And when I, right, when I identify that goal, I was like, okay, now I, now I gotta get in my own, I gotta start putting together my own set of strategic asks. So for folks listening, it’s like, what is my midterm concrete goal? It’s not like change the world. It’s not A-B-H-A-G or a big hairy audacious goal. It’s like really concrete.

I wanna land a million dollar client in the next 18 months, or I want to add a profitable service line to my service business. Or I want to see that like make yeah. You know, in the next, next 18 months, I want something to be self-sustaining, blah. So you’ve got something pretty concrete, right?

Yep.

I wanna be, I wanna be on a board, you know, for a nonprofit in something that I care about. These are super concrete. So we’ve got a goal now we’re not gonna decide right now what, what might I ask for? We’re gonna first ask ourselves step two, which is what big move do I need to make that gets me closer to that goal? Okay? Maybe I wanna be on a board for a local nonprofit that is influential in the area that, ’cause it builds your stature. It does, you know, it platforms you a little bit, little bit. Also you have an opportunity to give back to something you care about and be engaged in your community. Like it has all kinds of reasons why you might do it. Let’s, let’s take the business reason.

You’re gonna ask yourself, what’s the big move I need to make? Ah, the big move I need to make is I need to be invited into a particularly, you know, influential community of people who also are sort of in the culture of board service. I don’t know what that is for you, for me, you know, I’m one big move for writing the book. Finding a publisher was getting an agent,

Right?

Right. So as you’re, as folks are listening to this in their car, on the train, walking their dog, you’ve got a concrete goal. What’s the next big move? What’s one of the big moves you need to make to get you closer to your goal? Then step three is, what might I ask for that helps action my big move that helps me get closer to that goal. So it could be, ugh, I have an acquaintance that’s involved with an influential community of local business owners who lots of those folks are on on boards. Can I get an invitation to a plus one to one of their mixers, for example?

Yeah.

And I’m just making this up like right on the spot. I’ve never done this example before. So in my case it was like, who might, you know, I could cold email agents all day long, but I, I have always spread like a benevolent positive virus through my networks. Like that has been my whisper network has been one of the most powerful tools in my career. So I was like, who do I know that can give me an introduction? Who might I ask for an introduction, a warm introduction instead of sending a cold query? Now that’s scary enough, you know? Right. So, so goal move, what might I ask for?

And if you don’t, and you might wanna ask yourself, and who might I ask it of? Okay. Then step four is, is the ask that you’ve identified a ZOFO ask? Does it give you that feeling in your gut? And if not, how might you ZOFO it?

Right? How do I make it bigger and more scary? Yes. Yeah,

Exactly. Because if I go to an acquaintance I have in my network who’s involved in a really high level, you know, business owners group, they’re all boards on influential nonprofits in our community. But I’m kind of an outsider. I could so easily, you know, sure. I could ask John to bring me to a plus one mixer next week. That seems reasonable. How might I ZOFO that? Okay. Well it scares me to say, Hey John, could you pitch me to do a workshop for your networking group around what it means to ask like an auctioneer? Do you see what I’ve just done? Yeah.

Yeah.

I’ve raised the stakes. But guess how, what if he says yes? If he says, oh, you know, that’s not something I’m in a position to ask for, but what if you led a discussion on one of our breakouts? ’cause we, you know, we, ’cause there’s things you don’t even know about, right? We do lunches where we host round table discussions. That would be a great place for you. Do you see what, what’s happened? Yeah. Right. You haven’t got the main stage, but boy, you’ve got a, a table of 10 influencers of people

You’ve got better than the plus one. Right?

Well, you’re, you know, awkwardly mix, you know, networking with people at a, at a breakfast or a lunch, right? Absolutely. And also you’ve provided value. You’ve platformed yourself in a way that people understand what you’re about and who you are and how you operate in front of a room. Come on.

Right?

So we can always ZOFO our asks, we can always ask ourselves what might make this feel bigger and scarier?

Wait. Which is fascinating because that is the exact opposite of what we are natively wired to do, right? We’re we are wired to go, oh, that’s kind of scary. How do I, how do I dial that back? So to your point earlier, so I get the Yes for sure. And it feels a whole lot less scary or risky.

Absolutely. Yeah. And the reason I’ve found that the reason that we do this, and I didn’t, you know, this is my, my brain made these connections literally one night when I was like, God, it’d be so great if all the founders I work with could just, and women, women specifically in, in organizations where, you know, we are lack of women leadership, not because Right. Pipeline’s not there. Right. And I really was like, God, if we could just stop asking how we usually do and just ask like, you know, like how I do when I’m in front of the room, if they could just learn all this, if they could just ask like an auctioneer. And I was like, oh my God. And I wrote it down, you know, and over all these hundreds of conversations, what I have noticed is that we conflate, we collapsed together.

The answers we get to the asks we make and our sense of worth and worthiness. What I learned in auctioneering was that price or what somebody will do or pay for something is a signal and a way to see what they value and how they value it. Not a way to define worth. You know why? Because I sold a one night camping trip for 13 people at an auction in San Francisco for $55,000. And I sold what was a piece of art that was supposed to be quote unquote worth $10,000 for 4,500.

The idea of worth is useless

To us. Yeah. Right? Huh? Yeah. Un unless somebody super famous was on that camping trip. Holy buckets.

Yes.

Yeah.

So I just really let go, this goes back to curiosity, right? I’m curious how this person might value this,

Right? Yeah. Why is it worth that to them? Right,

Exactly. So what we value and what they value, I mean, I would never buy a Birkin bag, right? It doesn’t have any worth to me, but it’s supposed to be worth 12 grand or I don’t even know how much they go for. Well, not to me, does that mean it’s worthless? Well, to me, worth value is highly contextual. Yeah. So when we make an ask, we want, so, so bringing this idea of like, I mean, executive directors would tell me all the time, oh, I want this piece of art to sell for 10 grand. And I’m like, well, I’m gonna sell it to whatever, to whoever will pay above our reserve based on what, how they value it in the room. I can’t, I can’t tell them. I can’t say, no, dammit, y’all are gonna pay 10 grand for this.

Right?

I can’t, like

If it’s, yeah, I can’t do going once, going twice for an hour and a half till somebody just shouts a bigger number. Right.

Not gonna happen. Right. So I love this idea of getting ourselves off the hook of taking the answers we get and using them to establish our own sense of worth and worthiness, which by the way, is just frigging in, you know, infinite.

Yeah. Right.

I also really wanna let go of people thinking about, you know, asking for what they deserve.

Hmm.

Because similarly I see people with stuff that you could argue they don’t deserve.

Right.

And I see people without stuff that they might deserve. Let’s not load it up with whether you’re, let’s not moralize the answers that you get. Right. Let’s just ask for more and find out what they’ll say yes to.

Yeah. Well, and the idea of someone else deciding what you deserve is sort of twisted in its origin. Right?

I don’t like where the power sits in that. Right, right. In that

Right. I’m gonna ask my boss for a raise for what I deserve, and then when she tells me I can’t have it, I guess I didn’t deserve it. Yes. That’s a terrible place to put yourself in.

Exactly. Which is why in my workshops I say like, I want you, yes. I want you to get quote unquote paid what you’re worth. Okay, fine. But when we load up the answers, we get with the, the notion of who’s deserving and who is not. Right. When we load up our asks with the idea of being of worth and worthiness, then we will, it will, the ask begs us to, to go for only a guaranteed yes.

Right? Right. But if we, because, because the last thing in the world we wanna hear is that we are not deserving of X.

Of course. I don’t want people to feel they’re undeserving. I wanna say what you deserve is like, there’s, it’s not relevant.

Right? Right.

What matters is what do you want? How do you get more of what you need? And how do you define your reserves so that when, when it’s not right for you, you can go, Hmm. Misaligned

When

I mean, are there people here listening right now, you know, part of your community who have clients they wanna break up with for years because Right. They can’t raise rates or they’re, you know, and, and you wanna get paid what you deserve. You know, you’re not the same agency you were five years ago. I get that. But only you get to say, oh, this isn’t working for us. This is not, this is, these aren’t our rates anymore. We’re going to have to upgrade all of our clients that are operating, operating in this rate and operating at this rate. and that if that doesn’t fit for you, so happy to send you referrals to folks that are operating at that level. Like, yeah, we get to say yes or no. Now again, I understand you

Gotta pay the bills, you got people on payroll, all of that.

Absolutely. but

You, but ultimately you get to make that decision, right? Yes.

Yeah. My good friend Karen, who we call rock and roll, Karen, she,

We all call her that, don’t we? Oh,

This woman. Yeah. Yes. Rock and roll. Karen, if you’re out there, me loves you. Rock and roll, Karen. She has this phrase that her mom, she said, her mom always said to her, which is like, well, you can afford it. And I love that idea. Yeah. That there are moments where we can afford it and moments that we can’t. Right. And if we can afford it, if we can afford to take the risk

Or to fire the client or to make the big ask or to Right.

Instead of getting tangled up and like, they won’t, they just don’t pay us what we deserve. And fighting with yourself and with them about it. And spinning cycles on the, the difficulty, just the psychological cycles of grappling with the idea that you’re just doing work for not what you want. If you can afford to say no and make room for a new client if you can afford it.

Right. It’s a good one. Okay. So step five.

Oh yes. And by the way, folks who are listening, when the, all the resources in the book show up at ask like an auctioneer on, on November 14th, if you’re listening to this, after that November 14th, 2023, they’ll be available and free. You can also get this ask framework right now at Dia Bondi dot com on the resources page. Okay. So that was four. Yep. And then five is know what your reserve is, which is the minimum you’ll take. Yep. Really importantly, you’ve gotta decide now, not in the heat of the moment, not when the candy jar is sitting right in front of you. ’cause the last thing I want you to do is say yes to something you really mean maybe or no to.

Right? Yeah. That’s, that feels yucky later.

It feels yucky. Yeah. Yeah. So we don’t, I don’t want you to be, to betray yourself in that way. Yeah. So get really clear about what your reserve is. And it, it’s not, again, just about money. It could be like going back to this example of the networking event that maybe you get, you know, asked to host a round table or do a, a talk at so that you can network with people who are influential in the nonprofit space and get on a board that you wanna be on la la la you know, your reserve could be like, Hey, if I, it’s like not really worth my time to show up if I can’t have a meaningful conversation. But the moment that, so no thanks to just awkwardly, you know, networking. The moment you have a round table you can open, think of me first.

Right?

So that’s step number four or number five. And step number six is really the clincher. People take, ask me all the time, Dia, but what if I can’t even get my reserve? What if it’s a hard no, what should I do? And all day long I’m like, what do you wanna do?

Right?

I don’t know, you get to decide, do you wanna let go of that client? Do you want to hustle a different kind of work with that client? Do you wanna shorten the scope? Do you wanna say no thank you altogether, and recognize it might be a Boomerang situation. Like what do you wanna do? I worked with, I had a, did have a coaching conversation again in my research phase of yeah, what would go into this book. This woman, she’s a house manager for a very, very, very wealthy family, and if folks don’t know what a house manager is, you can look it up. And she was like, I, I gotta make more money. This is crazy. Like the amount of work that I’ve been doing, managing all their homes, setting up their family vacations, dealing like planning weddings for their kids.

Like so much cra like the scope of her work had expanded. Like she was basically their chief of staff at this point, not just like a house manager. And she was like, I gotta get more money. And we identified a number and it was a very, very big number. And it was in combination with a lot of other things. She needed a part-time apartment in, you know, the country, the other country that they spent time in so she could have a place to stay that was comfortable when she was there working on those projects. Like there was a whole slew of things. It was money and situational stuff. And then we talked about reserve, right. And she was like, if I’m, if I get this much money, I would give up the request for a permanent apartment abroad if I, you know, none these sound like bougie problems to have.

Right. but, you know, it was still very intense. Also, she had a very deep relationship with these people, you know, she was in their lives. So we figured out, okay, but if I get less money, then I want an apartment. You know, like we kind of figured out what the combinations were of all those things. And then we identified the reserve and I said, asked the question, okay, what are you gonna do if you don’t get it? Whatcha gonna do? And this poor girl, woman, she poor and wonderful at the same time, she welled up, she was like, I think it’ll be time for me to go. And although there was sadness in it, she got to experience that sadness now. Right.

And not in the moment in front of them.

Exactly. And just, right, she got to really see like, oh, this is a moment where I’m gonna make a dec a very important decision. Yeah. And how wonderful, I mean, maybe for folks listening, you don’t have the same situation where you’re asking for, you know, a bougie apartment and a half a million dollars and you know, as a house manager, but you might be like realizing it’s time for me to let go if I can’t Right. Change the race. It’s time for me to let go of the first client I ever had. Right? Oh, that’s so sad.

Or, or it’s time for, it’s time for me to leave this job that I’ve had for 20 years, a

Hundred percent. Or it’s time to let go of this service line that was the par the, the service line that got my business off the ground, but isn’t profitable anymore if we can’t continue with these certain clients in a certain way. Right. So when we, when we decide what we’re gonna do, if we get a no, we get clear about what matters to us and we get to be in a place of decisiveness.

Yeah.

So those are the six steps.

It’s interesting listening to you, you know, and I, and I’m sure you talk about this in the book, but you know, asking for something always feels like you’re beholden to someone else. And, and your methodology puts me in total control as the asker.

Oh, right. Oh, oh, that’s, oh, that makes my heart go pitter-patter. Right. I’m so glad you sense that about this. And I’ll say that the book and the work and folks who were at the Baba summit saw that like, you know, there’s some snarkiness in here and funny stories and it’s kind of irreverent, but it is, you know, it’s also straight from the heart exactly what you just named. Exactly. And this is the value of doing a beautiful brand exercise. I hired, when I came outta my sabbatical, I hired a woman to do a brand exercise with me. And she was like, here’s what you do in the world. And I’m, I’m just giving everybody here who invests or works with people, either individuals like me or small or medium sized large businesses that like getting clear on your brand early days is so wonderful.

She said, your promise is, your promise is helping people speak from the heart, put them back in control and having the impact they wanna have. And if you got one of those three out of our conversation today, I feel like that was money well spent.

Yeah, yeah. Well it it’s fascinating though because it, it, it changes the whole dynamic of the conversation and it probably changes how you feel about the outcome no matter what the outcome is.

And speaking of which, you know, I, I really realize in my own life and even in the front of the room when I’m doing auctioneering, is that, you know, and as I, as I talk to people in the halls at, you know, conferences like Baba and, and other places that, you know, you’re gonna, you might not ask for more and get it every single time.

Right. Well, you probably won’t, right. I mean, one of the odds of that,

But you can, if you ask like an auctioneer, ask for more and get it over time.

Yeah.

And that’s what we wanna think of this as a journey. Although these are high leverage individual moments, they accumulate. And I understand also that, you know, not every ask you make is a ZOFO ask. There are a million asks you make that are, please pass the salt, can I have 20 bucks? Like they’re, you know, they’re table stakes things, but when it really matters and it is high leverage, we’re gonna go for it. Sometimes we’re gonna get a lot more than we expected. Sometimes we’re gonna get nothing at all. But over time, you, you take those, you take the chance here and there and some of those asks can really change everything.

Gosh, I love this. I I love the power position. It puts people in. I love the, I love the opportunity for them to craft not only what they’re asking for, but how they react to whatever the response is. And I love the fact that to your point, the framework means that no matter what happens, I’m ready for it. Right. I, I’ve already played out all the scenarios. I already know what I am and am not willing to do. And so now it’s sort of like, well, why not ask? I, I’ve got, I know I’ve already figured out the worst case scenario and how I’m gonna respond to it, so Absolutely. Okay. Then it feels less risky and less scary.

Yeah. Somebody I, I posted up about this idea of like, know your reserve and like be willing to walk away kind of a, a post and somebody really was like, that’s a terrible idea. Like, be a hard liner and walk away when you don’t get your way. That’s terrible. But I hope from this conversation, you, you and the folks who are listening, it’s not about being a hard liner. It’s about being clear and holding true to your own boundaries. It’s about standing up for what matters to get you where you wanna go. And it’s about doing it in conversation and connection with other people. It’s not a competition. It’s about using curiosity, challenging our own assumptions and things might change. You might find that you ask for something really big, they can’t meet your reserve, but they introduce something else into the conversation where you’re like, I didn’t even thought of that.

Like, but I would take that. Right?

Yeah. I can say yes to something lower than my reserve because something new just entered the conversation. Right. What a wonderful discovery. And in that way, and I’ll talk about it in the book, I like, you know, other things can happen when you ask new possibilities emerge new relationships, new conversations. Right. It’s not about being heavy hitting.

Right. Well, and it’s also not being dogmatic. It’s, it is about also, but it’s also about, like we were saying, it’s also about not understanding what would feel compromising. so you don’t put yourself in that position in the moment

So we don’t betray ourselves.

Right. Which is probably the most important part of the ask.

Totally. Totally. Right. So maybe if I can offer your listeners a little challenge.

Yes. I love that.

So I wonder after you listen to this in the next, you know, 10 days to just once ask for something you don’t think you can get.

I love that. Yeah.

I don’t care if it’s an upgrade on the size of the coffee that you order at Starbucks or if it’s doubling your rate to a brand new client on a proposal you’re about to send out, just invite you to run an experiment.

Yeah. Love it. I love that. Dia, this has been awesome. I I, it actually, it’s been funny as we’ve been talking, I’ve been thinking about, I, I need to level up some of the asks that we’re making and so, so I, offline I will report back to you how, how I do so.

I love that. Me too. And I, you know, I’m eating my own dog food every day, all day. Yep. You know, every time I send something out, I go enter into a new, you know, conversation with somebody. I, you know, I check myself to go, is this a ZOFO moment? Will this help me get where, get me when? And it’s not about being opportunistic, it’s about making sure I’m honoring myself and where I’m going and not accidentally low balling myself when I have an opportunity to make a big difference.

Yeah. Difference. Awesome. Alright, so if people want to get to your website, if they wanna learn more about the work you do, if they wanna find out about workshops, if they wanna buy the book, if they wanna do all of those things, what’s the best way for them to do that?

Best way is to go to Dia Bondi dot com. Everything, my communications work, the book stuff, is there, all the resources related to the conversation that we’ve just had? Are there? The book website is ask like an auctioneer.com. So if you get the audiobook, you get the ebook or you get the, the, the hardcover coming out, or if it’s already come out, if you’ve, if you’re listening to this now, all of the downloads will be there for you as well. And even if you don’t buy the book, they’re available for you. so you can go and explore that as well.

This has been awesome. Thank you for, thank you for sharing the adventure. ’cause at the end of the day, this was a lark for you that turned into something really kind of magical.

Really was, I’m surprised about it every day.

Yeah. So I, I am super grateful. I was, I was grateful in May when you came and shared your, your story and your wisdom with our audience, but now you’re sharing it with thousands and thousands of people. So I love that we get to spread the message even wider on the podcast. So thank you so much for, for being with us today and sharing your story. I’m, I’m grateful.

I’m grateful. Bye everyone.

This has been fun. Bye. Alright guys, I love this. so, you know, I’ll wrap up almost every episode saying there’s, this is an action packed episode and you could do things, but Dia declared an absolute action item, which is in the next 10 days, make an ask, make an ask that you think you’re gonna get a no. And I would love to hear what you did and how it played out, and how you built the framework. So shoot me an email. I would, I would love to explore that with you and I wanna celebrate it with you. What, no matter what answer you get, I wanna celebrate the fact that you did it and that you had the courage to do it. and that you are learning to use that muscle.

And, you know, I suspect we didn’t talk about it, but I suspect the more we do this, the better and more comfortable we get at doing it. So let’s agree that all of us, and I’ll tell you what, at my next solo cast, which is in about four or five weeks, I will tell you what I asked for and I will tell you how it played out. So I haven’t decided what it is yet, but I will, I will share it with you the next opportunity that it’s just you and me on the podcast. So it’ll probably be in early December. So, all right. Go check out the book, check out the website, figure out your ask. I’m excited for you. I’m excited to hear what, what you get in return. In the meantime, I wanna thank our friends at White Label IQ. They, as you know, are the presenting sponsor of the podcast. They make it possible for us to hang out together every week and have great guests like Dia with us.

So White Label IQ dot com slash aami. They have some, an offer for you if you’ve never worked with them before to get some free hours on a project. So they do white Label, design, PPC and Dev. And as I’ve told you before, they work with a ton of AMI agencies and they’re their outsource partner and people love them. And it’s, it’s just, they’re just good people doing good work. And I think you’ll be really excited to, to come alongside them and have them help you serve your clients well. So I, I’m, I’m a little giddy about the episode today, so I’m, I’m gonna be thinking about this all night long, but I’ll tell you what, this wraps up the episode. I am grateful that you keep coming back.

Thank you for doing that. And I’ll be here next week. I hope you will too. All right, I’ll talk to you then.

That’s all for this episode of AAMIs. Build a Better Agency Podcast. Be sure to visit agency management institute.com to learn more about our workshops, online courses, and other ways we serve small to mid-size agencies. Don’t forget to subscribe today so you don’t miss an episode.