Selling to and pricing for corporate clients

Carlos: 00:00:00

Before we start, I just thought I would, uh, lay the groundwork for why this topic came up.

Carlos: 00:00:06

There's a couple of reasons actually.

Carlos: 00:00:07

One, uh, within our community there's a number of, there are a number of members who are looking to offer, their services to corporate clients.

Carlos: 00:00:17

And.

Carlos: 00:00:19

Who was I talking to?

Carlos: 00:00:20

I was talking, actually, I was talking to a coach yesterday who does a lot of leadership training, uh, with, for the corporate sector.

Carlos: 00:00:27

And I was asking them, you know, you know, well, what is it about that work that they enjoy?

Carlos: 00:00:31

Uh, and she said, uh, it's the money.

Carlos: 00:00:33

It's just like, you know, it's a challenge because you don't necessarily make the impact you want, but they pay really, really well.

Carlos: 00:00:39

So that was one perspective on working with corporates.

Carlos: 00:00:42

So, which got me thinking, you know, selling, we selling one directly to a customer is not exactly the same as selling to a corporate.

Carlos: 00:00:51

And so exploring that idea and then, you know, you had some experience in this, so I thought we could have a conversation around this idea or this challenge.

Carlos: 00:00:58

Uh, maybe get some people who are listening live to share their own thoughts and opinions and experiences of this to at the very least, you know, open up a box of things to think about, uh, and hopefully not cause too much confusion.

Carlos: 00:01:13

At the very most give you the seven silver bullets.

Carlos: 00:01:18

Seven.

Ben: 00:01:18

Seven

Carlos: 00:01:24

Let's talk about Lucy and Lucy.

Carlos: 00:01:26

She says, um, she's a super beginner at this, and it would be helpful to us if you came and talked to us.

Carlos: 00:01:31

So I'm gonna, I'm gonna invite you on stage.

Carlos: 00:01:34

so what I thought the way we could do this is, uh, maybe talk a little bit about your business, what it is who you're trying to help, and how, uh, and then maybe any particular question that arises around this idea of pricing or selling to corporates.

Lucy: 00:01:53

Okay, great.

Lucy: 00:01:54

So yeah, so my business is called Work Wild.

Lucy: 00:01:56

And it's all around nature connection or connecting with nature to boost mental health to get people outside and connecting together as a team.

Lucy: 00:02:03

It's very new.

Lucy: 00:02:04

So I've literally been working on it about six months or so properly.

Lucy: 00:02:08

And the idea is that I'm building a community of independent facilitators.

Lucy: 00:02:13

So if you imagine something like, I dunno, canopy Stars or Virgin Experience days, you go on the website and then you've got lots of different facilitators or experts offering their services through the website.

Lucy: 00:02:23

So what we want to become is the hub basically for nature connection for teams or outdoor experiences for teams.

Lucy: 00:02:30

So if you want to get your team doing something active outside, you wanna get your team doing something good for their mental health outside, then you come to our website and you can find all these different experiences to choose from.

Lucy: 00:02:41

So it's quite interesting in that the facilitators themselves are totally independent, so to some extent the pricing is up to them.

Lucy: 00:02:49

But a lot of them, like me, don't have experience selling to corporates.

Lucy: 00:02:53

So that's kind of why they want to work with me, I suppose, is because if we all work together, we can market their stuff a bit better and we can get corporates interested and, you know.

Lucy: 00:03:01

Find them easily in one place.

Lucy: 00:03:03

And nature of course, is something that a lot of people don't put a lot of monetary value on.

Lucy: 00:03:09

A lot of people think it should be free.

Lucy: 00:03:11

You know, it's got this link to charities maybe after school clubs.

Lucy: 00:03:14

You take your kid to something and pay a pound and then they hang out in a village hall for a bit and go on nature walk.

Lucy: 00:03:20

So there's a little bit of a disconnect there.

Lucy: 00:03:22

We kind of need to shift the mindset to nature being something that is valuable and that should be paid for.

Lucy: 00:03:28

You know, a lot of these people have an extraordinary depth of skill.

Lucy: 00:03:32

You know, they're forages, they're yogis, they're gardeners.

Lucy: 00:03:36

They've got years and years of experience, and they want to share that.

Lucy: 00:03:39

But when it comes to pricing that's where we're unsure where to start with

Ben: 00:03:43

Thanks, Lucy.

Ben: 00:03:44

That's very good.

Ben: 00:03:44

Good to hear.

Ben: 00:03:45

So are you a, are you a facilitator,

Lucy: 00:03:47

I'm, and I'm not.

Lucy: 00:03:48

So what I do is something a little bit different.

Lucy: 00:03:50

I do bio-inspired business, so using nature as inspiration for how to structure and manage and run a business essentially.

Lucy: 00:03:58

So kind of the outdoor stuff is for all these other experts I've got on board.

Lucy: 00:04:04

And then if they want to do some of my sessions, it's a little bit more strategy based, then I can't be fine as well.

Ben: 00:04:09

And what was the, uh, the kind of inspiration for setting up this new business?

Lucy: 00:04:13

Well, I mean, how long just the story do you want?

Lucy: 00:04:16

I mean, I, I got made redundant back in, uh, 2020.

Lucy: 00:04:20

'cause of lockdown and nature is just something that I've always loved.

Lucy: 00:04:23

It's always been what I'd love to focus most of my time on.

Lucy: 00:04:26

And I used that as a bit of an impetus or a spark to, to try and do something with nature with my career.

Lucy: 00:04:31

So I started running online workshops.

Lucy: 00:04:34

Of course back then we were all doing everything online.

Lucy: 00:04:36

And teams really liked it.

Lucy: 00:04:38

So that wasn't even going outside.

Lucy: 00:04:40

That was sort of teaching people how to go outside or what to do when they're outside, but online.

Lucy: 00:04:46

And I got some really good feedback.

Lucy: 00:04:47

I was working with a few different teams and then I decided, oh, I'd like to move this outdoors.

Lucy: 00:04:52

Tried to run a few sessions and then realized, what am I doing?

Lucy: 00:04:55

Like I'm not an expert in yoga.

Lucy: 00:04:57

I'm not an expert in mindfulness.

Lucy: 00:04:58

There's people out there that are so good at this.

Lucy: 00:05:01

Then I realized, well, where do I find them?

Lucy: 00:05:03

There isn't a hub for all of these people to come together.

Lucy: 00:05:05

Like if I'm a corporate or if I'm a people manager and I want to get my team outside doing something together, I have to know very specifically what I'm Googling or what I'm looking for to find it.

Lucy: 00:05:17

If you just type in Nature connection for teams London, there isn't a site that immediately comes up.

Lucy: 00:05:22

So I thought, well, I could be that site, So it is all about biomimicry.

Lucy: 00:05:26

I dunno if you've heard of that before.

Lucy: 00:05:27

But essentially mimicking or imitating nature.

Lucy: 00:05:30

And Mm-Hmm.

Lucy: 00:05:31

it's been around for thousands and thousands of years.

Lucy: 00:05:33

Lots of designers and uh, uh, engineers and people creating products and physical, tangible things inspired by nature.

Lucy: 00:05:40

But what I do is look at processes, ideas, systems, uh, and how we can use nature as inspiration for business essentially.

Lucy: 00:05:49

And running a business like nature would

Ben: 00:05:51

do.

Ben: 00:05:52

And what kind of clients do you do that for?

Lucy: 00:05:54

So, again, this is very early on.

Lucy: 00:05:56

And so the kind of clients that have been interested tend to be startups or people that are just starting out in their business.

Lucy: 00:06:03

So, I worked with Curve, which is a social media, a new social media platform.

Lucy: 00:06:08

And of course, their whole idea is around.

Lucy: 00:06:10

Starting a movement or bringing lots and lots of people together.

Lucy: 00:06:13

So we were like, how would nature start a movement or bring lots of people together, all around one common cause.

Lucy: 00:06:19

So that's just a difficult kind of project.

Lucy: 00:06:20

We start with a question and then go to nature for answers.

Ben: 00:06:24

So that's a kind of useful kind of point of those, isn't it?

Ben: 00:06:26

Because in a sense, are they buying the nature or are they buying the lens that nature provides in order to do something else?

Lucy: 00:06:33

They're buying the lens, they're buying the answers.

Lucy: 00:06:36

But as there is a little bit of a separate need or want, I guess I had thought about splitting out the businesses, so that's why at the moment on the website, you won't find anything about buyer inspiration or my consulting work.

Lucy: 00:06:48

At the moment, I'm just focusing on the nature connection, the mental health, the team building side of things for the business.

Ben: 00:06:55

Yeah, I guess the only reason I was kind of asking is understanding what their motivation is.

Ben: 00:06:58

'cause we're, irrespective of which side of the business is on, clearly people are buying.

Ben: 00:07:02

Like when you say, when I put something into Google, the thing that I put into Google, I guess the question in my mind is the thing that they're putting into Google nature, connection, London, whatever, or are they putting a problem into Google, which the lens of nature and the lens of those facilitators might better help them solve.

Ben: 00:07:20

And whether understanding their connection there might be a route to think about.

Carlos: 00:07:24

Uh, and Annie said, are they buying te team building stuff?

Lucy: 00:07:27

Yes.

Lucy: 00:07:28

Well, it's, yes.

Lucy: 00:07:29

So the whole buyer inspired strategy and business thing is a little bit.

Lucy: 00:07:33

Of a cross sell, you know?

Lucy: 00:07:34

So I'm not focusing on that at the moment.

Lucy: 00:07:36

I know that they're looking for team building.

Lucy: 00:07:38

They want to reconnect face to face after months being behind screens.

Lucy: 00:07:42

They want to, you know, induct, they wanna onboard their team.

Lucy: 00:07:45

Maybe they've had some new people join and they want to be together, outdoors, doing something fun.

Lucy: 00:07:49

Uh, maybe they've got graduates joining.

Lucy: 00:07:51

I don't know, maybe they've got some clients they want to entertain.

Lucy: 00:07:53

Like some, we are doing cocktails and foraging and campfires.

Lucy: 00:07:56

You know, it's all kind of fun.

Lucy: 00:07:57

Outdoor, getting people together type of things.

Lucy: 00:08:00

So yes, I'm really not pushing the Byron by Consultancy at the moment.

Lucy: 00:08:04

I'm focusing more on the experiences and what they might want those for.

Carlos: 00:08:08

So the corporates are buying, uh, an experience to connect their team and to make them feel more, I assume more connected to the company as well as each other.

Lucy: 00:08:21

Yeah.

Carlos: 00:08:21

Okay.

Carlos: 00:08:21

Could we make an assumption then, just to, so that we can focus on this idea of pricing and selling?

Carlos: 00:08:26

Not to just totally scrap your business and think, give you a new one, but say you, you were designing these experiences for them, you know, they would come to you and say, we want a three day experience where we all connect.

Carlos: 00:08:36

And you would say, all right, I've got this package.

Carlos: 00:08:38

You're gonna do yoga in the morning, we do foraging in the afternoon, we're gonna do some other activities in the evening, and it's over two, three, whatever.

Carlos: 00:08:46

It's, there's a package.

Carlos: 00:08:47

And so you wanna sell that pack.

Carlos: 00:08:48

Could, would you mind if we play with that idea?

Lucy: 00:08:50

No, go for it.

Lucy: 00:08:51

Yeah that's something I've thought about as well.

Carlos: 00:08:52

Cool.

Carlos: 00:08:53

Excellent.

Carlos: 00:08:53

All right, so we go to your website work while.org because we want to have a team building experience.

Carlos: 00:09:01

So how, Ben, given that assumption how would we think about, how would Lucy think about the pricing of that and what would she need to do?

Ben: 00:09:10

before we get into the pricing of that, a quick thing on the selling of that.

Ben: 00:09:13

So when, if you're selling those things to a company, like as Anya points out the team building stuff.

Ben: 00:09:18

So it has to be framed to a company by a lens of what it is a company is used to buying.

Ben: 00:09:23

And of course this changes depending on the type of organization that you're buying to.

Ben: 00:09:27

If you are, sorry, if you're selling to, if the organization you want to buy is very small and it's like, you know, maybe there's a founder plus one or two others.

Ben: 00:09:35

You are kind of, you are talking to the kind of, you know, the heart, the mind of the owner, the founder essentially.

Ben: 00:09:41

But as soon as the organization has a little bit of sort of scale to it or a little bit of structure to it, there might be some people in different kind of roles.

Ben: 00:09:48

There might be people with different responsibilities and critically there'll be then become people with different responsibilities for budget.

Ben: 00:09:54

Uh, and people, organizations choose to spend money within budget based on things that they understand fit within those budgets.

Ben: 00:10:02

And so one of them, the other businesses that I had for ages we, when we first started out, we were trying to persuade people who actually were spending marketing budget to spend budget on something completely different via a kind of lens and story, which made perfect sense to us.

Ben: 00:10:15

It wasn't what the specifics of it is not relevant so much, but the lens of the story made perfect sense to us and really made sense to, we could see how what we were talking about was very beneficial to their business, but we were making a mistake, which is we weren't framing what we were doing via the lens of how, excuse me, of how they expected to buy things.

Ben: 00:10:33

Right?

Ben: 00:10:34

And so, we needed to change the language that we used and we needed to change the story essentially, that we were telling.

Ben: 00:10:41

So it did fit within what they expected.

Ben: 00:10:43

And this critical thing around what an organization spends let's assume they are sort of, they have, they are of sort of, you know, some size enough where there maybe there's, there is some budgets for different things.

Ben: 00:10:52

To Anya's point there, you know, lots of organizations, once they get to a specific size, they probably have budget for events.

Ben: 00:11:00

They probably have budget for developing staff.

Ben: 00:11:03

They probably have budget for kind of, well, you know, let's kind of say wellbeing or whatever it might be.

Ben: 00:11:09

Because they would understand, oh, we need to spend some money, invest some money in our people because, you know, getting them back to the office is important for the performance of the company.

Ben: 00:11:19

Or giving them an opportunity to kind of connect every month or whatever it might be.

Ben: 00:11:25

Kind of, you know, increases our sort of efficiency.

Ben: 00:11:27

So there will be lots of stories they're telling themselves about what they should spend money on, how they should spend it, and why they should spend it.

Ben: 00:11:34

And the absolute kind of key thing when you're selling to a company is talking to those points.

Ben: 00:11:38

So if the organization that you're talking to does do team building, then it's important in a sense that you are talking about what you do via a team building lens.

Ben: 00:11:48

Then understanding that your take on it is a different way of doing team building is in the same way as your take might be a different way of integrating graduates into, uh, you know, organizational graduate scheme or whatever it might be.

Ben: 00:12:01

But the, it has to be via the lens and really it, you should always hopefully identify the budget area that it will most usefully come out of.

Ben: 00:12:10

Assuming that there is a budget so that you kind of know and, uh, 'cause if the organization or the person in the organization can't place you quickly and easily, essentially what will happen is they will just ignore you.

Ben: 00:12:21

Uh, because it takes too much kind of effort for them to put you they, you know, none of us want to be put into a box, but in a sense, for an organization to buy you, you have to be in some kind of box.

Ben: 00:12:32

Otherwise it's a very long and slow and hard sales journey.

Ben: 00:12:37

So the kind of more box you are, and in a way you would, you know, that sort of classic thing from a sales if in their mind there's a shorthand, which is Oh.

Ben: 00:12:44

Lucy's like this, but that, so she's like team building, but that she's like sort of, uh, graduate training, but that whatever the thing is, it kind of, it gives you, it gives them a hook in their mind to understand how to place you whilst at the same time as kind

Ben: 00:12:58

of pointing out what your sort of subtle point of difference is or kind of point of difference to whatever sort of, uh, extent that is.

Ben: 00:13:05

But it is important just from the sort of selling point of view.

Ben: 00:13:07

You need to, they need to understand where you fit, uh, to have a chance of progressing to a point where you might talk about pricing, but I guess that's, that kind of gets you through the door.

Lucy: 00:13:16

No, definitely.

Lucy: 00:13:17

So I, I, very early, early on when starting the business, I did some research calls with just people that I know in charge of budgets and whatnot in different companies.

Lucy: 00:13:25

And it was really interesting what they were saying.

Lucy: 00:13:27

You know, there, a lot of the time the mental health budget is a lot smaller, for example, than the ESG budget.

Lucy: 00:13:33

So if I tie it into the environment, if I tie it into volunteering and local community, because of course I'm based in London and this is a very local, uh, communal network of people that I'm working with.

Lucy: 00:13:44

And a lot of them are charities.

Lucy: 00:13:46

So, you know, a charity garden for example, if I really pick up the charity aspect, if I pick up the community aspect, the volunteering, the environment aspects, they can take the money then from the ESG budget rather than the mental health budget.

Lucy: 00:13:59

And that's a much healthier chunk of, of money.

Carlos: 00:14:02

For those of us who are a little bit ignorant of acronyms, ESG stands for.

Lucy: 00:14:06

Environmental social governance, I believe.

Carlos: 00:14:09

Oh,

Lucy: 00:14:09

don't quote me on that, I have to Google that.

Carlos: 00:14:12

Okay.

Carlos: 00:14:13

No, that's good.

Carlos: 00:14:13

And then I understand the context.

Carlos: 00:14:15

Alright.

Carlos: 00:14:16

So a principle that I was hearing that, uh, that Ben was talking about, the way I would phrase it is being safe to buy.

Carlos: 00:14:22

And what my assumption with companies that are a certain size is that someone has to justify to someone else the money that they've spent.

Carlos: 00:14:32

Uh, and if there's any fear in there or uncertainty, then like Ben say, I'd rather not answer that question, I'd just move on to the most certain safe thing, which is a, an unfortunate circumstance, I think for a lot of large organizations.

Carlos: 00:14:47

And that's why there's a issue with innovation in those organizations, ironically, because that's what they need.

Carlos: 00:14:53

So I think there's something here around understanding the cu culture of your customer.

Carlos: 00:14:59

And the more structured and rigid it is, the more safe they'll want to be is an assumption they'll have.

Carlos: 00:15:05

And again, another assumption I, the bigger they are, the more likely they'll be structured and to certain extent rigid.

Carlos: 00:15:11

And so, but they also have more money.

Carlos: 00:15:13

So it's an interesting thing there which lends, you know, we even talk about positioning and all that stuff.

Carlos: 00:15:20

And so yeah, so that's the how do we make ourselves safer to buy?

Carlos: 00:15:25

Maybe we can move on a little bit more.

Carlos: 00:15:26

Like how much do we charge and how do we think about that?

Carlos: 00:15:30

So, and Lucy, let maybe kick off with what's the challenge with that question for you at the moment?

Lucy: 00:15:35

Oh, several challenges, I guess because.

Lucy: 00:15:38

So first of all, I'm working with other people, so I'm selling other people's product or service.

Lucy: 00:15:43

It's not just down to me as to what it's priced at.

Lucy: 00:15:45

And a lot of these, there's two problems I'm finding here, which is the first one is that because these people are nature people, you know, they love being outdoors, they love doing what they do.

Lucy: 00:15:55

They're not perhaps well versed in this idea of the corporate world.

Lucy: 00:15:59

And a lot of people are underselling what they do.

Lucy: 00:16:02

So I spoke to a guy the other day he's an ex-Marine.

Lucy: 00:16:06

He does survival experiences and whatnot, but he was trying to sell a full day.

Lucy: 00:16:12

So I'm talking full working day for a team.

Lucy: 00:16:15

He was like, oh, I can do it up to 40 people because I can get an mate involved, you know, and he was selling that for 250 pounds and.

Lucy: 00:16:22

My heart breaks, because obviously what he, you know, that's not, that's, it's worth an awful lot more than that.

Lucy: 00:16:27

But then the other problem was so that the first problem is people underselling what they do.

Lucy: 00:16:31

And the second problem is people just hearing the word corporate and just hiking at the price up, not really knowing how or why, but they just sort of have this idea that corporates, oh, they have more money so I can just boost the price.

Lucy: 00:16:45

And if they're someone who's already got quite a healthy price on what they do, quite a realistic price, hiking it up 20% or whatever it is, just makes it really difficult for me then to make any kind of income off the business because, you know, that's much harder to sell.

Lucy: 00:16:59

Uh, and I need to take a commission as well.

Carlos: 00:17:01

So there's two elements there.

Carlos: 00:17:03

They're gonna say three, but let's start with two.

Carlos: 00:17:05

Two is, some of these people undervaluing themselves and not necessarily charging enough.

Carlos: 00:17:09

For the, for our sake, I'm gonna ignore them.

Carlos: 00:17:12

' cause to a certain extent you can't control that.

Carlos: 00:17:14

That's, I'm gonna say that's their problem, but that's a different kettle fish.

Carlos: 00:17:17

And related to that, those are people who are charging a lot more, you know, maybe because they're corporates, again, that's outta your control.

Carlos: 00:17:24

So what I'd like to focus on is if you were, say, if you paid them a standard rate, for instance, and you sold the experience, take that scenario and you going directly to corporates and saying, okay, I'm gonna offer you this thing and I'm gonna charge you this amount of money.

Carlos: 00:17:39

With that in mind, would you be confident to do what you wanna do or do you, would you still have questions about how to do that?

Lucy: 00:17:44

Um, I mean, I'd always have questions 'cause I'd never really, I haven't done it for a few years and years, but I guess.

Lucy: 00:17:49

So I do want to move towards this idea of value-based pricing rather than just the time it takes and oh, it's this much per head and you know, it take this, et cetera, et cetera.

Lucy: 00:17:59

And that, I think is where I am struggling at the moment because I think anyone in a corporate company would say, okay, well how much is it per head?

Lucy: 00:18:06

That's 20 people.

Lucy: 00:18:07

How long is it?

Lucy: 00:18:09

Two hours, half a day?

Lucy: 00:18:10

Okay, I need a full breakdown of costs, et cetera, et cetera.

Lucy: 00:18:13

How, you know, if you're providing lunch, how much is that lunch?

Lucy: 00:18:16

Whereas I, so I don't feel like I can just go to them and say, this is the lump sum, this is the price I feel like they're gonna wanna break down.

Ben: 00:18:23

I think the aspiration to value-based pricing, I think is kind of good orientation and good intention on your part.

Ben: 00:18:30

But I guess going back also to the thing that we're talking about, uh, understanding what is safe to buy.

Ben: 00:18:37

And so, you know, whilst we may kind of, fully understand and feel the kind of value, in a sense, the value of getting your team outside together in nature 12 times a year as about, you know, what, in a sense the value of that is, I miserable, isn't it?

Ben: 00:18:53

Right.

Ben: 00:18:53

So like, so, and I say that, you know, sort of half ingest, but not really, of course massively valuable thing to do.

Ben: 00:18:59

Like if actually all organizations took their teams out for at least one day a month to be outside of nature for sure.

Ben: 00:19:06

The impact on, uh, their ability to keep staff, their ability for their teams to work well together, their ability to be, the ability of their teams to be creative, the ability of their teams to be adaptable and adaptive and all of these things, you know, undoubtedly would increase.

Ben: 00:19:22

And so then we can say, well, you know, what's the value of you, your organization becoming perpetually creative and, uh, constantly recreating itself into an ever new and bigger future.

Ben: 00:19:33

You, Mr.

Ben: 00:19:34

CEO.

Ben: 00:19:34

So that is.

Ben: 00:19:35

That's worth, you know, a good chunk of all of the future money that you are going to generate as a company.

Ben: 00:19:40

Therefore, you can pay me a small proportion of that and everyone will be happy.

Ben: 00:19:44

And so in a sense, that's what a kind of value-based pri uh, pricing assumption is.

Ben: 00:19:49

But the all, so that maybe sort of true and in a sense, being able to sort of tell those stories and weave those stories and inspire the corporates with those stories is an important part of the kind of sales and buying journey.

Ben: 00:20:02

Uh, and it might be that when you get into the kind of dialogue a little bit, you can use some of that, use even some of the numbers around that if you have an idea about what the client company, how big it might be, all of these sorts of things.

Ben: 00:20:14

You can use some of these things to kind of sort of shape and inform the conversation that you are having with them.

Ben: 00:20:20

But then equally, we also need to kind of meet the kind of reality of often where we are and.

Ben: 00:20:25

Coming back to this idea around being safe to buy, right?

Ben: 00:20:28

So there's a few things for that.

Ben: 00:20:29

One, it might be because they've put you into this box that was necessary in order to get out to cross the threshold and be having the conversation with them at all.

Ben: 00:20:38

It might be that their expectation is, but hold on a second.

Ben: 00:20:42

The last time I bought something in this box, it was about this price per head, and they gave canopies at lunch and there was no ham in the sandwiches and that was the price.

Ben: 00:20:51

And so that's just how I need to see it.

Ben: 00:20:53

But, so this all comes back to really understanding what is it that the organization expects in terms of how they buy And if it is an organization which expects to buy like that, you want to know like that early because then you don't kind of lose too much time in trying to inspire them about this way of doing it when they're only ever going to be able to kind of buy it like that.

Ben: 00:21:12

And so it's maybe useful to kind of know that, because maybe that is a place.

Ben: 00:21:16

A space that you want to be sort of playing in and selling in and et cetera, or you kind of feel that's not the place that you wanna be in.

Ben: 00:21:22

But again, important to kind of know that.

Ben: 00:21:24

'cause if it is a client that's gonna act like that, know early so that you can be meeting the client where they are.

Ben: 00:21:30

The other kind of little thing around that, and we can sort of talk about, about, just come back a little bit to the kind of the value-based kind of, sort of cherry, if you like, is what we might do.

Ben: 00:21:39

The other thing, you know, whether it's like you were talking about that great, the research you did, like looking at ESG, it's easier for us to get kind of budget out of this kind of area.

Ben: 00:21:47

Again.

Ben: 00:21:47

The other thing is, you know, as much as we might like to, particularly when we're selling to companies there will likely be budgets that are relatively fixed.

Ben: 00:21:56

Now the thing is they probably won't tell you, uh, what they are, but there will be a budget which is fixed.

Ben: 00:22:02

And so, you know, the, we might have an idea, the value of something is all the way up here, but it might be that the client actually just is only authorized to spend.

Ben: 00:22:12

That and the game, if you like, is to uncover those things because, you know, in the same way as understanding if there's a client who needs to buy a per head thing, if a client has.

Ben: 00:22:22

200 pounds or 2000 pounds or 20,000 or 200,000, whatever it is to spend or something.

Ben: 00:22:28

We really, we want to know that's what it is, so that we can do, we can sort of give them something which is in line with what their expectations are.

Ben: 00:22:35

And so, you know, it's really important always to ask what budget they have available for this.

Ben: 00:22:40

Now, like I said, most of the time they will say, I don't know, can you tell me what it costs?

Ben: 00:22:45

And then there's a couple of things that you can sort of do around that, but it's also important to kind of do background research to know how big is the organization as much as possible, even before you are talking about a specific engagement.

Ben: 00:22:57

What other kinds of things have you, Mr.

Ben: 00:22:58

Or Mrs.

Ben: 00:22:59

Client done in this space?

Ben: 00:23:01

How have you done this before?

Ben: 00:23:02

What kind of organizations did you do that with?

Ben: 00:23:04

Did you do that with charities?

Ben: 00:23:05

Did you do that with an individual practitioner?

Ben: 00:23:07

All of these things will kind of give you an idea about how they.

Ben: 00:23:11

Really how they choose to spend their money.

Ben: 00:23:14

Uh, and those things will start to point to how much they're willing to spend on something.

Ben: 00:23:18

But if they don't provide a kind of absolute sort of view, like I said, asking what budget that they have available, let's then assume that they say, I don't have a kind of budget.

Ben: 00:23:27

I'm not sure what the budget would be.

Ben: 00:23:29

Uh, or if I don't have a budget, that's a clearly a important kind of watch out because then it is totally okay if you'd say, if you don't have a budget, is really, there's something worth exploring.

Ben: 00:23:39

Uh, if they say, I don't know exactly what budget is available, you know, then going back to them with a kind of range question to say, well look, similar clients to you have invested somewhere between, uh, I don't know, let's just say for the purpose of this conversation, sort of 2000 and 10,000 pounds for the team, for teams to go out for the day.

Ben: 00:23:58

If I come back to you with some options in that range, would that be appropriate?

Ben: 00:24:03

And the kind of, the usefulness of a question like that is you will find out straight away.

Ben: 00:24:08

What their budget expectation is because whilst they say they dunno, clearly they know what their budget is.

Ben: 00:24:13

And so what you are trying to find out is, you know, what kind of range that you have to play in.

Ben: 00:24:18

And, you know, if they totally fall off their chair, uh, and go no, I didn't mean that I really only have 58 pounds at least, you know, they only have 58 pounds.

Ben: 00:24:26

If they kind of, you know, their response will tell you everything essentially in terms of what their expectation is.

Ben: 00:24:32

Then you have an idea about what it is that you have to play with and what it is that you might come back with in terms of some options about how they might proceed.

Lucy: 00:24:41

Brilliant.

Lucy: 00:24:42

Thank you.

Lucy: 00:24:43

So that I think works really, really well when it comes to the packages.

Lucy: 00:24:46

So me putting quite a lot of time and effort into it to construct something, curate something really personalize and bespoke for them.

Lucy: 00:24:52

I guess my next question would be in terms of just the bread and butter, here's the experience, this is what it costs.

Lucy: 00:25:00

Do you have any advice around that?

Lucy: 00:25:02

You know, so the business model I'm working at now is that, 'cause I'm kind of a matching service, you know, I've got the facilitator, I've got the company, I take 8% from the facilitator, and then I add on 20%.

Lucy: 00:25:15

So I take 20% from the client and then that would be my fee for matching 'em together

Ben: 00:25:21

So in a sense that goes back to those two people that we were talking about before, wasn't it?

Ben: 00:25:26

Which like the 'cause in a sense if the facilitator has an idea about what they are, should be charging, that's sort of dictating the terms of that for you, isn't it?

Ben: 00:25:36

Unless you choose to charge more.

Ben: 00:25:37

I mean, obviously you wouldn't choose to charge them less.

Ben: 00:25:40

Uh, but like for, so the where it goes that you were saying, oh, so and so, you know, person X.

Ben: 00:25:45

They think their thing is really expensive.

Ben: 00:25:47

Person Y is sort of, you know, frighteningly, undercharging, uh, in a way that bit of the business model, then you have, you can't do anything about it, can you?

Lucy: 00:25:57

That's true.

Lucy: 00:25:58

I guess what's what I'm struggling with is just the idea of me saying, oh, it's such and such a price.

Lucy: 00:26:03

And then them saying, oh, I can't afford that.

Lucy: 00:26:04

Can you do anything with that?

Lucy: 00:26:06

And then me having to say, I'm sorry, that's just the price.

Lucy: 00:26:08

And then, you know, not being able to have any wiggle room on that.

Lucy: 00:26:11

And so that's quite a struggle for me.

Ben: 00:26:13

Yeah.

Ben: 00:26:13

So I, I mean, I, as a general, even though I, the philosophy, the practice, if you like, of what we were talking about selling the experience, I would use the same kind of approach even if I was selling the practitioner or I can't remember how you sort of framed it.

Ben: 00:26:27

So, you know, rather than say, well, okay, how much is sort of yoga in the forest, or whatever the thing might be, I still would want to explore a little bit with the client about what their expectation is.

Ben: 00:26:39

Otherwise, you are just dropping a figure into the breeze and either that figure is okay, that figure is ridiculously low, or that figure is sort of ridiculously high.

Ben: 00:26:51

It's still the same thing.

Ben: 00:26:52

If you, if there isn't an opportunity to explore some, something around their expectation, something around budget, then it's always gonna be dropping it into the wind.

Ben: 00:27:02

And it's useful to always have some choices.

Ben: 00:27:05

And it might just be that to avoid the situation of you needing to just offer up a take it or leave it number on any individual thing when you're talking to a client, that you do kind of point them to different things that a client might do, even if they're sort of, not

Ben: 00:27:21

a package, but they're different kind of options, essentially, just because you want to be able to explore a little bit with the client.

Ben: 00:27:28

You know, assuming the business model is about you sort of having some dialogue with them and a conversation with them, you want to be able to explore a little bit what their price sensitivity is.

Ben: 00:27:38

You want to be able to explore a little bit what their expectations are, and you want to be able to explore a little bit, even if it is just a little bit about what their ability and willingness and expectations are in terms of what they want to pay.

Ben: 00:27:49

Because every, it could differ in almost every situation all the time.

Ben: 00:27:54

And it may be you get to a point sometime down the road where it makes sense and there is a need to standardize it somewhat, but in a sense where you are kind of playing now at the beginning, I think there's value in treating, approaching every new conversation as a learning experience for you, like a learning, understanding how they're buying, what they're considering, all those things.

Ben: 00:28:16

And the opportunity of course, of approaching everyone as a learning experience is come with an open mind each time.

Ben: 00:28:21

Actually you'll find if you come with an open bind each time, you will increase the opportunity in terms of what you're selling and for how much it does require more energy and investment, but it's not.

Ben: 00:28:32

So it's avoiding you getting into a situation of will it cost 58 pounds, take it or leave it.

Ben: 00:28:36

'cause that is just dropping a number into the wind and there's little value in that at this stage in the journey.

Lucy: 00:28:43

So what would your thoughts be then on putting the price on the website from what you've just said?

Lucy: 00:28:48

I don't think you should.

Ben: 00:28:49

No, I don't think you should.

Ben: 00:28:51

I think, you know, if some way down the line you've got a big established marketplace, where a buyer, a company buyer can make choice comparison between a range of things that you're on, your sort of your website and it is about volume.

Ben: 00:29:06

' cause that, that is a different, you know, it, which, that goes back to that the challenge of the kind of, you know, two facing marketplace thing.

Ben: 00:29:14

So I don't think that you do want to have those, you know, the same thing.

Ben: 00:29:18

Actually, going all the way back to something Carlos said at the beginning, that coach, you said you were talking to Carlos who liked working for corporates because they could earn a lot of money.

Ben: 00:29:25

Right.

Ben: 00:29:25

And the thing is, I'm not, the only reason I referenced back to that is, you know, some companies spend the most heinously large amount of money on team building stuff, right?

Ben: 00:29:36

so in a sense, you wanna know that rather than just sticking a price on your website, because the company which expects to spend a very large amount of money on team building stuff will need to spend a large amount of money on team building stuff in order to feel safe buying from you.

Ben: 00:29:52

And equally the company that doesn't.

Ben: 00:29:54

Feel comfortable doing that or doesn't have the means to do that, they would not wanna do that.

Ben: 00:29:59

But equally, if there is a company which is, you know, feels comfortable spending a lot on team building, uh, of which your lens on that is their solution that they pay more, might allow you the opportunity to then work with the people who don't have very much money to spend on team building stuff.

Ben: 00:30:15

Uh, but you know, it allows you to kind of, to do both.

Ben: 00:30:18

But yeah, so the, that's a very long way of saying no, I wouldn't put the price on the website.

Lucy: 00:30:21

great.

Lucy: 00:30:22

And so, yeah, that I, the idea of, you know, ' there's so many different types of businesses out there and I want to work with them all.

Lucy: 00:30:27

But, you know, I don't wanna turn away little charities.

Lucy: 00:30:30

I don't wanna turn away smaller businesses and only focus on like, huge, you know, banks or whatever to try and get these people through the door because it's a conundrum.

Lucy: 00:30:38

Because the people that are most interested in nature and most wanting to do this kind of stuff tend to be from the smaller, more boutique.

Lucy: 00:30:46

More personal kind of business rather than a big bank or a big corporate.

Ben: 00:30:51

well, I think that's all about the, I think that's about how it's sold.

Ben: 00:30:54

Because, and this isn't about whether it's whether anyone wants to work with a big bank or not, whatever, like a big bank is a big bank.

Ben: 00:31:00

But it's like all these organizations understanding the problem that they are wanting to solve is the important thing, right?

Ben: 00:31:07

They're trying to solve a problem around bonding of team.

Ben: 00:31:10

They're trying to solve respon problems around retaining staff.

Ben: 00:31:14

They're trying to solve problems of just team functioning.

Ben: 00:31:18

They're time trying to kind of, they're trying to kind of send signals to prospective employees that it is a place, it's a place to work where they care about them.

Ben: 00:31:28

These are the problems that they're trying to solve.

Ben: 00:31:30

That your way of solving them is by getting people outside is your lens.

Ben: 00:31:36

So in a sense, yes, there might be some organizations who more readily go, like nature in and of itself is the solution.

Ben: 00:31:43

Being outside is the solution.

Ben: 00:31:44

But equally, there'll be lots of organizations they want to solve the problem.

Ben: 00:31:48

You have a means to helping them solve the problem and where that fit works.

Ben: 00:31:52

So that I think can apply to organizations big and small.

Ben: 00:31:56

I noticed, uh, Becky is not on the call, but it's worth to listen.

Ben: 00:31:59

We had a conversation, Becky, I think Becky really successfully sells to, organizations of a different sort of type.

Ben: 00:32:04

'cause was keen to be able to work with charities, keen to be able to work with the smaller organizations and has some relationships with the larger organization and the kind of blend of money, if you like, which spans across those organizations allows her to work with that breadth.

Ben: 00:32:18

And so there is real value in being able to sort of do that, particularly where there is a kind of desire to work across a cross section of organizations whilst not allowing yourself to say, I work with everybody.

Lucy: 00:32:29

Yes.

Lucy: 00:32:29

Because clearly

Ben: 00:32:30

nobody can work with everybody.

Lucy: 00:32:31

I will talk to Becky.

Lucy: 00:32:32

That sounds great, but I wonder if, does she change her offering?

Lucy: 00:32:35

Based on, you know, working with these large corporates or working with a small charity, because obviously I'm not the facilitator, I'm not running the session.

Lucy: 00:32:43

The session is kind of the session.

Lucy: 00:32:44

So I wonder if it might be more around fixing the minimum price that the facilitator, for example, and me is willing to run the session board and then with each introductory call, just pushing it a bit.

Lucy: 00:32:57

Seeing, seeing how it goes.

Carlos: 00:32:59

I feel like, one thing I'd like you to ponder, because at the moment, and this is my assumption, it's like this is the business model and I wanna fit into that.

Carlos: 00:33:06

And I want to know like, how do you want to live?

Carlos: 00:33:09

What's the business model?

Carlos: 00:33:10

Little fit into that.

Carlos: 00:33:12

How do you, what's the vision for the work for yourself and what's the best middle business model to fit into that?

Carlos: 00:33:18

Because you talk about scale, you talk about volume, which will take time to get to, and I'm wondering what that means because if, the reason why I say this, 'cause Becky, one of the things that Becky really defined is she wanted more time for herself.

Carlos: 00:33:33

That's what's governing a lot of her business model questions.

Carlos: 00:33:36

And she's now trying to focus down, she came to altitude with us last week.

Carlos: 00:33:40

There's this real thing about trying to focus down, uh, and she's got lots of things, but she wants to get this real clarity between the things that she does.

Carlos: 00:33:47

And that for me also Connects to, you know, how, who are you wanting to really work with and how do you wanna position yourself?

Carlos: 00:33:54

Because then that will then tell you how the money needs to work.

Carlos: 00:33:57

Who will work you as fac with you as facilitators.

Carlos: 00:34:00

'cause there's positioning.

Carlos: 00:34:01

You can position yourself to big corporate clients because like Ben said, you know they need safety.

Carlos: 00:34:05

So part of that safety is knowing that they're gonna spend a lot of money with you.

Carlos: 00:34:09

' cause they thought, all right, these, she's gonna stay, this organization is gonna stay around and so I need to make sure that these people are there, they're the right people.

Carlos: 00:34:15

Or you're gonna be working at another level, which is a different type of positioning, which then changes your how much money you need to make or how much volume.

Carlos: 00:34:24

'cause like if you've got like for instance, five corporate clients that pay you a hundred K each a year for whatever, I'm just pulling figures outta the hat.

Carlos: 00:34:31

But that's different to 500 lower, smaller clients trying to do little things every year.

Carlos: 00:34:37

And then that's different.

Carlos: 00:34:38

That affects also how you are working and the energy you are having to put into recruiting all these people.

Carlos: 00:34:43

So I'm not giving you more questions and answers at the moment, but really through the lens of like, how is this business model going to serve you as an individual?

Carlos: 00:34:52

As well as how does this business model work?

Carlos: 00:34:54

Full stop.

Carlos: 00:34:55

' cause I, we can talk theoretically till the cows come home about how to set prices with facilitators and get them to charge the right amount of money.

Carlos: 00:35:02

Then how to mark it up in the right way and sell it to, that's great.

Carlos: 00:35:06

But will that serve you in the way you wanna work?

Carlos: 00:35:10

That's a broader question that I would rather invite you to answer first.

Carlos: 00:35:16

'cause then we can then really focus on what's helpful right now.

Lucy: 00:35:19

So this whole business came about because I wanted to focus on this new idea, which I think is the future of business, which is bio-inspired business.

Lucy: 00:35:29

And I want, that's what I really want to do.

Lucy: 00:35:32

Essentially.

Lucy: 00:35:32

I want to spend my time doing the consulting.

Lucy: 00:35:35

Working with teams and connecting with nature is a big part of that.

Lucy: 00:35:39

You know, reconnecting with nature.

Lucy: 00:35:40

This whole mindset is a really big part of that.

Lucy: 00:35:42

And it's also something that teams already get.

Lucy: 00:35:46

So if I, when I've been going to teams and I've been saying, oh, you know, I can do this workshop for you on how to collaborate and communicate better inspired by nature, or I can do this workshop for you on how to connect with nature and boost your mental health, 90% of the time they're gonna go for the mental health because they know what that is.

Lucy: 00:36:03

They know what they're gonna get.

Lucy: 00:36:04

And so the idea with this was like, okay, well I can build this community of facilitators, we can get people outdoors and at the same time we can start to kind of slightly cross sell the fire inspired stuff because this, the mental health and the nature connection is kind of a, an easy way in to that with things.

Lucy: 00:36:23

So from what you've said, I guess I had in ideas in the future of this working kind of like a marketplace.

Lucy: 00:36:29

'cause I don't wanna be spending hours and hours building bespoke this and that and, you know, focusing all of my time on this.

Lucy: 00:36:36

This is just a way to make a little bit of income, I guess, hopefully in the future, but also to kind of cross sell the buyer inspired business stuff.

Carlos: 00:36:45

I have so many things I wanna say about that, but, uh, this is the Happy Pricing podcast rather than the happy, we've got a sister podcast called the Happy Entrepreneur Podcast that we could talk to you about that.

Carlos: 00:36:55

but yeah, I, I, I'm, I am hearing a lot of energy when you talk about the Bio-inspired stuff, and I can see how the facilitators can feed into that.

Carlos: 00:37:05

I'm feeling less the marketplace, you know, I'm seeing a Rolodex.

Carlos: 00:37:09

Basically.

Carlos: 00:37:10

I need a directory of people who I can lean on so I can do the bio stuff rather than I'm gonna sell out these, sell these people to other people.

Carlos: 00:37:17

that's some final thought.

Carlos: 00:37:18

But I, you can see there's the marketplace pricing approach, there's the selling experiences, pricing approach, and then within that, who you're selling to and what is it, but that makes you safe to buy as a way of being able to Yeah.

Carlos: 00:37:32

Price powerfully and confidently.

Lucy: 00:37:34

I

Lucy: 00:37:34

wonder, can I just, that last comment that you made Carlos around, you don't see it as a marketplace.

Lucy: 00:37:39

What do you see it as then?

Lucy: 00:37:40

I don't, I didn't quite get that.

Carlos: 00:37:41

I see it as a community, you know, this is, uh, personally for you, you know.

Carlos: 00:37:46

Initially, I'm seeing it as I need a group of people that I can trust who can deliver different modalities.

Carlos: 00:37:51

So if I do like a, uh, a team building thing, I can call on someone who does yoga, that I can trust, I can call on someone who does foraging, who I can trust, and I can put this package together that ultimately is about having a more tight team.

Carlos: 00:38:04

Uh, and or having, uh, no, you talked about wellbeing, actually really addressing team's wellbeing.

Carlos: 00:38:11

Uh, that's what people, that's the what I'm selling, and I'm doing that through yoga and foraging and being in nature and connecting people.

Carlos: 00:38:18

And what I, what you need are just trusted people who can support me with that.

Carlos: 00:38:22

And then working out how you pay them in a way that you are comfortable with and makes enough money for you to do this full time.

Lucy: 00:38:28

Right.

Lucy: 00:38:29

So the whole workshop, for example, the whole team day would be maybe a bio-inspired business team day with these people as kind of add-ons.

Carlos: 00:38:36

As, As the, they are the part of the whole experience.

Carlos: 00:38:39

You are selling an experience.

Carlos: 00:38:40

It's a bio.

Ben: 00:38:41

Bio-inspired solution to the mental health problem,

Carlos: 00:38:43

isn't it?

Carlos: 00:38:43

Right.

Carlos: 00:38:44

Yeah.

Ben: 00:38:44

Yeah.

Carlos: 00:38:44

And then in terms of this group of people, it's how do you just find them and bring them together and essentially tell them the, the mission that you are on, because the thing I'm missing from your website is like this, what we'd like to talk about the manifesto.

Carlos: 00:38:57

What is it that you really, you've got the vision, but you know, there's something that you really believe in that you want to create.

Carlos: 00:39:04

You feel nature's a big part of it.

Carlos: 00:39:05

You think businesses could benefit from it.

Carlos: 00:39:07

You think facilitators are the best.

Carlos: 00:39:09

These wizards and witches are the best people to help make this connection work.

Carlos: 00:39:14

You know, stuff about that story.

Carlos: 00:39:16

But yeah, your zone of genius is, it sounds like really creating this space for inspiration and connection.

Carlos: 00:39:21

Mm-Hmm.

Ben: 00:39:22

I think everything that you were saying, uh, there, Carlos makes a lot of sense.

Ben: 00:39:25

The, getting super clear about that bit that you really want to do, because I think the idea of kind of marketplace as a sideline, I think is going to be tremendously difficult to do, much like that business you were describing.

Ben: 00:39:37

There is a full on endeavor like needing to persuade, constantly being in touch with clients, trying to get 'em to do things, putting things together for them packages, you know, whether it's bespoke, whether it's, you know, that, that is a whole massive kind of business.

Ben: 00:39:55

And if that is not where your, if you are, if Lucy's not waking up today, tomorrow going, that's the thing I wanna do, then it will become hard.

Ben: 00:40:05

Pretty quickly.

Ben: 00:40:05

I think that what Carlos was pointing to the question that Carlos was pointing to there feels like a good one to me.

Ben: 00:40:11

But the general point about everything that you are doing, I think is totally brilliant.

Ben: 00:40:15

I agree completely around the bio-inspired thinking.

Ben: 00:40:18

I agree 100000000% about the value of kind of connecting people to nature and the myriad problems that can be solved for organizations by doing that.

Ben: 00:40:28

So, you know, within that orientation, I think there is a lot of goodness.

Lucy: 00:40:33

Brilliant.

Lucy: 00:40:33

Brilliant.

Lucy: 00:40:33

Good to hear.

Carlos: 00:40:35

Bringing it back to pricing, Just simply pricing something very standard and normal is hard enough, you know, not only because you've got the marketplace to contend with, but you've got your own.

Carlos: 00:40:45

Internal stories to contend with.

Carlos: 00:40:48

Now bring on other people, whether they're facilitators, whether they're customers, whether there's this business model thing that needs to work that just adds to the complexity, which I'm not saying is bad.

Carlos: 00:40:57

It's just whether you are willing to take on that complexity, uh, and how that fits into the way you wanna live your life and make your money.

Carlos: 00:41:04

And so, I'm a, my bias is simplicity, uh, and coming back to what is it I really want and what's, you know, why am I doing this in the first place?

Carlos: 00:41:13

What am I gonna get out of it?

Carlos: 00:41:14

As well as how am I helping people?

Carlos: 00:41:16

So, yeah, I feel that's why I'm very passionate about starting there.

Carlos: 00:41:20

And then the money will work itself out once you tune in with that.

Carlos: 00:41:24

Thank you very much.

Carlos: 00:41:25

I really appreciate your honesty and, and your Yeah.

Carlos: 00:41:28

Your vulnerability in just jumping up and, and just talking about your business.

Lucy: 00:41:32

Thank you for the opportunity,

Ben: 00:41:33

Lucy meeting.

Carlos: 00:41:34

Lucy.

Carlos: 00:41:34

Awesome.

Carlos: 00:41:35

Thank you everyone for watching live.

Carlos: 00:41:36

Uh, thank you Anya.

Carlos: 00:41:38

Thank you.

Carlos: 00:41:39

Uh, who else we got Simon?

Carlos: 00:41:40

It's still here.

Carlos: 00:41:41

And we have P whoever P is.

Carlos: 00:41:43

Okay.