Each week we'll be highlighting what Digital Agencies in the Bureau community are excited about. This week we dig into ways to get testimonials out of your clients and how-to overcome some challenges when they don’t really want to give them to you or even when it seems like you can’t because of contracts or NDA’s.
We've got some great tips and tricks and even a little legal insight waiting for you in this week's newsletter.
Gene: What's up, everybody. Welcome to another Bureau briefing. What's happening, Carl?
Carl: We're recording a second one. We're actually doing something twice. Holy crap. I know. Welcome back to the Bureau Briefing everyone. We have got a great show for you. As far as we know.
Gene: We'll see, won't we?
Carl: You be the judge. You tell us at the end. How bad did we suck? Good to be back Gene.Gene: Yeah, man, I'm enjoying this. I liked the first one and had a good time we begin.
Carl: Have you been sitting there ever since just going, "I can't wait till the end, I need a second Bureau Briefing just to...
Gene: I haven't moved an inch. All right. So up in this week's newsletter, we have... This is an interesting one and I was looking forward to talk through some of this with you about how to share the work you've done publicly for a client.
Carl: Yeah. And it's a challenging thing, right? Because as we find out in the newsletter, even if it doesn't say you can't, you may still need to check. And this is dependent. I love lawyers. I love my good friend. My good friend Gabe at the Matchstick, but some people are going to ask for forgiveness, but I think the thing is there's two challenges. One is making sure you've negotiated the ability to promote the work. And the other is actually getting the client to give you a testimonial so you can promote it. Nobody wants to hear that Karen G from Appalachia really loved, it needs to be from the client. It needs to say what they experienced. That was great. All of that kind of stuff. Yeah. So at, period three. Did you do much with or do you do much with testimonials?
Gene: I never did. Which is, much to the mediocre success of period three over the 20 years, but-
Carl: And congrats on 20 years of mediocrity. That's consistency my friend.
Gene: Yes. But when I started working with a real Biz Dev person, one of the things he did is he wanted to get testimonials. He wanted to put the, powered by period three at the footer of all the websites and everything, which it's feels old school.
Carl: Why did we stop doing that?
Gene: I don't know-
Carl: I know why, because somebody said somebody that we all respected, I don't know who it was, but somebody said, "Well, you shouldn't put powered by engine because that's not professional." [crosstalk 00: 02: 46] professional company too, but hey, you know what, if there's a book published, the publisher puts their name on it. If there's a car on the street. Well, okay. They made the car, whatever, but it's the same damn thing. And so I remember because we used to powered by engine.
Gene: Yeah. Same thing.
Carl: Yeah. You put all of those things in there, but at some point, and we were all young and didn't know. Right. And in the early 2000s, late '90s and then mid 2000s, somebody said, yeah, that's not professional. Well I want to be professional.
Gene: Yeah. I never paid attention. Yeah. I missed out on a lot, but ...
Carl: Well, we would get literally 60% of our traffic. They would turn into leads. Right. Like 60% would come from that badge or tag or whatever at the bottom of the site. So yeah. Okay. All right. So I appreciate that little rant. We don't do that anymore. Clients don't like that anymore, but I will say this. We used to tell clients if we're working and you see that we've removed that, what that means is we no longer like the project. We think you've been too heavy handed. And now we don't want to tell people that we've done this, but what it did. And I never realized was it made clients want us to keep it on there. They wanted it to be on there. So it was like unintentional reverse psychology. So that was pretty hilarious. But there are ways to get clients to give you testimonials. And this happened in the Bureau Slack last week, members started talking about it and that's why it's in the newsletter this week.
Gene: What cued it off? I mean, why did it pop up?
Carl: Because somebody asked, somebody basically said, "Hey, I really want to share testimonials, but I'm having a tough time getting them. What do I need to do?" And I will say,
Gene: [crosstalk 00: 04: 38] on how to get those.
Carl: We'll get to the legal side in a minute of non promotion clauses and non-disclosure agreements and all that stuff. But I think the number one thing is nobody likes to write a testimonial. Right. It's like writing your own bio.
Gene: Or people ask you for a job referral or something. You're like, Oh God.
Carl: Exactly right?
Gene: You are a great guy. I would hire him if I could. Totally not going to do that.
Carl: I won't give anyone a letter of recommendation that I like and think that's good stuff. If they give it to me first, not one for me, give me the dime when you want.
Gene: And I'll just sign it. Yeah.
Carl: And it's the same thing for clients and I think Andy Graham said it from Big C, there were a few people in there who said it, but yeah. Give them the written testimonial. I'd say, something like this. In fact, if you want to just use this and make it yours, that's fine. Right. Because the easier you make it the better.
Gene: Yeah. But at the same time, you also have to make it like a legit real one too. Right. You can't just be like, it was the most awesome web project in the history of web projects. Well, you have to like, I mean...
Carl: I'll say when engine was running, we got that one a lot.
Gene: Let me ask you this. And this isn't in the notes here, but I mean, how effective-
Carl: Are you going rogue?
Gene: I'm going rogue
Carl: Fucking going rogue.
Gene: Hoe effective do you think a testimonial actually is?
Carl: You know what? I don't think-
Gene: And keeping your gut-
Carl: [crosstalk 00: 06: 06] project. I think it gets you on the list because it's one of those things where somebody can say, well, I know that company, or that sounds legitimate, or that scratches a niche we have, or that's a problem we have to overcome. Like if the testimonial says, they even helped us through our crazy internal approval process. Right, like that might not have anything to do with the end project...
Gene: Somebody might key off of that. Right.
Carl: Exactly. Right. Or I'll go back to what Happy Cog did. And I think this was another one of the recommendations they did this with. I think it was with Ben and Jerry's show get the testimony was, I don't even remember who the hell it was, but basically they hired a videographer. They actually, I think they hired some Bureau members crushing, lovely to go do this.
Carl: And they did this whole video where they interviewed the different people on the Ben and Jerry's team. They interviewed the different people on the Happy Cog team. They put it together into this beautiful. I want to say it was like a three minute, four minute video, we saw it because we were all like, damn it, we need to do this. And they were like, oh, that costs money. And we're too cheap to promote ourselves officially. We're going to use our phones, which isn't bad now. But back then,
Gene: That's also what everyone knows who Happy Cog is. And they don't know who [00: 07: 26] is.
Carl: Yeah. I mean, forget the whole, inventing web standards, responsive web design, all of that stuff they did. That's not why people know him. It's because of those great videos. Now come on Gene. That's not true. But I will say another way to get a client to do a testimonial is to say, "Hey, we're super proud of this project.
Carl: We would love to interview you for a video that we want to promote." Right. And if you do it correctly, it's going to help them internally at their organization. Because they're going to have this thing that's being promoted that's sharing how great they were to work with, as well as propping up whatever the project was. So that's another one I think, and it could be a phone interview. It could be a video. Another thing that a lot of people have talked about, and I heard about this probably the first time three or four years ago, they're journalists in your local market who are really great writers and desperate for cash. So they will, and I'm not saying that they take advantage of anybody, but if you pay them 30 bucks, 40 bucks an hour, it's more than they make at the paper probably. And they will gladly and with professionalism, interview, anybody that you want.
Gene: Yeah. For a couple of 100 bucks, you get it, you don't have to do the work. So one of the things that my Biz Dev guy, my business partner, now he uses these things strategically in proposals. And I've not thought of the usage of them. I'd only ever thought of using them on websites, like public marketing, but putting that strategically inside of a proposal and then literally giving the person's phone number so they can follow up with them. That has real value. That's like real value for us. And I don't know if that showed up anywhere, but..
Carl: Yeah, it didn't, but you know what? The newsletter hadn't gone out yet. So, it's going to. I can't find my camera there it is.
Gene: But that's more of a, like a, you put those people in your proposal, that your person can call and check up on me.
Carl: It's like a great call-out referral all in one. I mean, if you're going to put a phone number down there, the odds of them calling are probably lower because-
Gene: Yeah. They're not going to do that.
Carl: Kind of know what the person said. No, but I think that's great. It speeds up the whole process.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative) But I'd not thought of the value of that until he was like, put it in the proposal. I was like, Oh shit. You're right.
Carl: So another couple of things that were in there. One is if you have a podcast invite the client on the podcast, start a podcast, find another white guy.
Gene: Oh man.
Carl: Get out there. Make sure not too young. You need those middle-aged guys, but yeah. Invite them on your podcast. Tell them, "Hey, we're talking about the way that we handled this. We feel it was really innovative." Or, "This was one of the smoothest projects we ever had. We want to talk about what worked well." Another thing is when you're doing retrospectives, right, you're doing retrospectives. Or if you're doing progressive's to go ahead and find quotes in there and then use those in the testimonial at the end, I think one of the biggest things that nobody does is it has to have an owner, right? When you're off putting a project, there has to be something that says get testimonial and it should be an account manager or somebody that the client really patterned on it. It could be a designer. It could be whoever that grabs that testimonial.
Gene: Right. What is a progressive?
Carl: So progressive is something... I heard about this the first time was simple. So basically what they did was instead of retrospectives, at the end of a project, they do what they call progressive's, which means depending on how long the project is, if it's six months, eight month project, every couple of months, they'll have a retrospective on those first two months because there's still time to change things to make it better. So I think most of the projects were a little longer, they were internal, but then whatever they found at a progressive, they would share across the company and say, "Hey, we're going to try these things and see how they go." And then they would let people know. These two things were awesome. These two to make a difference.
Gene: Got you. That's clever.
Carl: Yeah. It was really smart.
Gene: All right. So what about the legal aspect of this stuff we talked about, how to get them, but what about using them with someone doesn't want you to?
Carl: Well, that's the thing, first of all, why don't they want you to, is it something... Are you working with a huge corporation enterprise level? It's out of their hands. They can't control it. Okay fine.
Gene: They got like an army of lawyers that are just looking at everything.
Carl: Yeah, exactly. And you know what, if that's something they can't do, you just need to know it going into the initial proposal, going into the negotiation. This is not something that should show up after an estimate. Right? It should be something that is known early on and that's all about you making sure. And it's so funny because as much as I've always hated RFPs, I've always respected that they put criteria down. So, this is the playing field that I'm going to be working within. Right? So if you know that you have a restrictive clause or a conditional nondisclosure agreement, what you need to do and Jason Rosenbalm from Crowd Favorite said this in a different discussion, but I thought it was just brilliant. You need to let them know right, that unfortunately you're limiting the value we can get.
Carl: Now, this is something that a lot of people have said, you're limiting our value because this project, the only value we get out of it is cash money, right? We're not going to be able to leverage it, share it, bring a bright light on you and how great you were. And lead that to another project where we may get, another 30% profit, we may get, maybe there are two projects or three projects. So we have to adjust. And the way Jason says it, which I think is just brilliant, is our default rates are correlated to our default terms. If those terms need to change in order for us to work together, no problem. Our rates will reflect in a necessary change environment. Brilliant. Right? And I love Jason and Crowd Favorite it's a great shop. This to me... I wish I had had in my back pocket when I was running my shop, because I would always just say like, "Hey, you know what, if you're taking that off the table, I got to raise the rate." And the way that I said that was probably confrontational, Right? Yeah.
Gene: Yeah. Why are the rates dependent on me doing this?
Carl: Yeah, exactly. And you can, you can explain it pretty easy. And then I think, and this is something that Gabe Levine for Matchstick had shared many prospects will say something like we'll give permission, don't worry. But then the agreement comes in and it doesn't allow promotion. Right? Don't hate future you. Wait, don't let future you hate past you. I am not good with time travel, Gene. Don't agree to something you're going to hate later. Right? It's like the whole space-time continuum is lost on me. But, I think that's one of the most important things is, okay, you may not be in a great cash position.
Carl: And you're like, we really need this to make payroll. I don't want to slow it down. Okay, cool. You know what? Everybody's context is different. And I think, this is one of the things that can be the hardest to understand. When you're talking with another person who runs a web shop, everyone starts their shop in a different manner at a different time in their life with a different concept of what they're trying to accomplish. You can not project what you think is success on somebody else. Right. We're, working on a maturity model right now for digital agencies.
Carl: And we can only get it down to three, maybe four types of successful shops. Right. Because everybody has a different idea of what they're trying to get to. So to just hammer this one time, everything we're sharing here is based on the context of where you are. So if you need that project and you're like, I don't care that I can't promote it. I need this for survival. I'm in a surviving phase, then ignore all this, take the project. Don't feel bad about the future.
Gene: Yeah get paid and move on.
Carl: Right. But if you are in a position where you are fine financially, and you have time to negotiate, do it, right. Maybe you don't get a full pass to do whatever you want, but there are different types of these clauses and Gabe shared them. We've got them in the newsletter.
Gene: Yeah. This blew my mind a little bit. This one detail of just sharing on their site, who did it, like, it blows my mind that there's these different levels.
Carl: Well, and so the first one, right? Permission, granted, there you go. That's the best one, but you still have to make sure within the scope of what they granted did they say you can do it on the website? Did they say you can do it on broadcast television? Did they say you can do it in writing? Did they say you can do it in person? Like to make sure that it really is a blanket clause is important.
Gene: I see this one a lot. You'll see a lot of one page agency websites. And they'll have like, IBM's logo, Apple's logo, like all these logos and I'm going, I know for damn sure they didn't give them permission to use their logo I mean, what's less make them gray?
Carl: What's less image searches? Now you better watch your butt. Right. Because that's the kind of thing that'll come and get you. And so permission granted is the best. That's the highest level. The second. And I may get some pushback a little bit from the Matchstick folks here, but agreement says nothing,
Gene: Which most of them probably do.
Carl: Most of them don't have anything in there unless you put it in there. But I would also say, it's great to have your own clause in your back pocket and say, could this work instead where we ask you permission before we do it. But with the agreement saying nothing, you still have to be careful of copyright, IP, anything around there. There may be some other confidentiality that's just anticipated. That's just expected. So that one's there. Now, then we get into the third one, which is you can not do it without written permission. Right. Or explicit permission. However, you're going to designate that. I would say probably needs to be at least an email. So you have something to go back to. And then that one sucks, right? A little like that you have to get permission.
Carl: But then there's the one that just says F no. Yeah. And I already dropped the F bomb earlier. So I don't know why I'm blocking it now, but you know what, one per episode, just to make Spotify happy and get us up in the rankings, they call them ratings Gene, not rankings, but you know what, I'm going to call it a ranking. But yeah. So if you're not allowed to promote it, all, that just sucks. And you actually have to ask yourself at that point. Right? Okay. Are we going to be able to use a new technology that makes us smarter? Are we going to be able to use new process or what is the value in this for us besides just cash again, depending on the context where you are, maybe cash is exactly what you need. Maybe that's what you need to roll with.
Carl: But for me, I always wanted to know, how is this going to take us further? Is it going to be a project that the team gets excited about? Do they get to try something new? Is it going to be a project where the cash is good enough, that it allows us to take a really nice retreat with everybody? Or maybe the project is the kind of thing where you are going to elevate yourself, even though you can't share it and work in a new environment or with a new group. And, I mean, these are the things to me, if it's just the money, you're not moving forward in so many other ways, right? Unless you can use the money to move forward.
Gene: I love this. And I think it's a good way to wrap that up this last sentence. Make sure you're always thinking about the story you can share after the work is done. That goes far beyond like clauses and contracts, but-
Carl: That's life.
Gene: Yeah, that should be the quote of the week.
Carl: I had this conversation yesterday and somebody was telling me the different things they're like, I can do this or this and this. And I said, all right, stop looking at the options and start asking yourself, what is the story I can tell with each option.
Gene: That's awesome.
Carl: And I've told this before we had this opportunity with Microsoft. We didn't take it. So there's no nondisclosure. Right? We had this opportunity and I remember that they wanted to work with me as an individual, not the company, all this type of stuff. And I asked myself, what's the story, were they willing to pay triple rate. So if I take it, it's the story of, yeah we made bank. Do you ever in any situation when I hear this, somebody made a lot of money unless they're giving you some?
Gene: But it doesn't mean you should get to the next client except they're expensive.
Carl: But if I tell people, yeah, so we said no to the Microsoft project?
Gene: That's a stronger story.
Carl: That's a lot more fun. And so they poached three people off the team whatever.
Gene: Bastards.
Carl: And they did it without us. Regardless. The better story was we said no. And I think that's just one of those things that you have to do in every aspect. Like find that sunny spot where you can sit down and close your eyes and just ask yourself, what's the best outcome for what I'm doing here?
Gene: Cool beans. I said, cool beans.
Carl: You did. And I'm thinking about Hot Rod, the best Andy Samberg movie ever.
Gene: That was a good one. All right. What cool stuff for the week, a couple of things from the Slack, what sticks out to you?
Carl: If I'm looking at the cool stuff from the week, I would definitely say, and then this is going to be like a little promotional plug for our sponsor Parallax, but we had a member blog post about a Teen seven, a shop that joined Parallax. That's using them. And it has basically... The headline is we're now Parallax users and it has changed our lives.
Gene: That's a good endorsement.
Carl: Wow. Okay. So that's cool. And also for my friends at Parallax, I know it comes at a great time because they're in another seed round. Right. So they're in another funding round. And so they couldn't share that, hey, by the way, kind of awesome. I would also put in there a Spark Box, they've got their new design system survey. It is still out until the 26th. So figure when you hear this, you'll have a few days, but definitely go out there and look at that. Yeah. I mean, I think that those are really good ones there.
Gene: Really good stuff. All right. So you got... Normally we just talk about, excuse me, hot takes for the week, but I have a question for you about operation summit. I read the description for that and it got me very excited.
Carl: Oh, Gene.
Gene: It's that I've never heard of an event for operators. I mean, it's specific.
Carl: Yeah. And what I would say is, and not just because it means we can sell more tickets
Gene: And it's got nothing to do with it. I'm generally interested.
Carl: I found the camera that time for the thumbs up, basically what we're doing with the operation summit and Rob Har is instrumental in this. He's actually producing this event apart from Spark Box, is we're finding the people who we know are the best practitioners. Okay. So best at Biz Dev, best at delivery, best at financial modeling, right? We're looking at people who understand how to scale these different aspects of it. And so basically we are going to take what Rob has developed as his universal theory of studio operations, which got a lot of a claim at owner summit. And we're going deep in each of these aspects for it. But what I'll say is if you're in Biz Dev, this helps you understand how Biz Dev is part of the bigger picture. If you're in delivery, how delivery is part of the bigger picture, but we're not just putting speakers on a stage.
Carl: This will be online obviously, but even then they are actually crafting together what the experience is going to be like. And day one, they're going to tee up the conversations and get everybody on a level playing field of what each aspect is. And then on day two, we're going to have small group discussions on how you can apply that at your shop. So this is a new type of event for us. It plays off of what's going on with, beyond, which is next week, by the way, next Monday and Tuesday.
Carl: But yet Gene that, yeah. I mean, I'm excited about operation summit, so it's going to be a... It's one you need, even if you think you've got your operations going well, like you've got it going smooth, the biggest thing is sustainability, right? And that's where we're lucky to have Larry Wendell from Sear is going to be there to talk about how they scale up and down, depending on what's going on. But the reason that's so important is because when you get operations steady, then you can go after great things because you're not constantly worried about that rattling sound or the smoke coming out of the bat.
Gene: Mm-hmm (affirmative) Going on of offense instead of defense all the time, it's strong, it looks like a strong event.
Carl: It's going to be fun. And I only spent three minutes promoting it. So whatever.
Gene: They like it, all right, man-
Carl: I don't care if you hung up.
Gene: Well, that's all we have for this week everybody. We hope you tune in and we enjoyed doing this. I know I do, man. And I'm happy. I like going through this stuff.
Carl: No, it's so much fun. And I put so much time into looking at what the community is talking about and putting this together. It's nice to talk about it with time versus just going, maybe I'll go for a walk.
All right everybody great seeing you. We'll see you next week.
