Ep # 182: How Strategic Qualification Improves Pipeline Quality and Win Rates ft. Boris Cho (VP Growth, ChangeMakers)

Boris Cho 00:05 What organizations and brands buy from consultants is confidence in thinking and judgment. So when I think about our pipeline, it comes from credibility first and opportunity second. Intro 00:19 Welcome to Across the Funnel, where we dig into concrete, Go-To-Market moves across sales, customer success, and account management so you can build revenue that lasts. Brought to you by Hyperengage and Dextego. Ioanna Onasi 00:35 Hi, Boris. How are you? Welcome to Across the Funnel. Boris Cho 00:39 I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited to have this conversation with you today. Ioanna Onasi 00:44 Me too, me too. And I want to start with your journey. Your career is a combination of media, advertising, digital strategy. Tell me, first of all, when you were young, did you ever think you would be where you are today? What was the journey like? Boris Cho 01:02 No, that's actually a really great first question because my career actually started while I was in high school. It started pretty early at the age of 17. I was really involved in the music industry, the local music industry. So at the age of 17, I became an event promoter for touring and local artists that were coming through sort of the Greater Toronto Area. And that led me to actually start my own business, which was an independent record label. So at the age of probably 18, I started the record label up until I was 23. So I did it for, I would say, almost a handful of years. I had signed a handful of bands and touring artists, and then released a few albums with some national distribution. But then that was around the time the music industry had changed significantly. So I decided I should probably get a grownup job. So I stopped doing that and then found myself working at an insurance company. I started at a very entry-level position in the marketing department where I learned the fundamentals around business, sales development, discipline, and client relationships. After spending about six and a half years at the insurance company, I found myself as the marketing director there. And I did a lot of great work, but it also opened up a lot of doors for me, which had got me into leading marketing departments across mobile tech, lifestyle, fashion, entertainment. And then I got into the agency environment. I was encouraged by a lot of friends who were working at agencies at the time. They said, hey, Boris, you should really consider working at an agency. You're really gonna love it. So I did that. So after working at several other companies, I moved into media advertising, working across major holding companies and media companies like IPG Mediabrands, WPP, and Dentsu, to name a few. Ioanna Onasi 03:21 Awesome. And now VP of Growth at ChangeMakers. So, long journey, still in this agency consulting world. Have you ever regretted it? Are you ever thinking, oh, I wanna go back to another industry? Boris Cho 03:36 No, to be honest with you, once I joined IPG Mediabrands at the time, they're now owned by Omnicom, but at the time they were IPG, it introduced me to a whole new environment that I really didn't know existed. Having worked on the client side as the marketing director, I was working with agency partners. But from the client perspective, you don't have the full visibility into all the work and all the thinking that goes behind the closed doors at an agency. So when I got to an agency, I was just enthusiastic and overwhelmed with the amount of smarts and the thinking that gets put into all the projects that come through the door. So, to answer your question, no, I never think about going back to the client side. I feel like I really thrive in an agency environment. I like that fast-paced sort of environment where things are happening at high speed and people are just collaborating across the organization to achieve one common goal. And that's just to do great work. Ioanna Onasi 04:49 Yeah. And you're dealing with selling humans. That means you have to sell a lot of trust somehow. So tell me, what are the channels you're working with? What have you seen work the best? How has it changed? I feel like Go-To-Market is evolving so fast. So from last year to this year, is there any new channel you're working on? Boris Cho 05:12 Yeah, so working in high-trust consulting, I've come to learn it isn't sold the same way as transactional services. Organizations don't buy it quickly, right? What organizations and brands buy from consultants is confidence in thinking and judgment. So when I think about our pipeline, it comes from credibility first and opportunity second. To answer your questions about the channels that's been working best for me, really, it stems from two pillars: referrals and reputation. And those both come from the proactive side of consultative selling, right? So if I could break those down, the two pillars into other key areas, I would say it's around strategic partnerships. Thought leadership is incredibly important, and being very selective about outbound, and being focused on organizations' real inflection points, like what problems are we really wanting to solve for them. Ioanna Onasi 06:32 And in your case, what would this be like? Give me one, two big problems where, when a company has it, you say, okay, this is a good ICP for us. Boris Cho 06:41 Right. So I'll use ChangeMakers as an example. ChangeMakers, we do a lot of community engagement. We work with First Nations and Indigenous communities from a mediation perspective. We do a lot of work in terms of improving the health of a brand from a reputation perspective. Or if clients are going through sort of a brand crisis and they need advisory work. So I guess those would be the best examples. Ioanna Onasi 07:17 I love how you basically help companies do that, and you also focus on reputation yourselves for your brand. So if a new company comes up now, like it's a startup that doesn't have much in terms of resources to invest in their reputation, what is your advice? What's an easy way, as a startup, you can start building that reputation? Boris Cho 07:39 Yeah, so when it comes to startups and underdeveloped businesses who are really just starting to get their footing and positioning in the market, as agents to their media or their creative or their reputation, I like to take a step back and just level set the expectation for them. Really get them to understand what their real objectives are, right? And breaking it down into clear, concise phases, not to overwhelm. When you're working with a small business, it's easy for them to get quite overwhelmed with how much activity that they need to get up and running in order to succeed in the market. So as an agent of their communications ecosystem, I lead with benevolence. I would give them the same advice I would give my mother or my father who want to start a business. And it really starts from there. And what that does, it establishes trust and manages the expectation of what kind of work needs to be put into growing a startup. Ioanna Onasi 08:50 Yeah. We can't do everything on day one. Now let's talk a little bit about coaching and development, Boris. So how do you coach your team to, on the one hand, be so focused on the relationship and building that high trust, yet also being on point commercially and they have their goals to meet? You know, that pipeline has to convert. And you mentioned sometimes sales cycles are long, so how is really internally the sales enablement done so that they know, okay, this is one meeting. How do I do proper discovery? How do I convert that deal? Boris Cho 09:32 Yeah, so coaching and mentoring, I hold that space quite close to me. I've been fortunate enough to have a lot of incredible mentors throughout my career, and one of the best things I feel like senior executives or leaders can do is to give back to the industry by mentoring the next generation. For me, I've always operated with the philosophy that the better we get to know each other, the easier it is to work with one another. And eventually, when you achieve both of those, the work is exceptional. You really do output the best work when you work with a team that you really know intimately. So for me, when it comes to coaching and mentoring, it comes from a place of transparency. It comes from a place of really understanding the weaknesses and strengths of each individual that I'm working with and leveraging those strengths across the organization where they can build the confidence to work on other areas of improvement. So really it leads with getting them very comfortable with sharing more about themselves. In order for me to really understand where I can bring value to that mentorship or that partnership. I'll give you an example, many, many years ago, one of my team members I coached was very intelligent, but she was also overly solutions-oriented way too early. I felt like this was a problem I could help her solve because I was once in her position. I was very quick to jump into recommendations or present a framework or just try to demonstrate expertise. But what I wasn't doing, and what I was teaching this individual, was that in order to do the best work we can collaboratively, we need to really diagnose the real problem, right? So we need to slow down. That's the whole message, is we just need to slow down and we need to actively listen a little bit more. So what we changed was we created a simpler discipline. So I spent the first 30, 40 minutes with this person asking them questions about themselves and getting to know them. And she took that model into practice. When she sat down with her clients, instead of jumping in with recommendations, she sat there for the first 30 to 40 minutes asking them questions just like I did. So it was kind of interesting because she became sort of a mentor to the client without really knowing it, and the client didn't know it either. But in theory, it made her slow down and just actively listen and ask the right questions. Ioanna Onasi 12:40 Yeah. A friend of mine calls sales a series of intentional conversations. Like it sounds what you're saying, it felt like conversations because you show interest, you ask deeper questions, and at the end of the day, I think the first calls at least, discovery calls should really just be you figuring out why did this person reach out if they came inbound. If you reached out, highlighting, okay, I reached out because I thought that's a problem you're facing, but tell me how you're fixing it. So this is such a common problem I see too, like lack of discovery. And then as a result, your pipeline is inaccurate. Your win rates are all over the place, like everything else falls through the cracks because of that first conversation not being handled correctly. So right now, can you tell us a little bit about your tech stack? Do you have anything for coaching? Do you record calls or is it just you mostly doing one-on-ones? Boris Cho 13:38 Yeah. I believe the best coaching is one-on-one coaching. You really get the most out of that experience. Not to disregard getting a bunch of people in a room and all sharing the same information at exactly the moment they all get it, they all walk away with the same information. I sometimes find, although you can try to make it very conversational in a room full of people, you're taking a lot of pauses and you're having one-on-one conversations with people throughout that coaching session. So my recommendation is to really sit down and invest the time to spend one-on-one with your team. I find that you can get the real problems surfaced. I feel like when you're in a room, people don't really want to admit where their problems are amongst their entire peers. So focusing your attention on one-on-one coaching, I feel, is probably the most effective way. Ioanna Onasi 14:41 Yeah, for sure. And it goes back to what you were saying about understanding also who you're speaking to. Like read your audience. Not every seller will take what you're saying the same way. You have to really invest the time in getting to know how to motivate also that seller, how it's not just telling them what you do right and wrong. Okay, can I motivate you enough to actually change your behavior? And that's a whole other story. Boris Cho 15:09 Yeah. I think the fundamental principle about coaching and mentorship is to demonstrate more openness, open-mindedness. Right? It's the way to find ways to think differently. And I feel like the best leaders out there really understand this, is that you're gonna be in a room with people who think very differently. Across the table, you might have somebody who is a little more analytical opposed to somebody who is more theoretical, or philosophical. So it's not just about flexing your own personality to maintain a conversation. It's about really understanding how other people receive information or how they prefer to receive information. So I feel like leaders tend to start to understand that. So they're very versatile in their ways of communicating. Ioanna Onasi 16:17 Yeah. On that point, I'm curious to take your opinion on this. So what my startup does is we have an AI coaching platform that tells you all the things you said about your buyer, like what's your personality, how to approach them. And actually, I did run this for you before the call. I want you to tell me if you think it's accurate, knowing what you know about yourself as a buyer. Boris Cho 16:41 Happy to, yeah. Ioanna Onasi 16:44 So it always makes me smile when someone sees themselves in this, but the idea is that it understands from public data that we have a compatible communication style because it analyzes also, you hear in the summary, are DISC and OCEAN, OCEAN being Big Five, and comparing the two. So what I see here for you is you have the classic seller's background, like high dominance, high influence, meaning you have high EQ, influence being you're social, persuasive, dominant. You know, you're gonna take the lead if, let's say, you're in a call with someone who is more introverted and he doesn't, she doesn't speak. And here I see that you have high agreeableness and conscientiousness, which means that you're not gonna start a fight. You like cooperation, you have high empathy. Do you think that's accurate for you as a human, first of all? And then we'll see. Boris Cho 17:46 Yeah, I feel a little seen here. Yeah. I think I would agree with most of this. Nothing here jumps out at me that is inaccurate. Okay. So I would agree with this. Ioanna Onasi 18:01 Excellent. And here, basically, it would give me best practice and things to avoid. So if I was to sell to you, like building a trustworthy relationship, that you would be open to grabbing a coffee, like you wanna build rapport, so invest more in that relationship. Don't force involvement of other stakeholders unless it's critical. And then it gives me kind of an agenda. But point is, I see so many sales teams know the company they're speaking to and not the buyer. And now AI can help us analyze a lot of that to be more prepared in the calls and even role play. But I'm curious, how does your team prepare? Do they know who they're meeting usually? Do they go online on LinkedIn? What's the process for them? Boris Cho 18:52 Yeah, so we have a pretty rigorous process when we kick off a sales objective, or whether we're responding to an RFP or we're putting together a pitch presentation. It all starts with preparedness. The number one thing is we want to be known as the agency or firm that really, truly understands the client's business. Number two is beyond the client's business, we want to be known as category thought leaders. Right? So we want to understand the space that they're working in. And third is probably the most important piece, which is the relationship mapping, is we, you know, I never like to go into a room not knowing a single person. So we do our due diligence to try to understand every individual who's gonna be in the room. We get a little creative as to how we find this information, but we do some sales enablement research that sort of allows us some visibility into personality, past work experience, do they sit on boards, are they volunteering with causes that align with our own causes and values. All these things are critical to us when we go into the sales process. So it really starts with understanding the business, the category, and who they are as human beings. Ioanna Onasi 20:28 Well done. And what is a mistake you see others do, like other sales managers or maybe in other agencies? Do you see some common mistakes that people can avoid and fix the process outside of discovery? Boris Cho 20:43 Yeah. I've been asked this question before, and the biggest mistake that I see is leaders confuse activity with strategy. So many leaders measure how many calls did you take, how many meetings are you doing, how many proposals are you submitting, but they don't focus enough on the problem quality. So the biggest common mistake here is not all opportunities are equal. And people need to really understand that. Just because you have a list of services doesn't mean any brand or organization problem can be solved based off your services. So in my opinion, the greatest leaders focus on organizations at moments of transformation and problems that require strategic thinking. So they know that they really need to understand what problem they're going to help solve for the client. So my advice to leaders who do fall sort of in that bucket of making that mistake is to spend more time qualifying the importance of the problem, not just pursuing the opportunity. At ChangeMakers, we grow because we're in the right conversations and we're not just having multiple conversations. We embed ourselves in the right conversations precisely the moment we need to be there, right? So really trying to figure out what the problem is and then being honest with ourselves about do we have the capability, the talent, and the investment to help solve this problem for the client. Ioanna Onasi 22:40 Where do you see the industry and the agency world going in the next, say, like six to 12 months? I feel like there's a lot of fear that they hear like, oh, agencies are dead, this and that, but we know they're not. But of course they're evolving as any other business because of AI. But what is your kind of prediction for the next year? Boris Cho 23:06 Well, as you're very aware, this industry can change overnight, right? Mergers happen, acquisitions are happening, massive layoffs can happen. So all of that needs to be taken into account to how a business can change and the challenges we will face in the next year as an industry. But I don't really see new problems emerging in our industry. I think the problems that we face in the next 12 months are very similar challenges we've been facing five, 10 years from today. It's how do we nurture better thinking in the younger generation? It's about how do we empower our clients to write better briefs? It's about where are the next significant investments we are gonna make as a company or an industry in terms of technology and innovation. All these are problems and questions that we've been asking ourselves the last five to 10 years, right? And I think in the next 12 months, we'll continue to ask ourselves that. I think it would be silly not to point out AI being not only a solution, but a massive problem for the industry. There's the ethical piece of AI, but there's also the automation and the efficiency that the tools can bring. So I think, if I could pick one problem that I think the industry is gonna try to help solve in the next 12 months, it's where do we find that balance between utilizing tools like AI and the impact it has on our economics or environment or sustainable growth. Ioanna Onasi 25:08 Yeah, and easier said than done when there's so many conflicting viewpoints on a global scale. But I think what you said about also young talent is very crucial, like how we really upskill the young talent so that indeed they can find jobs and we have also a sustainable workforce, because right now it's becoming so much harder for junior roles to be filled. Boris Cho 25:33 Yeah. While we're on topic of issues that we’re facing in the next 12 months, from an organization perspective, from a client perspective, what I think a lot of organizations are gonna face is problems around trust, around misinformation, climate's gonna be a big issue, and social expectations. One thing that I could really admire about ChangeMakers is that our role at ChangeMakers is help those organization leaders move forward more thoughtfully, strategically, and more responsibly. As long as we can say that we're doing those things, we're absolutely making a massive positive impact on our client's business, and we're feeling really good about the work that we're doing. Ioanna Onasi 26:28 Wonderful. Boris, thank you so much for all your insights. I'm excited to see what the next 12 months indeed will bring, but it sounds like you are ready for it. You have all the right pieces in place, so I'm excited to see ChangeMakers grow and continue to have an impact. Is there anything else you want to add before we close? Boris Cho 26:53 Yeah. If I can offer a closing thought, I'll leave the audience with this one statement, is that growth isn't just about winning business. There's a misconception that growth is all about sales. It is about sales, and I'm not gonna disregard that. We are put in these positions to grow a business, but it's also about earning the right to be trusted with the most important problems organizations face today, right? That is the real role of growth, is understanding the important problems that are plaguing our clients, keeping them up at night, and really coming together as an organization. This doesn't just live within the growth department. It's really the responsibility of the entire organization to figure out how we solve these problems for our clients. Ioanna Onasi 27:48 That's so on point for a closing thought. Thank you so much. Boris Cho 27:53 Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed this conversation. Outro 27:56 Thank you very much for listening to Across the Funnel. If you got one useful GTM idea out of this show today, please share this with a teammate and hit follow. Explore Hyperengage at hyperengage.io and Dextego at dextego.com.