Stop telling me I need skin in my own game
By Dennis Roelofsen - Founder & Strategy Director
Sales people need to stop using the term ‘skin in the game’ in the wrong context. Let me briefly explain a situation;
Last week I had a demo call with a provider of marketing services. Let’s just call him James for the sake of storytelling. James offers marketing services and marketing automation to support that. After the call I was pretty excited by the idea of having ‘a revenue focussed marketing system with continous and predictable results’. I decided to take the weekend to think about his offer -I can be impulsive at times- and review all that was said.
Last night I remembered that he had presented their set-up fee as payment for an onboarding program and that it was required so I would have some skin in the game. It suddenly occured to me that this feels off. It’s my company, I have invested time, energy and money into making this work and also I have let other opportunities pass in order to create focus and flow for Yura Agency. I don’t need other people to motivate me into having skin in this game. This is my game, my only game. And I decide how much skin I want to have in it. On the other hand I am willing to pay a fair amount for services that create value and revenue to my company, my game so to speak.
But, hold on, when a salesman uses the phrase skin in the game, are we really talking about the same game here? Or should I interpret it more like ‘hey bro, you need to have some skin in my game’? That’s not skin in the game. That’s a transaction.
Guess what? After consulting three competing agencies and jumping on three other demo calls last Friday I learned this:
1) The 4-week onboarding program in three other agencies is reduced to a 1 or 2-week preparation phase and the agencies don’t charge a set-up fee. That’s their investment in making a client succesful and therefore stay with them. Call it skin in the game.
2) Also the three other agencies were easy to work with on a month-to-month retainer. (unlike James) No annual contracts. No set-up fees. Simply a matter of creating enough value to make me keep using their services.
So over a nice glass of red wine, this is how I see it: Skin in the game is a good tool to allign interests when for example an executive buys shares in the company he’s managing with his own money. It is a sign of good faith and the money goes directly into the company. There is only one game (that company) and everyone involved shares joys and pains according to the company’s performance.
What happens when I would be transferring sums of my skin into the game and James can’t produce the results? Would that hurt James or me? Who puts his reputation on the line? Me or the company that handles our accounts on our behalf?
It then also occured to me that the same agency that claimed to have invested 7 figures in their software actually has no online reputation. I mean zero public references, testimonials, companies, social proof or persons I can build my research on. The only person and client mentioned in the call, is a person that left that particular company back in 2015 according to his LinkedIn profile.
Please James, stop telling people they need to have some skin in the game. Instead, let's focus on how we could align everybody's interests.
Disclaimer: Some people may be curious to know who James and his company are. In my view that is completely irrelevant, this is not Facebook.
Closing Question: I am having deeper thoughts on growth marketing and marketing automation especially this week. How have you arranged your marketing efforts in order to produce predictable positive outcome?
