If Deals Always Comes Down to Price, You’re Doing It Wrong.

Amanda Quinn 0:00
Welcome to Build a Better BPO, the podcast where we help business process outsourcers break free from the one size fits all approach and build stronger, more profitable businesses.

Milan Batinich 0:10
If you're a BPO leader looking to improve margins, reduce employee churn, and create long-term client relationships, you're in the right place.

Amanda Quinn 0:18
I'm Amanda Quinn, principal at Quinn Growth Advisors. I help BPOs refine their positioning, market their expertise, and move beyond the outdated labor arbitrage model.

Milan Batinich 0:28
And I'm Milan Batinich, CEO of Milan Motivates. I help BPOs and CX leaders build stronger, happier teams by improving employee engagement and retention.

Amanda Quinn 0:38
Each episode will bring you insights, strategies, and real-world examples to help you stand out in the BPO space, attract better fit clients, and build a more sustainable business.

Milan Batinich 0:49
We're cutting through the noise with actionable takeaways. No fluff, no vague theories, just proven strategies from industry experts and BPO leaders who are making it happen.

Amanda Quinn 0:58
So if you're ready to build a better BPO, let's dive in.

Milan Batinich 1:17
So, Amanda, what would you like to talk about today?

Amanda Quinn 1:21
Today I want to talk about the number one myth I feel like I encounter, or I should say I hear from BPOs, which is deals always come down to price. No matter what I do, deals always come down to price. Um, so everything else, everything, Amanda, that you're recommending that we do is just fluff and it won't work because price is all that matters.

Milan Batinich 1:47
But it does, doesn't it? Come down to price?

Amanda Quinn 1:51
No, not always. And price is used for buyers to help them understand value, right? And if you're not giving the perception of real value, they're forced to compare you to every other BPO out there. And therefore they're gonna go off price. And so we're gonna reframe this today. We're gonna talk about how you escape the bottom barrel price trap and get your brand to be able to be positioned at a premium price where it's not dependent on where your team is located.

Milan Batinich 2:27
Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. Having uh differentiating factors, right?

Amanda Quinn 2:32
Yep. It's really when BPOs can't be um when they're not seen as meaningfully different from other BPOs, that's when price gets factored in, right? Because if you're a brand and there are thousands of potential BPOs to work with and you don't know who's good, who's who is better at solving your problems, and the um the landscape is really hard to navigate, price is the easy thing to use as an anchor. And you're the more you are not trusting that the that the BPO that you're talking to is gonna be able to solve your problems, the more pressure you're gonna put on price.

Milan Batinich 3:17
Yeah, I I totally get it. And it's amazing to me too how many BPOs still rely on whether but especially on RFPs, rely on, oh, we have to, it's a race to the bottom. We need to be the cheapest. When even a lot of most times the RFP outlines, hey, we take pricing into consideration, but it's not the main factor in making our decision. It's you know, your quality of service, or it's you know, oh, can you exceed our expectations? It's uh exactly what you just said, it's the value. So they're weighing uh brands and potential clients are weighing the value that a BPO can add a whole lot more than price. So what what's the reasons BPOs you know fixate or focus on price so much?

Amanda Quinn 4:00
I think they fixate on it because it's the point with which they lose the deal. And so that's in their mind, that's the story they tell themselves is that I wasn't low enough, and therefore that's where that's when I lost the deal. But really, they're missing the entire conversation at every micro moment that led up to that quote. They missed the boat on every single one of those points where they could have set a different position in their that prospect's mind for their company and been able to price differently, or maybe didn't lose a deal because of their price. And so, what I want BPOs to think about is the pool that you decide to play in. So if you if you are a BPO that is a generalist and we do everything back office, customer support, sales, finance, whatever, we do everything for every type of client. Yeah, we'll help healthcare companies, we have our HIPAA certification, we'll help technology companies, we'll help uh direct-to-consumer brands, you know, the list goes on. If you do all of that, then you're competing with every single BPO out there that does those things too, and does them in every single one of those things.

Milan Batinich 5:16
And and competing with those that are experts in that specific field or in that specific industry. You know, so many BPOs say, we'll figure it out. You know, prospects will say, hey, uh, you know, do you do business with other healthcare companies say in our space? Say it's a hospital group, you know, do you work with other hospital groups? Well, we can figure it out. Well, there's a BPO that that's all they do, right? They've learned that that's their specialty, that they've become experts in that. So since they specialize in that, now you, yeah, to your point, now you're not only are you competing with all those people that said they can figure it out, or all those people that said they can do everything, but then you're also competing with the actual person who is the best at it.

Amanda Quinn 5:56
Exactly. And just imagine from that hospital system. Let's imagine that hospital system went out to RFP and they got responses back from you as this generalist that does all these things, and you kind of dabble in the healthcare space, maybe, as well as other firms that do, as well as this specialist that you're talking about. The responses that they're gonna get from that specialist are gonna be so much more dialed in and tailored to that healthcare system, because I guarantee that they know more problems that that healthcare system is dealing with than they explicitly mention in the RFP. So they're gonna already be able to show their expertise. And so their pricing is should be higher than everybody else's. But because they have kind of overcome what I call like this trust barrier, they've been able to prove that they can solve the hospital system in this case's problem better than others, they're able to charge more. Whereas these other providers that that don't can't prove that have to rely on price and feel that price squeeze. And so for BPOs, I want them to be mindful that every area that you operate in, you are effectively competing against every other BPO and every specialist, like you just said. And it and in doing so, you're not gonna be that great at any of those areas. And so therefore, your pricing is going to have to be reflective. It's just like supply and demand, right? If there's a lot of supply, then price goes, this goes down. If there's less supply, if there's less of and um less experts operating in this pool, the price goes up. And so I want BPOs to just keep that in mind because the real challenge or the the the opportunity is to be able to show that you are an expert at all of those touch points. Like I was saying, all the places where right now you're missing it because you're not leading with that expertise.

Milan Batinich 8:02
Right. No, totally. And and to your point of that BPO that is the expert or the specialist in that industry, because they are the specialist, they're going to be able to problem solve a whole lot better than somebody who's a generalist. And they'll they'll understand things a whole lot better because they're much clearer on what's going on behind the scenes at, say, that hospital system. They'll know about problems that maybe the hospital system hasn't even brought up because they already know that industry so well. And hey, even though it hasn't come up for you, client, it has come up for these three other clients we have, where somebody who's a generalist has no idea what to anticipate or what to expect or other issues that they may need to resolve for that hospital system because they're such a generalist.

Amanda Quinn 8:45
Yep. And that's such a great point. And that's a perfect example of what I would what I tell my clients about the types of content to be putting in your sales communications to show early on, lead with that expertise. And so if you have clients in a space and you have a bit of a concentration, and maybe it's not enough that you right now feel like you're, you can credibly say that you are a specialist, but you have a concentration, you have a couple in a space. Look at patterns. Observe what you're hearing from them, what's going on from them, what's what they're struggling, struggling with, what challenges, what is their roadmap for their function, for their technology, what's going on with them, and use that on sales. Lead with that from an outbound perspective. Hey, our clients are thinking about XYZ thing. Is that something that you at your hospital system are thinking about? And is that on your roadmap too? People will want to open that email, respond to that email much more likely than the standard BPO approach, which is we can save your hospital up to 30% by outsourcing your revenue cycle management. Like we'll collect for you. And you know, it's always about price. And then they're shocked that it's that the deal comes down to price.

Milan Batinich 10:01
Yeah, and and I love what you said about, you know, if you're recognizing patterns or trends and then sharing that with other prospects or with other clients. Because if it's happening for a few, it's probably happening in mass.

Amanda Quinn 10:13
Right. Right. And that's one of the benefits, I guess, of having those, that concentration is let's just say it's happening for a couple, but it's not happening for another. That might be an interesting thing to just kind of have conversations with those clients about. So why isn't it happening with this one? Or why aren't they thinking about it? And should they be thinking about it? Now you just flipped from being a vendor to a strategic partner, educating your client on problems that they're not even aware of yet. All of that leads to higher prices.

Milan Batinich 10:45
Yeah, love it. Love it. Can you share a little bit more about how having those use cases within a specific industry helps with being able to build that price up?

Amanda Quinn 10:56
Yeah, sure. One of the clients that I worked with does finance and accounting back office and they focus on restaurants. And what they've observed, small restaurants, and what they've observed in working with these small restaurants is that there were some core themes that kept coming up. And as a result, they were able to build automations, but then build software that pulls in from their order management and their inventory management system, pulls it into QuickBooks, and develop like custom reporting so that for very low friction, these restaurants have a great sense of their number one challenge, which is what is our prime cost? How is inventory? Like, are the goods that I bought last week up or down more expensive than they were the week before? And now I can start making strategic decisions about my own pricing as a restaurant, imagine, to be able to protect my margins. And so what they heard over and over again was that that prime cost is something that's really hard to control. It's really hard to because it's so reactive. You don't typically know for a month what your costs were. And so they were constantly in this lag of being able to keep their margins protected. And so what this BPO was able to do was in hearing those problems, build out this product, like I said, and now they can take that to other restaurants that they're having conversations with. Is this something that you're struggling with? Are prime costs um the bane, you know, the bane of your existence, general manager? Is that something you want to get a hold of so that you can be able to do XYZ things? Great. Let me show you about, let me show you what we've done for some of our clients. So like that's just an example. In getting really clear on who you're focused on, the problem that you're solving, and for whom, your ability to offer customized solutions for that market, for that problem goes through the roof. And then so is your ability to monetize on it. Because now, just thinking about that that BPO I was just talking about, when they go into pitch to a restaurant group that and you think about their pitch versus a any other BPO that has a back office accounting function, how much more resonant is the first versus the latter, right? Where this is some the latter they dabble, the first they are experts in it and they can talk about everything that they're struggling with. For a prospect, it's like a no-brainer, right? Right.

Amanda Quinn 13:36
And price doesn't become an issue. Whether the team is located in India or the team is in the US or the team is in the Philippines, it doesn't matter. They want that level of expertise.

Milan Batinich 13:46
Right. The prospect wants that level of expertise, that quality. They want to have that same type of result versus, oh, we saved a few bucks by a specific geography or by a generalist type of BPO, and now our customers hate us. I think that's a lot of times brands will forget about how much money is it costing us through our customer loyalty. You know, yes, say I can use the example earlier. You know, say a BPO can save you 30%. Well, it'll save you 30%, but then you lose 40% of your revenue because your customers are going elsewhere because the customer experience has gone has tanked. Because, you know, as we've all heard many times, you get what you pay for. And you're like, well, I saved money because I went to this geography or I went with this BPO to save money, but then customers dislike that and they leave.

Amanda Quinn 14:39
Yeah. I um it's funny. I was just talking about this to someone else yesterday. I feel like what you're what you're saying, I feel like this is a consumer. Like the the pendulum in the 2017, 2020, like up to the pandemic, it felt like customer experience in particular had its moments where everyone was talking about the investments in this area are paid, dividends are paid on the the length of the customer relationship. You're gonna get the ROI back because they're gonna, um, you know, one bad interaction means they're never gonna come back to your brand, right? I feel like we just kept hearing that over and over again. And investments in CX were really prevalent. And then I feel like post-COVID, we like swung the other complete other end where brands have been cut cost cutting as much as possible. And I think that's probably factored into this what BPOs are feeling about this like price sensitivity. But my hope is where we are right now, and I um kind of confirmed this yesterday. I was chatting with outsourced consultants to hear what they're observing. I think we're swinging back. I think the pendulum is starting to swing back, and brands are starting to realize that these like short-term, I guess prioritizing the short-term profits and short-term financial results is not going to pay off for them and is going to lead to long-term customer attrition that they need to find the balance here. Um, but yeah, I I I completely agree and know exactly what you're talking about with that.

Milan Batinich 16:18
Yeah. All right. So, Amanda, for BPOs that say they do have more of an expertise in a specific area, how can a BPO maximize their messaging when it comes to like marketing and positioning themselves and the contents that they're sharing?

Amanda Quinn 16:32
Yeah. Um, so let's just say that you like if if a BPO knows that they have a concentration or they have certain use cases that they're really good at solving, they need to lean into that expertise and lean into that and develop a really strong point of view around that expertise. The niche itself is not enough to win long term. It's great for right now because so few BPOs are doing it. So certainly start there. You have to start there. Long term, I want you to be developing a point of view. Where is the market wrong? Your target buyers, what should they be thinking about? What are their struggles? And why does your brand uniquely help them? And everyone else is doing it wrong. Like I want you to be mindful of that. And then your messaging should be all about education. And when I say messaging, I mean sales, I mean marketing. I want you to be leading with all of the great insights that your operations team is getting, your client services team is getting from meeting with clients every single day and talking to them. Whatever you're observing from the ground level, as well as when you step back and look across kind of that collection of clients in that space. What are they all struggling with? What are like what are the unifying kind of themes that you're observing and start talking about it because right now, no BPOs are doing that. All of their thought leadership content is all about themselves. It's all about here's why you should outsource to South Africa. Here is why we provide really white glove um nurse, on-demand nurses to help with patients. It's all about themselves. And so if you can take a very buyer-centric point of view and messaging, that will already make you stand out. Every point of contact, whether it's sales or marketing, should be helpful. And if it is not helpful, get rid of it. I want you to be in a position where every time your buyer comes to your website or reads a LinkedIn post of yours or whatever the right channel is, social media channel for them, reads your emails, they are learning something. And in doing so, their trust of your brand is notching up. They may not be ready to buy yet, right? We know only 5% of the markets on average, um, B2B market is buying at any given moment. But as long as that trust is building, when the time comes for them to be buying, you're gonna be in the consideration set.

Milan Batinich 19:09
Yeah, because then they'll know who they're gonna call first because they're like, this BPO has great content, great education. They've actually helped me answer some of my questions in my operation already. And so when it's time to, okay, now it's time to find a new outsourcer, it's time to outsource for the first time. Well, the first BPO I'm gonna call is the one that all their content's resonated with me. They've helped me solve problems, they've given me insights. That's who I'm gonna reach out to first. I know that they're an expert in my industry. They know all the patterns, they know all the trends that maybe I don't know because I'm working at one brand, one company. So I don't know what's going on elsewhere.

Amanda Quinn 19:45
Yep, that's exactly right, Milan. We want to think about sales and marketing from like a digital perspective, like dating, right? You have to put a lot of effort in at the beginning. You're not making asks, you're not asking the person to come home with you tonight. You're kind of you're saying, how was your day? Where did you go to college? Tell me about yourself. You're you're inquiring and then offering value, right? It's like a little, like a little dance. And I think BPOs, if they can get that dance right and focus more on giving more value, give value away, you will get it on the back end and you will get it in terms of premium pricing.

Milan Batinich 20:27
Uh yeah, totally, totally, totally understand it. And I I love the uh analogy to dating. That is so true. Yeah, you don't go in for the close, right? On the first date. You don't go in for the close with their first piece of content.

Amanda Quinn 20:39
And because I wanted to corroborate what I'm saying with others in the market, I chatted yesterday with a deal advisory firm that prepares RFPs for brands and works with their vetted network of BPOs to help find the right outsourcing partner. Because I wanted to verify this of what are they observing? And they've said the exact same thing that they're seeing the BPOs that are winning on their side are the ones that are have really specialized use cases, really clear who what problems they solve and for whom. And then they've developed the right solutions, the tech-enabled solutions, processes, and whatnot to solve those problems. So reframe yourself, how you deliver your services, from where, what your team looks like, your recruiting, all of that is great. They're features of your offering, but they're not your positioning. That is not how you create premium pricing. Premium pricing is how you stand out as an expert in your client's mind. And you need to do that by carving off where you can be an expert and who it matters for.

Milan Batinich 21:51
I love that. And I feel like we can do a whole separate podcast just about sales and marketing and how sales really needs to be doing marketing. I wonder how many BPO salespeople, how much business they land in doing cold calling and cold outreach versus what you just talked about for the last few minutes, the education component and the content and what really for years has always been marketing. Even from my perspective, sales and marketing have always been two separate things. So having it as you know, salespeople doing the marketing that marketing is pushing out.

Amanda Quinn 22:25
Right. And I would be curious, even just from leads that you that BPOs have gotten from those outreach messages, cold outreach messages, where it first of all, I want you to look at those messages and I want you to see if price was implied, a cost savings was implied in those messages. So first of all, look at that. Um, but I want I would be very curious if if it was and um whether those end up being good clients of yours. Because my from my experience, the ones that come in off price, the ones that you win because you're the cheapest are the pain in the ass clients.

Milan Batinich 23:04
I was just gonna say that. You read my mind. I was gonna say from my experience, the ones were over the years where I charged the cheapest, were the biggest PITA, P-I-T-A, pain in the ass clients. Absolutely. They had the they were the most demanding, had the most issues, nitpicked over the smallest little things. And it's like, for what?

Amanda Quinn 23:28
Because they don't value you. If they value you and value and trusted you as an advisor and not just a vendor, that dynamic would not be happening. Right. And so we need to put you in the vet the authority position. That's the challenge for BPOs, instead of just being the vendor.

Milan Batinich 23:46
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then the opposite is true as well. The clients where you're like, we charge so much and we're given the more of the white glove service, but in return, they are a white glove type of client. You know, they're the easiest to work with and more of, like you said, a strategic partner versus, oh, you're just our vendor. That's just one of our vendors.

Amanda Quinn 24:07
Yeah. And if you have clients like that, like listener, that is an indication that is a spot to like double click in. If you have clients that are valuing you that way, like talk to them, talk to your team. What is it that's making that client so much of a partner to you? And how do you get more of it? How do you find other clients just like that? Go after their exact their nearest competitor and and try it. Um, or if it's a use case thing, you got to find the use case that they're struggling with. But yeah, that's what you should, that should be the goal right now. It's like stepping back and looking at your kind of roster of clients. Who would you want to do more business with? Like if you could copy and paste a given client, who would you want to copy and paste? And let's zero in on that and develop your expertise to get better at serving that client.

Milan Batinich 25:01
Yeah. And then you're gonna be so much more confident when you go to sell to other prospects in that space because you know that you have mastered and have become an expert in that space, in that area. So, because of that, you're gonna be much more confident when you're bidding on business or when you're looking at business.

Amanda Quinn 25:19
Right. And you'll have a really great referral to lean on, a really good partner who's gonna be able to help you make a really compelling case study and stand up with you at presentations and test out ideas. Cause I think right now the market is changing so much that there's an opportunity if you can have those partners that are willing to kind of let you not experiment with them. I don't mean that in a bad way, but like, let's figure this out together. Let's figure out AI strategy together. Let's figure out new ways of new commercial models and pricing together. Like that's the goal. And I would love for more BPOs to be able to have relationships like that.

Milan Batinich 25:59
That's awesome. So, Amanda, with that being said, for BPOs that are listening and watching, what is the next step that they should take if they want to learn more on positioning themselves better to be able to charge those higher prices and developing their perspective and their point of view?

Amanda Quinn 26:15
Yeah. Um, feel free to, you know, obviously keep listening to the podcast. Um, you can check out. I posted uh a bunch of I post on LinkedIn all the time. So feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn if you're not already and reach out if you want um help bringing this to your organization because these kinds of changes can be hard to navigate internally, especially when you're wrangling lots of different stakeholders. And so having an outside opinion can be helpful. Um, so if you would like help making this evolution and taking your business to the next level, I would love to talk to you.

Milan Batinich 26:49
Awesome.

Amanda Quinn 26:50
Thanks, Milan. It's great to chatting with you.