← Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
Strategy Hour | Online Marketing for Business Growth
915: Using AI to Negotiate Brand Deals
00:37:58
Leverage AI to advocate for yourself and increase your revenue with powerful negotiating suggestions and insights.
Loading summary
Transcript26 lines
- [00:00]
A
But my goal at that point is not necessarily to have the AI do the responding. For me, the goal of utilizing the AI is to get the third party perspective.
- [00:15]
B
Welcome to the Strategy Hour podcast brought to you by Boss Project. I'm your host Abigail Pumphrey and I'm.
- [00:21]
A
Dedicated to supporting online businesses. I don't believe in one right way to build a business. I'm here to help you build business your your way. One that supports not only the life.
- [00:31]
B
You have, but the life you want.
- [00:33]
A
I'm on a personal mission to help you become financially free.
- [00:37]
B
I'm taking all the lessons learned as I turned a layoff into a seven figure online business. I'm here to help you prioritize your life every step of the way. Whether you're creating your first digital product.
- [00:48]
A
Growing an email list, or scaling an already profitable business.
- [00:52]
B
Settle in. It's time to talk strategy.
- [00:55]
A
Looking for a way to make a difference with your morning coffee?
- [00:58]
B
Grab a bag of talitha coffee@bossproject.com Coffee Every purchase helps support survivors of human trafficking.
- [01:07]
A
Make every cup count@bossproject.com Coffee November of 2024 was the very first time I used AI to negotiate a brand deal and it was so game changing for me that I couldn't hold back this strategy. It absolutely brought in more revenue for my business and I think it is such a hidden tool for those of you who want to do more brand deals or are just trying to figure out how to better leverage them for more revenue. I think it's really easy to get in your head when you're negotiating. You have an idea of what you want, maybe what you think you're worth, what you're willing to put into something. And then you're trying to figure out how do you communicate this? How do you sound like you know what you're talking about? How do you present it in a way that's logical, that feels like something someone should do without making it feel like you're pressuring them or that if they don't do what you ask that you're not in at all. Like so often, many of us are willing to accept potentially what that initial deal looked like, but the negotiating feels like an opportunity to grow things and maybe you would be happy with the original offer. But you getting paid what you're worth is important and you realizing the hidden costs of some of the things you're agreeing to is critical for you to understand what you're actually giving up now. I don't think everyone needs a brand deal. I don't think every small business out there needs to go down this road. Like ultimately, it's about creating content, potentially producing live events. There's a lot that goes into this, a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of effort, and it can be really distracting from whatever your core business operations are. So I don't necessarily think brand deals are for everyone. However, if you're a coach or a consultant, I think brand partnering with brands that offer something complimentary to what you do is such an incredible way to expand your reach and your audience. I have found some of the best, most strategic things I've done in my business have been collaborating with software tools or platforms that have alignment with my ideal audience. I can put together a proposal that helps solve a problem for that brand, but also helps me get in leads on autopilot. And when it's also tied to an affiliate offer on the back end, I can potentially also bring in reoccurring revenue. Now, perhaps obvious but worth pointing out, I think the right brand deals can position you as an expert that you saying you are all on your own. While this validates what you've been saying for a long time, especially if it's the right brand, the right brand will say more about who you are than you saying about who you are, which is an unfortunate truth. And even with all those positive things, even with all of the things that can do for your business, I think people get scared to negotiate. They're just happy to work with some of these brands, especially if it's like a dream collaboration for them. But negotiating is so important. It helps you secure fair compensation for your work and your reach. You have an opportunity to align expectations early because the worst feeling in the world is when you've said yes to something that you didn't quite feel like you were being fully compensated for. And then you start to resent the brand partner before you're even done delivering for the year or for the specific collaboration. That sucks. It absolutely sucks. There is something about self advocating and increasing your revenue through that process that really helps you feel powerful and in a way that like just elevates everything else you're also doing now. In the specific scenario that I used AI to help negotiate for, it was technically after someone had already reached out to me. So I was offered a deal up front and this was me negotiating. That being said, you can absolutely use AI earlier in the process to both potentially pitch, but also to enhance some of the potential background of the deal. That is the kinds of things you're going to Produce to make it more in alignment with their ideal customer. Because here's the thing, what people forget when they're doing these brand deals is like, it's not just an infomercial about the other brand. Like, you're not just putting content out into the world. They want you to convert. They want to convert your audience into their offer. Period. Period. End of story. So you understanding who their ideal audience is, who their ideal client is, is going to help you produce better content to convert. The right people, they want to have the right people because the right people are stickier, the right people stay longer, the right people pay them longer. So even if you feel like you know a lot about this brand, especially if they're a dream partner for you, use AI to do research on that brand, you would be shocked what ChatGPT knows about other companies. Ask them about what that brand's target audience looks like or what their product offers are or their price points. What are some recent campaigns they put out into the world. It can scour the Internet in a way that you may not be able to now. It's not to say you shouldn't also do your homework. You need to go to the brand's website. You need to see the messaging they're using on their homepage. You need to see the messaging they're using on, like, if it's for a particular campaign. Like, have they already created content for that campaign? Is it out in the world anywhere? Did they produce a podcast for it? Is there paid ads that you can go look at on their social profiles? Because a lot of the transparency laws allows you to even look at that content. You can go see what's on their organic social profiles. What have they been posting? I think you're going to get better ideas and better feedback out of AI if you feed it your knowledge too. Like, yes, do it for research. But then if you come back and you're like, okay, fantastic. Based on that and based on what I'm seeing, here's a couple of my ideas for how to pitch them or for how to potentially target their ideal customer, for how I help them convert more people into their software or into their platform or into whatever the thing may be. And what I like about AI specifically is you can have an idea already and it can enhance it. So you saying, here's my thoughts, here's what I think might work, like, poke holes in my plan or show me how I can improve. Boom. Like, you're going to be shocked. Now. It's not to say you have to take 100% of what it's saying back to you, but what is it helping you drive home that you maybe would have failed to mention? Now, if you are cold reaching out, definitely trying to figure out who the partnership person is on that team, trying to figure out how they operate. Because some of these brands use outside agencies. So even if you reach out to the brand, they're going to be like, so sorry, like we contract all our influencer work out to a completely other company. Like, are they using an outside company who's handling this communication? Because you pitching it shouldn't just go to like some hello email. Like it needs to go to the right person. If you skip this step, then it's not going to be helpful. So knowing who that person is, how long they've been with the company, like what their previous roles have been, do some cyber stalking, like, what are their interests, what have they said yes to before? What are the things they're posting, maybe on LinkedIn or something like threads, like, what are they putting out into the world? You can learn a lot about a person that way. And then putting together a little bit of a plan. Here's kind of what I'm thinking, here's a little bit about the person I'm reaching out to, here's what I know about them, here's a little bit of their background, here's some things they've said yes to. And then ask it to draft a pitch. Draft a pitch for a partnership with brand offering this to help them do this. Then also make it specific, like, how are you going to reach out? Because if it's going to be on LinkedIn, this needs to be way shorter than if it's going to be on email. Or totally different than if you're putting together like a pitch deck or a PDF proposal. Like you telling the AI how you ultimately print to produce this is important. And then don't just stop there. Whatever it spits out, don't just take it and run with it. Like, what about it? Do you? Like what about it? Do not like what about it? Do you feel intuitively that you should change or adjust, make those adjustments, put it back and say, okay, based on what you said, here's my draft. Do you see any further ways to improve this or make adjustments or do you disagree with something? It will give you its opinion. It has opinions. It absolutely does. Now, I think all of that can help on the front end, but like I said, I specifically used AI after someone had already reached out to me. It was a big brand. They had A specific campaign in mind. Hey, we want you to do this. Here's the deliverables. Here's what we're willing to offer in terms of price point. Here's the other stipulations. Now, it wasn't a full contract, but it did include things like usage rights, exclusivity and those deliverable requirements. Now I'm going to walk you through exactly what I said, like the exact prompting I used, a little bit about how it responded and some things I adjusted along the way. Because I just want you to get an idea of what interacting with this AI can look like to get you a better end result. Because I think so many people either stop too early or they're not giving it enough feedback. And so I'm excited about this. Okay, so the first thing I did was obviously read through what the brand wanted and I was like, this isn't bad. Like in terms of the deliverables, like, the deliverables feel fair, but this like exclusivity and usage rights, like, there's just something about it that I'm like, it feels like a lot. Like it feels like they're asking for a lot and what they're paying for is that it's less the deliverable itself and it's more the usage. Like them using my name and usage for that long with that level of exclusivity, like, that is what's worth the money. And so I plugged it in and I said, is this a fair proposal? I don't know if the price reflects the usage rights appropriately or not. And then I put quote, I copied and pasted the entire email I got from the brand and then I put end quote. Now it spit back some suggestions and I wanted to listen to those. First, I wasn't immediately like, craft a response like, because that wasn't going to be helpful. I just wanted to know, based on all of the data it has access to, did it think it was fair? And it suggested that I negotiate for a higher rate considering specifically the usage rights, exclusivity and deliverable requirements. Or alternatively I could suggest limiting the exclusivity to a shorter period of time or like reducing the number of deliverables. It also suggested as another opportunity for negotiation is to adjust the payment terms. Now, depending on the type of brand, you're like, the bigger the brand, usually the worse the payment terms. And what I mean by that is, like, you're generally not paid until well after you finish the campaign. Sometimes it's, you know, 60 days after the campaign ends, which sometimes could be at the end of that exclusivity agreement, which could be months down the line. I think some of the more fair ones are like net 30 or net 60 after you've posted. I definitely prefer the net 30 or net 60 after you'Ve created the assets because sometimes you create the assets long before they go live. Now, in an ideal world, you would get paid something upfront before you even start. I haven't necessarily seen that happen with bigger brands. So it's not saying you should walk if they're unwilling to do that, but that's what contracts are for. Like if they're a big enough brand, they're not just going to not pay. Not to say that some brands haven't I, some brands not so much. But I haven't necessarily had a problem as long as there was a contract in place. So based on that information, I was like, okay, well, given the usage rights, what should I counter? Now the interesting thing, if you've worked with AI at all, generally speaking, the first response is going to be the strongest, the most firm, but potentially the least in your voice. Now I think some of the mistakes people make, especially when we're talking about negotiation, is they go too far the other direction. They're like, well, it doesn't sound like me. And so then they end up making it too soft. So I think it's somewhere in the middle, right? So it gave me a response. Here's how you might phrase your counteroffer. So instead of just like taking that and then like editing it, which totally could have been a valid place to stop, I read through it and I was like, I don't know, how would you adjust it so that essentially their original offer is not a total no? I don't want them to just turn down the counter offer and then think I'm out. So I provided that feedback to the AI because the way it was written implied that if you're not willing to do this, then I'm out. And I didn't want it to seem that way. I wanted it to still feel like me and that I'm willing to listen and that I'm willing to be flexible. But I did know what I was worth. I know you know the feeling.
- [18:10]
B
Fear that keeps you from admitting what you really want. Self doubt, whispering, who are you to really claim this? The overthinking that turns every decision into a time suck spiral. I've been there and I know how suffocating it feels. But here's what I've learned. The biggest thing holding you back isn't a strategy you haven't figured out or a resource you don't have access to.
- [18:34]
A
It's how you think, how you decide.
- [18:37]
B
And how you take action. That's why I created Mindset Reboot. This workshop series is my way of helping you break through those mental barriers.
- [18:46]
A
Once and for all. But don't wait. You won't be able to grab this.
- [18:49]
B
For just $11 for long. Visit creative templateshop.com mindset to find out more. When you're hiring, it feels amazing to finally close out the job search. But what if you could get rid of the search and just match? You can with Indeed with over 350 million global monthly visitors, according to Indeed Data, and a matching engine that helps you find quality candidates fast. Ditch the busy work. Use Indeed for scheduling, screening, and messaging so you can connect with candidates. F I love that Indeed makes it easy to hire when we've hired in the past, the process was full of unqualified applicants. With Indeed, we can target the right candidates for the right position, leveraging over 140 million qualifications and preferences every day. Indeed's matching engine is constantly learning from your preferences, so the more you use Indeed, the better it gets, and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at indeed.comstrategy hour, just go to indee indeed.comstrategy hour right now and support our show by seeing you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com strategy hour terms and conditions apply. Need to hire you need Indeed.
- [20:03]
A
So then it gave me a response that was pretty far the other direction in terms of firmness. Like, it was very kind, like almost overly kind. It wasn't necessarily to the point where you're like, dang, that's kind of like just giving them whatever they want. Like, it wasn't that, but there was still something about it that I was like, this is too soft. And so I came back one more time and I said, I still want the response to be like the higher end of the offers that we talked about. And I specifically mentioned this, but in the middle of the two responses in terms of firmness, and then I specifically told the AI the phrases that I didn't like. I'm not sure I would say quote the thing I wouldn't say. And then if I had a couple, I would put that there. And then I said something about what I would do in this case. I said, rather than say I'm willing to meet in the middle, I still want to imply flexibility without using those words and the response it gave me was incredibly helpful. The interesting thing is I had very little editing to do at this point because of how much feedback I had provided. And I was able to simply send that off via email. And within a couple of hours I had a yes. And it wasn't like a, oh, we can do this, but not that, and like, I don't know about this and how about we meet in the middle? Like, they didn't do any of that. I had double their initial offer, which felt like an aggressive adjustment. But again, for this particular instance, it wasn't about the deliverables. The deliverables were really fair. It was about how long they wanted to use this for and how much exclusivity was required of me. And specifically on the exclusivity piece, I think a lot of people can be like, well, I don't have plans to work with these other brands. The irony is the moment you start working in a particular field and representing brands in that area, they notice. And so you could say, well, I've never worked with them before. I don't have plans to work with them. So it doesn't feel that weird to offer exclusivity. I really try to avoid giving exclusivity when at all possible. I do think there are reasons to offer it and limitations around it. But you need to know that it costs you money to offer exclusivity because you will likely be in a scenario where you have to turn down opportunities in the future because you've offered exclusivity. And that hasn't just happened to me once. Like literally every time I've offered exclusivity or like agreed to exclusivity, a brand has come around. That was on that list that I couldn't work with. Now I'm obviously grateful that I was able to use this, send it back to the brand. They said yes, and I got to move on. All of that is well and good, but you may not always have that luxury. You may end up where they respond back and they say something and you're like, okay, well what now? Well, what now? Go back to the same threat. And I think this is the really critical piece that people are missing. A lot of them will create brand new conversations with AI and like, or not even include AI at this point. They used it up front and then they're just trying to fully rely on themselves at this point, which, you know, more power to you. But you don't need to make your life that hard. Like, this is a tool at your fingertips. Now so utilize it. And so what I would do is if they respond and if they say they can't do something or they're responding to a specific part of what you're suggesting, or they're giving you some kind of objection, or maybe this is way earlier on in the plan, like maybe you haven't even got to a price point and, and you're still in the pitching and kind of going back and forth phase. Put their response in, say here's what I ultimately sent them, here's what they responded back, what would you do next? And it might just give you a different email, it might suggest you adjust your pitch. I mean it could suggest all sorts of things. It's going to completely depend on the response, obviously. But my goal at that point is not necessarily to have the AI do the responding. For me, the goal of utilizing the AI is to get the third party perspective because at this point it's personal. At this point the way they respond feels like a response to you as a human, a response to your value or response to your self worth. And you can get really reactionary when you're negotiating. And so I think it's helpful to get some perspective that feels a little outside of yourself. But in the past I've tried to do this with other people on my team or other peers in this industry and those people can like lead you down all sorts of paths. I have found that AI tends to be a little more objective versus like there's going to be people in your life that are going to be really defensive for you or they're going to be like really hardcore and be like you should turn it down if they won't do this or whatever. And so not that you can't play hardball, that's up to you. But I find that AI is going to give you a little bit more neutral of a response and then you can decide what you're going to do with it. Now I think a lot of people assume that it just has to stop there. Like once they agree, once they get the contract going and they're working on the deliverables that like they stop using it altogether. And you know, I think there's lots of opportunities to include it along the way. And I specifically think the communication pieces are the ones that offer the most opportunity. More often than not I will still draft a response myself for regardless of what stage we're at, like a thank you email or a recap email or a here's my deliverables for review email or whatever. I'll still put something together. And then I'll suggest like, can you make this kind but professional or like even out my tone or you know, especially when it's deliverables, I tend to like get kind of all over the place and I'm like, can you organize my thoughts? So this email is easier to like navigate through and it'll give you formatting suggestions and like all sorts of things. I think you would just be shocked what it can come out with if you ask it specific things. And you know, sometimes it's, you need to be more firm or you need to be more kind or you're like irritated, but you need to like take out the irritation. So write the email irritated and then ask a hi to be like, okay, you know, maybe they asked for some frivolous change to the deliverables and you're just feeling spidey when you write the response. Well, you know, you can ask AI to help you remain a little more neutral despite having these feelings. Now, it's not to say that if you have feelings about the partnership even after you're in a contract, it's not to say you shouldn't share those feelings. But doing it in a non confrontational way or a non judgmental way I think is still important. I have absolutely been brutally honest with brands before, even after we're really far down the road and there is a way to do that professionally and there is a way to do that in a way that ruins long term relationships. Now I think if you're relying on AI for either negotiation or navigating these brand deals or communication in general, I think there are some common mistakes and I think they're worth talking about. The first one of which is relying too heavily on the content without personalizing it or making it sound like you people can read through it like, AI is good and it keeps getting better. I do think there is a world not in the too far distant future where it will be indistinguishable between you and what the AI wrote. But right now there's still too much quirkiness to it. That's like, you know, it used to be when you asked it to write an email, it always included the same sentence at the beginning of the email and you're like, oh my God. Well, if I include that sentence, they're definitely gonna know, hey, I wrote it. So don't rely on it so heavily. Still be yourself. And sometimes that means you communicating shorthand, you know, in the way that you would if you were slacking them a message or talking to them on a zoom meeting. You don't want your other communication to feel disjointed just because it's via email. Like, it all needs to sound like you now. This was definitely in an unrelated manner, but I think a lot of times people assume the AI is just right, and it's not always so. I do think it's getting better with, like, fact finding and like, making sure it's not saying things that are just like, blatantly wrong. But when we start to get into numbers, like math, I have been shocked how often it is wrong. So, you know, this was again, unrelated, but I was focusing on 2025 planning and kind of working on mapping out ad spend and potential costs and numbers and what that could mean for business growth and all of that. And it was providing these things that looked real, like they looked like potential outcomes. And then I started looking at it and I was like, yo, that does not. That does not work. Like, that does not even out. So even if it looks like it could be true, double check this, because this is not an Excel spreadsheet that's doing multiplication for you. If you need to, like, plug stuff in to make sure math is right, do that. Because you don't want to end up in a pickle over assuming that it knows its numbers. Because anyway, part of it is, okay, it might know this part of the equation, but then it could completely forget another thing. In the particular example I'm talking about, it was like giving these, like, wishful thoughts on, well, if you grow the membership by this amount of people per month and they're all paying this amount, and then by the end of the year, the reoccurring revenue will be blank. And I was like, yeah, that sounds great, but you're completely forgetting that there's churn and people will leave every single month. It doesn't just grow exponentially. And it was like, oh, you're right. I was like, oh, no. So it's still has errors anyway. I also think you can kind of lose yourself in it. You can get to the point where you're utilizing AI so much that you're like, I don't even know how I sound anymore. Like, I don't even know what my voice looks like. And it might be a sign that you need to walk away for a little bit and come back and not open ChatGPT and write something out before you go forward. Like, you still have to practice that strength. Like, you still have to continue to hone your own skills. AI is meant to be a compliment it's not meant to be a replacement for do I think it might be at some point, probably, but like not in every area of your life, not in every area of your business. I really think now and into the future AI could be a secret weapon for you for negotiating brand deals, helping you do the research, helping you pitch, negotiate, follow up and look like a pro. But also like do so without the intimidation. Because I think so much of what people ultimately say yes to is more of a reflection of how they feel about themselves versus what the market is suggesting. Because a lot of this pay like is determined based on how big your audience is and what your engagement rate looks like with them and your previous success with other brands and the kinds of results you've driven. Those are the things that indicate the price point of what you're worth, not what you think you're worth. And you can utilize AI to make this process easier at every step. Now, if you want to utilize AI more in your business and you want more prompt engineering to help you ask better questions to help you accomplish more in your business, I highly encourage you to check out your digital va. It's included inside the co op, so that's definitely an awesome opportunity to get access to that and a bunch of of other tools at the same time. But if you want to check out your digital VA, I would go to bossproject.com courses and then for the co op you can go to creative templateshop.com membership. Like I mentioned, it's already inside. I love prompt engineering. I absolutely plan to continue to add more prompts as we move along and grow our businesses. I think there's a lot that is going to grow, evolve and change about what this process looks like. But for now I encourage you to keep it conversational, keep it authentic to you, and not be afraid to ask great questions.
- [34:52]
B
Hey, a few quick favors before you leave. I'd love if you'd share today's episode, send it to a friend who needs.
- [34:57]
A
To hear it, and post on social.
- [34:59]
B
You can show us where you're listening from, your favorite takeaway or why someone else should listen. Be sure to tag me, Abigail says and ossproject so we can share it.
- [35:09]
A
Okay.
- [35:09]
B
Second favor to get podcast updates and all the behind the scenes news from bossproject. I'd love if you'd join my VIP list. Just head to bossproject.com signup to make sure I have all your contact details.
- [35:22]
A
Really love this show.
- [35:24]
B
It would mean so much to me if you'd leave a rating and review. It not only helps more listeners find.
- [35:28]
A
The show, but allows us to bring.
- [35:30]
B
On quality sponsors so we can keep bringing you this valuable content for free. Thanks so much for listening. Until next time.