#256: The Six Reasons White Paper Projects Fail

Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast, helping you propel your writing business to a whole new level. And now, here's your host, Ed Gandia.

Hey there. Welcome to the High Income Business Writing Podcast. I am your host, Ed Gandia, and this is the podcast for business writers and copywriters who want to earn more and less time doing work they love for better clients. You can find detailed show notes for this episode@b2b launcher.com episode 256. Those notes include a summary of our discussion as well as any links to resources we mention during the show. Having more than 300 white papers to your name might not sound like much until you realize that there are probably only a handful of writers in the world who have reached that milestone. My friend and colleague Gordon Graham is one of them. Gordon is not only a highly talented writer, but he's also a great thinker. He's extremely curious and late last year he took time to go through his more than 300 white papers that he's written over the years to look for interesting trends. Part of this research included studying white papers that never got off the ground. Gordon was surprised to see how many projects he had landed that just for one reason or another fell into this category. They just never saw the light of day. And when he looked closer, he found six reasons why these projects failed. We recently sat down to discuss his analysis from this research and that's what this episode is all about. Our hope is that by having a better understanding of what can cause these long form projects to go south, you'll be better equipped to deal with difficult situations and take a more proactive stance when it makes sense to do so. By the way, I should mention that what we discuss here definitely applies to much more than just white papers. I would say any project that's complex, typically that means it's long form. But any project that maybe has a lot of people involved, maybe a lot of decision makers, there are a lot of moving parts to it. Certainly the ideas that we're going to discuss here apply to those projects as well. Anyway, hope you enjoy this conversation with Gordon Graham, that white paper guy. Gordon, welcome back to the show. It's great to be talking with you again.

Yeah, it's always a pleasure.

Ed, man, it's been a long time since you've been here and always enjoy our conversations. Today we actually get to record our conversations so people get to kind of listen in like a fly on the wall.

Well, I hope they get some value out of it, right?

Well, yeah, I mean, you know, you always think that, oh, it's going to be great for people. Then you wonder, well, I don't know, I mean, like, is this stuff we're even talking about useful? But apparently it is. So that's, that's good. And we try, we try to make it useful and practical. Inspiring. You know, a lot of my listeners know who you are. I talk about you all the time. I talk about your book. I think everything you put out there, it's fantastic. It's just so well thought out. But for those of you, for the people who are just kind of hearing your name for the first time, why don't you give us a bit of background, starting with what you do now and then maybe how your business has evolved over the past few years.

Okay, well, I call myself that white paper guy because I've specialized for about 20 years in long form content white papers for B2B. And during that time I've worked on about 300 of them. So I've got a lot of track record knowing what to put in, what to leave out, what makes them work, what what makes them flop. And I think one of your questions from your team was like, how did you get started? And I just wanted to say, like, I'm one of those strange people who, from the time I was a little kid, from the time I was in grade three, and I remember this to the day, I remember the day I decided I wanted to make my living as a writer, you know, and it wasn't I want to write books, I want to write poetry, I want to make my living as a writer, I thought in grade three. And so pretty much ever since then, I've tried lots of different ways to make my living as a writer. I worked as a freelance journalist, I worked as a newspaper editor, I worked as a technical writer, which is like being employed by a company to write manuals about software and how to use it in the old days when software needed manuals. And then I switched over to what was called marcom Marketing Communications and wrote a variety of different stuff, most of which I wasn't too good at. But then I heard about these things called white papers and they kind of appealed to me because they were more journalistic. They were based on facts and not on kind of salesy calls to emotion. So I started looking at white papers in the 90s, really, and I found them not too good. They just weren't very engaging and they weren't very well written and they weren't very structured. And you know, along the way I had Also worked in book publishing, and so I had edited, you know, textbooks and things. So I kind of had that discipline down of how to rigorously tell a story and how to stick to the facts and how to, you know, get your sources lined up and things. And I found most white papers that I saw in the 90s set the bar very, very low. So with the kind of arrogance of youth, I thought I could do a lot better. So that's kind of when I started to focus on white papers and, as they say, kind of systematized and organized the book body of knowledge that was behind white papers in those days. I could read everything that was on the web about white papers, and I did in the late 90s.

Not much out there, because I know when I started 2003, 2004, even then, there was very little. And 80% of it was from you.

Right.

So I can only imagine late 90s, what you found. It must have been pretty bleak.

Yeah, well, there was a couple of sort of courses that I bought for 100 bucks each. They were kind of like ebooks, very primitive courses, and they were $97 each. And I bought them both and learned a few things from that. But a lot I learned just from doing and from hanging around the other leading lights of the field, of which Michael Stelzner was really a leading light. And so I got to know him, and we worked on a few projects together. But it was like, it became clear to me that these things fall into a real format and that there's not. I used to say, like, there are 10 different types of white papers or 11 different types of white papers, or eight different types of white papers. And after I'd done a hundred of them, I was looking back through my portfolio and thinking about each one, just thinking, wow, it's amazing. I've done 100. And I realized they fell into kind of three main buckets, that there was really only three types of main types of white papers. And I guess that's the. I called those chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry. And that's kind of my claim to fame, that I came up with the ice cream flavors for white papers, which is brilliant.

I remember when you started writing about the 10 different types, and I remember thinking, oh, man, that's wonderful. He's narrowed it down to 10 because it was so confusing. You know, there was no structure to the types, and. But when you narrowed it down to three, man, it's like the sky sparted. This is wonderful. You know, one of the things that you've done recently is kind of embark on a project and it was a real project. You dug into all the reasons why writing projects can fail, especially long form projects such as white papers and ebooks. And I've been really intrigued by this because you and I have had plenty of these projects that have just gone south. In fact, there was a point I started writing a lot of white papers. Gosh, I don't know, 2005, 2006, 2005 is really when I got going for good. And there was a point, maybe 2007, 2008, where I considered not doing them again. It was a big chunk of my business. That's why I couldn't just drop them. But it's because so many of them were failing. I'm just really intrigued by kind of what you uncovered. That's where I'd like to spend some time talking to you about. I know there's several things, but why don't you tell us a little bit about what you did and then you could just start walking us through kind of the major findings.

Well, sure. Well, I mentioned after I'd done 100, I thought about them after I'd worked on 300, I thought, Gee, what am I going to do to sort of celebrate this milestone? Because there was another person in the industry, Jonathan Cantor, who said he had worked on 300 white papers. So I thought, oh gee, I'll never get to that point. And but after 20 some years, I was, I am at that point where I worked in over 300. And so I thought, man, I don't know if there's too many other people in the world that have worked on that many, so what am I going to do? So I started thinking about each one and writing down a few notes about each one. And it was kind of surprising to realize every so often I'd hit one and oh yeah, that one never got finished. That one never got published, did it? Gee, that one never came out. Oh gee, that one either. That didn't come out either. And it turns out out of the 300 white papers that I have worked on, a full 50 of them, that's one out of six of them was never published. So most of those I got paid for. Out of those 50, there was only three clients that I gave up on. So I remember them all very distinctly. They drove me crazy. They were going around in circles. They're wasting my time. These things had taken months and I didn't figure they were ever going to come out. So I fired the clients. I've done it three times in my life. Okay, so that takes us down to 47. There's another 47 white papers that never came out that it wasn't me giving up on. So what was it? So I started looking at them and thinking about them putting, making up buckets, making up categories that I could group them all into. And there were really some big patterns. And this was kind of the shock of my life when I started putting this together. You know, like internal conflict at the client was more than 25%, was 26% of these flops. And let me tell you. Can I tell you about a classic internal conflict?

Oh yeah, please do.

It's so funny. So a lot of times there's a conflict and I've ran into this when I was doing technical writing, but certainly when you have to do a white paper, because a white paper forces a company to kind of look a little more deeply and think a little more deeply about what they're doing, you know, who their audience is, what problems their audience has, what the company does to solve those problems and how they're going to. How they're going to sort of articulate what they actually do best. And there is in many companies a split between the sales and marketing people and the engineering or development people or programming people or product people, right? There's the people that are creating the product and there's the people that are selling it. And sometimes they don't see eye to eye, they don't even get along, they don't even like each other. It's almost like one is Republican, one is Democrat or something. They can't find much to talk about and the same way to talk about things. And so here's a classic story. It was a very small business run by a husband and wife team. And the husband liked to travel around the world, sort of very hands on, showing off the latest software. He was the developer and he'd pack up a working prototype, a couple suitcases, and he'd be out the door. And he'd be gone for weeks showing it off to people. The wife was in charge of marketing and she thought this is a kind of inefficient use of his time. And we could reach a lot more prospects if we had a white paper where we wrote down the benefits of our product. So she hired me to create one and she was a great client. She was always very attentive and really wanted to go for it. But the husband was always too busy to come on the calls or be involved or read the drafts or think about it, you know. So I send in an outline. And the wife likes it, but she can't get the husband to look at it. And this goes on for weeks. And, you know, it's so funny because at one point she tells me, they're going out on a picnic tomorrow. It's Saturday. We're going out on a picnic. I'm going to put the white paper in the picnic basket and bring it out to the park. And when and when we pull it out, I'm going to put it under his nose and he's going to have to look at it. Guess what? He didn't look at it.

Shocked.

Another time, she says, I'm going to bring this home and leave it on his pillow tonight and tell him he has to read it before he goes to sleep. Somehow he manages to weasel his way out of that one, you know, and so the wife is happy. We're rolling along, we've got an outline, we've got a first draft, we've got a second draft. And he has never looked at it. Finally she says, well, I want you to finish the design. And she's paying. She's paying every invoice. So I sent the text to the designer and it turned out beautifully. This is one of the best white papers that I've ever worked on it. They had next to nothing written down. You know, so this was a product background or a vanilla. And we came up with a system diagram. They never had one. We came up with their six key figures, which we kind of clarified and put into plain English. We came up with 10 use cases that they had never documented. And I found 16 footnotes to really good sources in the industry. And that white paper looked really nice. It had graphics, original graphics. We'd come up with, you know what? Nobody has ever seen it. It was never published. The husband just didn't buy in and wouldn't let her publish it. And she paid our invoice. I said, listen, is there anything I can do? Do you want me to have a zoom with everybody on the call? Can I call him? What can I do? She's tried everything. And he won't look at it and he won't get behind it, you know, so that couple, that husband and wife team, represented perfectly. That schism that goes on in companies, right? It's very seldom that clear. It's very seldom like two characters like that embodying them. But this is a true story. And I thought that was just so revealing, you know, and it happens more often with teams, but sometimes that's a classic internal conflict.

Yeah, it could be two people, it could be five, six people. But it's an internal conflict and very little you can do on your end. You can help facilitate, you can help encourage and make it easier by removing the friction in the process. But at the end of the day, you can't really change what they do. I can totally see that. And I definitely saw a few of those in my failed projects, white paper projects. What's another one? So was that kind of the top one in terms of percentage?

That was internal conflicts, 26% of the failures, and the next biggest one, almost as big, was really no executive sponsor or an executive sponsor that's too weak or who leaves in the middle of the process. I had one that went off to another job elsewhere in the company. And the three white papers that were underway, nobody else really wanted to spearhead them, so they just died on the vine. But I've got a funny one. I've got a funny one that's even worse than that. So there's a guy I'd worked with before at a much bigger company. So he comes and leaves that company, goes to a smaller one. He's the vice president of marketing. Everything starts out fine, we're having a nice talk, we make the deal. I send my invoice, he pays it. I give him a plan, give him an outline, give him a couple drafts. I never felt like he was crazy about what I was doing, but he couldn't ever quite say what he was missing or what he wanted. So we were just sort of trundling along. I get to the third draft, and his communications are getting kind of spotty, you know, like, he'll email me one day or an answer, an email. Then he'll go silent, like, for two weeks. And finally he just dropped off the map. He just went silent. And I never got any answers to my emails or my phone calls or anything. I even looked him up on LinkedIn to make sure he was still with the company. Right. And he supposedly was. You know, my second invoice never paid. I phoned up the accounting people. This invoice wasn't approved by so and so. Well, where is he? Oh, he's not here anymore. He's not with us anymore. That hurts. When you have put in weeks of effort and you don't get paid for it, that's really painful with a white paper. And that was one of the, I think, four times in my life that's ever happened to me.

So there was a sponsor, but it was a weak sponsor in that he ended up leaving. The company, and then there was no one else to really drive the project because that's where you're really getting at. The executive sponsor. You mean someone at a high level who can help drive the project so that others can follow?

Absolutely, yeah. And they ideally are strong enough that they can resolve any of these conflicts that come up. Right. They have to be a good negotiator and a good facilitator. And they're inside. They're in the org chart somewhere. The writer can't do it. The writer can't say, okay, let's all sit down and solve our differences, you know, but let me tell you the kicker to the story. Like, about a year later, for some reason, I looked him up on LinkedIn. Oh, he's landed at another company in London, England, this time, moving from New York City to London, England. So I nudge him on LinkedIn, and then he sends me this super apologetic email in which he tells me his story. So listen to this. So he's working away at this company. His wife gets pregnant. He didn't really want to have any children, so it sparked a midlife crisis. He started drinking. He started missing meetings. He starts an affair with the company receptionist. He's just like, screwing up left, right and center. And he eventually gets fired for dereliction of duty. You know, this is a movie. Yeah. And then after that, his wife divorces him, you know, so he's. We've got this white paper and, you know, obviously somebody else is reading his email, you know, taking over, trying to pull the threads together that he's left hanging. But nobody wanted to touch. I figured out nobody wanted to touch the draft white paper because it had been tainted by him, you know, and nobody wanted to say, oh, you know, that white paper that so and so was working on, I found the draft and we could finish it up. Nobody had the guts to do that. So they just.

So disgusted, right?

They just let it go. You know, they just let it go. And nobody wanted to touch it. So what a crazy story, right? That's the worst example of an executive sponsor who leaves.

Well, sidebar, quick sidebar, right? I always tell my coaching clients who. When they're having a really hard time getting hold of somebody and it's been weeks and turns into months in complete silence, I say, look, there is a decent probability that there's something going on that you have no idea about, and it's pretty significant. And if you push too hard and if you get your feelings hurt when they do come back to you, you're going to feel a little, you know, a little weird. And I haven't heard this one, but I've heard of, you know, major accidents. I've heard of death. I mean, like, crazy stuff, right?

Yeah.

So it can happen. And the whole point is, look, don't think that it's. You don't think that your draft was so. Because that's the stereotypical writer. Right. It's like, oh, my God, they hated it. They don't even want to talk to me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, this is why I think I'm telling these stories and why I'm so motivated to get this message out there is that in that case, it wasn't that I was writing crappy drafts of them or not nailing it. It was that he was falling apart. And I think when all of these fails, except for those three that I gave up on, all of these other fails were things that they fell apart at the client side. And there is very little that a writer can do from the outside to really fix those things.

You know, one quick thing I wanted to mention, Gordon, is I've had really good luck with two or three clients where I had a great executive sponsor who actually wasn't an executive. So it wasn't a VP level person. It was usually a director, which, I mean, you know, you could say that's an executive sponsor, but who had full reign and total support and respect from the executive team. So she or he, in most cases, I think it was a. She was really, really good. And I call him a champion because she was really good at consolidating all feedback and conflicts that were happening internally and then just giving me the decision instead of throwing all the problems over the fence at me, she would make sure to consolidate everything and funnel that through one voice, one decision. And that is exactly what you want. I learned so much from those experiences because I was lucky that they happened that way. But I realized, you know what? This is so important. If I got six people, I know we're going to get into some of this, but six people all giving me conflicting ideas and information? I mean, what do I do with that? So very important that you have somebody who has the authority to really kind of consolidate decisions.

And the thing I find it. That's an excellent point. And calling them champion is a very good idea because it doesn't matter where they are in the org chart as long as they've got the respect of everybody else and people listen to them. Right. But I mean, I think that that's really, really important insight that the Thing that I realize is all of these fails, you cannot see them coming. And I want to tell you that I just finished teaching a class with the AWAI in writing white papers, and I got 75 people to do research and send in draft white papers about this topic. The topic was why white papers fail and what you can do about it. So people were crawling all over this subject research, and I got a couple of really, really, really interesting insights, you know, and one of them was from Stacy Hua, and she said that there are emotional factors and there are technical factors in every project, and these fails are caused mostly by emotional factors. And isn't that so true? Right? Isn't it so true? It's not like they don't have the latest version of Adobe Acrobat. That's not that, you know, it's that maybe there's some personality that nobody else can get along with and they're right in the middle of this project and nobody else wants to cooperate with them. I saw one of the clients I gave up on was a kind of political difference between a really powerful sales guy and a new hire who was supposed to be putting out a lot of content, supposed to be organizing the content marketing side. And the sales guy was clearly threatened by this. And so he would not cooperate. He was like a mule, he was like a donkey. He would not cooperate with the content guy who would like call a Zoom. And this guy would say, he'd answer, yeah, I'll be there, and then he wouldn't show up. Stuff like that, you know that it's just so you can't call it insubordination. If he was down the ladder from you, that would be insubordination. But he's up the ladder from me. So it's just sheer dastardly lack of cooperation. And it was making the new hire look bad. So this guy threw a total monkey wrench into the white paper project that we were trying to do. And I realized before the guy in house did, or maybe he realized it, but he didn't want to admit it. I realized this is never going to happen without this guy's cooperation because he's one of the main sources for this white paper. He's one of the main people that has to sign off on it. He's not even going to talk to us. There's no way that's going to happen. And so that's an emotional or political factor. It's not one of your typical project management things like did you allow enough time in the budget?

You know, it's not an easily solvable problem. I mean, it's very complex and outside of your control. So, yeah, I get it. Let's move into the next few because I know now we're going to start moving into things that you do have some control over. So what was the third reason from there?

The third main source of fails?

Yeah, fails.

Okay, okay. Well, this is an interesting one. It was really no story like a company is making claims. When you look into it a little deeper, there's nothing to back up their claims. I've got a classic anecdote about that one too. Right? It was an established company offering an exciting new service for consumers. So they wanted to write a white paper because this would go out through ISPs, right? As part of a bundle of services for consumers. So they were selling it B2B to ISPs, to Internet service providers. And on our very first call, the VP of sales gets on and he says, the market for this thing is huge. It's been estimated at 31 billion a year. And we're like, wow, what a gold mine. 31 billion a year and nobody's in that market. And we're going to jump in first. Holy moly. So I'm like, hey, we got to put that number in the white paper. Great. So where'd you get that number? Oh, I'll send it to you. I'll send you the source. I'll send you the source. So he never does every time I'm talking to him, every time I'm emailing them, I'm asking everybody, did you happen to get the source for that 31 billion thing? Nobody has it. So I do the draft. He assures me, I'm just digging up. It's in my files here in my office. I just got to spend a few minutes and find it. Okay, so I do a whole draft, but we're still missing that all important nugget, right? And so eventually say, well, okay, I can find that, I've got a number, I'll just start googling 31 billion and this market and the phrases that the consulting firms use for it. So I'm scanning through this mountain of market research, finally come up with this report. Oh, it's a five year projections for this report. Great. So then at the end of it, over the next, it says over the next five years we foresee very strong growth and this market will reach 31 million a year. 31 million, not 31 billion, just a few zeros off. So I send that report around to everybody else. You know, and I'm saying, hey, I found this. Is this what you're talking about? You know, the only problem, it says 31 million, not 31 billion. Did somebody have some other source that says 31 billion and this guy's the VP of Sales? The project stops dead. You know, no more calls, no more emails. I had to chase somebody, got my second invoice paid, and the project just died, you know, so what was it? Was that VP a sloppy reader? Did he have dyslexia or something? Like, had he? Was it wishful thinking? I really don't know, you know, but that's a classic case of no story, you know, or a claim that something is so much bigger than it really turns out to be once you start looking at it.

So, yeah, this was something that you just couldn't spin, Right? So the whole paper just hinged on this number. This is Right. But are there situations where there's no story but, you know, you might be able to figure out another angle?

Oh, sure. Oh, sure, I've done that.

That's a different thing. That's a different thing. But you're talking about situations where, well, there's just nothing here. But of course, you wouldn't have taken it on. You just assume that we're all assuming that it was based on this figure or this finding or this report or whatever, and it turns out not to be true.

In this case, it was very specific because there was a number. Sometimes it's more like we're the next generation in this genre of product. And then you look at it and there's 17 other people doing exactly the same thing. So you're not doing anything new and there's nothing exciting, and they're telling you it's a big breakthrough and it's no breakthrough. So sometimes you can figure out how to reposition that and you don't have to be the breakthrough product. But if they're really married to that approach, you can't do it. So it's kind of. I like in writing white papers, I say you have to think like a lawyer. You have to kind of build a case. And if you can't find any evidence to build your case, then you have a lot of trouble persuading anybody.

I got to tell you that this is going to come across as bragging, but it's really not. I just want to make an important point. I really felt I was not an amazing white paper writer. I thought I was very good. That's it. In terms of writing chops, I think one advantage that I had over many other writers is that is the one thing I'm pretty good at, is looking at a story from different angles. And I was always a couple of steps ahead of the reader. I try to predict what would a typical reader object to? What would they find right? Like something is not right, it's misleading. I always address those things. I'm not saying I was perfect, but I think I was pretty good at anticipating these questions and needs and objections because I kind of think like a lawyer in that regard, and I think I learned that from you. You've said that from day one. It's like you really got to build a very strong case.

Well, yeah, I think you are good at that, Ed, because I've seen a couple of the white papers you did, and I think it's like. I don't know if it's a matter of intuition or something, but when I'm writing along, I'll go, well, wait a minute, says who? If the company has put out some claim, I get a spidey sense or something where I even alert myself and I'm going along and say, oh, wait a minute. Who? Says who? Who's your authority here? I better get some authority here to back this up. Because this is just a, you know, a very thin plane without any other, you know, source saying that this is real. So I think it says who? So what? And who cares? Those are the big.

I love those.

They're the big killer questions. And you do not want to do something. And it can be just a word, right? It can just be a word that sticks out and somebody stumbles on it, and suddenly it's like the spell is broken and they've been going along and they're kind of agreeing with you, and all of a sudden, wait a minute. And. And you don't want that to happen in long form. You do not want that. Because then if the spell is broken, then they start looking around their office and they see, like, a hundred other things they could be doing besides reading your wife.

Well, you've lost credibility. You know, if there's something there that they haven't addressed. And I just thought it was, you know, they made a claim without giving much thought to, well, wait a minute. Where did that come from? And why are you saying then? I mean, I kind of lost interest at that point because I don't feel that the rest of it is going to be credible. And I find that. I mean, I hate to say it, but with basically news these days, I mean, I can pick up. It's Gotten so bad, it's actually pretty easy to pick apart these days. But I read a news report or I watch a news report, and immediately I can tell that, oh, my gosh, this is so incredibly biased. You've left out so much. You're building the whole story on this idea that it's like a sandcastle.

Yeah.

So it's. I think, especially today, maybe that has had an effect on readers as well. Everyone is so skeptical, so cynical, that you have to anticipate those things.

Yeah, Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And the thing is, this goes back to what I said about a white paper. Sort of is a chance or an obligation that forces you to think deeply about what the company does and what the product does and who your audience is and how you can help them and where they are in their journey. You have to really grab with all those things. And when I teach about white papers, I say, this is not just a writing exercise. The writing has to be very polished. Right. And very nuanced. We were just talking about that. But the thinking has to be crystal clear and step by step and no holes and no gaps and no rough spots. And I say you can get away with one. You can get away with one. I call it the three elements of persuasion from Aristotle. Right. So you've got logo is facts and logic. And so you can get away with one sort of assumption that all reasonable people would agree with this and no backup. I think you can do that once if the rest of your logic is really strong. But you can't do that five times in one white paper. Because people will sense it.

They're done. Yes, they'll sense it. So, Gordon, moving on, because I want to make sure we cover the rest of these. Of course, now we're kind of getting lower and lower in percentages, but the next item you found was a change of direction. So, I mean, yeah, and I can go through itself, but tell me about that.

Go through these pretty quickly. A change of direction is really not that tragic. But it's often say that you're writing a white paper to accompany the launch of a new product, and then the product gets delayed for a year or something. You know, I have an example. I was working on a white paper set of white papers for a 3M to go with a new product. It was a healthcare product, and they were expecting it to get approved by the fda. And it didn't get approved. It was the first product of its kind. And the fda, you know, said, oh, wait a minute, we need A bit more research or something. So that's going to take at least a year for them to get the research and reapply. So the white, they don't need those white papers, you know, they just went on the back, on the back burner. And that's what I would call a change of direction. Not much anybody can do about that. You want to get paid, you know, if you're the writer, you want them to do that with some integrity. The next two are bigger. It's a really process breakdown and unrealistic expectations. So I have those at 12% on for failures, but together two different ones.

Two different ones, not the same one. So two different ones at 12% each.

Yeah. So they add up to a quarter know. Well a quarter and they are related. Unrealistic expectations is really. I'll get people that email me sometimes the most unreal one I ever got. This is funny too. I'm pulling out these funny ones to tell you, I guess, but it's like Christmas Eve, 8 o'. Clock, you know, God knows why I even answer the phone, but my phone rings.

That's your first problem.

And I thought it might be a friend calling to wish me, you know, Merry Christmas or something. So I pick up the phone and it's like 8 o' clock at night, right. And it's some marketing person, you know, working late saying I really need a white paper. Can you get us a white paper before the end of the year? Like that is in the next week when I'm on holidays. Can I whip them out of white paper in record breaking time, you know, probably so that they can check something on their editorial calendar and make their bonus for the year. Right. That they actually got that white paper out and they didn't even lift a finger to think about it until Christmas Eve. That's profoundly unrealistic. That's profoundly unrealistic.

Well, that's an extreme situation. Right. But what might be. That's pretty bad. What might be a more common unrealistic expectation that you see?

Well, I think it's that we'll put out this white paper and then we'll make millions of dollars in sales and it's a standalone thing, you know, there's nothing that comes before it. It's not part of a campaign. Right. It's not part of a step by step thing to the customer journey. There's nothing that people see before with a call to action to get the white paper. There's nothing they see after the. The white paper has a call to action. Now take the next step, it's just sitting there like a tent pole, like a telephone pole out in the middle of nowhere. And people are going to read this. And then the worst call to action of all is call, call up 1-800-Sales and put in your order. Well, you know, we're not selling bubble gum here. You know, like white papers are used to sell big, big, complex, expensive items that, whether it's a complex sale with a lot of people involved, you don't just read one paper and then order. You just don't. You got to take it back to the committee and circulate it, and everybody's got to argue and debate and look at the cost benefits and everything. Right. So it's probably the most unrealistic thing is people applying B2C marketing to this kind of B2B complex sale, you know?

Yeah. So, you know, really, it's incumbent upon you to catch these that early, because that's one example, and I'm going to come back and ask you about that. But that would be one that would be fairly easy to determine early on before things get too heated or you get too far.

I think so. I think so. That's why it's only 12%. Right. And there are four others that are bigger factor. But it could be early in the process. I'm saying, what's our call to action? What's our campaign? And they're saying, oh, yeah, we're still talking about that. Oh, yeah, we're still talking about that. And then it turns out they have no campaign. They really don't understand content marketing, even though they say they do. And there's nothing to do after they've got no other step in the campaign after the white paper. And sometimes they just kick that can down the road until it's really time. And then it's like, well, I think for the call to action, they should just phone us up. And that's the worst call to action in a white paper, I think, because, listen, if they wanted to talk to you, they would have already talked to you. If they wanted to call a sales guy, they would have called a sales guy. Instead, they surreptitiously or anonymously or with a fake email, downloaded this white paper and read it, and now they want to do something else. That's a tiny little step, Just a teeny, tiny little step. More commitment, right. Like maybe watch a recorded webinar or maybe play with a little online widget to see how much money they actually could save. If they use this kind of software, they don't most white paper readers do not want to jump into talking to a sales guy.

Yeah. You're too early in the process for that.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

So tell me about process breakdown, because we kind of skipped that one. I mean, it kind of speaks for itself. But can you give us an example of when it's been an issue?

I think this is the most painful one of all to me, you know, and it's where those times I've been ghosted, those handful of times I've been ghosted by the client, that's where it's. Everybody is happy. You're rolling along. You send them a draft, and then either you get no feedback, which I sort of call ghosting, or you get completely contradictory feedback, or you get a sheepish admission that we've decided to go another way. They're dreaming about how fantastic this white paper is and how it's going to solve a lot of their problems. So it is kind of unrealistic. Or maybe they have these warring factions in the company, but for some reason it just goes off the rails, and they cannot articulate how it could be any better. They cannot articulate what they want you to do. So as a writer, you just say, well, I'll do another draft. What do you want me to do? And they can't articulate it. So it just fades off and is never published. And that's the most demoralizing because that's the one where it's really tempting to think like, oh, I just blew it. Oh, I missed the mark so bad, they can't even tell me what's wrong with it, it's so bad. Maybe they're just being nice and they just don't want to tell me how bad it is. You know what it is? It's that they're so inexperienced or they're so at war with each other that they cannot come up with a coherent response just to a piece of work you did. That's all it is. And it's. Those are the ones that pain me the most, really, I think more than. The others are kind of sometimes kind of funny. Right? But this one is never funny. It's always just sad because they've sunk the company has sunk resources into it and time into it, but they just can't finish it. They just can't come back to you and say, partly it's a lack of experience in publishing. I'd say, right. Or in content marketing, they don't know how to give reviews. I have a checklist that I send them and I Always tell them, look, focus on the strategic level. What I need from you is, does this sound like the way the company sounds? Is this true? Is this presenting the product in a factual way? Are there actual mistakes in here? And far too many clients focus on is. You know, but you started all these sentences with and, or, but. And my teacher in grade three told me never to start a sentence with and, or, but, you know, and they can't get past that kind of worm's eye view. And who cares if you start a sentence with ander, but it's completely acceptable these days. Is that going to help this white paper work?

They've lost perspective. In other words, totally lost perspective. Unfortunately, I wouldn't say a lot, but I've had more than 12% of those.

I hate to say it.

And a lot of them, you're right, were unsophisticated smaller companies, some startups who got in over their head and they just didn't have the discipline, the vision to see it through. And, you know, for a lot of reasons, it's not that they're bad people or, you know, dumb or. It just. It was what it was, but it does hurt. I hate to see someone make that kind of investment and then not get something out of it for reasons like that.

Yeah, yeah.

So I'm curious, Gordon, what would you say. And I know that there's a lot we can unpack here, but, you know, as we're wrapping up, what can writers do to just minimize these things from happening? Are there, you know, maybe two, three things that you could advise people do that would make their lives easier, make the clients lives easier?

Well, I guess I'm still thinking about that, and I'm still working on that, but I do have a couple of tips, and I would say the number one thing we've touched on this, the number one thing is realize you're dealing with people, you're not dealing with computers here. You know, so people, we all have our contradictions. We all have our good days and our bad days. And so I think it's. Instead of taking it personally as the writer and thinking, oh, this is all my fault, I blew this, you know, like, engage with your client as real people. And I have found during the COVID pandemic that that has become kind of more. What do you think? I think it's become a lot more acceptable and a lot more normal. You know, whenever I talk to a client now, I'm going like, how's it going with you? Are your kids there at home? Are you trying to homeschool. Like, we talk, we talk for a little while about what's going on with our personal lives. And it seems like a waste of time, right? To some people it seems like a waste of time, but there's actually a lot of research behind this, where one group that did this, it was called Project Aristotle at Google. And they spent millions of dollars tracking their teams and figuring out which teams were most effective at Google. And they were the ones where the people knew each other as people and they weren't all business, you know, they weren't like, this meeting starts at 9 o' clock and it goes to 10 o' clock and we're all business. You know, the meeting would start at, you know, maybe it started five to nine. And people would chit chat for 10 minutes and some people would say, oh, they're wasting five minutes of valuable time, but they're getting to know each other as people and feeling where each other are, you know. So if somebody says something that's a little bit heated, the other people know, oh yeah, well, geez, their dog just died, you know, or their dad's in the hospital with COVID You know, like people give each other a little more, you know, they cut each other a little more slack. And I think that we can kind of animate that a bit as writers, you know, I think that we can help them do that and not treat us. I'm a pretty informal person and so this fits me very nicely. Just to have some idle chit chat about the weather or whatever and where they are in the world and how it's going with COVID And it's not a waste of time. That idle chitchat is good because it will help you see each other as people. So I think that's something that maybe beginning writers might feel a little less secure doing. But it's worth doing, it's worth doing. And plus, then they see you as a person and you're. It's more fun to work with you, right? You're not just a machine, a typing machine giving them these word files. You're a person maybe with a kid there, that banging on your office door trying to get in.

I actually love that fact, that aspect of the pandemic. And you have to look at the bright side and things. And I try. It's difficult sometimes, but is the fact that we all connected differently over the past few months. It got a little weird there heading into the election and all that. I think, you know, we kind of fell apart here in the US But I agree with you, I think it's become much more acceptable and people do open up. If they can tell that you're sincere and you're asking people do open up.

Yeah. And we can start that as the outsiders. We can start that, right? Yes, we can start that better than anybody else. And if we do that with everybody in the project, you know, then you laugh more and you have more fun. It's great. And I think there's a couple of other. There's basically the three P's, you know, there's the three P's. So the first is people. The second is think of these things. And I've been doing this for a long time. Think of a deliverable, not as a product but as a process. You are, it's. What we're doing is a service. It's very tempting to think we're delivering 3,500 word white paper and it's got to be in by December 10th and you know, blah, blah, blah, and it's a deliverable. I kind of always try to remind myself that it's more of a process. And so look, if you get the process going in the right direction, there's less chance that you're going to have a process breakdown or that there's going to be an internal conflict if you treat it not as like a box you're shipping off like from Amazon, but more of a living, dynamic thing that everybody's helping each other make as good as they can. Now maybe this means you do a few extra little fix ups without worrying about it. Maybe it means like you're not delivering version one and then version two and that's it. And you only get your two drafts. And you know, someone called me up the other day and said I had written a case study for them and they said the company's been sold. That case study is really working well for us, but we just got to change the name of the company and like these three spot in the PDF, can you do that for us? And I could tell intuit that what they were dreading was me saying, oh yeah, but I'm going to have to get the designer back and he's going to have to open up that file and that's going to cost you 200 bucks. I didn't say that. I said like sure, I'll go into the PDF myself and I'll fix that up for you right now. And it took me like 10 minutes and I sent it back and they were like, wow, that's really great that you did that. Oh, thanks a Lot. So that's solving problems. Right. Like, they didn't want to have to go to their boss and say, it's $200 because, you know, we had to change this one little piece of content. You know, they want to go, yeah, that guy did it for us. Yeah, that's great. So who are they going to call next time they need a case study? Well, you know, it's no decision. Right. Who are they going to call that guy that did them the nice favor? I think so.

What I'm hearing there is to be flexible and easy to work with. In fact, I would even just pick that, if it was one thing, be easy to work with. I think we undervalue that. I see it a lot with writers because we feel. A lot of writers feel that, you know, it's all about our craft, you know, and, like, well, you know, it's. They're buying my chops, my writing chops.

But it's.

You're dealing with people, and I find that you could be a good writer. Amazing to work with. And they'll choose you over someone who's an amazing writer but difficult to work with.

Oh, every time. Every time. Yes. Yep. Yes.

So I think we need to just. I need to remind myself of that. It's really about how easy you are to work with, how pleasant. You don't want to be the kind of person that when they pick up the phone and it's you, they cringe.

Yeah. You want to be the person that puts a big smile on their face and they can't wait to talk to you again, Right?

Yes, absolutely. So I think that's very sage advice. Is that alone I can see, as I'm looking at the list of project breakdowns, I can see how that can have a massive effect with the understanding that, look, you're just lowering the probability that these things happen. It's not a foolproof system. He's still dealing with people. Right. Dealing with complex systems, complex situations. Sometimes it will happen. I would add that also doing a good job qualifying the prospect can certainly help because if you understand at a deeper level what they're trying to accomplish, how they're thinking about it, how they're making their decision, kind of their thought process, that tells you a lot. And you can avoid a lot of problems early on if you can tell this is not going to work out. That comes with a little bit of experience, but still there. I'm a big believer in having a system for qualifying your prospect.

Yeah. And, you know, I think that ties then perfectly to My third P. Which is do a white paper plan.

Yes.

And as part of the white paper plan, you ask them, okay, who else? Who are all the subject matter experts I'm going to have to talk to? And if you're dealing with them as people, you say, what's Harry like? Will I be able to get them on the phone? Okay. And they'll tell you, oh, well, he'll be. He's a little formal until you get to know him, but you break the ice with him and then he'll really go to town with you and he'll really tell you anything, you know, and really dig up stuff for you. So just expect him to be a bit formal at the start, but then you'll get through that. That is golden advice. Right. If they start telling you things like that about the SMEs that you're going to have to interview, and then who's going to have to sign off and approve this thing? We're going to have to take it to Legal. Well, what's legal like today? Oh, legal's terrible. It's going to take three weeks and Legal, you know, and we're going to be lucky if we ever get it back from Legal. Like, well, could we talk to somebody from Legal now and tell them that this is coming down the pipe and what we're trying to accomplish and that you can go into those emotional factors as you do your planning by sort of talking about all the people that are involved with your sponsor. Kind of, it's. It's kind of behind the scenes. It's kind of, you know, gossipy, I guess. It's nothing you're going to go and blurt out in a meeting. But it can be really helpful to get sort of the lay of the land in terms of these people you're going to have to deal with. And I believe that that part of the planning process is really invaluable because I used to get a lot more of these process breakdowns before I did that planning. And now those, when I do those white paper plans, I know all the personalities involved from the start, and that is really, really great. You know, so it's first, realizing you're dealing with people and second, being flexible and easy to deal with throughout the whole process. And the third, having a plan that actually grapples with some of these emotional factors. I think those are what I'm doing from now on, and I think they all help have a lot fewer failures.

I think it's really wise, my friend. Good stuff, Gordon. Thank you. Thank you. For coming on and sharing your findings. I want to make sure folks know where they can learn more about you, where they can check out your excellent content that you give away for free on your website. Where can I send them?

Www. Guy. Www.whitepaperguy. and if. And please subscribe so that that white paper guy, slash subscribe. And then every so often when I put out a new piece of content, I'll let you know it's all free on the site. At this point, I did want to add. It's funny, we say we're going to talk for 45 minutes and now we're up to about an hour again, as usual. This is an ongoing process for me too. We're still looking at how we can have a higher success rate for white papers. So please subscribe and if you've got some ideas, please let us know. We're looking at doing some interesting things in 2021. You know, first of all, publicizing our research and asking other people for their experiences. And then we're going to develop some things that can hopefully make these long form content things easier to realize. So, like things like templates and maybe even a product, you know, and maybe even an app that would run on a mobile phone to help people. I really want to help people increase the success rate of their long form content and increase the quality of it so that it really does engage and it doesn't waste people's time and it doesn't waste the resources to develop it.

Man. Well, I'm excited to hear more about all this, my friend. This is great. You guys definitely subscribe. Gordon, he doesn't send out stuff all the time. When he does, I always read it because it's fantastic. So thanks again, Gordon. Great to have you back on the show.

Yeah, thanks, Ed. I find when we're talking, you always challenge me to come up with something useful and I always learn a few things too. So thank you. Thank you very much. The High Income Business Writing Podcast is a product production of B2B business launcher. Learn more@B2B launcher.com.