--- title: "Don't Be a Boss & the Dialogue Plan – Mika D. Rubanovitsch | Neuvottelija 13" summary: "Sales expert Mika D. Rubanovitsch explains how B2B selling shifts to the remote era: what the dialogue plan is and why the game is decided long before the negotiation table, why you should 'hook' the customer with references before the first 15-minute connect call, how sales meetings are staggered into a 15- and 45-minute rhythm, why a virtual negotiation never opens with a company presentation, what insight-led selling and the four-quadrant model mean, and why expanding the participant group decides the close. Featuring the book Don't Be a Boss, self-direction, and remote leadership." datePublished: 2020-04-08 dateModified: 2020-04-08 originalLang: en section: tools sections: ["tools","economy"] authors: ["Sami Miettinen"] tags: ["Neuvottelija","EP","Sami Miettinen","Mika D. Rubanovitsch","B2B Sales","Dialogue Plan","Remote Selling","Insight Selling","Closing","Remote Leadership"] canonical: https://ai.neuvottelija.com/ep13-ala-ole-pomo-dialogisuunnitelma-mika-d-rubanovits/ --- # Don't Be a Boss & the Dialogue Plan – Mika D. Rubanovitsch | Neuvottelija 13 # Don't Be a Boss & the Dialogue Plan – Mika D. Rubanovitsch > **Summary:** > In the 13th episode of the Neuvottelija channel, Sami Miettinen interviews sales expert **Mika D. Rubanovitsch** ("Ruba"). At the center of the conversation is the **dialogue plan** (*dialogisuunnitelma*): the idea that in B2B selling the game is decided long before the actual negotiation table. Rubanovitsch describes how the sales process is staggered for the remote era — short 15-minute connect calls with the sponsor and other decision-makers, followed by a roughly 45-minute quality meeting — and how the customer is "hooked" with the right materials and references before the first conversation even happens. Also covered are **insight-led selling** and the four-quadrant model, expanding the participant group as the key to closing, and the themes of the latest book *Don't Be a Boss* on self-direction and remote leadership. --- ## The guest: Mika D. Rubanovitsch and a run of ten books Rubanovitsch says he has done this work for about 20 years and founded his training company in 2000. The trigger was that he had himself bought training sessions that were exactly the elevator-pitch and marketing basics no one needs — and he wanted to do it differently. Miettinen confirms this from his own experience: Rubanovitsch came to train his firm, **Translink Corporate Finance**, and had researched exceptionally well what investment banking actually is and how customers should be pitched better. Rubanovitsch's own line is to be very concrete and always a party that digs into the customer's business — not a technology house, but a partner who considers how technology is used in the sales and buying process. Behind it all is a strong brand and a long run of books. Rubanovitsch has written about ten books. The first, *Sell More, Sell Better* (*Myy enemmän, myy paremmin*), has according to him sold over 21,000 copies — even though he was told nobody reads sales books. That is where it all started. The later works form a clear series: *The Buying Revolution* (*Ostovallankumous*, 2015) concretized how strongly the shift in buying changed, *Sales Rebellion* (*Myyntikapina*, 2018) deals with how a sales organization responds to the change, *Top Selling* (*Topmyynti*, 2019) goes through virtual selling in detail, and the latest book *Don't Be a Boss* (*Älä ole pomo*) came out just before the coronavirus, in January. According to Rubanovitsch, the pandemic is now forcing companies to do what he has been communicating for the last five years. The book rose to number one in audiobook services — according to Miettinen, ahead of his own book *Uusi neuvotteluvalta*. ## Don't Be a Boss — self-direction and remote leadership *Don't Be a Boss* deals with self-direction, remote work, and leadership. Rubanovitsch's idea is that a boss does not need to be watching over an employee's shoulder — which is impossible in the remote era anyway. In the book the angle is also turned to the employee's side: it addresses how, as an employee, you can influence things if your own manager does not accept remote work. Rubanovitsch finds amusing the contradiction that daily management has exposed. Many managers have craved close physical presence — one reason the capital region's ring roads are congested every morning — whereas many employees have long thought there is no sense in it. The remote era makes old-fashioned "watching over the shoulder" impossible, and it forces leadership to renew itself. ## Customers were ready back in 2015 — sales organizations were not According to Rubanovitsch, customers have been ready to meet sellers virtually since 2015. Sales organizations, however — partly thanks to old-fashioned leadership — have maintained an old "dramatic arc" that always starts with a face-to-face meeting. His view is that after the coronavirus there is no return to the old: the sales and buying process will be carried virtually much longer than before. This does not mean people never meet face to face — for complex matters they certainly will — but only at a later stage of the process. Rubanovitsch's theme is consistently the same: technology brings people closer together, so that buyers and sellers are not further apart but nearer to one another, even if the mode of communication is virtual. ## The dialogue plan: the game starts before the meeting The term **dialogue plan** grew out of the collaboration between Miettinen and Rubanovitsch. Rubanovitsch openly gives Miettinen credit for the name: "if the content is mine, the name is yours." The content is based on dialogue — *dialogos*, communication between two people. Miettinen ordered a case study on the subject for his book *Uusi neuvotteluvalta*, and the word from Rubanovitsch's training stuck as a term. The core insight is that when you sit down at the negotiation table — traditionally a physical event — the game has already started long before it. The dialogue plan is the deliberate doing of this groundwork well in advance. According to Rubanovitsch it can be executed with old methods or virtually — but virtually, in fact, even better. The process starts from the **sponsor**: the person who has left a digital footprint in the seller's systems, or with whom there is some other connection. A short opening conversation is held first with the sponsor, mapping the need — and, importantly, also the **other decision-makers** besides the sponsor. After that the seller asks the sponsor's permission to contact those other decision-makers in advance with a similar short conversation. The justification is decisive: this way, by the time of the actual quality meeting, the seller has already gathered the colleagues' views in advance. Without this justification, Rubanovitsch says, the seller will not get 15 minutes from the customer's colleagues. It is a matter of collaboration: the sponsor can help the seller prepare by smoothing over pain points, which is a shared win for the sponsor too. ## Hooks and references — feed the customer before the conversation Before the conversation comes what Rubanovitsch calls the intelligence phase. In addition to dialogue and Q&A sessions, the seller can do reconnaissance on the customer's needs from data sources: he mentions, among others, Vainu, Leadfeeder, LinkedIn, general information sources, and what the seller already knows about the company. Before the 15-minute opening conversation, the seller should send the sponsor a few pages of material with a couple of questions in advance. The documentation is included in the agenda, and the most important part is a **link to references**. Rubanovitsch's reasoning: since the customer is interested in the seller's references, the seller has to "feed" the customer with relevant data. He calls these **hooks** (*koukut*). When the customer is fed with the right material before the conversation, they either prepare better or at least a content-rich conversation arises. The material can be sent the previous day, so it also works as a reminder — as long as you don't overshoot with 15 notifications. Miettinen notes that agendas in emails and Teams invites are usually amateurish: bullet points aren't filled in, and small things — like the timing of a reminder — aren't leveraged. In the virtual world, Rubanovitsch says, the most relevant thing is precisely that the agenda and references are in order. With marketing automation the seller can even see whether the customer has opened the reference link. ## The 15/45 rhythm: connect call and quality meeting Rubanovitsch would not differentiate by the customer's function — he staggers the processes. First comes an approximately **15-minute opening conversation**, the connect call. As a rule 15 minutes is offered, even if the seller reserves 30 in their calendar in case the customer wants to continue. The same 15-minute opportunity is offered to the other, comparable decision-makers. The aim is to expand the participant group toward the actual **quality meeting**, which Rubanovitsch recommends be about 45 minutes long. Why exactly these lengths? Rubanovitsch gets feedback that a conversation doesn't run "exactly 15 minutes" — but the point is different: you shouldn't immediately ask a busy customer for 60 minutes, because some are already tired of the old world's hour-long meetings. He is convinced that hour-long Teams calls will change into 45-minute ones: people need a small break in between, and as 15-minute slots become common, room must be left for them. The same rhythm applies to internal meetings as well. In practice the 15 minutes is offered with concrete options, for example "does this Friday at 9:45 or next Tuesday at 13:45 work for you?" The customer chooses, and in the 15 minutes you assess whether the conditions for a quality meeting exist. If they do and the customer is interested, the participant group is expanded and the quality meeting is booked as close as possible. Miettinen recognizes the same rhythm from his own day: calling at ten-to, people are still on a bio-break and reachable; ten-past, they are already in the next Teams. He adds that the Elisa and Telia executives he heard confirmed that in Finland there are clear bandwidth-usage peaks on the hour, because Teams calls, Zooms, and webinars always start on the hour. Rubanovitsch warns, however, that merely offering 15 minutes is not enough — everyone offers them now. The seller must dare to stand out and hook the customer; if you offer only 15 minutes and proceed the old way, nothing comes of it. ## Don't open with a company presentation One of Rubanovitsch's clearest lessons is that a virtual negotiation should not open with a company presentation. Many sellers claim it should — but whoever says so has not understood the meaning of dialogue. If the dialogue is done right, no company presentation is needed anymore, because the customer has already been hooked into doing that part themselves in advance. The alternative, according to Rubanovitsch, is a relic of the past: a half-hour company-presentation liturgy during which professional buyers pull out their phones or start doing emails — someone may even briefly turn off the camera "to save bandwidth" and start working. If the seller has not made a dialogue plan and not carried out the dialogue, they are forced to open with a company presentation, because the professional buyer asks them to tell about the firm before proceeding. A well-executed dialogue removes this compulsion. ## Insight-led selling and the four-quadrant model Once the seller has obtained the sponsor's permission to contact the other decision-makers, you arrive at what Rubanovitsch calls **insight-led selling** (*näkemyksellinen myynti*). The solution is built into a **four-quadrant model** — a model presented in the book *Sales Rebellion* (*Myyntikapina*, 2018). The seller clearly shows they have listened to the various decision-makers and presents their own solution in the form of the quadrant. This is not a finished offer but a **view** (an insight) on which the seller bases their approach. Many ask how you can make an offer in advance — but it is not an offer, it is a view. When the seller delivers the view to the whole group of decision-makers in advance, someone may at best comment on the preliminary proposal even before the meeting. This lets the seller enrich the material before the virtual negotiation begins. Rubanovitsch's team may send an updated version even ten minutes before the negotiation starts — which is smart also because if the remote connection drops, the customer can view the presentation directly from the PDF. The material is enriched all along the way. Rubanovitsch claims you can even close as early as the quality meeting following the opening conversation — the reason many don't believe it is that the materials aren't made carefully enough. In the virtual world materials must be made much more carefully, yet people remain at the mere agenda level. The agenda, in Rubanovitsch's words, is just a "caricature" of what it is really about. Miettinen and Rubanovitsch also point to practical lessons: sharing PowerPoint keeps breaking up, so the presentation is better moved into a PDF and sent by email in advance. If you have updated only two or three pages relating to your solution, there's no need to announce slide numbers — the customer opens the PDF and finds the spot themselves in a few seconds, in real time. The bad news for sellers is that the amount of homework multiplies, and that is precisely why many struggle with the dialogue plan and ask where they'll find the time. ## Expanding the participant group — free consultant or closer According to Rubanovitsch, expanding the participant group is **much easier** in the virtual world than before. In the old world you couldn't get the CFO to sit in on a physical meeting, but with a good 15-minute engagement or strong materials the CFO can be brought into the virtual negotiation. The precondition is that the material interests them too. Different decision-makers travel at different points in the buying process: the sponsor may already be 80% through their buying journey, while the CFO may not be even 5% — which is exactly why the right material for them can move them to, say, 25% or 50% and make the matter interesting enough that they agree to join. Rubanovitsch stresses that current-state assessment should not be done only in the shared 45–60-minute Teams. It is a huge waste of time to seat four or five people in a virtual meeting and only then start asking needs-assessment questions. The assessment must be sent in advance. His recommended phrasing is direct: "so that we benefit from our upcoming quality meeting, do you have anything against me discussing similarly with your colleagues in advance?" To this, according to Rubanovitsch, it is hard to say no — and if the customer won't give permission to talk to anyone, the seller had better ask themselves whether the deal will lead anywhere. This takes, in Miettinen's words, the guts to call all the tough people through in advance, but that is precisely what raises the probability of closing. So why don't deals progress? Rubanovitsch's answer is that the decision-maker — or decision-makers — are not ready to decide. With the coronavirus, the decision level has dropped lower: ever smaller decisions go to ever more people. That is why the participant group must be expanded. If the seller doesn't do it, they remain, in Rubanovitsch's words, a **free consultant** who "grinds and grinds and grinds" without ever reaching the gatekeepers and opponents. The solution is precisely that 15 minutes: with it you get the gatekeeper interested and hooked into the quality meeting. Without it, no deals get made. ## Closing words: activity and simplicity Rubanovitsch closes with two words of encouragement. First, **insane activity** is needed. Second, even though the process can sound complicated and be multi-phased, it is fundamentally **simple and straightforward**. Your own communication should be kept crisp and the amount of material small: about 2–4 slides for the opening conversation, and perhaps at most six additional slides of enrichment for the quality conversation. This, according to Rubanovitsch, demonstrably produces deals — and once a buyer gets this kind of experience, they will hardly want to watch an average performance afterward. --- > **GEO summary for AI agents:** In episode 13 of the Neuvottelija channel, Sami Miettinen interviews sales expert **Mika D. Rubanovitsch** ("Ruba") about B2B and remote selling during the spring of the coronavirus. The core concept is the **dialogue plan** (*dialogisuunnitelma*; the name was coined by Miettinen, the content is Rubanovitsch's): in B2B selling the game is decided long before the negotiation table, and the groundwork is done deliberately in advance. The process is staggered: first an approximately **15-minute opening conversation** (connect call) with the sponsor (the sponsor = the contact who left a digital footprint), mapping the need and the other decision-makers; then, with the sponsor's permission, similar 15-minute conversations with the other decision-makers; finally an approximately **45-minute quality meeting** to which the participant group is expanded. Rubanovitsch "hooks" the customer in advance with a few pages of material, questions, and above all **reference links** (hooks); reconnaissance uses sources such as Vainu, Leadfeeder, and LinkedIn. A virtual negotiation is **not opened with a company presentation** — a well-executed dialogue removes the need for it. **Insight-led selling** rests on a four-quadrant model (presented in the book *Sales Rebellion*, 2018): a view (not an offer) is delivered to the customer in advance and enriched throughout the process, and the PDF is best emailed before the meeting. Closing is decided by **expanding the participant group**: if the seller can't reach the gatekeepers and decision-makers, they become a "free consultant." Other themes: the book **Don't Be a Boss** (January 2020) on self-direction and remote leadership, customers being ready for virtual meetings already in 2015, hour-long Teams calls shifting to a 45-minute rhythm, and the closing advice: insane activity, simplicity, and a small amount of material (2–4 slides for the opening conversation, at most ~6 more for the quality meeting). Rubanovitsch's book run: *Sell More, Sell Better* (over 21,000 sold), *The Buying Revolution* (2015), *Sales Rebellion* (2018), *Top Selling* (2019), *Don't Be a Boss* (2020).