As Colin Wilson highlighted in his recent post on this site, the primary role of a sales manager is to ensure that his team “hits their number” – that they’re performing.

An effective sales manager will use many skills in order to achieve this objective – and will vary their use according to the needs of the salesperson being managed. An experienced and motivated salesperson may primarily need support and admin tasks taken off their hands. An old hand who has lost motivation may need re-energising. A new recruit may need initial training and coaching. Part of the skill of the sales manager is to understand what help each member of their team needs in order to achieve their goal. And sometimes it may be just to “hold their feet to the fire” then to get out of their way.

One area, however, that is almost always important is that of coaching.

It’s unheard of that a sales team is comprised entirely of superstars all operating at the peak of their capabilities. In almost all situations, most members of the sales team will have development needs: areas where they can improve their performance (sometimes significantly). Sometimes these needs can be met by training. But most often, the gaps are very specific – and frequently the salespeople are not aware of them themselves. It takes the skill of the sales manager to identify what the improvement need is, and how it can best be made – through awareness, training, experience, coaching, motivation, etc.

Just as in sports, a good coach can make the world of difference to the performance of a team. And good sales coaches share the same characteristics as good sports coaches:

They may not necessarily have performed at the very highest levels themselves – but they know exactly what excellent performance looks like. They are able to accurately assess where the team member stands against that benchmark; and they know what steps it will take to get them to deliver an excellent performance. They won’t overwhelm them by trying to change too much at once – but they will work on the fundamentals first, then on the next level, then on the next level – until performance reaches its highest possible level for that person.

In my time working in a variety of industries from pharmaceuticals to consumer goods to heavy industry I’ve seen both good coaching and bad. But in the area where I’ve spent the last few years – professional services – good sales coaching is almost unheard of.

In professional services, it is almost always the senior professionals who do the selling. Clients are buying an intangible product – and so they want to meet and discuss with the person who will actually be doing (or leading) the work as the primary part of the sales process. However, selling very rarely comes naturally to professionals (lawyers, accountants, consultants, achitects surveyors, etc.) and sales coaching is even more alien.

It takes all the courage a professional can muster to give feedback and coaching to another professional on the hard, technical aspects of their work – let alone the subjective area of interpersonal and selling skills .

Most senior professionals “fail” the basic tests of being a coach:

• They themselves are not experts at selling – they don’t know “what good looks like” enough to be able to pass on that vision to younger professionals.
• They lack the framework and understanding of different stages of skills in sales to be able to accurately assess the current capabilities and progress of their teams.
• They don’t have a strong repertoire of interventions they can use to improve the capabilities of their teams. Usually they have a “one size fits all” mentality – they improve skills by training, or on the job coaching, or mentoring, etc. If their preferred method doesn’t meet the needs of the “trainee” – the learning simply won’t occur.

In order to develop expert performance in a skill, you must perform it many, many times – and get feedback from existing experts to allow course corrections to be made and learnings to be derived. Unfortunately, many professional firms have an unwritten “sink or swim” policy. Those who display a natural aptitude for sales will be given opportunities to perform their skills in real world situations. Those who don’t, don’t get this opportunity. As a result, Most professionals end up being “filtered out” of a business development mindset and strategies.

But no one is in a better position to offer coaching to junior professionals than their seniors. No one else has been in similar situations they can share, no one else witnesses some of their key presentations & pitches to top clients.

Senior professionals need to take this coaching role seriously to maintain the competitiveness of their teams and companies. They must overcome their own discomfort over their lack of knowledge to build a clear picture of “what good looks like” in the practices they manage. They must overcome their dislike of potentially uncomfortable situations and deliver timely and appropriate feedback to the teams. And finally, they need to understand not only what’s needed for their team’s roles: but also what is needed to continuously improve their sales management capabilities.

Popularity: 11% [?]

Good qualification is critical for salespeople to avoid wasting time and to focus their energy on higher potential prospects.

You can find solid guidelines for qualification criteria in many good sales books; and SalesBlogger colleague Colin Wilson has some excellent free resources to help with qualification on his Entrepreneurial Salesperson website.

But there’s a dirty little secret about qualification I’m going to share with you.

It’s a tip geared at professionals (consultants, lawyers, accountants) and other non-salespeople who have to sell.

It’s one you won’t hear anywhere else – so shhhh – don’t spread it around.

If you want to get better at qualification – the most important thing you can do is: get a better pipeline.

You see the idea behind qualification is great. Weed out low probability and low value opportunities and prospects so that you can focus your precious time on the higher potential ones.

The problem is that most professionals and other non-salespeople hate lead generation (cold calling, networking, and initial meetings) so much that they actively avoid it – or at best do it very badly. As a result, their pipelines are often so weak, they don’t have any high potential opportunties in them.

Qualification then becomes a charade – one I’ve seen played out many, many times in professional firms. The consultant, accountant or lawyer inflates the assesment of their opportunities so as not to look so bad. To avoid embarassment, they force-fit them to the qualification criteria – knowing full well that the vast majority of them aren’t really worth pursuing. But once they’ve declared publicly how great the opportunities are, and how they meet the qualification criteria; they are forced to chase them – despite knowing in their heart of hearts that it’s just a waste of time.

So what’s the best way of improving opportunity qualification?

In most cases, I’ve found that for professional firms, they key is not to redo the qualification criteria, nor to order professionals to “get tougher” in the way they qualify. The first step is to boost their capabilities and motiviation in lead generation. It’s only when lead generation is working well, and they have a strong pool of opportunities entering the funnel that qualification then becomes a valuable and effective tool.

Popularity: 10% [?]

This article is an excerpt from the report “Building Your Client Base Through Referrals” – available for free download at www.lighthousebc.co.uk/referrals

Referrals Work. “Referrals from Colleagues” and “Referrals from Other Service Providers” were identified as the #1 and #2 method used by buyers of professional services to identify and learn more about providers in the 2009 RainToday.com Benchmarking Study “How Clients Buy”.

But in practice, few of us get enough high quality referrals. This article focuses on how to increase the number of referrals you and your firm receive. The full report covers how to ensure that these referrals are high quality and are likely to result in sales.

For many professionals, the quickest way to get more referrals is simply to ask for more. Although almost all professionals say they ask for referrals, studies¹ repeatedly show that over half of all customers claim they have never been asked. Those that do recall being asked often cite confusion over what they were being asked for – seeing the request as a suggestion or even a throwaway sentence.

The reality is that a great many professionals feel reticent about asking for referrals. They don’t want to be seen as a “pushy salesman” and they don’t want to risk endangering their current client relationship by asking for too much.

And they’re right to be wary. Asking for referrals too soon, in the wrong way, can result in a client feeling “used” by the professional.

Some of their reticence however, is driven instead by a fear of rejection. Few professionals enter their field because they are excited by the prospect of selling. In many professions – law and accountancy in particular – the early training and career development of professionals focuses almost exclusively on the technical aspects of their role and rarely provides adequate preparation for the inevitable transition into business development the professional must make as they rise in seniority. They are rarely equipped with the skills, and most importantly with the thick skin needed to face up to the prospect of rejection inevitably faced in selling situations. And asking for referrals is no different – there will be some clients who say no. However, gentle coaching can usually give professionals the courage they need to significantly increase the amount of referral requests they make. Challenging their assumptions and highlighting that the rejection is not of them as a human being can be helpful. And sometimes simply asking them if they would object to a someone who had provided a great service to them asking them for names of people who would also benefit, is enough to help them get a realistic grip of the level of risk involved.

Having said that, there are ways of minimising the risk to the relationship and maximising the chances of getting a referral.

Timing the Referral
The first of these is timing. Asking for a referral just after you’ve confirmed a sale is often recommended to product salespeople. But for a professional service firm it simply doesn’t work. Before they can feel confident giving a referral, the client must know that you can do a good job and that they can trust you. Giving a referral involves quite a high degree of risk to the client. If you let down the person they referred you to, their reputation will suffer. And the better the referral (to close colleagues and friends who place great trust in them) the higher the risk. Referrals must be earned by exceptional performance. Only after you have proven your capabilities can you ask for a referral and expect to be given names of people where they have the strong relationships you are looking for.

One valuable tactic to increase the number of these high value referrals is the concept of “Superpleasing” introduced by David Maister in Managing The Professional Service Firm. Maister highlights how professional firms are quite willing to invest thousands of non-billable partner hours into low ROI marketing activities; yet rarely consider investing partner time into “going the extra mile” for existing clients on current engagements. Maister is not talking here about marketing and relationship building activities with current clients. He’s talking about investing senior time, unbilled, into ensuring that current engagements overdeliver and “superplease” the client. He rightly points out that exceeding expectations on project work has far more impact on clients than any amount of relationship building meetings or hospitality. Yet most firms cut themselves off from this option by strictly segmenting project work – which must be done using billable hours – from relationship work – which is non-billable, but not allowed to support the project work. We’re not talking here about spending unbilled hours to do the basic delivery of the project. Instead, it’s a strategic investment of non-billable time to elevate an engagement from “meets expectations” to “exceeds expectations” in order to generate more future business.

The same principle applies to referrals. Deliberately investing non-billable time in overachievement of key projects for clients with a high potential to refer good business can really pay off. Again, timing is crucial – ask for the referral after “superpleasing” the client and they will be highly likely to reciprocate.

Preparing the Client for the Referral
In addition to timing the request for a referral for when you have overdelivered on your work, the number of referrals you get can be increased by preparing the client in advance.

At its most basic level this means avoiding surprising the client with a referral request and putting them on the spot for names without giving them time to think about it. Instead, treat the referral request as a two-stage process. Initially, ask the client about how they feel the engagement or service has gone and what aspects were particularly valuable to them. Then ask them if it would be OK to meet at a later date where you could discuss together who they know who could also benefit from a similar service. Then by specifying the type of person or business you would like to be referred to you give them time to think and to come to the meeting prepared with an initial list of names. You can also set expectations: “Typically most of my clients are able to come up with about 5 or 6 names of people who they think could really benefit from working with us”.

At a more strategic level, subtly reminding the client at key moments throughout your relationship that you are a “referral based business” can ensure that your request for referrals is not a surprise. It also activates their “antenna” so that they can be looking out for potential referrals for you over time.

Professionals who “warm up” their clients in this way, and who time their referral requests for when the client is feeling the most gratitude and satisfaction with their work can gain a minimum of 2 – 3 times the number of referrals to those who simply ask (and simply asking is more than most professionals do).

¹Cited in Paul McCord, Creating a Million Dollar a Year Sales Income Through Client Referrals.

Popularity: 9% [?]

Over my years as a consultant I’ve seen huge increases in the use of technology to support sales. From the initial wave of Sales Force Automation (SFA) systems – to the channel integration offered by Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems, to advanced analytics and the introduction of web technology and mobile to sales systems.

These technologies have helped many companies (although their main impact seems to have been to make the software companies pretty rich) – but there have been many failures too. Implementations that never got off the ground, or took too long and cost too much, or that never delivered the benefits aimed for.

In my experience, the biggest cause of implementation failure is simply that the systems are often designed for the wrong people.

More often than not, the main beneficiaries of sales technologies are management. Sales managers get better visibility of what the sales reps are doing, the marketing group gets better customer data, the FD gets better numbers to work from.

It’s actually quite rare that the salesforce themselves see immediate benefits from the system. They put information in (customer information, meeting reports, tracking information) and they get very little out that helps them sell better.

Of course, a system where the people you are reliant on to provide information don’t see any benefits themselves is simply doomed to failure. And with sales forces the failure is even faster. Sales reps don’t sit in offices working on computers – they’re not easily monitorable. Force them to put information in where they don’t see the value and they’ll do the bare minimum they can get away with (and quite rightly so in many cases).

But actually listen to them when you start designing your system – and you see a world of difference. Bring in the “opinion leaders” amongst the sales community and find out what would help them sell more. Show them some ideas for what the system could do and how they could use it to help grow their sales and work with you to make implementing the system a success.

It doesn’t take much: perhaps access to their current sales figures and estimated bonus; visibility of which other salespeople are talking to their customer, some basic analysis of their customer base to help them focus on the highest potential ones. Focus your implementation of areas which bring value to the salesforce and your system will be up and running smoothly very quickly indeed.

But focus instead on the needs of managers and the finance community to the exclusion of the sales force and you’ll soon find that the principle of “garbage in, garbage out” is as alive and well today as it was nearly 30 years ago when the phrase was originated.

Ian

Popularity: 10% [?]

If you’ve been reading any of our earlier posts on follow-up you’ll have seen how follow-up for the sake of follow-up isn’t a particularly effective strategy – and especially not if your approach is to say “I’m just calling to follow-up…”.

Nonetheless, follow-up is a vital topic. According to the Gartner Group, almost 70% of leads are mishandled in some way. So great follow-up will give effective salespeople a huge advantage over less rigorous competitors.

The key is that follow-up needs to be pro-active and planned. For example, if you are following up progress on a proposal or bid you should already have pre-agreed your follow-up activities with your prospect the last time you met or submitted the bid. So there should be no need for the desperate “I’m calling to follow-up on…” communication. As another example, in Follow-Up Before You Start on this site, Tibor Shanto describes an excellent follow-up system for leads using email marketing.

I’d like to go into a bit more detail on a highly effective lead follow-up system I use in specific situations. It’s not complex, and it doesn’t require any sophisticated technology – pen and paper will do.

One of the most effective lead generation methods for salespeople of all types – but particularly for professionals who work in local markets is networking. However, most people we meet at these events tend to fit into the “might do business with, but might not” category. For most of us, we don’t have time for lots of face-to-face meetings or a “follow-up coffee” with people in this category – we have to reserve our in-person follow-ups for people highly likely to give us business themselves or refer business to us.

And it’s the same in reverse. Many people who we would like to build a relationship with may not immediately see the value in building a relationship with us. But we can significantly increase our chances of this if we follow-up effectively.

But typically, professionals are very bad at following up initial contacts made at networking events and turning them into useful leads. Most follow-up tends to fall into one of three categories:

• Do nothing. A valid strategy if the contact is definitely not a potential customer or referrer – but in reality used mainly by people who simply don’t know better and are hoping that somehow the contact will remember them later when an opportunity arises.
• Send a meaningless email. “It was nice to meet you, if you ever have need of our services in future don’t hesitate to call me”. Impersonal. No value-added. No lead.
• Put them on a standard mailing list. The poor contact then gets a regular monthly advert sent to them that’s not tailored to their needs and is probably irrelevant.

So what’s the alternative?

The best follow-up from a networking meeting is one that adds value to the recipient. Perhaps some thoughts to help them, or links to useful resources. The more it’s clear you’ve thought about them and how to help them, the more likely they are to classify you as “someone to trust”. If you’re in the sort of business that lends itself to this, one of the best things you can do to really add value is to have a series of reports or articles on relevant subjects available which you can send to contacts who express interest in those areas.

Of course, in order to do that, you need to understand what might be useful to them. And that means that you need to ask them questions during the event (and remember or take note of the answers) to identify what would be helpful. Understanding their business challenges or goals is critical to this.

If you can’t add value straight away tell them you’ll be looking out for them in future – and specifically name what you’ll be doing. For example “…I found your ideas on growing your business through relationships with accountants in your local area really interesting. If I identify any accountants who fit the bill in future I’ll be sure to pass on their names to you”.

Then you need to turn that initial follow-up into a regular nurture programme. This could be via your CRM or email marketing system. Or it could be a simple pen and paper based system if you don’t have a huge contact list.

One way to do this is to keep a list of all your “interesting and important” contacts with notes on the sorts of things that would be useful and helpful for them – taken from your initial discussions at the networking meeting. Review this list monthly so that your radar is always active and on the lookout for how you can be helpful. For high priority target clients review this weekly and build in time to your schedule to actively look for resources to help them.

In this way, you can tailor a series of follow-up communications with prospects that they will get value from, and actually look forward to receiving. And more importantly, they are much, much more likely to result in genuine leads and sales than the typical “…if you ever have need of our services…” email.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Knowing that some of my fellow bloggers specialise in the area of pipeline management, I’m going to focus this post quite tightly on 3 simple guidelines for sole practitioners and small businesses.

Many organisations still rely heavily on instinct, guesswork and “seat-of-the-pants” management to control their sales pipelines. As a result, they get trapped in a vicious circle where they over-focus on highly visible areas such as closing late-stage deals, and under-invest in key areas such as early-stage lead generation.

This leads to a further drying up of quality opportunities, a panic-driven focus on closing the few remaining opportunities in the pipeline at all costs, and more neglect of the critical front-end.

For small businesses – and particularly for owner-managed companies and sole practitioners – this can be even more crippling, as the key business-winners are often also heavily involved in the execution of sold work – and are easily dragged away from working on filling up the earlier stages of the pipeline.

The first, and most important pipeline guidance for small businesses is to actually look at it. Now this may seem blindingly obvious to those of you in larger companies – but the majority of small businesses I meet either don’t actively manage their pipelines – or in some cases don’t even know what pipeline management is. They carry round their pipeline in their heads – and as a result have a weak understanding of what the shape of their future sales actually looks like and what they should be doing to increase their chances of winning those sales.

So the first step for businesses in this position is to get hold of a simple pipeline management methodology and use it. And you could do a lot worse than moseying on over to fellow Sales Blogger Colin Wilson’s site at First Border and looking over the approaches recommended there.

The next piece of guidance is to model your pipeline on your customer’s buying process. Of course, that’s more complex than it sounds: different customers buy in different ways and even the same customer can buy differently depending on the the size and nature of the product. But it should be possible to develop a rough model of how they usually buy – the stages they go through. When buying consulting, clients most often meet with a small number of prospective suppliers first to discuss the key issues they face. If that goes well, they may have a series of follow up meetings with some of the consulting firm’s expert staff to delve into highlighted areas more deeply. Then they may ask for a more formal proposal or go out to tender for a larger piece of work – etc. etc.

Building a model of how your customers buy can be tremendously helpful in it’s own right in giving you insights into what they will be looking for from you at each stage before they allow you to progress to the next. And if you find you don’t know how they decide at each stage – ask – you need to know to sell effectively.

Mirror this model in your pipeline – don’t just accept the standard model that came with your CRM software – make it truly reflect how your customers buy.

This will give you insights to allow you to accurately assess where an opportunity is in the buying process from the customer’s perspective (and that’s the only one that counts) and therefore the steps you need to take to progress it to the next stage.

The next and probably most important guidance is to use your pipeline to manage not just to measure.

Far too often I see small businesses who adopt pipeline management get obsessed by the process and the numbers and the need for absolute accuracy. They spend more time trying to get an accurate forecast than they do trying to figure out how to increase their chances of securing a sale. Good pipeline management – whether being done by an individual salesperson, or by a team with their manager – is primarily about improvement. At the end of a pipeline review you don’t just want to have a more accurate forecast – you want to have actually increased your chances of selling the deals in the pipeline becasue you’ve used the process to help the reps understand better what they need to do to win (or in some cases, got them more focused and motivated to do it).

Now I’m not saying forecasting is unimportant. I particularly want to use the forecasts to highlight weak spots in my pipeline that I can do something about. For example, my pipeline may show that I have a solid late stage pipeline of deals I’m working on, and a lot of stuff in the funnel at the early stages about to drop into the pipeline – but a dearth of opportunities being progressed whcih are likely to come to fruition in the 2-3 month out timeframe. That’s a signal that I need to put my focus on the opportunities in earlier stages and pull them through to fill that gap. For a capacity constrained business, the pipeline may also highlight time periods where I run the risk of being oversold and unable to meet customer demand: maybe I need to slow down some of those opportunities.

The point is that I’m using my forecast in a managerial sense to highlight weaknesses and areas I need to focus on – I don’t really need to be super accurate – just accurate enough to tell me my weak spots.

Once I know those weak spots I can do something about them. The pipeline model can help again here as it will give me clues as to what the customer is looking for before moving on the the next phase in their buying process.

Unfortunately, so many businesses just don’t know where the weak spots in their pipeline are and so are hugely surprised when the weak spots turn into horrible leaks.

Ian

Popularity: 11% [?]

My Candle burns at both ends
it will not last the night.
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends
It gives a lovely light.

Edna St. Vincent Millay, “First Fig”

Burnout – the experience of exhaustion and disinterest – is a debilitating condition in any role, but it’s particularly damaging for those in sales roles. In other professions it’s possible to soldier on at 70% and just about get the job done. But selling is very much a “confidence game” – and a salesman lacking in energy and enthusiasm wil get 0% results.

Worse still – perhaps the most powerful mechanism to help employees recover from stress and burnout, a supportive work environment and social system – is often unavailable to salespeople. Many salespeople rarely interact with peers or others in their organisation. They’re out on the road or meeting prospects. With the exception of occasional meetings with their sales manager, they just don’t have the kind of work environment conducive to providing social support to mitigate the effects of burnout.

Burnout can often be a vicious circle. Lower energy and enthusiasm leads to poor results. Pretty quickly, self-defense mechanisms can set it – with the salesman beginning to blame luck, a poor product, bad marketing, anything but themselves. Soon, results get worse and cynicism sets in. If only the salesperson had better leads or a better product….but they don’t. The salesperson feels more out of control, more stressed – and sales drop again.

Now I’m no psychiatrist or therapist – and I wouldn’t presume to hold the answer for anyone in the painful throes of burnout except to say that if you’re suffering – get help.

But what I can do is offer some thoughts on how I’ve got myself out of bad patches where I’ve begun to drift into burnout mode.

There have always been two things that have helped restore my energy levels and my enthusiasm – no matter how bleak things are looking.

The first is learning. I’ve always been motivated by learning new skills and gaining new understanding. Reading a high quality sales or marketing book or listening to an audio will often inspire me – or at the very least interest me to try the techniques or ideas from the book. Often this little trigger is enough to set me on a positive spiral.

The second is to help others. I find that when mentoring or simply giving advice my cynicism drops and I often rediscover my motivation for selling. Motivating others seems to work to raise my own motivation levels – it’s as if I’m secretly listening to myself and taking everything onboard in a more powerful way than if someone else had been saying the same things to me.

Of course, different things will work for diferent people. You might find these methods work for you if you’re beginning to feel burned out. Or you might find that you can discover something in your history that works better for you. Either way – try something.

Popularity: 11% [?]

The subject of Closing is one that invokes passion and heated debate amongst sales gurus. On the one hand, some point out that closing is one of the biggest weaknesses of salespeople and that a huge number of sales are lost because the salesperson simply didn’t “ask for the business”. On the other hand, many point out how manipulative and sometimes downright “cheesy” some of the most popular closing techniques are.

The truth, as ever, lies somewhere in between. We’ve learnt a lot about closing in the last 30 or so years. In the 70′s and 80′s “Always Be Closing” was the key mantra for salespeople, and everyone carried a much-read copy of Zig Ziglar’s “Secrets of Closing the Sale” in the glove compartment of their car ready for frequent reference.

But in the 90′s, Neil Rackham showed conclusively that trying to close too early and too frequently could severely damage your chances of making a sale – particularly for large sales. And in the last decade we’ve seen savvy customers becoming increasingly wise to assumptive closes, alternative closes, Ben Franklin closes and other techniques. When they hear a “closing technique” being used they feel manipulated and instantly put the barriers up and become harder to sell to.

Over time we’ve learnt that successful closing is the culmination of an effective sales process – not a technique tacked on at the end.

That being said, we still need to close. At the end of the sales process we need to ask for the business. During the process we need to gain commitment from our prospect to the next stage in the process – the next sales meeting where she brings along her manager, a trial of the product, a meeting with one of our expert consultants to analyse their manufacturing operations to identify the savings our lean manufacturing process could bring.

So, given that closing is becoming more difficult – yet is still vital to selling – how do we close effectively in today’s sales environment?

In my experience, the key to effective closing today is to avoid triggering resistance.

Today’s buyers – be they consumers or professional purchasing managers – are better informed and more used to “getting their own way”. Whereas 20 years ago it was possible for a salesperson with a forceful personality and a handful of stock closing lines to “steamroller” a prospect into buying – today that just doesn’t work. Or to be exact – it may still work with some people, but not enough to make it an economically viable strategy. The balance of power has shifted from the seller to the buyer.

Unfortunately, so many of the closing techiniques revered by salespeople revolve around manipulating, tricking or putting pressure on prospects.

We’re told that instead of asking prospects if they want to buy, we should ask them when they want the product delivered. Really, would that work on you? If you were uncertain about whether you wanted to buy or not would the salesperson saying this suddenly make you cave in? Or would it instead make you think “Wooah! Hold on a minute. I haven’t agreed to buy anything yet” and actually set back the sale.

We’re told that just like children, prospects can be diverted away from the question  of whether they want something at all by asking which alternative they want (blue or green? jumbo or giant size?). Has anyone actually tried this technique on today’s kids? If my kids don’t want a bath, no amount of “do you want your bath at 8.15 or 8.30?” helps at all – you have to address the issue head on.

We’re told that by introducing false scarcity we can compel peopel to buy: “my manager is out for the day – I can only give you this price until he comes back”, “if you buy right now I can give you a 15% discount, but only if you buy right now”, “another customer has called to say he wants to buy this model – you have to decide right now if you want it”. How does it feel when salespeople say these things to you? You just know it’s a line and you don’t react well. There are websites dedicated to cataloging this stuff. My friends laugh and tell stories about the awful pressure techniques they’ve been subjected to like this. And of course, they don’t buy.

Most people can sniff out techniques like this a mile off – even if they haven’t read a “closing techniques” book. And if they feel you are using techniques on them – or you’re trying to pressure them into buying then you will trigger their resistance and their defenses will go up. They’ll start mistrusting what you say and stalling so they can reassess the situation.

So how can you close without using pressure or transparent closing techniques?

The answer is to treat closing as a joint planning and agreement session like you would with a friend or business partner.

How do you do joint planning? You simply and clearly summarise your agreements so far and propose the next step using plain and clear language.

If you believe they are ready to buy and have no outstanding concerns, simply confirm what you’re agreed so far and ask for the sale using your own language:

“So to summarise, your key issue is that you need to increase revenue from your larger customers by over 10%, and you need a marketing strategy to do that. You want the strategy to focus on how to reposition your firm as the quality and customer service leader – and you want a lot of involvement in its development from your team so that they buy-in to it and are really motivated to develop it. We talked about our approach to developing the strategy using a series of high-intensity workshops and you believe that’s the right approach to take – it will deliver the results, and we have the right people to make it work.”

Pause. Allow them to interject, raise issues, or clarify points. If they nod or otherwise confirm agreement, continue:

“It sounds like you’re ready to proceed – is that right, or is there anything left we need to iron out?”

Of course, you need to find the right words for you own situation. Buyers of management consulting know that “ready to proceed” means “ready to buy” for example.

If you’re not so sure they are ready, do the same summary – but be more open in your question – for example: “How do you suggest we take this forward?”.

While this may sound “weak” – in fact it’s the opposite. Remember, the key fear most prospects will have is over your intent. Are you trying to sell them a bill of goods, or do you genuinely have their interests at heart? Asking them how they want to proceed shows them it’s the latter – and makes it much more likely they will agree to proceed with the sale. If they believe you are putting their interests first, they will be comfortable with a few unresolved issues – knowing you can work out the details after things get going. If they are unsure of your intent they will want to have every i dotted and every t crossed before they are willing to proceed.

Everyone needs to find language that works for them. But in the words of Mahan Khalsa – “Intent counts more than Technique”.

Take these words to heart – and practice pressure-free closing.

Popularity: 9% [?]

In professional service firms, some of the greatest opportunities for growth lie in the area of cross-selling. For example, a consulting firm selling their technology services to a client of their business advisory services, or a law firm selling their employment law services to a client of their intellectual property offering.

The theory is that deep relationships built with clients by one practice area within the firm can be “leveraged” to sell services from the firm’s other service areas.

Since the firm already knows how the client’s business works and what the key client individuals value, and the client knows and trusts the firm’s capabilities and key staff, it seems to offer a win-win scenario for both parties.

The reality is often starkly different.

Despite cross-selling obviously being a highly profitable strategy, many professional firms struggle to make it work. They often find themselves “siloed” in one practice area – and surprised when the client brings in a competitor to perform work their team could have done.

Firms let high value opportunities slip through their grasp through failings in three key areas:

• Their front-line business development and delivery teams often fail to spot opportunities for cross-selling.
• Even if an opportunity is identified – client partners and business developers in one practice rarely have the knowledge and skills to effectively position the services of their other practices.
• Finally, there is often a high degree of reluctance to bring in partners from other areas of the firm: a fear that a misstep may damage a hard-won client relationship, or perhaps worse, that success may lead to a relationship being “taken over” by the other partner.

Addressing these issues is not simple – it requires key staff to upgrade their skills, their knowledge, and crucially, their level of trust in their colleagues in other practices.

On the skills front, business developers need to gain the ability to engage clients in business discussions outside their area of expertise. They need to know the current business and industry issues facing their clients – to be able to talk about recent competitor moves, market and customer trends. If all they can discuss is their own specialty and how the current engagement is going then the client will never open up and give them the clues to potential cross-selling opportunities they need.

They also need the ability to turn general or business discussions into specific sales discussions. If a client mentions challenges they face in another area, they must be able to “put on their sales hat” (usually by signposting this to the client) and make a transition in the discussion to exploring the issue and creating the opportunity for a sales-focused follow-up. And they must be able to do this gently without creating the impression that they’re a hungry salesperson only interested in selling more.

To develop those opportunities further they also need knowledge. Knowledge of what to look or listen for in a client organisation to identify an opportunity. Knowledge of what questions to ask to probe a little further to qualify and clarify the opportunity. And critically, they must carry with them a handful of stories and anecdotes of work their firm has done in the area (or more helpfully – stories of the problems they have helped clients solve).

Finally – and often the most difficult element – they need to trust that the people they bring in from the other practice to further develop and close the opportunity are going to do a good job. The business developers or partners must treat the client with respect and ensure they sell “the right thing” to the client – working in a seamless manner with the original partner. And the delivery team must perform high quality work in a way that enhances the overall client relationship. Sadly, many cross-selling opportunities fall at this hurdle. The current client-facing team simply don’t have enough confidence in their own colleagues in other practices to risk damaging a valuable client relationship by introducing them.

Of course, building these skills, knowledge and trust doesn’t happen overnight. But it can be done through both informal and planned interventions. For example:

• Cross-practice awareness building sessions sharing information in useful forms (e.g. “what to look for”, “what we do”, “benefits we deliver”, “case studies of our work”).
• In-depth showcases of specific engagements to built both knowledge and (more importantly) trust in the quality of work being delivered by other practices.
• Cross-practice client visits – for example using partners from other practices as “quality control” partners for engagements.
• Cross-practice account teams and account planning sessions.
• Incentives for partners to introduce and cross-sell for other practices.
• Visible celebration of cross-selling successes.

Most importantly, the firm’s leadership must be seen to actively support cross-selling and inter-firm collaboration. It must become viewed by staff as “the way we do business round here”. And there is no better way than for the senior partners to actively role-model good collaborative behaviours.

Popularity: 12% [?]

As I wote on my own blog in Social Media and Professional Services Business Development, the Internet has been a real “playing field leveller” when it comes to marketing for professional service firms.

Traditionally, the large professional service firms have established their reputations and brands using article writing, seminars and speeches. These methods provide advanced clues for potential buyers to the credibility and knowledge of the consultant, lawyer, accountant, engineer or architect who wrote the article or delivered the speech. Given the intangible nature of professional services; those clues are often an immensely powerful lever to at least get the professional engaged in a dialogue with the potential client.

Historically, speech-making and article writing has often been the preserve of the well-known individual or the major firm. Most people read a small number of quality journals so competition for placement was high and the chances of a small firm or unknown individual getting a high degree of visibility was slim.

But not so today. Thanks to the internet and Web 2.0; even small firms can showcase their capabilities:

Articles on their website or syndicated on other sites can establish their expertise and knowledge.

Blogs, Podcasts and Video can not only showcase content – but can establish a sense of “who you are” with potential clients – beginning to allow you to pass the crucial “compatibility” test that all clients run before (at least subconsciously) before hiring you.

Social Networks and Forums go further – allowing professionals to interact with and add value to potential clients – giving them live experience of what it would be like to work with you (for example, I hired my accounting firm after they were really helpful answering my questions on a public business forum).

But there’s a challenge.

By default, the internet is a global channel. Whereas most professional service firms have distinct geographic and subject area niches.

Articles on your website and items on your blog may raise the credibility of your firm amongst readers – but if they are largely being read by people outside your geographic reach, then they will do little to bring you business.

Digg and Stumble may bring in huge surges in traffic – but if the visitors only stay for a few seconds, or are from a demographic which is unlikely to buy or recommend your services then the traffic is wasted. Even trying to use the categorisation systems on the big social bookmarking sites still results in very high level aggregations – my content fits into “Business and Finance” on Digg and “Marketing” on Stumbelupon – along with posts on millions of completely unrelated and vastly different subject areas.

“Tweeting” and “Poking” a big follower list, or engaging in a debate on a globally read forum may raise your feeling of being “in the game” – but again, unless the readers, debaters or followers are in the right geographic, demographic and psychographic segment then you’re wasting your time.

If using the internet and social media to promote your professional service is part of your strategy, then the core element of that strategy must be targeting.

If participating in forums – you must identify and focus on forums used by potential clients (or callaborators/referral partners).

If using social bookmarking or networking sites, you must identify ways of connecting to target clients – for example via specialist Linkedin or Facebook groups.

But perhaps the most effective strategy of all is good old-fashioned SEO.

Although it’s been much maligned recently in favour of Web 2.0 technologies, search engine traffic has one huge advantage: it’s highly targeted. Traffic to my site from google is from people searching for text which is in my headlines and article content. Traffic from people wanting to know how to sell accountancy services, or about marketing for consultants or establishing a trusted advisor relationship. In short: my potential clients.

Popularity: 11% [?]