For professional firms there are a myriad of potential collaborations which can help deliver greater sales.

Lawyers, for example, can collaborate with accountants, financial advisors, bankers, consultants and other advisors to do joint seminars, create joint service offers or simply cross refer business.

Consultants collaborate extensively with technology and software providers to provide joined-up implementation solutions for clients.

But of all the choices, the one area where almost all firms must excel at collaboration is with their clients.

Gone are the days where professionals carried out their trade in ivory towers and clients gratefully lapped up their advice without challenge. Nowadays almost all clients want to be significantly involved in the process of how the professional does their work. They want to be kept up to date with progress and consulted at key decision-making points – not just presented with the results at the end.

For many professional firms, this requires a new skill-set from their professionals. They need to be able to work effectively in teams with their clients, be comfortable getting “up close and personal” with people from different backgrounds and experience bases to them, and to be able to get results without having direct line authority over all team members.

Of course, not all clients want this. Some still want to outsource responsibility and get a great end product. But more and more are realising that the only way to ensure a great end product is to be involved in the process of producing it yourself. The consulting, law, accounting or other professional firm who is able to demonstrate that they can collaborate effectively with their clients in this sort of environment has a great advantage when it comes to winning business.

Popularity: 22% [?]

Professionals Need Motivating Too!

Professional Services are somewhat unusual in that the key sales tasks are almost always carried out by non-salespeople: the professionals who will supervise or perform the piece of work being bought.

As a result, what motivates them is often quite different from what motivates “normal” salespeople. Often, for example, by the time they’ve reached a stage in their career where business development is a key part of their role; they are already earning a very comfortable salary. They certainly aren’t in the same position as a commission-only salesperson who needs to bring in business to eat.

That’s not to say that money isn’t a motivator at all – but it’s often not the most important one for most professionals. Nor, surprisingly, is the role of sales in your chances of being promoted to partner.

When professionals are surveyed, the two factors which regularly emerge as being the most important for them in their career are the ability to work on interesting and challenging assignments, and to work with clients they like and respect.

How can this be used to motivate them to sell?

Well, a factor often overlooked by professionals reluctant to get involved in business development is that it gives them control over their destiny. If you can sell, you can ensure you work on interesting assignments for good clients. If you can’t sell you have no option but to work on the assignments others sell – which may well not be for the sort of clients you want to work for, or on the sort of topics you want to work on.

When professionals understand this they are often much more motivated to get involved in sales than before. They suddenly realise how effective selling can make their “real job” of delivery so much more enjoyable and interesting. And over time, they often come to realise that selling actually is their “real job” and can be even more enjoyable and interesting that delivery.

Popularity: 10% [?]

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% [?]

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% [?]

Objections are a fact of life for all salespeople. And anyone who’s sold for a while knows that objections come in two major varieties:

• “Real” objections – where the question or issue the client raises really is what they are concerned about.
• “Smokescreen” objections – where the objection raised is a cover to a deeper concern the client doesn’t (yet) want to admit to.

Overcoming real objections is difficult – but achievable. Common objections can be pre-empted, discussed when raised, and frequently addressed. Not always, of course: sometimes the objection highlights that the seller’s product or service just isn’t quite right for the buyer. But often the objection relates to an issue which can be addressed. Sales training courses and books on “how to sell” abound with advice on overcoming these objections.

But a far more difficult challenge is when the objection raised is a false one – a smokescreen covering what the real objection is. No amount of pre-empting or discussion or negotiating can overcome a smokescreen objection – because it’s not the real issue. Until the real issue is out on the table, you are essentially stuck.

Smokescreen objections need to be handled in a different way. They can be avoided – by the client raising the real issue in the first place; or if they do arise, by working through them to get to the real issue. But this is far easier said than done.

Why do clients raise smokescreen objections in the first place? They don’t do it just to be difficult – although it might feel that way sometimes. Primarily, they do it because they don’t feel comfortable discussing the real issue.

Perhaps they’re not the real decision-maker – but don’t want to lose face. Or they don’t fully understand some elements of what you’re proposing – but are embarrassed by their lack of knowledge. Perhaps the solution you’re discussing with them will cause political issues in their company that they don’t feel comfortable discussing. Perhaps they don’t have the budget available – but don’t want to be seen as “cheap”.

It could be one or more of a myriad of issues. But usually it will be something that is embarrassing or difficult for them to admit to an outsider.

And that’s the clue as to how to address the problem. The common factor is that – at the moment – they don’t feel comfortable sharing the real issue with you.

In life, some people are more open and candid than others. Some will willingly share their life story and all their problems after 10 minutes – others will remain reserved even after years of friendship. But most of us are essentially cautious with strangers and more open with people we know and trust.

So the secret is: the more trust you have built up with your potential client; the more they believe you have their interests at heart; the less likely they will be to raise smokescreen objections. And if they do raise them, the more likely it is that your follow-up questions and discussions will actually dissolve the smokescreen and get to the real issue.

How is trust built up?

According to Charles Green, author of “Trust-based Selling”, the core components of trust can be summarised in the equation:

T = (C + R + I) / S

Where T is Trust, C is Credibility, R is Reliability, I is Intimacy and S is Self-Orientation.

So in other words, trust can be increased by improving your client’s perception of your credibility and your reliability, by getting “closer” to them, and by decreasing their perception of how much you are interested in your own objectives over theirs.

In my experience, the key area to focus on for most sales professionals is decreasing their Self-Orientation.

Salespeople already know how to establish their credibility, they work on establishing a relationship with their prospective client to establish intimacy; and they do as much as they can to establish their reliability (turning up on time, always following up on agreed actions, etc.). But the area where they most often fall down on is their self-orientation.

Mahan Khalsa uses a wonderful phrase in his book on selling consulting services, “Let’s Get Real Or Let’s Not Play”: Intent counts more than technique.

If you truly have the client’s best interests at heart it will shine through in your interactions with them – even if your sales techniques are somewhat rough around the edges. Conversely, even if your questioning techniques are excellent, you are perfectly using body language to try to establish rapport, and you have killer closing skills; if the client believes that everything you are doing is purely out of self-interest then they will never open up and share with you their real concerns.

This sounds simple in theory. But it goes against the grain of most sales training and advice. Salespeople are trained to take control, to push, to close, close, close. But does your client want to be pushed? Do they want to be out of control of their own buying process? Do they want you to try to close, close, close? All these actions tell the client graphically that you care much, much more about getting the sale than you do about helping them achieve their goals. And the last thing they’re going to do is let you beyond the smokescreen and share their deep seated, personal concerns.

But really start with your client’s interests at heart and everything you do will show that to them. From the questions you ask (and don’t ask) to the way you listen. When your clients truly believe you care (and, of course, this means that you really do care) they will begin to share with you their real concerns. And then you can begin to address them together and proceed towards a sale.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Does Cold Calling Work for Professional Services?
In his landmark book “Managing the Professional Services Firm”, leading professional services guru David Maister labels cold calling as a third-tier “desperation” measure.

Can Maister be wrong? Certainly the vast majority of professionals intensely dislike cold calling and are more than eager to accept the many pronouncements that “cold calling doesn’t work”.

But the reality is that many professional service firms and sole practitioners have used cold calling very successfully to grow their practices.

For example, the firm where I began my career, Gemini Consulting (and its predecessor United Research) fuelled its phenomenal growth in the 90s primarily through cold calling. It used a dedicated “Strategic Executive Relationship Building” team to place calls with senior executives to get meetings for Gemini’s business developers – and it worked exceptionally well.

So the question should not be “does cold calling work?” – but instead “when does it work?” and “how do you make it work?”.

When Does Cold Calling Work Best?
Cold calling in professional services is almost always geared towards getting a meeting with a prospective client. And it will always be, to some degree, a numbers game. While it makes sense to make the call as warm as possible, and to try to target calls to people most likely to be responsive to what you have to sell; there will always be a huge element of the unknown. Most importantly, the key variable is whether the person you call will have a need for your services. And the more pressing the need, the more likely you will be to get a meeting.

That means that cold calling will be more suitable for some services than others. If your service is one that target companies are likely to need most of the time, or if the time that they need to use it is “visible” from the outside – then cold calling is much more likely to be a valuable tactic than if not.

For example, if your expertise is in helping companies to reduce the cost of their external purchases then most companies will have an ongoing need for your services – unless they have just completed a similar programme. In contrast, if your expertise is in helping companies identify acquisition targets – that is a service that fewer companies need, and those that do only need it relatively infrequently.

A cold call for the first service is much more likely to result in a receptive audience than the second. In fact, the chances of reaching a potential client with a pressing need for your services (without the benefit of insider information to guide your targeting) is so unlikely in the second case that it would normally render cold calling economically unviable (although in this case, for high value potential clients, it could be the initial step in an ongoing “nurture marketing” campaign to get front-of-mind with the target client when they do come to need the service).

Another example of a service suitable for cold calling is where the “trigger event”* which drives the need for the service is externally visible. For example, if your service is post-merger integration, or advising companies on recent legislation changes – these events are usually visible to the service provider from outside the prospect – and so can be used to guide the timing and targeting of a successful cold calling campaign.

In the case of Gemini Consulting, the service offer was “solving a ‘red issue’ via business transformation”. The ‘red issue’ was the business problem that kept the executive awake at night and business transformation was a holistic twist on the prevailing hot topic of re-engineering that most companies in the 90s were interested in. The Executive Relationship team did enough homework and were business-savvy enough to be able to identify a number of potential topics that the executive might be worried about – and to engage them in a brief discussion about those topics.

Essentially they did enough to pique the executives interest to secure a meeting with a partner/business developer who was then able to question the client face-to-face to identify what their ‘red issue’ really was – and to position the firm as being able to address it. So the service being sold was general enough that – as long as an issue or big problem could be found – a meeting could be secured.

Alternative Approaches to Cold Calling
Another key determinant in “When Does Cold Calling Work Best?” is the effectiveness of alternative marketing and sales tactics.

Referrals and networking can often be a more effective method than cold calling in identifying a warm prospect and gaining the credibility to secure a face to face meeting. But for many firms and especially sole practitioners who are essentially in start-up mode with no established customers or referral network, they are often not a viable option.

Similarly, public speaking and article writing are two highly effective marketing techniques for professional services – but both have long lead times; and are not a viable option for those who don’t have the skill or experience in speaking and writing to make them work.

So sometimes, cold calling is the only viable option to gain short-term sales.

How Do You Make Cold Calling Work?
With professional services, the target client often does not fully understand the depth of their issues and challenges. And because of the intangible nature of professional services; they find it difficult to properly evaluate and establish your credibility as a supplier. So when selling professional services it’s vital to enter into a dialogue to explore the client’s problem to help them discover its true impact and causes. And it’s vital to demonstrate your value, credibility and trustworthiness to the client during the selling process – otherwise they will not build up the confidence to allow you to “take care of their baby”.

Unfortunately, cold calling itself does not inherently help with these factors. Simply calling up to ask for a meeting does nothing to identify the clients problems and their impact – and does not demonstrate value, credibility or trustworthiness to the client.

The cold-calling approaches which work best for professional services are the ones which do allow these two factors to be addressed.

So an effective cold call will be one which:

• Delivers value to the client in the call itself – or more likely offers immediate value from the meeting to be arranged (for example, discussion of a relevant research study, case examples from similar clients, or details of upcoming legislation changes affecting the client)
• Allows an exploratory dialogue about the client’s business challenges to take place which both qualifies the client (allowing them to “hold their hand up” to express interest) and allows the professional to role-model what it will be like to work with them in future: insightful questions, good interpersonal skills, modesty, candour, etc.
• Gives the client confidence that the professional can be trusted – for example through subtle third-party referencing or simply the way the professional handles themselves throughout the call

For these reasons, it is usually more effective in the professional makes the cold call themselves. A highly skilful telesales person – as in the case of the Gemini Executive Relationship Building team – will be able to position the value and qualify the client – but an interaction with them will not help inform the client what it will be like working with the professional as much as talking to the professional themself will.

Of course, if the professional has a poor telephone manner, or a real phobia of cold calling; then they won’t do a good job of this either – and so it would be best to leave it to a third party. And sometimes the skills of a third party – who is used to cold calling for a living – can outweigh the specific knowledge and capabilities of the professional themselves. But even then, they need to be not only skilful at cold calling, but also knowledgeable about the firm, its clients, and its services – and able to leave “the right impression”.

Warming Up the Call
In addition to the way the call itself is handled, the more that can be done beforehand to make the call “warm” the better. This could include:

• Using your existing client and contact base to at least make a connection to the target client
• Researching the client and their company beforehand to identify potential business issues that might be of interest
• Sending relevant thought leadership material in advance to establish credibility – and maybe even getting them to call you
• Calling other people in the company as “entry points” to get their opinions (for example to confirm or reshape initial hypotheses about the client’s top business issues) and get a referral to the client themselves
• Working positively with the client’s gatekeeper to ensure a “positive mention” when the call is set up

The Importance of Attitude
Another key factor in making a cold call a success is the attitude with which it is made. Professionals sell mainly to senior executives – but senior executives hate to be “sold to”. A professional who makes a call with the need to sell uppermost in his or her mind is likely to trigger defensiveness in the client. Paradoxically, a professional is much more likely to make a sale if they make the call with an objective of finding out if a client really needs their services, and if so of beginning to form a productive business relationship.

Cold Calling Works for Professionals – If you do it Right
In summary: cold calling may not be suitable for every professional service firm – but let’s be clear: for the right firms, at the right time, and done in the right way; it can be a huge driver of profitable growth.

* For more on Trigger Events see Craig Elias’ SHiFT Selling Blog

Popularity: 19% [?]