LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT SOME of the worst salespeople I have known. They are professional services people - accountants, lawyers, consultants, financial advisors, mortgage brokers, and the like.
Did I ever tell you about the best consultants or accountants I've met? Lawyers, financial consultants? Yes? Well actually they're in both groups.
The groups are not mutually exclusive.
Let me just qualify what I am saying so I have a fighting chance of retaining friends who happen to be consultants, advisors, lawyers and accountants. The fact that they are ordinary salespeople is no reflection on their professionalism to do what they are retained to do. Which I know is excellent.
Just that personal service professionals do not like selling. I will rephrase that they hate the idea of selling.
"Build the practice and they will come" approach.
Apologies to Kevin Costner and one of my favourite movies.
They truly believe if they provide a good service that their practice will build automatically and they will be successful.
Well not quite. No cigar. Just yet.
Their practices will grow incrementally, more by default. But not sufficiently fast to satisfy the owners, defend them from faster more savvy competitors or take them from a practice to a true business.
Some wanting to change this paradigm will go and do a sales course and learn the sales process. Full marks for effort. But unlikely to have a tinker's chance of improvement .
Because the value of gaining sales knowledge will not be applied frequently enough for the right habits and attitudes be created. So we are back to square one.
So what is the alternative?
Let's keep it simple. Real simple.
Once consultants and professional services practitioners realise this they have a rubicon moment to not only increase their chance to attract new business but also gain improvement in their processes which will greatly enhance their service.
A true opportunity to stone two crows with the one yonnie.
Instead of learning the complexity of the sales process. Just adopt processes that will both exceed clients' experiences as well as gain you new business fees, both from your existing clients as well as new customers.
Adopting processes that could do both? Yes. This change would form the basis of better client work practices and also put you in a good position to be recommended as the service of choice.
So yes, meeting your client needs is critical but it is only part of the story.
It requires exceptional client experience. Most would agree but not know how to achieve this.
So to strive for great client outcomes which lead to a major increase in business consider the acronym AEDAA:
Attention Engage Desire Action Acclamation
ATTENTION
Gain the ATTENTION of your target demographic group. Until you have taken the time to decide who they are you will never know when you come across them.
Anybody can attract customers by sheer chance- some ideal, some clogging up your client list and others who are high maintenance and low yield.
There are good clients for you and then there are good clients for your competitors. Its knowing the difference.
What are the psychometrics and sociometrics that define your best clients. Their age, gender, roles, postcode, personality traits, industry categories, to start with.
Take your top 20% client, and aggregate their features. You will be surprised how common they are. As they say, birds of a feather flock together.
Next step is to hangout where they do. Where do their interests lie? Football, Yachting, Quilting, whatever. If you are in B2B then join their industry association. Your current clients know people who know people who would also be ideal clients for you.
Better a big fish in a small pond.
We like to be with people who are like us.
Get ATTENTION by not being beige and forgettable. Be different. Be noticeable.
What is your point of difference?
Marketing guru Seth Godin authored a wonderful book on this topic titled Purple Cow. In essence when you go for a relaxing drive through the countryside and you arrive home. How many cows did you see? It might take a moment to remember if any. But if there had been one purple cow you wouldn't hesitate to remember.
So what is your Purple Cow? Maybe it is your incredible high level of service, maybe your pink vans, or is it your giant pineapple in the front lobby which has you stand out like the proverbial (ie. the purple cow)? Whatever. But make it unique.
Ian Molly Meldrum is a unique and quirky character. I shared a friendship and accommodation with Ian in London in the 70s. His (and my) greatest influence was The Beatles. When he had a chance to meet his hero John Lennon he fainted. Imagine how many people John Lennon would have met, likely in the thousands, before his untimely death. But he always remembered Ian as that "crazy Aussie" that fainted and fell flat on his face in the London club when he met him.
That was Molly's Purple Cow which served him well later getting exclusive access to the super group.
Also ATTENTION in meetings with prospects and clients. When you meet with them in their office make sure they are present. What do you say? Yes, they may just have had an argument with their partner, got off the phone to a client about late deliveries, or simply just distracted.
So make sure they are mentally present as well as physically there . Otherwise anything you say or discuss will not be heard or remembered or acted upon later.
Best way to get their attention is to focus your and their attention on them. Compliment something personal or an interest or a sport you know is important to them.
What do consultants and advisors meeting with clients and prospects do? They are always in a hurry. Time is tight. So they launch straight in without the 'small talk ' which has such an important role at this point of a meeting.
'Tune in' the other person's frequency to your's before you move into the business part of the meeting.
Think about the Australian coast watchers in New Guinea during the war risking their life to pass information about Japanese shipping movements . They would crank up their valve powered short wave and start calling Port Moresby all the time swivelling the frequency modulator. They knew that there was no point transmitting until Port Moresby acknowledged their plea for attention.
ENGAGE
The key to today's age is engagement. We are bombarded by thousands of stimuli each day that are filtered out and only the most pressing and beneficial get through.
Plus there are so many ways and means we can ENGAGE. For many years it was restricted to face to face, mail and telephone. Then came radio and then television. Then fax arrived . Wow did we think it was Christmas every day.
Herald in the Internet and the permutation of engaging people has progressed exponentially.
As a senior executive from Disney visiting a conference in Melbourne said last month at a breakfast he was asked to address:
Are you engaging with your prospects and clients on as many platforms as possible?
It is a question, he said, is asked at every meeting of his team at the Disney studio.
That is what has become expected today.
We can only best ENGAGE if we know what our clients are interested and concerned about. How do we do that? We set out to understand what their concerns are, their problems and their pain points which can only be done through asking probing questions.
Questions that not only reveal their goals but their deep seated concerns and problems.
As Rob Jolles says, former head trainer for Xerox the pioneer of sales training, prospects only make decisions to solve problem. BIG problems.
Whilst many consultants and advisors know they must ask questions, they usually do without knowing the protocol and hierarchy of questions. Most are superficial first degree non probing questions. And their questions are left at that level.
Often the level of probing questions can be directly linked to our own self image. Only asking questions which will not upset our rapport and register a negative response.
SPIN Selling , which was released by Hathaway gives an excellent example and structure of questions that every professional services practitioner should study to be more effective. SPIN being Specific, Problem (Identifying), Implication and Needs (or benefits) questions.
We must aspire to be not just a provider but to esteemed position of trusted advisor.
One based on Trust and centred around their needs and their wants. This can only come from an honest concern for our clients welfare, by knowing their goals and desires.
Which come from questions!
DESIRE
DESIRE is what drives decisions. DESIRE to gain pleasure or avoid pain.
To help prospects and clients make decisions, to avert procrastination, we must 'dial up' the benefits or aversion to losses.
"What if" questions help our prospects envisage a future if they proceed the path they are currently travelling or if they decide to change direction by making a decision.
We should not expect the person in front of us to automatically be able to imagine their future, but that is our professional skill to guide them down that path.
A good principle to use is that expressed by the President of Mattel:
"Never offer a solution until you first have the prospect verbalise their problem"
This is where we need to become big on questions and slow on statements.
It is human nature when we have endless time to make decisions, even for things we desire, we tend to put off because our fear of being wrong or a fear of failing as a result.
To increase the level of desire and the need for action we can create a sense of scarcity. Scarcity of opportunity, availability, profit, or time.
I am a good case study. Best expressed: I have some 364 days to buy one important Christmas gift, my wife's present. In all fairness I start thinking about it a week before Christmas Day. Come Christmas Eve morning I am now on a mission. By midday I am getting a little nervous as the count down begins in earnest. My level of desire is quickly rising like a barometer on a hot summer's day. Money becomes less important, because the solution is a matter of life and death. My personal safety is at risk.
This level of urgency in the financial advisory area comes with bass statement deadlines, ASIC reporting or our year end annual tax return. Or minimising tax through superannuation instalments before the end of the financial year.
The level of pain or gain must rise to be greater than that of inertia before we move into action.
ACTION
Our job is not done until we clearly have actions to be taken. Many professional service representatives often stop short. Thinking that if we give a prospect all the information that they will automatically make decision to go ahead. Wrong and in many cases a fatal error in getting a prospect on board.
A major error is that we give far too much information for a simple decision to go ahead or not .
We have blinded them with our cleverness and suitably impressed them with our knowledge.
The next words likely to come out of their mouths are " thank you we will take this home, (office or wherever) and think about it"
What we need to do is to take an assumptive stance and set a time table sign off," how are you placed next week to meet ?"
So before the initial meeting ends, a clear timetable should be proposed and diarised. Anything less will cost time and money and increase doubt that the project will go ahead as discussed.
Is that the end. Well for most it is.
But not for good professionals on their way to being great.
If we had a prospect which has now turned into a client we are now behind. What the? Yes we are now behind. We have one less prospect than we started with.
We should see our business model as a continuum. Otherwise just like everyone else it becomes a roller coaster of feast and famine.
ACCLAMATION
We started by saying there is nothing that professional services people like worse than when they have to sell their services.
We are wrong.
There is one thing they hate worse. Asking for referrals!
Well we have a viable alternative to this very important element in the business development continuum.
That is to identify our brand advocates.
People who are pleased as punch with the service we have given and more than willing to recommend to others.
Once the project is completed a thank you letter is sent to our client for their business and a request which asks them to rate our service :
1/ on a scale of 1 to 10 would they give a value of the service they received?
2/ what is the likelihood that they would recommend on a scale of 1 to 10?
First this exercise tells clients that you are looking to build your client base. Often it is thought, wrongly, that you have enough clients and not looking for more, or whilst we feel it would be top of mind to recommend us, in real truth it just never enters their mind.
Second by identifying those who would give their experience an 8, 9 or 10 you could follow up to ask them for a testimonial to be placed on your web page.
Also a direct request if they can recommend to associates and others.
Third to the rest you might ask them with subsequent questionnaires what it would take to improve their rating.
SUMMARY
AEDAA offers a sustainable process that is repeatable and reteachable for all in your professional team to contribute to getting new clients.
Without relying on the practice rainmaker.
It also provides simple practice process to deliver superior service and enhance the client experience.
Why not try it. Nothing to loose and everything to gain
Good luck!
Footnote: For every statement there is an exception. The best salesperson I know is in professional services. I would go as far as saying that he and his brother established the most successful financial services practice in Australia 50 years ago and Tony Bongiorno still today does 35 new business presentations a week in Sydney and Melbourne. When the norm is more like 15. Without doubt in my experience he is the best salesperson of any product in Australia. Tony lives by many of the principles in this post.
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Other posts by the author are:
12 ways to pick Low Hanging Fruit
14 Keys to Effective Checklist creation
LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT SOME of the worst salespeople I have known. They are professional services people - accountants, lawyers, consultants, financial advisors, mortgage brokers, and the like.
