In an excellent recent post, Jeffery James writes of the mistakes experts make when teaming with a salesperson to sell a complex technical product.  They are all too true; so true that they make me cringe.  I could cite a few more.

In fairness, though, there are also mistakes that clueless salespeople make when teaming with a management consultant, accountant, engineer or other professional to sell a professional service.  These include:

• Believing that a good salesperson can sell anything and trying to sell a complex service as if it were a widget.  Some salespeople are good at selling professional services and some aren’t, however good they are at selling something else.
• Not respecting the expert’s expertise.  I have seen more than one salesperson try to structure a service without the expert or ignoring the expert’s advice.  This most often happens when the salesperson tries to negotiate a reduction in scope for a client that wants a price decrease without the expert’s input.  They may make the sale, but the results are seldom pretty.
• Not recognizing when it is inappropriate to sell.  Professionals are in an advisory role and there are times when it just isn’t appropriate to try to sell something.  A consultant whose firm was acquired by a technology company arranged a meeting with the skeptical CIO at one of his clients to explain how the change in ownership would improve his firm’s service.  Not recognizing that this was an educational meeting and probably never having met with a C-Suite executive before, the salesperson tried to sell the CIO something.  The CIO felt tricked into a sales meeting which was not what he had agreed to or expected.  I could cite several analogous cases.  This kind of behavior can cost the firm a client.
• Not respecting the expert’s relationship with the client.  The expert has a qualitatively different relationship with the client than most business developers will ever have.  Not necessarily better, but different, because it is based on the client’s respect for the professional’s knowledge and advice.  Some salespeople act as if the relationship between the professional and the client didn’t exist, even though the client and professional have known each other for years.  I have known cases where the client told the professional that he didn’t want to see the salesperson again.
• Not keeping the expert informed.  Business developers will sometimes run with an opportunity without keeping the expert informed, even when the expert is working at the client and turned up the lead.

Of course, many business developers don’t make these mistakes.  To avoid these problems with those who might, a professional firm should:

• Hire the right kind of salesperson:  Those who would sell professional services have to be smart, curious and eager to learn about the nuances of the service in question, and respectful of the professional’s expertise.  They should also be tactful on-the-job sales trainers.  When possible recruit some of your business developers from your professional team, using a few years in full-time sales positions, as a part of their career development.
• Set ground rules for every meeting.  Make clear what the client’s expectations are for any meeting and what behaviors are appropriate and what are not.
• Set ground rules for every pursuit.  The same can be said for every opportunity pursued.
• Assign primary and secondary relationship responsibilities for key members of a client organization.  Both business developers and firm professional staff members should have such responsibilities.

When a sales-savvy professional is teamed with a professions-savvy salesperson, they can work wonders.  It’s a combination worth striving for.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 4:58 AM and is filed under Account Development, Business Development, Selling Professional Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.