If you are not going to follow up with contacts from a conference, don’t go.  You would miss the whole purpose for attending the event!  Upon completion of a presentation a speaker’s goal is to continue the conversation and build stronger relationships.  Speakers can continue the dialog with attendees, clients, prospects and network contacts by: 

1.       Following up with attendees who asked specific questions before, during or after their presentation.  (This requires judicious quick note taking on the back of business cards for future reference.)

2.       Contacting clients who attended their presentation to get their thoughts or for a critique on how you did. 

3.       Asking clients and prospects who attended if they had any additional questions regarding the content.

4.       Reaching out to clients or prospects who did NOT attend with relevant materials or information you obtained at a conference that may be of interest. 

5.       Calling and meeting with co-presenters to explore future networking opportunities. 

6.       Publishing the content of your presentation.

All of the activities mentioned in this three part series on “A Speaker Who Knows How to Work It” occur outside of the conference.  The conference becomes a means to an end, not the end. 

As Spring approaches and more promotional materials for upcoming conferences begin arriving in the mail, I’ve heard many clients are assessing if conference attendance is worth the cost - - which today can be significant.  We are a big advocate of preplanning to get the most bang for your buck.  If you are a speaker at the conference you have lots of relationship development opportunities with both clients and prospects that don’t even occur at the conference!   

1. You can call clients or prospects for their advice and input on your presentation topic. 
2. You can invite contacts to be panel members for your presentation.
3. You can personally invite clients and prospects to your presentation, preferably by phone to continue a conversation flow. 
4. You can ask your contacts if there are other individuals in their organization who would benefit from attending your presentation and invite them too. 

These pre-conference conversations can result in the following benefits:   

-  It’s a great reason to call lots of your contacts to touch base and up your visibility in the marketplace.

-  You reinforce your credibility and industry expertise based on the presentation content. 

-  It reminds people of you and your services oftentimes prompting statements such as, “I’m so glad you called. . . we were thinking about  . . .”

-  Contacts are flattered that you seek their advice and feel good about giving it to you. (nurturing a relationship)

-  You can prepare a better presentation for your audience with greater knowledge as to leading industry challenges.

-  The conversation can validate your presentation conclusions leading to increased confidence in your offering.

-  You expand your network by client referrals to invite others within their organization. 

-  You may learn more about your client’s or prospect’s specific corporate challenges by asking the age-old question at the end of your conversation, “So how are things with you?” and listening.   

All of the activities described in this three part series on “A Speaker Who Knows How to Work It” occur outside of the actual conference.  The conference becomes a means to an end, not the end. 

I would like to collect some stories about professionals artfully righting a sales effort that fallen in a ditch.  Here is one, for starters:

An executive recruiter accidentally called the client by the wrong name during a sales pitch.  Who hasn’t at least once in a career?  He apologized, but it was not his day, and he did it again.  The third time  he did it, he caught himself and without saying another word, picked put on his coat and started putting away his things.  The client asked what he was doing, to which he responded cheerily, “I would never hire somone who got my name wrong three times at an important meeting.  I suspect you wouldn’t either, so I don’t want to waste more of your time.  Thank you so much for the opportunity.  I wish you all success with the search.”  He had read his client correctly; the man laughed and told the recruiter to take his coat of, because he wanted to continue the discussion.  The recruiter got the search.

Do any of you have good stories about artfully turning around a difficult sales situation?

When two people who haven’t worked much with each other first go on a sales call together, one often dominates the conversation with the prospective client. When two people go on a sales call together and one is much senior to the other, the senior one tends to do most the talking. Anyone who sells with Maxwell Flushover (name changed—actually, this could be one of a dozen different people I know) learns that he will do most talking. In cases like these, what is the second seller to do?

She (or he) has several options:

1> Sit silently trying to look wise and interested. This may be good for starters, but if it goes on too long, the client may wonder why she is there.

2> Take notes. Good, but if it is all she does, the client may perceive her as junior help.

3> Fight with the colleague for airspace. This will alienate both the client and the colleague.

4> Take the role of monitor, carefully watching and listening to the client for visual or verbal cues that her colleague may miss during the exchange. When she sees one she will insert a question, like:

• I sense that you aren’t comfortable with that idea. Is there something you could share with us?
• You said there were three reasons you want to do this. Did we miss the third one?

It is, of course, this last alternative that I am advocating. As anyone with a lot of selling experience knows, a monitor can contribute hugely to a sales meeting. Every firm should have an understanding that anyone not speaking goes immediately into monitor mode. Everyone should know that the monitor will speak seldom, but when she does, everyone else backs off immediately.A good monitor can make the difference between winning and losing. The furrowed brow of the General Counsel, unnoticed by the first seller who is speaking to the CEO, may veil a concern that will go unspoken until later, unless an observant monitor draws him out. And the concern only voiced after you leave the room is the most hurtful to your cause.

Establishing the monitor’s role as an important one in all sales meetings counters the implicit and insidious bias that important people talk during sales meetings, while others listen. The job can be done by the most senior person on the team—and should be whenever someone else is speaking. Indeed, to instill the role in a firm, senior people must model it. And they must complement those who have effectively monitored their exchanges with a client.

There are no second sellers.

(This post is another in our series of Rainmaking Problems.  We invite your comments on this problem and would also welcome any problems you would like to submit to get comments from other readers.)

I received the following question from a reader in Singapore.  He was responding to Rain Making Problem #9: Lead Generation when Your Back is to the Wall to which he refers several times.  What would you suggest?

Hi all,

Ford, I just want to say first that I think what you’re doing is great. I was so unhappy with my previous firm, I set up my own practice last year with just one client. From what the client told me before I quit, I was going to be extremely busy just servicing them. However, for various reasons they have sent me only about one-quarter to one-third of the work they indicated they would send me before I quit, so your books and your website have been a life saver for me.

I’m sorry that I don’t have any tips for Lenore, but I do have a question which relates to Mel’s point on focusing on serving rather than winning. I like to think I provide first-rate service. I’m not aware of anyone else in my geographical region and area of practice who provides service and does work to the standard I do. The only trouble is, how does one show that to a potential client? The way I see it, the scope for doing this is pretty limited: you can only go so far in writing proposals, and you may be limited to just one, or if you’re lucky, two meetings with the potential client to talk over their needs, etc. Otherwise, “We’re great. Our service is awesome and we’re much better than everybody else” just sounds like another sales pitch that the potential client also heard from the competition. It is only when you actually land the work that you can show what you do.

So, do you have any tips to share on focusing on servicing during the sales process? Thanks in advance if you do.

In a sling in Singapore,

Willem

Of course, I am responsible for the in-a-sling close. Forgive me Willem; I couldn’t stop myself.

I sat with a friend today who described frustration with a colleague who had lost a sale my friend had been pursuing for a long time. The client had asked the colleague, whom I will call Ernest, if he had ever done work in a foundry. Ernest had answered, “Yes, but only once and it was over twenty years ago for a company that was so different from yours that there isn’t much relevance to your situation.” After the meeting, Ernest had argued that a less detailed response would have been misleading, and so, dishonest.

First, I want to commend Ernest for his desire to be honest.  There is, unfortunately, too much lying in selling situations and it gives selling a bad name.  I do not think Ernest was being prudish nor that his colleague wanted him to do something unprincipled. Yet, I think his answer was a mistake.

In making his defense of his answer, he committed at least two logical fallacies. First, he assumed he could read the client’s mind. Ernest presumed that the question was about relevant client experience. What if it wasn’t? For example, it may have been a simple devise to get Ernest to talk to get a sense of what he would be like to work with. If so, and I think this at least as likely as the reason Ernest assumed, he showed the client that he was likely to bore him with unwanted detail and, worse, that he was none too savvy.

Or the client could have wanted to know how Ernest felt about spending a good part of the next few months in a place with a lot of banging and crashing. We will never know. If so, Ernest’s answer showed no tolerance or interest in such a place. Unless you know why a person is asking a question, you don’t really know how to answer.

Second, he assumed that an accurate but imprecise answer would be misleading and dishonest. The distinction between accuracy and precision should be kept in mind when answering client questions. An accurate statement, such as Ford Harding is between 20 and 70 years old, can be imprecise. And a precise one; Ford Harding is 18 years, four months and six days old; can be inaccurate. When we answer questions, we often make tradeoffs, explicitly or implicitly, between accuracy and precision.  An answer that is sufficiently precise in one context may not be in another.  If a policeman asks a young person’s age at a bar, he requires a precision not usually necessary, for example.

Answers to the question, Have you ever worked in a foundry?, such as Yes or Yes, but it was a while ago are both accurate, if imprecise in that they don’t give much detail. If they satisfy the client and are true, he may be put off by having more information pressed upon him. He can follow up with more questions, if he wants to.

If you are concerned that you may have misled him or that you may appear to have been evasive if he does ask for detail, the solution is simple: ask before you tell more. Yes. Is experience in a foundry important to you? His answer will guide you to the right level of precision. For example, he might answer, Only in that it would be better, if you knew what it is like to spend months in a place with so much noise, before you take the assignment. This might open the opportunity to describe work you did at a heavy metal stamping plant or the noise your child’s rock band makes when it rehearses in your living room, information relevant but not obvious.

But Ernest assumed he knew what the client was thinking and the level of detail the client wanted. Ernest is a nice man and generally good to be around.  But trying to read another’s intentions, as he did in this case, can be an annoying thing to do. How would you feel, if you asked a travel agent if she had ever been to Sweden, and you got a lengthy, qualified answer which seemed to suggested she wasn’t certain about anything on the subject, when all you really wanted to know is if the currency there is the Euro?

Because this blog is written for professionals, I have avoided using examples from product sales. But I like this story, and it makes a point.

My friend, Dan Morley, who always has a twinkle in his eye, owns a furniture dealership that was recently asked to bid on furnishing a corporate headquarters. Dan’s firm was shortlisted to present its capabilities along with several competing firms. His firm was given the last slot of the back-to-back presentations, an hour in the middle of the afternoon. Deadly!

Dan and his team arrived at the client site in time for lunch and went to a restaurant across the street. The waitress, obviously in her element, was talking with each of her customers and leaving most of them laughing. Harriet, for that was her name, asked Dan what his team was in the area for, and when she learned, she said, “That’s simple! Just tell them that the furniture is BE-U-TIFUL, that the price is REA-SONABLE, and that everyone will be HAPPY!”

Later, when Dan stood up to introduce his team, he was faced with four men with their ties loosened and sleeves rolled up sitting at a table littered with old coffee cups and stacked with materials left by his competitors. The clients looked exhausted. On the spot, Dan ad libbed, “We can give you the forty-five minute presentation you asked us to prepare or I can give you the five minute synopsis. Which would you like?” The clients stared at each other. They had been listening to presentation after presentation all day. They were sick of sitting and listening, while the dealers all praised themselves and their products. To a person they opted for the synopsis.

So, Dan told them about the waitress and how she said the job was simple. “And,” he concluded, “I’m going to tell you what she told us to say: The furniture is BE-U-TI-FUL, the price is REA-SONABLE, and everybody will be HAPPY!” Everyone laughed, and the rest of the meeting consisted of an informal give and take. The clients gave Dan’s firm the business, and the next day, Harriet received a large basket of flowers.

Here are some lessons from this story:

• Take pity on the clients you present to and remember that most presentations are long-winded and repetitive. The words Dan borrowed from the waitress made the same point that other firms had taken an hour to make.

• The clients didn’t doubt the ability of Dan’s firm (or any of the other firms) to meet their need. That being the case, they were now looking for someone they would like to work with. That is often the case when final selections are made. So, give them a sense of what you would be like to work with during your presentation.

• A client who laughs is half sold.

• A rainmaker recognizes good advice when he hears it, regardless of the source.

This carnival has selected a posting from this blog,  Who’s in Your Audience, originally published here on May 12, 2008, for inclusion in its Professionally Speaking category.  Because our blog is not primarilly focused on public speaking, we are flattered to be included.  For additional good postings on speaking skills, visit the carnival.

You have just delivered a speech on the effect of the new tax law on employment expenses that packed the emotional wallop of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s I Had a Dream speech. 

The association audience rose to clap, whistle and cheer, calling you back for an encore.  You gave them some quick insights into increasing deductions for charitable donations, which was followed by over five minutes of heartfelt applause, forcing you to the podium three times to wave and bow. 

Later, after the high from presenting had worn off, you asked one of the conference organizers for a list of people who had attended your session.  She told you that the organization didn’t keep track of attendance at the smaller breakout sessions.  During the following week you hoped for calls from members of the audience, but they never came.

You never knew it, but three of the attendees intended to call you, but didn’t get around to it.  Six months later, a fourth thought of calling after arguing with her tax advisor, but couldn’t remember your name.  The other sixteen people who attended the breakout session never thought of you again. 

Though the audience was smaller than you remembered it, had you actually talked with the four people who thought about calling you, you would have achieved an impressive twenty percent follow-up rate.

After giving a speech, if you don’t follow up with attendees, your chances of converting any of them into clients drops to low single digits.  But, you can’t follow up with them unless you know who they are.  That means you have to get their names and contact information and often, as in our example, the organizers of the event can’t tell you who was there.

Withhold Slides – Not Always a Good Idea

Speakers have developed a number of ways to get the information they need. Many withhold copies of their slides before and at the event and then offer to send them to anyone in the audience who provides a business card.  

Though easy and obvious, this approach has several drawbacks.  First, it frustrates those attendees who want to take notes on hard copy of your materials.  This clearly runs counter to your goals, and, lest you forget, the goals of the conference organizers who have given you this opportunity.  It will also be ineffective, if you allow the sponsoring organization to post your slides on its website, providing the attendees an alternative access.  Denying your hosts the use of your materials will frustrate them a second time.

Offer Additional Materials

You can avoid these problems by providing copies of your slides at the event and then offering additional materials, such as a whitepaper, to anyone who leaves a business card.  Of course, someone will have to develop the whitepaper—a big increase in the work required to prepare.  Most firms post such documents on their websites for all to see, anyway.

Pass out an Attendance Sheet

More artful speakers prepare an attendance sheet, with columns for each attendee’s name, company, email address and phone number.  A few minutes before the session is scheduled to start, the speaker or her colleague gives the sheet on a clipboard to someone in the front row and asks him to sign in and pass it on.  At the end of the session, she collects the sheet from wherever it has been left in the back of the room.  If you ask, the sponsors of the event may discourage this tactic.  It doesn’t work well for large audiences.

Pass out a Survey

During my days as a location consultant; helping companies select places for factories, offices, and research labs; I gave a presentation to a group of human resource officers on labor markets.  It was at the peak of an economic boom with labor shortages in many areas.  At the beginning of the presentation, I passed out a ten question survey of how companies were dealing with tight labor markets.  There was a place at the bottom for participants to provide contact information to which I could send the survey results.  That information was what I was after.

Better still, Question #3 asked how the respondents’ companies would address the labor shortage.  They were asked to mark all the things they would do from a list that included raising wages, lowering hiring standards, advertising more heavily and other tactics.  Among the tactics was move operations to a new location.  Everyone who indicated that her firm was planning to use that tactic was a potential user of our services.  I still feel a bit smug about that one.

Before reading this you may be interested to read my previous posting No Time to Rehearse? You’re Fired!

At many professional firms, preparing for a sales meeting means many hours spent preparing a PowerPoint presentation deck that will double as a leave-behind. This document and maybe a proposal, too, have been through several iterations, proofed and reproofed, adjusted, adapted and then admired by the sales team who may or may not remember to thank the graphics specialist who stayed up all night incorporating last minute changes.

With document in hand and confidence buoyed, the sales team grabs a cab to take them to the client’s office.  During the fifteen minute ride they decide what they will say and who will say it.

This is insane.

Long ago I was put in charge of a struggling office that was losing pitch after pitch. To turn the situation around, I did post mortem interviews with as many people who had hired other firms as I could.  I used a process for the interview that avoided biasing the clients’ responses (see Chapter 24 in the second edition of my book, Rain Making: How to Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field for a detailed description of the process.).  I must have done twenty such interviews over several months, sometimes with separate members of the client’s selection committee.

I first asked the client why she had chosen the other firm, letting her prioritize her reasons without any suggestions from me.  I then asked what our competitor had done well, what we had done well and not so well, again without offering any suggestions.

Once I had her view of the decision, I asked her to compare what we did with what the competitor did, starting from first contact.  One issue at a time I asked how each firm handled the initial phone inquiry from the client, how each handled the fact finding meeting, the proposal, the pitch meeting, the leave-behind document, and follow up.

Not once was the proposal or leave-behind mentioned by any of the clients until I brought it up.  Not once!  When I did bring them up, it was clear the clients didn’t remember them very well, if at all.  I suspect that many of them never so much as glanced at the leave-behind.  The deck or pitch book were mentioned by two or three clients, all referring to one image, a particularly compelling diagram our competitor had concocted.

What they did remember and what all of them volunteered without prompting was how our people and our competitors had handled themselves in face-to-face interactions with their people.  This they could talk about in detail and with emotion. This is what they cared about!

Like so many other firms we had been putting all our energies into things that mattered little and treating cavalierly that which really counted.  It was insane!
And when we fixed it by taking rehearsals seriously—putting in time and effort where it mattered—we began to win again.
 

For more advice like this, please see Ford Hardings’ new book: Rain Making, Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field, 2nd Edition

“Rain Making, in its new edition demonstrates its position as the single most sensible, accessible guide to building a professional practice…”
David Maister, author of Strategy and the Fat Smoker and co-author of The Trusted Advisor (with Charles Green and Robert Galford)