Some of the material in this posting appears in the second edition of Ford Harding’s book, Rain Making, which will be published in February and contains about 40 percent new content.

What do you do when a client brings up a matter she is clearly concerned about without realizing that it is something you can help with?  I must hear this question twenty times a year.  And it’s a troublesome one. 

Of course, there are some people to whom you can say, “Hillary, we have a lot of experience at managing come backs.  Let me tell you what we can do.”  But we have to know a person pretty well to know that they will accept this sudden shift into sales mode.  Many others will wish they had never brought up the matter and extricate themselves from the conversation as fast as they can.  They come away feeling that you have been insensitive or, worse, pushy and will be careful to avoid bringing up problems with you again.

Rainmakers deal with this problem simply and directly by asking permission to go into sales mode.  They say such things as:

• You didn’t come to lunch today to be subjected to a sales call, but you’ve brought up a subject that we actually know a lot about and I think we can really help you.  But I’m not trying to push anything at you.  So, just let me know if you want to talk about it.
• Would it be all right if I put on my sales hat on for a minute?

After saying these words, the rainmakers shut up and listen to what the client has to say.  If she shows any hesitation about accepting the offer, the rainmaker backs off immediately.  More commonly, he client accepts, and a sales meeting begins.

 

Whether it is by cutting costs or increasing revenues, many professionals help their clients make more money. When selling to a client, it’s a good idea to determine how much money that will be, usually through a series of questions. Once the dollar amount is estimated, a rainmaker will sometimes go one step further, letting the client visualize what she would do with that money, if she had it. Doing so will remind the client of the urgency of getting the job done, so reducing the risk of a delay in hiring you. It will also help focus the client on the value of your services rather than on some preconceived idea of what they should cost. Here are two examples of such two-stepped series of questions.

Issue: Potential Real Estate Sale

Step One: Determine the Value

Q: How many acres did he donate to the college?
A: Ninety, but a third of that is wetlands.

Q: What is it worth per acre?
A: The developable acres have been appraised at $____________, the wetlands at $____________.

Q: How many acres would you be willing to sell?
A: We want to keep fifteen developable acres adjacent to the campus and all the wetlands. We will sell the rest.

Step Two: Letting Her Spend the Money

Q: Let’s see . . . That totals to about $ __________ and if you can acquire the old Peggoty farm, giving the site access to Dunmore Road, the value could as much as double. What would the college do with that money if you had it?

A: We badly need a new chemistry lab if we are to remain competitive in the recruitment of faculty and students.

Issue: Hiring the Right Talent

Step One: Determining the Value

Q: I can think of several reasons to get this position filled quickly. Which ones are you most concerned about?

A: I’m worried that some of the other research team members might jump ship. They all get offers from our competitors all the time, and if they sense the project is in trouble, they would be more open to accepting one.
Q: How would a loss of two or three of the researchers affect the project?

A: It could delay its completion by anywhere from four months to a year.

Q: What would a delay in the project cost the company in lost revenue for each month of delay?

A: We project sales of the A30 to build quickly to $____________ a month in the first six months.

Q: How much of a delay do you feel the recruitment and integration of three new team members in addition to the lead scientist would cause?

A: That would set us back eight months at the very least.

Step Two: Letting Her Spend the Money

Q: Ouch. If that could be reduced to a two-month delay, what would the additional funds be used for?

A: We cut dividends last year and want that money to restore them to previous levels.

From Flip to BLIP: On Tuesday we covered The Amazing Flip or how a rainmaker can sometimes flip roles with the prospective client and get the client to try to convince the rainmaker of desirability of her firm as a client. Today, we will turn to BLIPs. BLIP is an acronym for Bottom Line Impacting Project, a term which some firms use to describe the largest opportunities they pursue, the ones most important to win. To classify as a BLIP, a project usually must have a fee above a certain amount.

One international firm limited BLIPs to those projects with fees expected to run over $4,000,000. A friend of mine, whom I will call George, was the head of marketing there. A smart man who knew a lot about selling professional services, George believed in the persuasive value of good data and he analyzed the firm’s sales data carefully. Every year he would determine the win-rate on BLIPs. This was an important statistic in a business where all projects were competitively bid, with four or five firms duking it out as finalists. In its best year, George’s firm won over sixty percent, an astounding number given the competitive nature of the business.

Then George did something interesting. He looked through the firm’s old lead lists, which management used to track opportunities the different offices were pursuing, for the date that each one of the BLIPs first appeared on it. He used this data, to determine how many months the firm was actively pursuing each project. He then calculated the win rate for each one and determined win rates by the length of each pursuit to see if there was a correlation. The results were stunning: For BLIPs the firm had pursued for more than a year the win rate was a jaw-dropping eighty percent. This is like a baseball team playing 750 ball; it’s so rare it’s hard to believe when it happens. In other words, the length of time that the firm pursued a project was a major determinant of success. In essence the analysis showed that if you only learned about an opportunity when the request for proposal arrived in the mail, your chances of winning were negligible.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who has sold professional services for a long time, but I have never seen it so clearly documented. And, just as George had predicted, the data argued persuasively for learning about projects early. Why should this be so?

There are several reasons. Selling is done through an exchange of information. The buyer gives you information on his needs and you give back information on how you can address them. The more you know about the client’s needs, the more accurate the solution you can frame and the more persuasive the words you can use to describe it. This is because the firm that knows about a client’s plans to hire a professional has more time to find out about a need. The team from that firm can talk to more people about what the client wants and talk to them more often. They may even be able to help the client better understand his problem and the kinds of help the client will need to fix it. The client selects the professionals he wants to work with and justifies his choice with logic afterwards. A firm that has early information on a client’s need has more time to develop an emotional linkage.

Also, as the number of people who learn about a pending project goes up, the more formal and limiting becomes contact between the client and the firms competing to win it. This reduction in contact is required by regulation for government projects. Though less formal in the private sector, as the number of professionals want access to the client rises, it becomes harder for the client to get work done. To avoid this, many clients limit access as the decision about whom to hire gets closer.

Anyone who has sold a lot of professional services knows this. I write this for those who haven’t, for those who see an RFP from a client as a much more promising opportunity than the longer and less direct pursuit of an as yet unidentified project by going out and talking to people who have not expressed any specific need, yet. In many cases the RFP is the illusion of an opportunity. The client has already decided which two or three firms it will choose from, and those firms have been pursuing the project for over a year.