I received this email from one of our program participants that illustrates the benefits of listening and asking questions.  Specific names have been removed to maintain confidentiality but her process and outcome are worth sharing.

Your help in prepping me for my important meeting today with our prospect from XYZ was invaluable.  It was just supposed to be a quick “coffee”, but it went much longer than that, and we had a wide-ranging discussion during which he shared some confidential information about the company and indicated a strong intent to move on with us.

After a few pleasantries, I asked him how things were going.  That question immediately got him going, with him telling me the critical things that were going on at the company and sharing with me the most important issues with which they are dealing.  I guided the discussion with a number of questions.  As the conversation progressed, I began to contribute my experiences or views on an issue, when he seemed to want it — he did enjoy the give-and-take and the harking back to our old company.  However, there were a few times when I was going to talk but shut my mouth quickly, when it became apparent that he had a lot more to say.  I also was very careful to be brief in my comments, something I’m not always good at.

I learned a lot listening to him, and also I felt that he became more and more invested in our conversation and relationship as we went along.  One piece of evidence of this is that at one point he looked at his watch and said he needed to break away.  However, he didn’t, and instead we kept going in a substantive discussion for probably another 15 minutes.

Another piece of evidence is that, early on in our discussion, he talked about getting back with us in six months.  By the end of our meeting, he had changed that to two months. Mentioning that we should be involved upfront in helping them develop their strategy.

This approach to the meeting definitely helped ensure a successful outcome.  I learned a lot about the company and their issues; we built our relationship in this new form (client-consultant vs. co-workers); and we have a next step.  I was not as nervous about the meeting as I might have otherwise been, because I really felt prepared. 

Winning approach: Ask questions. Listen. Do not interrupt. Engage them in a conversation. Allow them to think through their issue. If you want to read about how to change, you can read chapters 14, 15, 16, 17 and 18 in Ford Harding’s Rain Making – 2^nd Edition book.

Many consultants are uncomfortable asking for the sale.  They have a fear of rejection or say it feels pushy to ask and courteous to wait.  By waiting, what they don’t realize is that they could lose the sale! 

Asking for the sale is a consultant’s right.  You have spent time and energy crafting and presenting a solution to address a client’s need.  You have also flushed out and succinctly addressed specific client concerns.  Your question to the client, “Do you have any other questions?” is answered by the client with, ‘No.”  Now is the time to ask.

You’re on, so here are some approaches for your LAST question: 

·             Needs based: “Since you have agreed that our capabilities and approach meet your needs, can we work with you on this project? 

·             Relationship based: “Since we have worked well on past projects together, are you comfortable proceeding with us for this project?

·             Fee based: “If we drop our fees 15% do we have a deal?” 

·             Assumption based (Assumes that you are starting the project) “Can we schedule the first round of leadership interviews next week?” 

·            Next Steps: “Where do we go from here? “

After you ask for the business, you must follow these two sales rules to get a successful outcome:

1. When giving concessions, each additional concession should be smaller so that the client can see the end of the negotiation is near. 

2.      After you ask for the business be quiet and listen. Do not say a single word until the client responds – even if it feels like eternity! 

Silence can be golden!

Author:  Gary Pines   (gpines@hardingco.com)

Marketing meetings have become more frequent now due to work slow down.  Senior management at professional firms are spending more time meeting with each other to discuss clients, prospects and pursuits in an effort to capture the limited project opportunities in the marketplace.  At many firms, marketing meetings have become as frequent as weekly.  Participants at most marketing meetings include senior practice leaders and managers.  What most firms don’t realize is that these meetings come with a significant cost to their firms and oftentimes don’t provide a return on their investment. 

Marketing meetings are expensive!  Typical marketing meetings include 5 to 15 participants.  If they meet every other week for one hour, the total number of hours spent in marketing meetings per year is 130 to 390 hours.  As an example, at an average billing rate of $300 per hour, the cost is $39,000 to $117,000 per year.  Assuming gross margin of 12%, these meeting must generate roughly $325,000 to $975,000 to break even.    Larger firms with several group marketing meetings could be looking at a cost of several million dollars.  Depending on the firm and project size, these fees are a tall order in this economy. 

After years of working with consulting firms, I’ve seen all kinds of marketing meetings.  I thought I would share with you the Top Five Traits for the Worst Marketing Meetings with some tips on how to improve them.

1. Have participants report only leads and activity.  Lengthy information reporting becomes boring to most participants.  Don’t make the marketing meeting only a reporting session.  Adhere to succinct reporting of only relevant information.  Gather and distribute relevant data in advance of the meeting.  
2. Minimize idea exchange among participants.  Two way reporting conversations between each participant and the meeting leader squelches peer dialog and team problem solving.  Facilitate group problem solving and brainstorming for client development initiatives and challenges.  
3. Meet regularly without specific objectives.  Having regular meetings may feel like there is a focus on getting more work, but to make things happen you must establish action-oriented objectives for each meeting.  
4. Assume that your people are helping each other.  It’s a nice thought, but in reality, many individuals in different practice areas need specific action requests and follow up to cross sell.  Relationships are made one person at a time and that includes with colleagues within the same company.  Bringing people together with specific goals and action steps help facilitate development of stronger relationships among themselves and with their clients.
5. Invite everyone to marketing meeting to hear what’s going on.  Evaluate the number of regular meeting participants.  All participants should have specific action items to accomplish.  If they are not a player don’t take them offline for every meeting, invite them to only periodic meetings and learning sessions. 

Hopefully this doesn’t sound too familiar.  If it does, planning more effective marketing meetings is an easy fix which takes a bit of extra planning, but with focus can yield significantly more results and more regular attendance!

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?

By Ford Harding & Mimi Spangler

Over the years we have seen the leadership of many professional service firms frustrated by key account programs that don’t work.  There are, of course, many reasons that this happens, but one stands out: firms almost always start with too many key accounts.

A key account is one having such value or offering such potential to a firm that it warrants special attention.  Attention translates quickly into time devoted to the account by account team members, usually partners from a variety of practices and geographies.  The more key accounts a firm has, the more teams a partner is likely to serve on.

There’s the rub.  Partners at professionals must sell work, deliver services and administer the firm.  They are always stretched for time.  The more they are given to do, the more fractured their efforts become.  Assigned to too many accounts, they rationally devote their attentions to the one they are in charge of or the one or two where they see the greatest potential for their practices and ignore the rest.  As a result, many account teams lack the attention of key team members, so key relationships go undeveloped, opportunities to cross sell are missed and the account team falters.  Also, there is often a lot of finger pointing at those who let down a team that can cause lasting ill will, when the real problem is structural.

We believe firms fall into this trap, because management lacks the fortitude to tell a partner that his best client will not be designated a key account or to limit partners to membership on two account teams.  They pay for this weakness.

When Cortez landed on the coast of Mexico, he famously burned his ships before marching inland, focusing all attentions of his followers on the need to succeed.  Partners will always want to go after any account where they can make quick and easy sales.  Letting them do so, is akin to what Cortez would have done had he left his ships unburned, preserving retreat as an option.  If you want to focus time and attention on a client by making it a key account, you mustn’t make retreating from it too easy.

At some professional service firms, order taking is a common way to get business.  The client calls with no advanced warning and says show up tomorrow.  There is no competition and little, if any, fee negotiation.  Most litigation support firms get a significant share of their cases that way.  So do many valuation consultants.  Some kinds of legal services are also bought in this manner.  Firms that deal with emergencies, whether it be a client’s sudden, bad publicity or a need for a rapid environmental cleanup, are additional examples of those who often benefit from order taking.

It sounds like an easy way to get business.   But it isn’t.   In these cases the client feels a high sense of urgency and needs to trust the professional he hires.  This leads to a conservative approach to selecting a professional; the client is likely to go with the firm who did good work for him in the past.  That makes it hard to get new clients, including the new clients needed to replace old ones, who retire or cease to give you business for some other reason.  Firms or practices which get business this way run the risk of having too  much work with too few clients, exposing them to sudden revenue drops, if something happens to a key client.

Just as you would be unlikely to welcome a pitch from a watch repairman, if your watch was working, clients are often reluctant to spend much time with professionals who offer such services, when they don’t have an immediate need.  When they do, they are in a hurry to get help and don’t have time to expend much time researching alternatives.  The problem is compounded when the client’s need is confidential as well as being urgent, such as when a client knows his company is likely to receive some devastating publicity and doesn’t want the bad news to come out any sooner than necessary.

Effective selling of these kinds of professional services requires far more than answering the phone.  Rainmakers for these kinds of services typically select from three options:

• Public Relations:  They can seek publicity in order to increase the likelihood that prospective clients will stumble across their name when an event drives a need for their services.  This, of course, works best when the service meets two criteria:  First, it can’t be so confidential that the profession can never reveal work done and  client names and, second, it must have enough sex appeal to be worth of media attention.  For many years, I worked as a location consultant, helping companies pick locations for new factories, offices and research labs.  That service met both of these criteria, and we worked the publicity channel hard.
• Networks:  They can develop relationships with other professionals, who have early access to information about a client’s need for help.  So, for example, many turn around executives work hard to develop relationships with the workout specialists at bank and with bankruptcy attorneys.
• Developing Client Relationships: They find ways to develop relationships with clients in anticipation of the need, in effect making the sale before the need arises.  This works best when the client is likely to have intermittent need, such as a litigator’s periodic need for a jury selection consultant.  It is a hard route, given busy clients’ unwillingness to expend a lot of time learning about services they don’t have a need for now.  In such cases, the professional must link relationship-building to a client’s more immediate needs, for example, by providing training that will meet a client’s need for continuing education credits or providing friendship on the golf course.

When the phone rings and a professional selling such a service gets an order from a new client, it usually results from a lot of hard work.  Order taking isn’t so easy.

Last month in behalf of a reader I posted a Rainmaker Problem, requesting suggestions about how to make a referral.  A couple of readers responded with good ideas, but not many, probably because you were busy with pre-holiday activities.

The subject is an important one, so here are a few suggestions for requesting referrals:

• Pick the right moment.  There are times when you are much more likely to get the help you want than others.  This was the subject of an earlier post, so I will not repeat that discussion here.
• Make it easy for the client to help you.  Broad requests, like Would you consider referring us to others who might need our services?, may get yes for an answer, but they place a large burden on the client to figure you who might be a good contact for you and how to bring up your services.  That’s why they so often produce no result.  You can make it easier for the client by:

1. Being specific:  A request for a referral to the CFO or head of the Consumer Products Division or someone in a senior position at Trigestis Pharmaceuticals is much easier for the client to focus on than a broad plea for help.  Alternatively, you can ask for an introduction to someone with a specific issue with words like Can you think of anyone you know who might also be facing executive succession problems? or Do you know anyone else who handles insurance recovery problems for his company?
2. Make it clear that you aren’t asking too much.  The open ended request for introductions can, and often is, perceived as asking for access to all of a client’s contacts.  That can be off-putting.  Be clear that you aren’t asking for too much.  One rainmaker I know would ask if a client would be willing to make introductions for him and when the client agreed, would follow up with these words:  Could I make a suggestion?  Would you be willing to scan through your contact list and note down ten or a dozen people you know who might benefit from our services? After you do that, we could sit down and talk about them and, together, pick out one or two to target.  If you are uncomfortable with that language, try these words:  Thanks.  That’s awfully kind of you.  Even one or two introductions would be a big help.
3. Provide some language that the client might use when making the introduction.  This saves the client time coming up with the right approach and makes him more effective at getting you in the door.  You can use words like these:  We find that people dealing with international litigation often respond well when someone says, “If you even need a rock-solid, expert witness on transfer pricing issues, you might want to talk with Brenda Smith.  She helped us on . . .” Or you can help your client filter out good introductions form bad ones with words like We find that if you ask someone if they are interested in green design and that they say they are, it is easy to get them to agree to a meeting with us.

• Don’t put the client on the spot.  Show that you recognize that the client many choose to back away from an introduction with words like Timing is everything, so if you bring up the subject and feel that this isn’t the time to introduce us, don’t even try.  I trust your judgment on this completely.  This is especially important if the client shows even the slightest hesitation about making a specific introduction.  Asking for advice rather than an introduction is another way to reduce pressure:  I want to meet Joe Smith.  Do you have any suggestions for the best way to do that?
• Keep the client informed about what happens.  Always notify the client about how the introduction went, whether or not it was a success.  If the introduction turns into new business for you a year later, it is still important to let the client know what happened, because it shows you acknowledge the help he provided, and so reinforces the behavior.
• Be thankful.  This should be done whether or not the introduction is successful.

Do any of you have additional ideas?

Slippage refers to the difference in price for a stock between what the investors estimates he will pay and what he actually does pay, due to changes in price that occur during the process of buying. Efficient buying reduces slippage.  It is a concept that applies to selling professional services, too.

There are times when a client or prospective client or network contact is more than usually predisposed to help you.  This can be, for example:

• When you have just finished an excellent piece of work for the client.
• When the prospective client becomes excited about your potential to help him.
• When you have just had a conversation at a conference with a network contact that shows the potential you have for helping each other.

The value of such opportunities fades as time passes.  The client’s desire to help you in return for the excellent work you did ebbs as she gets absorbed by other urgent matters.  The prospective client loses some of the enthusiasm generated at your meeting.  The network contact also forgets the conversation you had as the days go by.

This is one of the reasons that rainmakers feel a sense of urgency about following up.  No matter how busy they are, they find time to follow up on such opportunities, recognizing that all their hard work to produce them loses value as time slips by.

I don’t want to overwork this metaphor.  Following up too eagerly can be construed as desperation or as being mercenary.   But, in my experience, among professionals far more is lost from slippage than from pushing too fast and too hard.  And, of course, I am not suggesting that you give up on an opportunity if a week or three has slipped by before you act.  Better late than never.

Still, as a New Year’s resolution, you could do worse than committing to reduce rainmaking slippage by following up on opportunities while the glow you have created burns brightest.

Transferring a relationship from one professional to another is best done while the client is working with your firm, because the work, itself, provides the professional seeking to pick up the relationship plausible reasons for staying in front of the client.  There are two principal strategies.  The rainmaker can step away from a relationship with a client, while a colleague moves in or the rainmaker can maintain her relationship with the client, providing a colleague the opportunity to develop a relationship with the client’s probable successor. I will call the former The Classic Transition and describe it here and the latter The Generational Transition and deal with it at another time.

The Classic Transition

A rainmaker starts a transition in account leadership by assigning a colleague to manage all other of the firm’s professionals working for the client company.  Once the colleague knows the company’s issues and people, the rainmaker starts bringing him to meetings she has with her senior contact at the client.  She plays the role of the senior representative of the firm at the meeting, letting the colleague do most of the talking with the client.  If the client seems comfortable with the colleague, the rainmaker steps away from the account by:

• Never going to a meeting with the senior client contact without the colleague.
• Deferring to the colleague as much as possible and becoming increasingly quiet at meetings.
• Advising the client that she cannot attend a meeting and recommending that the client and colleague go ahead with the meeting without her.
• Letting the colleague schedule future meetings without her.

As the rainmaker steps away, the colleague must serve the client so well that he accepts the transition.  He must, in the words of one rainmaker, get the client to forget the rainmaker’s phone number.

A couple of years ago, I attended a retreat for all of the new partners at a consulting and accounting firm.  The CEO packed a lot of wisdom about the ways to be a successful partner into a twenty-minute, before-dinner speech. I have been turning one bit of advice over in my mind ever since.  “Some of you know that when you started on one of my accounts, I always told you to make the client forget my phone number. And some of you did service the clients so well, that they did forget all about me.  Now it’s time to encourage the people working on your accounts to make the clients forget your phone number.”

The CEO was addressing one of the perennially difficult aspects of selling professional services and building a practice, the safe transfer of a relationship between a client and a professional to someone else within the professional’s firm.  Firms and their senior professionals need to do this for several reasons:

• Retirement: Most obviously, you can’t take a client with you into retirement—at least not if you truly mean to retire. Helping the firm keep your client will help it earn the money it will need to buy out your share of the ownership.
• Upgrading: You will sometimes develop an account that is not the most strategic use of your attentions.  Turning the account over to someone else allows you to move on to bigger things.
• Specialization: Fewer people are good at developing new accounts than are good at managing and expanding existing ones.  Smart managers of professional firms do all they can to keep the “finders” finding. To have the time for it, finders have to turn over existing accounts to minders.
• Organization Designed for Growth: Some firms build this kind of specialization into their organizational design. Partners mind accounts.  To become senior partners, they must pass on these accounts to new partners and then go out and bring in new clients.

The process is commonly referred to as “handing off of a relationship,” a description so inaccurate, it can do harm.  A relationship exists between two people and is the product of time spent together, of sharing thoughts and experiences.  I cannot give my relationship with a client to you, even if the client were willing, because you weren’t there when the client and I shared those thoughts and experiences.   The best that I can do is introduce you to the client and get out of the way while you and she share thoughts and experiences, so building your own relationship.  Because “handing off” suggests something simple that I can do for you, it may lead you to sit around and wait for something to be given to you.  It will never happen.

The words used by the CEO are much more accurate.  I can set you up to meet my client one or more times, but then it is your responsibility to service her so well that she forgets my phone number.  Rather than handing you something, it’s then my job to get out of the way, to disappear while you develop your own relationship with the person.  How strong that relationship becomes has nothing to do with me, as long as I don’t interfere.  It’s up to you and the client.

In a subsequent posting, I will provide some suggestions for doing this.