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.

(Blogger Bizze Guye has tagged me to comment on warming up cold calls as one participant in a meme. For other contributors go to his site.

Cold calls, sales meetings at your request with someone you have never met, are universally loathed in the professions. But they can be effective, especially because they offer direct access to a prospective client of your choice. No other technique I know of does that. When in hot pursuit of an opportunity that will go to someone else, unless you move quickly, a cold call may be your best shot.

Of course, you would be crazy not to warm it up, if you can.

1. Market Like Crazy: A major goal of your firm’s marketing effort is to build its brand, a market awareness of what you do well. Developing a brand takes time, so start now and cold calling will be easier a year or two from now. I still remember the first cold call I made on a person who had one of my books and had heard of me from two people. I was so much easier than any I had made before.

2. Ask for an Introduction: If someone introduces you to the prospective client, the temperature of the meeting starts about ten degrees warmer than if you go it alone. People with large networks can almost always identify some who knows who will provide an introduction. The ability to do so frequently is a hallmark of rainmakers.

3. Identify Someone You Know in Common: During the small talk which precedes the meeting, see if you can identify someone whom both the client and you know. Say a few nice words about someone you both admire and you can almost feel the warming up of most relationships. Rainmakers, with their big networks, are good at this.

4. Use the Client’s Time Well: The client is a busy person and probably feels she is doing you a favor by meeting with you. Do your homework so that you focus discussions on something of interest to her. If you can, call someone who works for her or some higher in the organization, who knows you well enough to tell you about the client and her interests.

5. Keep up the Relationship: Find reasons to stay in front of the client from time to time, so that the relationship continues to build and so each call you make is warmer than the last.

For more on this subject, including a description of how to get and conduct a cold call meeting, see Chapter 7, “Eliminating the Dread of Cold Calls,” in my book, Rain Making-2nd Edition—Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field.

(Now I am tagging John Caddell of Caddell Insight Group and Ian Brodie of Lighthouse Consulting to write a post about warming up cold calls.)

To what extent can emails be used in place of phone calls and face-to-face meetings when maintaining and developing relationships with clients and other important network contacts?

This question is asked by someone in every group of aspiring rainmakers I work with.  Sometimes the speaker asks hopefully, wishing to avoid phone calls.  At others the speaker is trying to sort out mixed messages he is getting from different clients.  Or she may be wrestling with the perennial juggling of client work with business development and may see emails as a partial solution.

One way or another it is a question that every professional seeking to become a rainmaker must answer.

Nor is it as trivial a question as it might at first appear.  How you answer it affects the effectiveness and cost of your efforts to develop business.  Because the answer will vary from one network contact to another and even with the same contact over time, it is a question you must answer several times a day . . .for the rest of your career. There is good reason, then, for asking the question.

Four bloggers have all agreed to post their answers to the email question simultaneously, each offering a different perspective, with all responses linked.  They are:

• Brian Carroll, author and expert in lead generation on the complex sale.  His post can be found at  blog.startwithalead.com/

• Tom Kane, expert in marketing and selling legal services.  His post can be found at www.legalmarketingblog.com/

• Mark Buckshon, prodigious blogger and expert on the sale of design and construction services. His post can be found at www.constructionmarketingideas.blogspot.com/

• And me.  My post “Email, Call or Go See?” follows:

Email, Call or Go See?

What’s more effective, emails, phone calls or in-person meetings? Each time you contact a client or other member of your network, you are, in effect, assessing the desirability of these alternative forms of communication in terms of practical consideration, your objectives, and your and your contact’s preferences. Usually, this is a split-second decision. At other times, it requires consideration. Here are some guidelines to check you decisions against:

General Guidelines

1. You need to use a mix of communications channels with each person in your network. This means that if you have communicated largely by email over the past year, it’s probably time to get face to face or to talk by phone with her again.

2. A client’s preference for one channel over another should weigh heavily in your choice, but it is not the only consideration. Your needs count, too. For example, if you have largely respected the client’s preference for email over the past year, it may now be time to get face-to-face to warm up the relationship.

3. Telephone calls are the great compromise between the other two channels to your contacts. They provide most of the information obtained face to face, allow give and take and the shifting of subjects to redirect the conversation to subjects that are productive for all parties. But they cost a fraction of what a meeting does in time and money. You need to make lots of phone calls.

Face-to-face meetings are best when:

1. You want to establish relationships. Good relationships are based on trust. Trust travels better through the medium of broken bread than it does through the Ethernet.

2. You want to advance relationships. Relationships are based on frequency of contact, shared values and shared experiences. The last of these is provided most effectively face to face. A mechanical engineer participated in charities that large real estate owners and managers participated in, too. Working with them on these worthy causes greatly strengthened his relationship with them.

3. You want the contact to remember your involvement in a matter. If you introduce two people who are likely to receive high value from knowing each other, it would be wise to host the lunch when they first meet. Otherwise, they are likely to forget your involvement.

4. A client clearly intends to hire you to address a matter, but is always too busy to get around to it. Get in front of him, and, chances are, he will take advantage of the moment to get things started.

5. You can take advantage of trips and association meetings to reduce their cost. Meeting with people is time consuming and expensive, often prohibitively so, if the client is at a distance. If you have a meeting with one person at a client company, use the visit as an excuse to drop by to see other people you know in the building. Or take a late flight home so that you have a chance to meet with another contact in the same city. Use an association meeting to get face to face with dozens of people it would be impractical to go see.

6.You want to gather sensitive information. Phone calls are second best. Neither requires leaving a written record.

The telephone is best when:

1. It’s important to control the costs of maintaining a network and still get the benefit of give-and-take exchanges. A locally based contact from your A List might get three or four calls from you for every time you meet. One from you B List might get between six and eight calls for every meeting.

2. A lot of give-and-take is required. In such cases, phone calls and meetings are usually more efficient.

3. You want to make an indirect probe. If, for example, you want to ask if any progress has been made towards the approval of your proposal, but don’t want to disturb the client yet again for this purpose, you can call to give him information you have come across about a competitor or something else he would be interested in. Then at the end of the conversation, you can say, “By the way, as long as I have you on the phone, has any progress been . . . .”

Email is best when:

1. You want to remind clients of what you do and that you are thinking about them. One goal of frequent contact is to capture mindshare. Sending a client regular emails, as long as they have substance, is a way to that. As one rainmaker expressed it to me, regular mailings of articles and whitepapers demonstrating the firm’s intellectual capital are one way of saying, “PING! I’m still here. PING! I’m thinking about you. PING! This is what I do.” But avoid passing on what might be seen as spam.

2. You need to confirm meetings and to summarize their results. This is good professional practice and gets you two extra PINGs from the meeting.

3. Your message is long and complex. You can plan what you say more carefully and the reader can review your thoughts several times and contemplate on them.

4. When you want to create a record of a contact.

So, before you send an email, look deep into your heart and ask yourself if it is the right thing to do, or if your doing it because you are . . . , well, . . . chicken! And if you are agonizing over the choice between email and phone, get over it! Pick up the phone and dial!

To what extent can you substitute emails for telephone calls and face-to-face meetings when maintaining and developing relationships with clients and other key market contacts?

The answer to this frequently-asked-question affects how you spend your precious business development time and money.  Getting it right will improve your sales effectiveness.  No wonder it’s so frequently asked.  But what is the answer?

On September 22, four bloggers will post their answers simultaneously.  They are:

1)  Brian Carroll, specialist and noted author on generating leads for the complex sale.

2)  Tom Kane, specialist on marketing and selling legal services.

3)  Mark Buckshon, prodigious blogger and special on marketing and selling design and construction services.

4)   Me

We hope this attention to the issue generates conversation on the subject with all of our readers.

To what extent can you substitute emails for telephone calls and face-to-face meetings when maintaining and developing relationships with clients and other key market contacts?

The answer to this frequently-asked-question affects how you spend your precious business development time and money.  Getting it right will improve your sales effectiveness.  No wonder it’s so frequently asked.  But what is the answer?

On September 22, four bloggers will post their answers simultaneously.  They are:

1)  Brian Carroll, specialist and noted author on generating leads for the complex sale.

2)  Tom Kane, specialist on marketing and selling legal services.

3)  Mark Buckshon, prodigious blogger and special on marketing and selling design and construction services.

4)   Me

We hope this attention to the issue generates conversation on the subject with all of our readers.

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)

Any athlete, no matter how talented, who doesn’t practice with the team falls short of being a true professional. Any actor, musician or dancer who doesn’t rehearse, is unlikely to make it as a professional. Professionals who don’t practice quickly find themselves without a position, part or seat with the team, cast or ensemble.

Accountants, actuaries, architects, engineers, executive recruiters, lawyers, management consultants, publicists have to prove themselves as presenters to make partner. That is because partners are professional presenters. They present to their clients, to judges and juries, to arbitrators, to zoning boards, to industry groups and to each other. And, of course, they present to prospective clients.

“When a group of our engineers stands up in front of a selection committee, they are being judged not so much on their abilities as engineers as on their presentation skills,” George Friedel said when, as head of sales for Parsons Brinckerhoff, he was helping stack up one of the most impressive win rates I know of.

“By the time the client gets to the short list, they know that each of the firms they are considering is technically qualified. They choose on the basis of which team will work with them best. At that final meeting, then, your ability to communicate effectively using entertainment techniques, is more important that your ability to engineer,” he added.

Spend enough years participating in the bake-off competitions for huge infrastructure projects that a firm like Parsons Brinckerhoff pursues and you will know this is true. It is equally true, though less obviously so, of most sales meetings that professionals have. The infrastructure engineering firms know what’s at stake and they do rehearse, sometimes well and sometimes not, but they do it.

There are many professional firms that prepare for an hour-long sales meeting in the ten minute cab ride to the client’s office. Or they will spend 30 hours of firm time preparing slides or a leave-behind document and not five minutes on rehearsing. They have all kinds of excuses:

• I don’t have time.
• There’s no time when we can all get together.
• I don’t learn anything from rehearsals.
• I don’t do well in rehearsals, but I’m great in front of the client.
• What’s to rehearse?
• I never rehearsed before and have done okay.

I have a response for all of these excuses. Say: “Okay, you don’t have to rehearse, but if you don’t win the business, you’re fired. You’re fired because you have been unprofessional and wasted firm time and money and were unwilling to do what it takes to minimize the chances of losing. You will have set a bad example for the others in the firm, and I must make it clear to all that what you did was unacceptable.” And if they don’t rehearse, and they lose, fire them.

Whew!! I feel so much better having gotten that rant out of my system! Could you visualize me letting him have it? How I whipped that office into shape! Oh, that felt good.

I can now focus on something more helpful to you. In next week’s posting on being prepared, I will describe what preparing for a sales meeting means.

(Sims Wyeth also discusses presenations in his post The Show in Business

In my last posting, I described three kinds of people (beagles, babblers, and big shots) who will highjack a sales meeting by talking at length. They do so regardless of agreements made in a rehearsal to hold back until you understand the client’s issues. In this posting I will suggest some ways for dealing with them.

As I prepare to write these recommendations, I am reminded of an office I once saw of a high school literary magazine that had a banner with publication’s motto boldly displayed over its three desks: Our Best Is None Too Good! Before providing suggestions on how to deal with those who highjack sales meetings, I must caution you that though these are the best suggestions we have, they won’t work in many cases. Hijackers are tough to deal with.

Here are some things your can try:

Don’t bring the hijacker: See if you can bring someone else who can fill the role the hijacker plays on the team. Though this would be my first choice, it often isn’t possible. The firm may have but one thought leader on the subject the client is most interested in. The hijacker may be the head of the practice and so gets to decide who goes. There can be many reasons why you must bring him. Still, the potential for leaving him at the office is worth brief consideration. At the very least it allows you to daydream about the possibility for a few pleasant minutes.

Plan and rehearse: Carefully plan out who will do what for how long and then rehearse as if this were the plan that everyone will follow. Plans and rehearsals seldom stop a hijacker, but when you apply one of the other techniques, the hijacker will be more likely realize where you are goings and sometimes fall in line.

Bring someone who outranks the hijacker: You may not be able to control the hijacker, but someone more senior in the firm might. This is particularly true of the “big shot” described in my preceding posting. Big shots may walk on people lower in the hierarchy than they are, but usually kowtow to those more senior.

Rehijack the meeting: At the appropriate moment—such as when the hijacker pauses to take a breath—say something like, “Thank you, Scott. That provides the big picture of the way these issues are addressed. I would now like to focus our conversation on the specifics of your (i.e., the client’s) situation. Please, describe . . . “ If you are seated, it is best to stand when you seize control of the meeting this way. If you are standing at the back move forward. This language identifies you as the practical manager of the effort, implying that the hijacker’s role is to provide the big picture.

This approach is most likely to work with “beagles” and “babblers” and especially if there is an agreed upon and rehearsed plan for the meeting. On the downside, it risks the appearance of an argument among the members of your team, which is almost certain to result in the client choosing someone else. So, think carefully about how the hijacker is likely to react, before you try it. I would not attempt this approach with most “big shots.”

Don’t give up control until the client has set direction: Briefly introduce yourself and your colleagues, stating why each one is present. Then, ask the client what she how she prioritizes her concerns, by offering a slide or page of a document that lists alternatives. Say, for example, “These are the issues that most companies concerned with the effectiveness of their sales forces have. Which, if any stand out to you?” The list might read:

The client will then prioritize issues. If your colleague hijacks the meeting now, at least he will be talking about the issue the client feels is most important.

This approach relies on knowing enough about the client’s problem to prepare an issues list and on keeping the hijacker from talking at all until the client says what he is most concerned with. These are big ifs, but I have seen the approach work and, notably, seen it work when a junior person is trying to control someone more senior.

Split one meeting into two: If you can arrange to have a first meeting to talk about broad issues and a second to work out details specific to the client’s situation, you can sometimes go to the second without the hijacker. You might, of course, never get to a second meeting.

Dealing with sales meeting hijackers remains a tough issue. I would be interested in hearing about other techniques. If you have one, please leave a comment.

Professionals I work with often complain about colleagues who hijack sales meetings by ignoring agreed upon plans and dominating the conversation, barely allowing the client a chance to talk. This problem is especially hard to deal with if the talker outranks everyone else on the firm’s team.

This posting will describe three kinds of hijackers. My next posting will describe some ways to deal with them.
There are many reasons that a person will highjack a meeting. In planning how to deal with them, it often helps to see if they fit any of the following three types: beagles, babblers and big shots.

Beagles

It’s hard not to like beagles. Small, cheerful and friendly, they win a place in your heart. Smart, they quickly learn to behave, or so it seems . . . until they see a rabbit.

Upon seeing a rabbit, centuries of breeding short circuit every other thought in a beagle’s head. RABBIT! Off goes the beagle in pursuit sounding his wonderful bay. “Heel!” you may command, but something in a beagle’s head screams “RABBIT.” “Sit!” you yell. RABBIT is what the beagle hears.

You can shout, stamp your foot, threaten, cry, cajole or do whatever else you may think of, but RABBIT overwhelms everything. RABBIT! RABBIT! So overpowering is this genetically based focus on RABBIT that there is little you can do except watch the hunt.

Fortunately, rabbits usually run in circles. If you can find the center of the circle, chances are the dog won’t be far away.

Some professionals behave in much the same way when a client raises a specific issue. Everything short circuits and they begin to pitch whatever it is they specialize in. FORECAST! (or INTELECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION or ASBESTOS REMMEDIATION or whatever).

You may have agreed to sit back and hear what the client has to say before talking yourselves. No matter. That agreement is overwhelmed by the word, FORECAST!

Thought leaders often exhibit this behavior. They seem to feel that all clients hunger to hear their knowledge of a subject. Firms reinforce that belief by trotting them out to talk about their specialty at marketing events.

Like beagles, these people aren’t malicious. Rather, it is as if they have been bred for one purpose, to talk about their specialty.

Babblers

My wife is a second grade teacher. Every fall she must get her young scholars, who have run wild and free all summer, adjusted to the limits of the classroom.

On the first day of school last September, she told a talkative seven year old, “Now, Rachel, remember that in school you can’t just talk whenever you want to. You have to wait for the teacher to call on you.” To which Rachel replied, “You know, . . . I had the same problem last year.” One imagines Rachel having the same problem for a long time to come.

Rachel isn’t the only one who talks too much in spite of reminders. Some professionals suffer from the same malady. The babbler may be an extreme extrovert who gets such a high off of human contact that he talks away, missing the chance to learn about the person he is addressing.

In other cases, the babblers confuse the deference we show to those in power with interest in what they have to say. I can think of at least one hierarchical firm where promotion to partner increases a person’s prolixity even more than it does his paycheck.

This isn’t the talk of a young person who seeks to prove herself or who just doesn’t know techniques for getting the other person to talk. (See He Talks Too Much.) This is the talk of a person who believes, often mistakenly, that other people want to hear what he has to say, of a person who sees a conversation as an opportunity to sound forth rather than to take in.

These people seldom realize they have a problem. Last summer I was asked to coach a former CEO turned executive recruiter. When I cautioned him about talking too much, he looked at me as if I were crazed and then proceeded to talk in almost a monologue for two hours, starting with a denial of his talkativeness, before rambling from subject to subject.

Big Shots

Big shots are firm partners who sell aggressively and believe that there is no other way. They dominate in sales meetings, because they always dominate. If another partner says, “Green,” they are likely to say, “Red.” They have personally landed most of the firm’s major clients and developed it’s most profitable services . . . just ask them. Actually, you don’t even have to ask.

They also knew all along that a hurricane would wreck New Orleans, advised Bush not to go into Iraq (by way of a close personal friend who knows a cabinet member who passed the advice on to the president), taught Robin Williams how to be funny and could bring peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis, if someone would just let them.

After dominating a sales meeting, they will tell you that you should have spoken up more. They cannot see their domineering behavior as having anything to do with your silence.

These are the three common kinds of hijackers. In a future posting I will suggest some ways to deal with them.

In his current post in his blog, Trust Matters, Charlie Green argues for listening largely so the client realizes she has been heard. He argues that you should “listen for the sake of listening.”

I am not sure whether we disagree or we use different words to say much the same thing. Your goal, I believe, is to figure what the client wants from you when she talks to you. If she wants to know if you can help her with a problem, tell her yes or no, and if it’s no, try to help her find someone who can. If she is trying to scope out a problem, help her do so. Hold the selling until you both have a clear understanding of the problem. If she simpley wants to vent or brag a little, let her do so.

Clients quickly catch on to the professional who claims to be able to help them with any problem. Saying that you can’t do something and refering the client to someone who can is both the right and professional thing to do and good business. If you have helped a client find someone who can solve Problem A better than you can, the client will trust you when you say you can help with Problem B.

Your first objective should always be to understand the client’s problem as she sees it, rather that as you think she should see it or would like her to see it. And once you do, if you can help her solve it, get on with the selling. That’s why she called you.