What to Do When You Need Sales Fast : Issue 1 of the Outside In Newsletter

I'm proud to announce the launch of the Outside In Newsletter. It features articles, hints, tips and news to help partners, marketers and business developers in Professional Service Firms to attract more clients and win more new business. Every month (usually on the 3rd week) I’ll be sending out a new edition featuring a detailed article on Marketing & Business Development for Professional Firms. This month's feature is highly topical: What To Do When You Need Sales Fast. In the current economic climate, many professional firms are facing the challenge of bringing in new business in a very short space of time - for example, to replace the lost revenue of a major client who has stopped buying, or to "fill the gap" when engagements are delayed. In some cases it's a "do or die" situation - they need to chalk up new sales in a month or two or face layoffs or worse. Unfortunately, for professional service ... Read the full article »»

How to Get More Referrals Using Offers

One of the biggest challenges I find clients have when trying to get more referrals is that their referrers (the people they've asked to introduce them to someone) struggle to make the introduction sound attractive to the potential client. For example, let's say you're an employment lawyer and you've asked an accountant to introduce you to small manufacturing businesses in your area. Or perhaps you've been smart and used Linkedin to name some specific people and organisations you know he knows. How is he going to make that introduction sound attractive to the potential client? Chances are they don't have a specific need for your services at this point in time. And even if they did, the accountant might not know that. So although a recommendation and offer of an introduction from a trusted partner like an accountant is more likely to succeeed than a cold call - it still might not seem attractive. And it may also be ... Read the full article »»

The Referral Formula

This is the second in a series of posts on how Professional Firms can get more referrals. Read the first in the series - Referrals: You've Got to Have A System To some degree, succeeding with referrals is something of a numbers game. More referrals equals more business. However, for busy professionals who need to balance business development with billable hours, it's rarely wise to sacrifice quality for quantity. Better to go for a smaller number of high probability referrals and devote enough time to convert them to sales. So what makes a high quality referral? Referrals work because of transferred trust. Obviously I am going to put more credence in a recommendation from a colleague or business partner I know and trust and who I know has experience in the area than from a casual acquaintance or someone I bumped into at a networking event (although it's surprising how much credence we do give to those more ... Read the full article »»

Keep out of the "Muddy Middle" when Selling Professional Services

For many decades, perhaps the most successful client development strategy for both professional service firms and individual professionals has been one of focusing on a small number of high value clients. As Andrew Sobel points out in "All For One", a consultant or accountant only needs a handful of good clients to make a great career. And most successful professionals will maintain around 15 to 20 truly important client relationship over their business life. Building a small number of deep, trusting relationships pays off much more than having shallower relationships with a broader group because there's a very high probability of converting each prospect into a client. However, more recently, an alternative strategy has emerged. Fuelled by the ability of technology to allow relationships to be developed with large numbers of people via email newsletters, contact management software, Linkedin and other networks. This strategy focuses on developing a very large number of shallow relationships: people ... Read the full article »»

Creating a Marketing Habit in 21 Days

Paula Black has just published The Little Black Book: A Lawyer’s Guide To Creating A Marketing Habit in 21 Days. Having got my hands on a pre-release copy, I can say that not only is the book beautifully produced (the sort you'll want to keep flipping open and dipping in to) but it's filled with the sort of practical hints that can really help ingrain a marketing mindset. And as I've repeatedly written, the key differentiator between successful Rainmakers and "also rans" is that Rainmakers have a repeatable business development system. Sometimes it's unconscious - they just get on and "do their thing" when needed. But a great many highly successful business developers have developed their skills and their "system" consciously. This book is a great way to do that for yourself. It's not a book of heavy theory or completely new ideas. Just practical tips and advice - the "blocking & ... Read the full article »»

Referrals: You’ve got to have a System

We all know that referrals can be the most powerful and profitable source of new clients. Yet most of us find that we’re simply not generating enough referrals of a high enough quality to reach our practice growth objectives. What's the problem here? Are we mistaken in our assumption that referrals are such an effective business development method? Or is it an execution issue – we're simply not going about it in the right way? For most professionals it's a bit of both. While all the evidence highlights that our clients rely on referrals as their most trusted source of information on new suppliers; we must remember that not all referrals are created equal. Unfortunately, some referrals can be little better than random cold calls – a name and number we're given of someone who may or may not need our services, may or may not be able to afford them, and may or may not see ... Read the full article »»