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Posted by
Ian Brodie on August 22nd, 2008.
If there's one thing I know about selling professional services – it's that my chances of making a sale go up exponentially if I can meet my prospect face to face. In fact in my 20+ years in business and over £20m of consulting projects sold – I've only ever sold one engagement (and a very small one at that) without at least one face to face client meeting.
Yet in my life as a buyer of services, I'm becoming increasingly reluctant to meet salespeople face to face. Perhaps it's my age, or perhaps it's that I'm increasingly used to being “in control” in other aspects of business life – especially on the internet. For whatever reason, I basically don't want to be sold to. And I am confident enough in my knowledge of most service areas that I don't need the “help” a salesperson to guide me.
In fact, when I recently bought some marketing information services, I selected a supplier I'd never met – but one that was prepared to provide me with all the information I requested over email. The other potential supplier insisted on trying to set up a meeting. Despite my requests for them just to tell me what I needed to know, they insisted they would need to meet me face to face to properly explain what they had to offer. As a result, I simply put off the meeting to a much later date (that will never happen) and went with the first supplier.
So should a salesperson push for a meeting with a potential client or not? There's no easy answer to this conundrum. Obviously, the simpler, easier to specify the service is, the more possible it is to buy without a face-to-face meeting.
But the key determinant of whether a meeting will progress a sales is the attitude of the buyer. Is the buyer the sort of person who will resent a push for a meeting – or will (perhaps despite some initial resistance) it work in your favour? An experienced expert buyer is more likely to be able to buy without a meeting – but might not necessarily want to do so.
It takes skillful reading of the buyer – knowing when to push and when to back off – to navigate through this. One thing I can tell you though – don't try to push me for a meeting.
Ian
Postscript It's now May 2011, nearly three years after I wrote this post, and this trend has continued. In fact, it's accelerated.
Back then, I'd only ever sold one project without meeting the client face to face. Today, almost all my coaching clients sign up after talking to me on the phone rather than meeting face to face.
Part of the change is that people are increasingly used to buying without meeting people. And part of the change, I think, is that because people do so much research on the web in advance of calling a business. In may case, theyll see my blog posts, videos, podcasts and a host of other material I've produced. They'll get to see if I know my stuff – and they'll get a feel for who I am and if they can work with me. If they can't – they don't call and they don't waste their time or mine.
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Posted byIan Brodie on August 14th, 2008.
The element of sales most visible to outsiders is the “big win”. The “rainmaker” seemingly works some magic in a presentation, or big meeting and returns home with the sale in the bag.
This often leads to a belief that the crucial element of the sale was that final event. When people look at what the professional or salesperson did, and what skills they have; they focus on the final event. When they then try to reproduce that performance themselves or train and foster it in others they focus again on that final event – on big presentations and “closing”.
Of course, what they miss is all the small things that person did over time to make the sale happen.
Their initial persistence in sending useful material to the potential client to eventually gain a meeting. The ongoing networking at client associations that meant they were well known and trusted by the key decision-makers. The connections they made to third parties who were able to help and advise the client in related areas. The careful listening to differing client perspectives – and the meeting they organised to help them reach consensus on their needs.
None of these steps individually was enough to guarantee the sale – but added together theya situation where the final presentation was simply to confirm what had already been decided.
Effective “salespeople” (and by that I mean anyone responsible for bringing in new clients whether sales is in their job title or not) seem to instinctively know that they need to repeatedly go the extra mile and plug away at these small steps. Day after day, week after week, month after month. It's not glamorous – but over time it's effective.
If you want to reproduce effective sales behaviour it's these seemingly little things you need your team to be able to do. And it's often these things which are the hardest. Presentation and closing skills are so much sexier – and often easier for trainers to focus on than the real sales drivers – the persistent plugging away at all the small steps.
Ian
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Posted byIan Brodie on August 6th, 2008.
One of my favourite resources for professional services marketing is David Maister's series of podcasts. In his Business Masterclass episode “Cultivate the Habits of Friendship” he shares a lovely anecdote about building relationships that bears repeating:
The actress Angelina Jolie was interviewed on television and asked if she had to like the characters she was portraying in order to act them well. Her answer was brilliant. She said something like: “You can’t love everything about everyone. But there must be something there. The key is to find that one small slice of overlap between you and them, and focus intensely on that overlap, ignoring everything else.” I don’t know about acting, but that sounds like a perfect recipe for human relationships to me.
The reality of relationships is that everyone is different, and everyone is flawed. There will be things we like, and things we dislike (in differing proportions) about everyone.
Although it's often said that you get 30 seconds to make a good impression – and that's great advice for how we should present ourselves – we absolutely must not treat others in this way. Yes, our time is precious. Yes, we cannot have deep relationships with everyone and we must be selective. But we must not make that selection based on the first 30 seconds.
We've got to take time and make an effort to establish a relationship with people before making that selection. In my life, the scouser who looked so much like a “scally” at our first meeting I feared for my hub-caps is my oldest friend; and the irascible Scot who everyone else steered clear of was the guy who gave me some of the most insightful advice on sales I've ever had.
Angelina's method of focusing on the areas of overlap and ignoring the rest is a great way of starting relationship and of beginning to find out enough about people to know whether to continue the relationship rather than making a snap decision.
Ian
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Image via ThisParticularGreg
Ian Brodie on August 22nd, 2008.
One of my favourite resources for professional services marketing is David Maister's series of podcasts. In his Business Masterclass episode