Issue 1: What To Do When You Need Sales Fast

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 firms, accelerating sales is not simply a matter of running a campaign or pushing the partners and business developers harder. The lead time for a sale is usually much more dependent on the client’s timetable than the professional’s – and pushing too hard, too fast can very often backfire.

However, there are ways of generating sales in short timeframes – if you have a strong understanding of the key sales drivers. Not all the strategies will work for every profession or for every client – but each is worthy of strong consideration.

Firstly, you must focus on clients who are ready and able to buy from you right now.

Secondly, you must package and position your services to make them easy to buy.

Finally, you must reduce "friction" in the buying process.

Focus on clients who are ready and able to buy from you right now.

Who are these clients? To understand this, you need to go back to the fundamentals of the "key buying conditions" for professional services. In other words, what needs to be in place for a client to be willing to buy from you. Although clearly, all clients have their own specific needs and requirements, there are three key buying conditions which must be met before any sale of a professional service can be made:

1. The client must have a clearly perceived need – a problem they face or opportunity they want to exploit.
2. You and your solution to their need must have credibility. They must believe that you are able to do the job.
3. They must have trust that you will act in their best interests, and be able to work with them and their team effectively. This is particularly important for the sort of intangible services which professionals deliver. Unable to see, touch, or test the service in advance of purchase, they client must place a high degree of trust in the hands of the professional.

How do these key buying conditions affect the ability of the professional to get sales quickly?

A Clear and Pressing Need

Although in some industries such as consumer goods or media it’s possible to "stimulate demand" through advertising and other marketing approaches – it is much more difficult in professional services. Accountants can’t "magic up" the need for an audit. Lawyers can’t persuade their clients to initiate an acquisition just because the lawyer needs the fees from the transaction. And while in normal circumstances it’s part of the skillset of the successful business developer to be able to help a client discover needs they didn’t realise they had – this takes time.

Faced with a need to develop business quickly, the professional must adopt at least one of three strategies designed to identify potential clients with urgent, important needs.

The first strategy is to actively target clients with current needs in the "sweet spot" of your service offers and capabilities. While many client’s needs aren’t easily visible from outside the firm, there are often externally visible "Trigger Events" which indicate a need may be imminent. For example, a change of CFO often indicates an upcoming change of accounting firm. A new startup, or new product lauch indicates the need for a variety of marketing consultancy services.

The second strategy is to get potential clients with urgent needs to "self identify". This type of strategy typically involves using a low cost broadcast media (for example an internet pay-per-click campaign) with the offer of a relevant free report or analysis or tool in the area of need. By clicking on the link to get the report or sign-up for the analysis the potential client is self-identifying that they have that particular need and are looking for ideas and solutions.

The third strategy is to use "insiders" to identify potential clients with urgent needs. This means working with other service providers who are in regular contact with potential clients and who are likely to know from their contacts who may need your services in the near future.

In all these cases, once a client with an urgent need is identified, it’s then part of the professional’s role to ensure the client understands the true impact of the situation. Because of their years of experience and training, most professionals can quickly assess a situation in their area of expertise and understand the opportunities, or the costs and risks associated with it. Unfortunately, many then assume that the client can see the same picture with the same clarity: they can’t. One of the biggest barriers to making fast progress with a sale is that the client simply doesn’t perceive the issue to be as big or as urgent as the professional does. Often this results in the client simply not doing anything at all. It’s not because the issue was actually small – it’s because the professional didn’t take the time to fully explore and explain the magnitude of the situation and all its impact.

Your Credibility to Do the Job

Your technical capabilities are usually a qualifying rather than a deciding criteria to win work. Under normal circumstances, you’ll very rarely be shortlisted or get in the door of a client unless they are already confident in your abilities. The deciding factors in a sale or often more related to how well you understand their needs, how well your proposed solution or services meet those needs and how confident they are they can work with you.

However, lack of credibility can often be a barrier to a quick sale.

It takes time to build up your credibility with a potential client. Often it takes a series of events and interactions: an initial meeting where you discuss a problem they have, a few informal conversations while networking, a few articles sent to them, attendance at a seminar on the topic you’re running.

If you need to bring in new business quickly, it usually means that you must focus on potential clients where you already have strong credibility – or where you can get "transferred credibility" from a strong referral from someone they know and trust.

How Much They Trust You

Trust is of paramount importance in professional relationships. No trust = no sale. And like credibility, trust takes time to develop. It’s built by getting to know your potential client personally, and repeatedly demonstrating trustworthiness over time.

And again, like credibility, if you need to bring in new business quickly, it usually means that you must focus on potential clients where you already have a high degree of trust established – or where you can get "transferred trust" from a strong referral from someone they know and trust.

Package and position your services to make them easy to buy

Professional services are difficult for many clients to buy. There’s a high degree of uncertainty over what they will actually get, and what it will cost them. And we professionals often don’t help. In a bid to cover every eventuality, we describe our services in very fuzzy terms – full of ifs, buts & maybes. And we load the risk of uncertainty onto the client by charging daily or hourly rates rather than fixed fees.

This doesn’t make our services easy to buy – certainly not quickly. Clients don’t want to write a blank cheque, or risk buying something that doesn’t meet their needs – so they require us to put more and more detail into proposals. But because we’re initially not fully sure what they need, we struggle to provide that detail. The sales process becomes long and drawn out, and painful for both client and professional.

Instead, try to package up some of the most common client needs into simple "entry level" services you can offer at a fixed price. There will be some client needs which don’t fit into the basic offers – but your objective in tough times is not to get every sale eventually – it’s to get some sales right now.

Instead of trying to sell them "the whole shebang" in one go, create initial diagnostic or healthcheck services which have value in their own right (for example producing recommendations and an action plan) – but don’t require a big open-ended investment. Diagnostic phases are much easier to scope and price (and for clients to buy), and will provide the data to allow you to scope out the bigger implementation phase and to put a fixed price on that. And by working with the client on the smaller diagnostic phase you will give them a good sense of how great you are to work with – and so increase your chances of selling the bigger piece of work.

Consider reducing the client’s uncertainty and perceived risk by offering a guarantee of some sort. Of course, there’s a risk this may result in you working for free. But if you don’t sell anything, you’re going to be sitting around not earning any money anyway. Personally, I’m confident enough to offer a 100% unconditional money-back guarantee for all my services. If my clients are less than satisfied they don’t have to pay me. So far, no one has taken me up on this offer. I suspect the same would be true for you.

Reduce "friction" in the buying process.

Giving a guarantee is one example of reducing friction – unnecessary roadblocks – in the buying process.

To avoid these roadblocks you need to clearly understand your client’s buying and decision-making processes and to align your sales approaches to them.

Make sure you understand who the key decision-makers are and ensure they’re bought-in to your proposal.

Make sure you understand the timing of key events such as budget and approval committees – and ensure your proposals are prepared in time to be considered.

Make sure you’re focusing on the right "hot buttons" for the client executives – and if you’re doing formal ROI type calculations, make sure you’ve sat with their finance team to ensure you’re doing the calculations correctly (using the right discount rate, for example) and presenting them in the right way.

Above all, have an open discussion with your client about what could stand in the way of your proposal being approved – and then work to remove that barrier.

And while the above is geared to corporate clients – the same applies to private client work – you must understand the decision making process and remove any administrative barriers to progress.

From Ideas to Action

All this thinking about how to get sales fast will be of no use unless it’s turned into action. For most firms, a simple action plan agreed by the partners or leadership of each practice area or specialty will suffice. The action plan should address all three areas highlighted in this article: Identifying high potential clients likely to be ready to buy now, developing "easy to buy" packages, and reducing "friction" in the buying process.

The first two areas can be worked on in parallel. Set a team working on each one with the task of reporting back their recommendations in a week. Then put those recommendations into place immediately. Addressing "friction" should be dealt with on a case by case basis once opportunities enter the pipeline.

Don’t wait for the next partners meeting or strategy offsite to do this – do it now.