Issue 10: Where are the “leaks” in your business development process (part 2)?

In this Issue:

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Part 2

Let’s recap our simple diagnostic model of the three things you need to do well to get more clients:
  1. You need to "get in front" of high potential prospects for your business and initiate relationships with them.
  2. You need to turn those relationships into genuine opportunities to win business.
  3. You need to convert those opportunities into sales.

We covered the "leaks" in step 1 last issue: not knowing the right approaches to use to get in front of high potential clients, not executing those methods well, and not converting contact into a relationship. This issue we’ll look at the "leaks" in step 2:Growing Relationships.

Growing Relationships

The necessity of growing a relationship with a potential client before they hire you is one of the key differences between selling professional services and selling simpler services or products.
 
In the world of professional services, because what the client is buying is intangible, and often costly and complex, the potential client needs to build up a high degree of confidence in your capabilities and trust that they’ll be able to work with you before they will feel comfortable buying.
 
That confidence rarely materialises overnight.
 
In addition, the initial contact between the client and the potential client often happens well in advance of the perceived need for the professional’s services being strong enough or urgent enough for the client to be ready to buy.
 
As a result, it’s crucial for professionals to build relationships with high potential clients over time so that when the need does become urgent, they’re top of mind with the potential client. And it’s critical that they grow the client’s perception of their capabilities and build trust so the client feels confident enough to buy when the time arises.
 
Unfortunately, the relationship building activities of most professionals are ad-hoc at best, and non-existant at worst.
 
Sometimes it can be tough. The immediate pressure of client work, or the need to close "hot" opportunities can easily take precedence over important long term relationship building activities.
 
But if those relationships are not built – the pipeline of work will soon dry up.
 
The first mistake I see professionals making in this area is not prioritising their relationships.
 
The 80:20 rule applies here. Few professionals will have the time to undertake effective relationship nurturing activities with their whole contact base. Inevitably, a small number of current and potential clients will make up the lion’s share of future revenues – and you need to focus your in-depth relationship building activities on that critical few.
 
Your top 10 (or top 20 or however many you can manage) list should always include your very best current clients who could both give you more work in future, and refer you on to others.
 
After that it’s very much dependent on your circumstances and strategy.
 
You might, for example, focus on very high potential clients -  real "giants" who, if you won any of them as clients, could set you up for a long time to come.
 
Or you might focus on more realistic targets, potential clients who you already have a fledgeling relationship with or you could easily reach through someone you know.
 
Or perhaps you’re looking for a leading edge client to help you break into a new sector or field.
 
And don’t overlook nurturing high potential referrers – even if they’re unlikely to become clients themselves.
 
I always advise getting a balance across these different types of potential clients/referrers. A few "giants" to nurture over time for big future paydays, a few more realistic targets to fill the pipeline more quickly, etc.
 
And make sure that all the clients on your nurture list meet a core set of criteria. The exact criteria will depend on your business but could include factors like their business size, sector, geography – and intangible factors like their values, their image, and whether you just enjoy working with them.
 
Once you’ve prioritised your list, you need to implement your nurture activities. this is the second stumbling block for many professionals. They fail to implement a rigorous system for nurturing relationships.
 
You can’t just do nurture activities when you remember, or in the few spare minutes of time you grab at the end of each month.
 
If you want your client nurturing to be effective you must do it systematically.
 
My recommendationis to do two things.
 
Firstly, for every name on the list, write down what they need to know and feel about you to feel comfortable buying from you. This is based on your knowledge and experience with them so far.
 
Sometimes you won’t know much and will have to put in something generic (and plan to find out more about what they look for in the professionals they hire).
 
This list of the things they’re looking for set the agenda for a number of the nurture activities you’ll carry out. For example, if you still need to prove your technical capabilities then you might want to invite them to a seminar you’re running.
 
Secondly, review your list every week. Read through your notes on each person/business and think through what you can do for them that week. How can you help them? Can you send them useful information? Can you introduce them to someone or invite them to an event? What can you do that "ticks off" the items you need them to know and feel about you before they’ll feel comfrotable hiring you?
 
You won’t be able to do something every week – but many weeks you will. And by reviewing the list each week you make sure that your high potential clients are on your mind so that throughout the week you’re more alert to opportunities to help and connect with them. Over time, this systematic review will enable you to consistently grow your relationships.
 
The third leak is ignoring the contacts not on your "manual nurturing" list.
 
This may sound a little contradictory. Earlier on I said you need to prioritise and focus on the critical few clients who can make a big difference.
 
That’s for "manual nurturing". The activities you have to invest your personal time and energy into implementing. It’s the best way of nurturing relationships – and historically, it’s been the only way.
 
Today, however, we can also nurture relationships with minimal manual effort.
 
Connecting and keeping in touch with contacts via social networks online is very high leverage – you don’t need to spend hours doing it (although it can suck you in to spending hours if you don’t watch it).
 
And your most powerful method of nurturing relationships automatically is to create a list of contacts who have opted-in to receive value-added material from you by email.
 
Please don’t just send your newsletter to everyone in your contact address book. That’s little more than spamming. Give them the chance to opt-in to receive communications and only send messages to those who do.

 
And make sure that what you send isn’t just a newsletter with news about your firm. it needs to be a valuable communication that helps them, and enhances your relationship with them.
 
The final leak is not creating opportunities.
 
The relationship building activities we’vetalked about so far absolutely will work as described. They’ll make it much more likely that your clients will think of you first when a need for your services arises.
 
But you can do better than that.
 
This doesn’t work for all professionals though.  Some professionals perform services that are demand-driven. You can only sell them when a client already has a need. For example, a divorce lawyer can’t go out and encourage clients to get divorced just to drum up demand for her services.
 
However, some professionals can. Many consultants, for example, can create demand by simply making clients aware of their services and the benefits they would get from hiring them. In my own case, a conversation with a client about how to get more clients from their website can trigger a request for me to help them – even if the client wasn’t aware of a "need" beforehand.
 
In these cases,  your nurture activities can actually trigger demand.
 
In your communications with clients you can make them aware of training events you’re running, or a new coaching programme you’re launching. Essentially you’re creating news from your services.
 
You can’t do this too often. At least 80% of your nurture activities must directly add value to the potential client rather than being promotional in nature. Otherwise they’ll stop being open to your communications.
 
But subtly mingled in, these communications can proactively create opportunities for you with the clients you’re nurturing rather than having to wait for them to recognise a need and come to you.

In the Next Issue…

I’ll be covering the third big area: converting opportunities into sales.

Recommended Resource: Aweber

It’s rather appropriate that in an issue dedicated to nurturing relationships I should feature a resource that’s central to the way I nurture relationships with my potential clients.

Aweber is the leading email marketing and "autoresponder" system on the web.
 
it allows you to manage large lists of subscribers to your newsletters (I have thousands and it doesn’t even blink) and handle all the subscribe/unsubscribe requests automatically.
 
it has very high deliverability – they have full time staff dedicated to making sure they have strong relationships with all the email service providers so that your messages actually egt through rather than being tagged as spam.
 
(By the way – if you’re using Outlook or your corporate email system to send out large numbers of newsletters or other emails you’re running a huge risk of getting your email address being marked as a source of spam and being blacklisted).
 
Aweber also has a great system for autoresponders: automated emails sent out in sequence when people sign up (for example a series of informational and promotional emails delivered over time when people ask for more information on a particular service).
 
It’s got the best statistics in the business – letting you see what people are opening and clicking on (and what they’re not) and it allows you to split-test different elements of your emails to see which has the best results.
 
I thoroughly recommend Aweber and use it for all my campaigns. You can find out more and get a free $1 trial for the first month here.

News Roundup

For consultants and coaches reading this, I’ll be hosting a free teleseminar with Mike Schultz of the Wellesley Hills Group (and author of Amazon best seller Professional Services Marketing) on Thursday 1st July. We’ll be discussing How to Succeed at Selling Consulting Services without becoming a Pushy Salesperson.You can sign-up to get the dial-in details here.

Thanks to everyone who bought my More Referrals More Business ebook and audio on getting more referrals. I’ve been really flattered by the response and the feedback – thank you all for your kind words.
 
The ebook is still on sale at the launch price of $47 for a little while longer. In a couple of weeks I’ll be popping the price up to $97. You can go to www.morereferralsmorebusiness.com if you’re interested in buying it (and see some free videos on getting more referrals too).
 
Over on the Get Clients Blog I got some great feedback and lots of tweets about an article I wrote entitled "Think Like a Fish" on trying to put yourself in your customer’s shoes. You can read it here.

Finally, I posted some findingsand some advice on how to create a good profile on Linkedin at Linkedin Profiles: My Shocking Findings
That’s it for this issue. See you in a few weeks time.
 
Until then, best of luck winning new business!
 
 

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