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5 Crippling Beliefs That Keep Consultants And Coaches In The Poor House

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 12th, 2011.

There's a myth often perpetrated in the media that consultants and coaches earn easy money doling out simplistic advice while hard-working salaried employees get on with the “real work”.

In my experience, the truth is very different. Most independent consultants and coaches work long hours, dedicated to helping their clients. They're still there plugging away long after the “hard-working employees” have gone home.

Yet most earn less than they did in the corporate world. And many struggle to survive.

It's not for want of talent or hard work.

Most usually it's because they're not good at marketing and selling their services.

And often, that stems from “crippling beliefs” they have about marketing and sales that undermine their attempts to get new clients.

In my time I've seen 5 particularly damaging beliefs that are commonly held by consultants, coaches and other professionals. Beliefs you must eradicate if you want to succeed at winning clients.

Crippling Belief #1: “If I do good work, people will hear about me”.

Painful truth: no they won't.

Sadly, good news doesn't travel. When researchers TARP looked at word of mouth, they found that if you have a bad experience with a business then on average you'll tell 12 people, and those 12 people will tell 6 others each. You've probably heard this or a similar statistic before.

However, a much less reported finding is that they also found that if you have a good experience with a business then on average you'll tell just a couple of friends. And those friends won't remember much, and won't tell anyone else at all.

And the problem with relying on word of mouth is that as most people practice it, it's a passive strategy. You're reliant on the goodwill of others to generate leads for you.

If you want more clients? Well, you just have to hope you get more recommendations.

So while word of mouth is great – relying on it alone is a sure road to the poor house.

Crippling Belief #2: “I just need to get my name out there”.

Painful truth: it won't make any difference.

Having your name out there more, having more people know about you, just means you're adding more noise to the constant barrage of promotional messages we all face every day.

“Getting your name out there” causes consultants and coaches to pay for advertising, send out meaningless flyers, and hire SEO companies to generate traffic to dead-end websites.

Unless you have a message that resonates with potential clients and that sets you apart from the myriad of others clamouring for attention then getting your name out there is pointless.

Crippling Belief #3: “I can copy what others are succeeding with”.

Painful truth: it might be working for them, that doesn't mean it will work for you.

These days we're overwhelmed with opportunities and information. Every day we see others “crushing it” with webinars, events, product launches, direct mail, networking, social media…

It's incredibly easy to become distracted – to try copy all the things other people (who always seem somehow less talented than us, but more succesfull) are doing.

But if we do this we'll hop from strategy to strategy. Always following the latest technique we've heard about and never mastering any of them.

And worse still, just because networking or social media or direct mail worked for one of your competitors or someone you saw speaking at an event doesn't mean it will work for you. Your clients are different. Your skills are different.

You have to tread your own path. Learn from others, but find the things that work for you. Then focus on them and become a master at them.

Crippling Belief #4: “I can't find the time for marketing”.

Painful truth: if you don't market, you'll soon have plenty of time on your hands.

Not having the time for marketing sounds ludicrous when you say it – but I hear it or something similar again and again.

You don't find the time for marketing – you make the time.

I advise most small firms and solo professionals that they should be spending between 10 – 20% of their time on marketing and business development. More in the early stages of their business.

If you can't make that time, then you've either got your priorities wrong, or (if you need to be billing for 80%+ of the time to make ends meet) you've got your economic model seriously wrong.

More usually, the problem is that people avoid marketing because they don't feel competent or comfortable with it, and unlike the area where they're an expert, it holds out the terrible potential for failure and rejection.

If you want to be successful you've got to get over this, and you've got to get over yourself. You've got to knuckle down, book the time, and get your marketing done.

Crippling Belief #5: “I'm not a (natural) salesperson”.

Painful truth: almost no one is a natural salesperson. It doesn't stop them, and it shouldn't stop you.

For some reason, many of us seem to have acquired this belief that “natural salespeople” kind of pop out of the womb that way. So we look at people who are good at selling and we assume we could never be like that and feel overwhelmed.

But the truth is that when we look at people who are good at selling, we're seeing the finished article. The product of years of experience and training. They didn't start off that way.

Sure, there are some skills like listening, empathising, making friends and being sociable that some people seem to be naturally good at or pick up at an early age. But those are perfectly learnable skills for us too. Along with the more structured skills involved in selling.

And we don't need to have perfected our skills to still have success with them. Most people see significant improvements in their success rate winning clients just by learning and following a simple, structured sales process.

Empowering Belief: “I CAN do this. I will do this”.

Marketing and sales isn't some magical thing you have to be born into. It's a set of simple principles and steps that anyone can do.

And it doesn’t have to be the pushy, hypey type of marketing that many of us would hate to do (see my article on How To Market Without Using Hype for details).

What it does take is a commitment to learn what you need to do and then to put it into action.

Can you do this? Will you do this?

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More Clients Memorandum

Practical tips for romancing your clients

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 10th, 2011.

In the last email I talked about the importance of courting your clients. Investing in building a high-quality relationship with them.

Great in theory – I don't think anyone would disagree with the concept.

But why do so few people do it in practice?

The truth is that romancing your clients is hard work.

It's a bit of a grind. And it's work that doesn't pay off immediately.

Consistency is the key – you need to be regularly in touch, not just calling when you need something from them.

Consistency requires you to be systematic. And I have to admit, I'm far from the most systematic of people by nature.

So this has always been a bit of a struggle for me. I'm always tempted to focus on shiny new toys rather than keep focusing on old friends.

To keep myself on the straight and narrow I devised a simple system that even I can use to make sure I'm being consistent with my client nurturing activities. It might be helpful to you too.

These days my business is all online and automated so I don't do so much personal nurturing of relationships and more. But this system worked very well when I did, and I thought it might be helpful to you too.

There are three steps to it.

The first is to list and categorise your potential clients. I use a fairly simple approach:

* I mark those clients who would be ideal for my business and who could bring me a lot of work as category A.

* Potential clients who are close to ideal, or who are ideal but small and wouldn't bring me a lot of business I mark as category B.

* People I've met who are interesting, but I don't yet know if they'd make good clients I consider as category C for now.

My primary method of keeping in touch with this C category is via my email newsletter which, of course, my As and Bs also get. Note: I don't sign them up for this unless they say they want it. I might send them a link to sign up or offer to do it for them. But I won't add them to my list without permission.

The second step is to write down your goals for your relationship with your A and B category potential clients.

In particular, I focus on what I'd like to achieve with them (perhaps it's that they hire me for coaching, or maybe it's a big training project) and what they need to know and feel before they'll be ready for that.

So, for example, if I'd like them to become a coaching client, perhaps what they need to know and feel is that I understand their challenges and that I've got the skills to help them overcome them.

Maybe they also need to feel that I'd be a nice person to work with – we'd have a good time working together.

And perhaps they need to have confidence in their own abilities and that achieving the sort of goals they're aiming for really is possible.

Over time I've found I'm able to identify common patterns of what potential coaching or consulting or training clients need to feel to be comfortable hiring me – so I don't have to rethink this stuff from scratch every time.

I also write down what I know they're interested in and what would be useful for them based on my interactions with them so far and a bit of research with our friend Google.

Then the third step is simply to review my lists on a regular basis and take action.

For A category potential clients I'll look at the list of names, what I'd like to achieve with them and what would be useful for them on a weekly basis. For the Bs it's every month.

Then based on that reminder, I'll plan some activities for the week where I do something to help progress towards my goal.

Sometimes it'll just be sending them useful information or inviting them to an event I think they'll benefit from. But it's better if I can be sure that what I'm doing is leading us towards the goal.

So if I'm sending them useful information, I'll usually try to make sure it's something that will build their confidence in my skills (an article I've written that talks about a client I worked with, for example).

Or if I feel they need to grow their confidence that what they're thinking of doing is really possible, I may send them a case study of someone who's done something similar.

I don't always manage to come up with something every week. But I do manage to come up with things often enough to build a good, strong relationship.

And thinking about them every week increases the likelihood that during the week I'll spot something relevant for them as I'll be more aware of what would be useful.

It's this regular drip-drip-drip of action that makes the system work.

We've probably all made lists and categorised our clients before.

I'm sure most of us have identified our clients' needs and interests and promised ourselves we'll use that information to build a better relationships with them.

But where almost all of us fall down is that we fail to turn that into regular action.

If you're not doing this stuff week in, week out, it really won't have much impact.

So if you're like me and this systematic nurturing doesn't come naturally – make sure you build yourself a weekly habit like this and build it in to your schedule.

Because, as we said last week, for the majority of your prospects, it won't be your first contact that turns them into clients – it'll be your 5th, 6th, 9th, 10th or more

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Authority Marketing Podcast

Authority Marketing Interview: John Seddon

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 7th, 2011.

John Seddon is a global authority on systems thinking in service organisations.

Often controversial, always outspoken – John has been championing systems thinking for nearly three decades. He's a fierce critic of piecemeal government reform and top down target setting and often clashes with what he calls the “toolhead” proponents of Lean.

He's not everyone's cup of tea – he even has “hate” websites dedicated to criticising him. But he's built his reputation and authority to the level where, certainly in the UK, if you want to take a systems thinking approach to transforming your service organisation, John is almost always the first person you'll call.

In this podcast John talks about how (almost accidentally) he got started in the field of systems thinking. How he built his expertise and his reputation. Some of the branding mistakes he made along the way. And his advice for consultants and other professionals wanting to take the authority route to building their business.

Click here to subscribe to the Authority Marketing podcasts in iTunes.

To find out more about John, his business Vanguard Consulting, and to get hold of resources on systems thinking, you can just google “John Seddon” or head straight to:

http://www.systemsthinking.co.uk/

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More Clients Memorandum

Romancing your way to more clients

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 3rd, 2011.

In my recent emails I've focused on the planning and activities needed to make your initial contact with potential clients.

Now it would be great if at that initial point of contact, it turns out that your potential client is ready to buy right then and there.

But in reality, that's very rarely the case.

In my experience, 80-95% or more of the time, your initial contact will be with prospects who could be great clients – but who just aren't quite ready to hire you yet.

It could be they haven't yet realised they have an issue you can help with.

Or they haven't seen the magnitude of the challenge and aren't yet addressing it with urgency.

Or very often, they haven't seen enough from you yet to trust you and believe in your capabilities.

Or it may even be that you ended up pitching for some work but lost out to a competitor.

Typically what happens next is that you'll move on to your next “hot prospect”. You'll focus on the next initial meeting or call you have arranged, or that new proposal you've been asked for.

But has that potential client you've been focusing your attention on up to now suddenly become a bad prospect?

Are they suddenly not a good fit for your services because they're not ready to buy yet, or they've chosen to go with a competitor?

It could be that during your initial contact with them you discovered some new information which tells you they're not a good prospect. But nine times out of ten that's not the case.

Usually the answer is that they're still a good prospect – only not for now. Maybe 3 months or 6 months or 18 months down the line.

The trouble is that most of us will act as if they're no longer a high potential client. We'll devote all our energy to our new hot prospects and ignore the people who only weeks ago were top of our list.

As a result, when 3 months, 6 months or 18 months has passed and they're now much more ready to buy – do they turn to us?

If we've ignored them over that time, or only contacted them to ask if they were ready yet, then the chances are that we won't be the one they call.

Who would you call in those circumstances?

Someone you spoke to months earlier but who never contacted you again – or someone who kept in touch by sending you useful, relevant information? Someone who introduced you to useful contacts and invited you to interesting events.

No matter how great your credentials and capabilities, if you ignore a potential client they're never going to find out how great you are.

As David Maister used to point out, the situation is very much like the difference between romance and “one night stands”.

If you're looking for a significant commitment from someone, then the chances are they're not going to make it on the first date. You need to romance them over time.

You need to show that you genuinely care about them – and that you're the sort of person they're looking for.

That's not going to happen if you use the “one night stand” tactics of trying your luck then moving on to the next person if you don't hit it lucky straight away.

Think of the difference in approaches. Succeeding with one night stands (at least so I'm told – obviously I have no first-hand experience ;) ) is all about you. It's about putting on a show. Looking the best you can, having the best chat up lines and pick up techniques.

Romance is all about the other person. Genuinely listening to them. Understanding what they're looking for (and maybe deciding you're not right for each other).

Doing nice things for them. Proving to them that you're the one. It's not about using clever chat or techniques.

All of this requires an investment of a not-insignificant amount of time and effort. In the world of personal relationships, it's pretty difficult to romance more than one person at a time.

In the world of business relationships, you can manage a few more and they rarely expect you to be “exclusive”.

But nonetheless, it's very difficult to romance more than a handful of clients personally at any given time. So before you make that investment, you need to make sure that they really are right for you and that you're right for them.

So let's put that into practice.

Out of the potential clients you met in the last few weeks, write down a short list of the small number who could be those “perfect” clients for you.

Then think through and write down what you can do over the next few weeks to start romancing them.

Keep building that list week-in, week-out. And keep planning those romance activities for the highest potential clients on your list. It'll pay off sooner rather than later.

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Mindset

Marketing Half Truths

Posted by

Ian Brodie on March 31st, 2011.

Did you listen to my recent Authority Marketing Podcast interview with Drayton Bird? Hasn't he led an amazing life?

The interview reminded me of something I've long felt but never spoken about before. Something I describe as one of Marketing's biggest “half truths”.

Have you ever heard anyone say “your clients aren't interested in you – only what you can do for them”? Or “they don't care what you do – only the result they'll get”? Or the old classic “clients are tuned into WIIFM – what's in it for me”?

Well, of course, that's marketing 101. Real basics.

But it's also only half the story.

Here's the thing: weren't you fascinated by Drayton's anecdotes about his experiences, for example? And what are the most popular programmes on TV? The soap operas or character-based dramas like House or CSI.

We humans are fascinated by interesting characters. We want to know why House is the way he is – not just watch him cure the patient. We want to see the interplay between Grissom and Sara – not just the solution to the crime.

And vitally important for professionals – those stories lend credibility to our expertise. We hear Drayton's stories of studying human nature in his parents' pub. Of researching direct marketing more than anyone else. Of learning from the greats. And of making mistake after mistake until he got it right.

And so we think “yes – he must know what he's doing”.

So although clients initially focus on what's in it for them – what results you'll deliver for them. They're also interested in your story. What is it in your backstory that makes you credible to deliver those results.

And that means that as a consultant, a coach or other advisor, you need an interesting and credibility-bestowing backstory.

I don't mean you make one up. But you look at your story and pick out the elements that make you credible in what you do.

Did you obsessively research your subject, for example? Or have you, like Drayton, “made every mistake in the book and then some” – you've got the experience and scars that mean you can steer your clients away from the problems you hit.

Perhaps you're the champion of the little guy (or big guy) like them. Or maybe you've been the guy behind the scenes pulling the strings making others like them successful.

Or maybe it's a combination of those things.

In the next post I'll run through some of the most effective “stories” you can have.

But for now, just think about your own story and what elements of it give you the most credibility in what you do.

PS – it's not just people that people are interested in the backstory of. One of the most successful print advertisements of all time was the legendary Claude Hopkins' ad for Schlitz Beer shown here.

Did the ad focus on the refreshing taste, or how the beer would make you feel? Was it all about the result?

Nope. it talked about the 50 years of brewing experience. It described the care they took selecting the hops from Bohemia. It detailed the supervision of the process, the cleanliness, the purity, the filtration and the storage.

In short, it gave the backstory of the beer. It gave credibility to the claim that it was the best beer in the world.

And the impact for Schlitz? It went from fifth in the market to first in a few months and stayed there for years.

That's the power of a good backstory. One that goes beyond just WIIFM.

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Authority Marketing Podcast

Authority Marketing Interview: Drayton Bird

Posted by

Ian Brodie on March 28th, 2011.

What can I say about Drayton Bird that hasn't already been said?

The legendary David Ogilvy said “he knows more about direct marketing than anyone in the world”.

Sir Martin Sorrell, founder of WPP called him a “wise and wily marketer”.

Ken McCarthy, the founding father of internet marketing called him simply a “genius”.

So how did he get to this point? How did he build his authority as a direct marketer and copywriter to the point where even the experts come to learn from him?

In this interview, Drayton reveals the simple (but of course, far from easy) secrets of his success in direct marketing.

He talks about how he got started, how he got his first job in advertising, some of his famous successes and painful disasters.

And he shares his advice on what it takes to build a position as an authority in your field.

For a consultant or coach looking to raise their profile and begin to get clients looking for them, it's absolute gold dust.

A quick warning for the faint of heart – Drayton does swear a bit in the interview!

Drayting Bird Authority Marketing Interview

Click here to subscribe to the Authority Marketing podcasts in iTunes.

To find out more about Drayton and to get a free copy of his 101 helpful marketing ideas, head over to

http://draytonbird.com/blog/

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More Clients Memorandum

My best tips for “making things happen”

Posted by

Ian Brodie on March 27th, 2011.

We've reached the stage in our process where it's time to take action. To make things happen.

We know who our ideal clients are. We thoroughly understand what makes them tick.

We've got an irresistible value proposition and we've planned the right lead generation activities to make our first contact with them.

Now we have to turn those plans into action.

And I must admit, this is the area I'm personally the weakest at. I get my kicks from thinking: innovating or solving problems. It's probably what makes me quite a good consultant.

But I'm not so good at actually implementing my ideas myself. I just don't find that quite as exciting.

And my experience from working with hundreds of consultants, coaches and other professionals over the years is that I'm not alone.

It seems endemic that we prefer the intellectual to the practical or relationship sides of business.

So if, like me, you're in that camp then click here for my simple “implementation tips” that I've picked up over the years. They've made me vastly more effective at getting things done and getting results than I used to be.

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More Clients Memorandum

Don’t miss this crucial marketing step

Posted by

Ian Brodie on March 20th, 2011.

Today's email is about a crucial step in your marketing that many of us miss out – and it costs us big time.

If you've followed my “soup to nuts” emails so far you'll know we've touched on identifying our ideal, target clients. We've built deep understanding of their needs and figured out what makes them tick.

We've developed a compelling value proposition and identified what marketing approaches are the best to get our message across to them.

Time for action then?

Not quite.

Almost all of the strategies we're going to use require planning. Even something as seemingly simple as networking needs you to identify the right events, to develop a simple benefit-focused introduction and a set of questions to ask.

And you'll need to figure out what your follow-up approach is going to be.

Without planning, even the most effective marketing will fail to deliver results.

Case in point: when I first started up on my own I decided I wanted to use speaking & seminars as a way of getting in front of potential clients.

But for over a year it just didn't happen.

The reason: wanting and wishing aren't the same as planning and doing.

But once I'd set myself a target of 12 presentations or seminars to audiences with at least 10 or more potential clients I was spurred into to action.

I broke down the target into months and planned the activities I needed to do to hit that target.

I brainstormed potential events & venues, thought through the topics I would focus on that would be likely to lead to potential clients engaging with me, and identified the resources I would need to achieve my goal.

Once I had my plan in place, I became more aware of possibilities for offering my services as a presenter.

And by reviewing the plan and progress initially weekly and then monthly, I kept the pressure on myself to hit the target.

And it worked. I beat my target after only 9 months.

Simple stuff. But I hadn't done it the year before, because I hadn't taken the simple step of setting a target and making a plan.

What Makes an Effective Plan?

An effective plan is not just about the details of activities and milestones.

What's more important is to think through the objectives and deliverables – and what are the critical success factors – the “must do”s that will make sure you achieve your objectives. The things you can control.

In my case I set a goal of getting at least 6 clients from my talks during the year – and I reckoned I'd need to do 12 talks to audiences of at least 10 potential clients to do it.

That was my final goal. But in order to achieve that goal I needed to develop a high quality talk, and to find the right events to speak at.

I also needed to develop a follow up system to identify who in the audience was really interested in the topic and to then convert them into clients.

Those were my critical success factors.

They may seem obvious now in retrospect, but it took a few minutes of brainstorming to make sure I really understood what they were and had prioritised them above all the other things I could have been doing.

That led me to create a simple plan – focusing first on getting a compelling topic and doing a brief synopsis.

Then working in parallel on developing the talk itself while finding the right events to speak at and speaking to the organisers to get booked.
Then I worked on creating the talk itself and the follow-up system just in time to deliver the first one.

Do I really need to do all this planning?

Absolutely yes.

I've seen so many professionals who think they can wing it. That once they've identified their key marketing approaches they can just make them happen and hold all the details in their heads.

They can't. They fail.

Or worst of all, they experience minor success – so they keep on doing it, not realising how much more effective they could be if they planned properly.

If you haven't got a written plan that you're reviewing week-in, week-out for the key marketing approches you're going to use to bring in clients then inevitably you'll be distracted by the day to day pressures of client work and running the business.

Don't fall into that trap. Get planning.

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Selling

Why I’ve Changed The Way I Sell – And Why You Should Too

Posted by

Ian Brodie on March 17th, 2011.

An email I got last week from a fellow consultant made me think about how the way I sell has changed in some important ways over the last few years. I thought you might be interested and it might help you make some changes in the way you sell too.

What's triggered the change is a difference in clients.

What I'm finding is that more and more, clients approach me having done a much more thorough exploration of their problems and opportunities than before. And often they have a solution in mind already, even before they've spoken to me.

Perhaps you've found this with your clients too?

In the “good old days”, I found clients were aware of the symptoms they were seeing in their business. But they usually didn't have the knowledge or experience to know why they were happening, what the true depth of impact was, and what the solution might be.

So my sales process focused on diagnosing their problem, exploring the true impact, and suggesting some potential solutions. Basic consultative selling really.

This process did three critical things. Firstly it established what the real issue was so that I was proposing the right solution. Secondly, by exploring the true impact, we could see whether the problem was worth solving (and if it was, it motivated the client to hire me to solve it).

Thirdly, behind the scenes, it established me as an expert.

Because I was able to diagnose their problems – show them what the real issue and the true impact was when they had been looking primarily at the symptoms – it gave me credibility. It gave clients the confidence that I'd be able to solve those problems because I'd understood what they were when they hadn't.

But fast-forward to today and it's a different scenario.

Now they've done their research online. (I knew nothing good would come of that darned interweb thing).

And if they're coming to you believing they've already diagnosed their problems and have the solution then your relationship is very different.

You're no longer a trusted partner and advisor guiding them through the problem-solving process. You're a vendor they're telling what they want.

If all you can do in response to what they're asking for is to nod and say “yes, we can do that” then where's your value added?

In particular, you're not filling the client with confidence in your expertise. Worse still, you're not providing any differentiation from all the other vendors he's been to see who say “yes, we can do that”.

How's he going to choose if all you vendors look the same?

Price. Yuck.

So, how do we get out of this “vendor trap”?

Well, one great way is if they've educated themselves on your website and they see you as the leader in the field and the only one they want to work with. That's what I'm aiming for with my marketing and it's something I encourage you to aim for too.

But in many cases (even with all the effort I put into the web) that won't be the case. They'll have educated themselves via other sources. Maybe good ones, maybe bad ones. But either way they're coming with much more information about their issues already.

How do we handle that in a sales meeting?

Well, the good news is that you're still the real expert.

A few hours of research on the web may point them in the right direction – but it doesn't give them the depth of experience and knowledge that you have.

You just have to get that across to them.

Now telling them you're an expert isn't going to cut it. You know that.

Even testimonials, awards and all those articles you've had published in prestigious magazines don't cut it.

What works best is creating what I call “lightbulb” moments.

These are where, in your discussion with your potential clients, lightbulbs suddenly go off in their heads. Something you say helps them see things differently.

They get deeper insight into their problem. They suddenly see a much better solution. They realise they're looking at the wrong issue.

Anything that makes them take a mental step back.

And most importantly – anything that makes them realise there's a bit more to this that they first thought. And that you really know what you're talking about. And that you're different from those other guys who just nodded and said “yes, we can do that”.

So how do you get those wonderful lightbulb moments?

Well, you could do it by being a genius. By being so smart that on-the-fly you can spot new issues, ideas and insights that trigger the lightbulb moments for your clients. Personally, I don't rely on this method.

I use an approach I learned from the rather excellent book Escaping the Price Driven Sale

In essence, what you do is a mini audit of your services and the projects and other work you do for clients.

Normally what you'd do in these audits is think through what problems each service solves for your clients. The typical benefits they deliver and what they could be worth to your clients.

Here you go a bit further. You look for surprises. For each service you've delivered you look for what was new, insightful, unusual and surprising to the client you were working for. Try to find the things that are often “news”. The things that most clients didn't realise before they started working with you.

Let's say you're a supply chain consultant and you find that clients are often surprised that on inventory reduction projects, you usually get better results not by improving forecast accuracy, but by improving production flexibility. (I just made that up by the way – please don't email me if you're a supply chain expert and I'm talking nonsense).

Or you do sales training and you find that most sales training initiatives fail not because of the training itself – but because it's not followed up and reinforced by coaching and mentoring afterwards.

In fact, lightbulb moments related to implementation and making stuff work in practice are often the very best – because they show you don't just know the theory – you're really been there and done it.

Turn your most common examples into questions you can ask, and gentle responses you can give.

“Where do you believe most of the cost reductions are going to come from?”.

“Hmmmm. You know, with most of the clients I've worked with, they've found that in practice, …”

You mustn't upstage your client and make them look like an idiot. What you want to do is ask enough insightful questions that they come across the answers themselves – or at least begin to see a glimmer of them. Then you build on that and share some of your experience. They'll take much more ownership of ideas you seeded that they got to themselves (and they'll give you credit for them too).

I can't promise this will work every time. Sometimes the client really has come up with the right answer themselves already. Or they've got their mind set and they just don't want to listen. That's just the nature of the game these days.

But very often using this technique will help you change the game so that you're not just a vendor saying “yes, we can do that”. You're an insightful trusted partner that they'll want to do business with.

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Authority Marketing Podcast

Authority Marketing Interview: Greg Alexander

Posted by

Ian Brodie on March 15th, 2011.

Greg Alexander, CEO of Sales Benchmark Index and leading authority on improving sales performance using benchmarking explains how he found his niche and became the leader in this field.

This is the third in a series of interviews with leading authorities and experts from the world of consulting and coaching.

Greg is recognised globally through his books Topgrading for Sales, Making the Number and The CEOs Guide to Getting More Out of the Sales Force.

He reveals some surprising findings from his research into where senior executives look to find the “go to” expert in a field (hint: it's not google) and his recommendations for how to build your authority.

Click here to subscribe to the Authority Marketing podcasts in iTunes.

To find out more about Greg and SBI and their work on salesforce performance, head over to:

http://blog.salesbenchmarkindex.com/

Enjoy!

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