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Mindset

Creating a Marketing Habit in 21 Days

Posted by

Ian Brodie on June 15th, 2009.

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 & tackling” we all need to do become effective marketers.

The first part of the book is a day-by-day activity guide to ingrain client-focused marketing habits into your psyche. The second is a guide to developing a marketing plan, focused on your current and former clients, marketing within your firm, and marketing by joining organisations. the final part is a series of marketing “pearls of wisdom” from successful lawyers.

48 Hour Deal: 34 Free Gifts for Purchasers of the Book

For the next 48 hours, Paula is running a special deal where anyone who buys her book via the Law Marketing Portal can claim “The Smart Layer's Toolkit” – 34 ebooks, free subscriptions, podcasts and other gifts.

Among the contributers to this are:

Larry Bodine on “Thinking Like a Rainmaker”
Josh Fruchter on “The Top Ten Law Firm Website SEO Best Practices”
Julie Fleming on “The Reluctant Rainmaker: A Guide for Lawyers Who Hate Selling”
Patrick J McKenna on “Getting Unbeatable Testimonials”
Paramjit Mahli on “How To Grow Your Law Practice on a Shoestring Budget…Media Relations”
David Barret on “Social Media for Lawyers”
and a contribution from myself: “Building Your Client Base Through Referrals”

Go to Paula's Law Marketing site to order and get the free gifts.

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Strategy

Referrals: You’ve got to have a System

Posted by

Ian Brodie on June 13th, 2009.

Referral Partnerships 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've got to remember that not all referrals are created equal.

Unfortunately, some referrals can be little better than random cold calls. You get the name and number 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 the referrer as a credible and trusted source.

So it's our ability as professionals to work with our clients and partners to deliver the quality – not just the quantity – of referrals that will make all the difference to our success with them.

Do Referrals Work?

“Referrals from Colleagues” and “Referrals from Other Service Providers” were identified as the #1 and #2 method used by buyers of professional services to identify and learn more about providers in the 2009 RainToday.com Benchmarking Study “How Clients Buy”.

Because of the complex and intangible nature of professional services, buyers look for help to assess two critical criteria for selection:

“Can the provider do the job?”, and
“Can I work with them?”

They take clues from their personal interactions with the providers (at seminars, presentations and sales meetings) and from the experiences of people they know and trust.

And despite the increasing prevalence of online “relationships”, the people they turn to for recommendations are their colleagues and other service providers they have worked closely with. In other words: people whose judgement they respect.

For infrequent or “distress” purchases which are bought because of an immediate or unexpected need (for example, many legal and consulting services) the reliance on trusted third parties is even bigger.

Buyers won't invest in building a relationship up front with a provider of services they don't know they'll ever need. So instead, they rely heavily on the opinions of those they trust with experience themselves.

So do referrals work? The answer is a resounding “Yes” – if done correctly.

You've Got to Have a System

In his classic work Creating Rainmakers, Ford Harding highlights that although successful business developers are very diverse in terms of background, personality, style and approach – they all share one common factor: <u>they all have a “system” for generating business</u>.

That system may be hugely different between Rainmakers, with one relying on networking, another on cold calling, another on writing and speaking.

But all of the successful Rainmakers had developed a method which <u>worked for them</u> which they could employ repeatedly and effectively without having to think from scratch of what to do.

When needed, they were able to “switch on” their system and carry out the steps which would bring them more business.

In contrast, less effective business developers either tried to “wing it”, or had to spend so much time reinventing a system – gathering contact details, developing a script, identifying networking meetings, or writing an article – that the opportunity was lost.

It's the same with referrals. Although we all know how powerful referrals can be, how many of us take a systematic approach to generating them?

Not many in my experience.

Professional firms wouldn't dream of investing marketing budgets and non-billable time into advertising, speaking campaigns, seminars, website development or thought leadership without a thorough analysis and plan for how that investment would pay off.

Good marketing plans identify target clients for each approach, refine the firm's positioning and specify the messaging to be used.

They identify clear objectives for each area and the sequence of activities and critical success factors necessary to achieve those objectives. They carefully allocate non-billable hours and budget to each activity to try to maximise the overall returns.

Yet when it comes to referrals – potentially the most powerful approach of all – most firms simply leave it to chance.

At best, they encourage and remind partners to “ask for referrals”. But no thought is put into which clients to ask, how to ask, what to ask for, how to “earn” a referral, etc. At worst referrals are simply not mentioned at all.

These firms are hoping that their good work will result in positive word of mouth and spontaneous referrals. Sadly, research by TARP in the US has highlighted that referrals simply don't happen spontaneously.

When it comes to dissatisfaction:

An unhappy customer will share their bad experience with an average of 12 other people (in my case, when it comes to bad customer service at John Lewis, I share it with thousands via this blog)
Each of those 12 people will in turn mention it to 6 others.

Unfortunately, when it comes to a satisfied customer:

A happy customer will share their experience with just a few friends;
Those friends will not remember much and will not share that information with anyone at all.

Essentially, without further proactive work from the service provider, positive “word of mouth” ends with a few friends and colleagues of the satisfied customer.

So professionals and their firms who want to get more from referrals need to get serious in their approach.

They need to develop and implement a plan to proactively address all the key elements which influence both the number and the quality of referrals received.

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Mindset

Why You Should Enter Your Contacts in Your CRM System Yourself

Posted by

Ian Brodie on May 10th, 2009.

Typing into my Contact Management system As businesses grow, they very sensibly begin to delegate or outsource “administrative” tasks. One such task is often the inputting of contact details from business cards into the contact management or CRM system. The task is typically delegated to junior staff, or nowadays a virtual assistant or service such as Shoeboxed.

As a sole practitioner I need to outsource as many administrative tasks as possible to preserve my time to focus on marketing, sales and client work. But inputting contact details is one task I keep myself.

The task isn't hugely onerous – but it does take time. I'm prepared to invest that time for three reasons:

I always recall useful details of my interaction with the contact that I can enter in my system – but that I didn't capture at the time in a way an assistant would be able to transcribe. Like many people I write useful notes on the back of people's business cards. But, of course, I never capture everything. Typing in the contacts details often triggers useful memories which I can then put in the system.
It embeds the contact's details in my mind and makes it easier for me to remember them in future – particularly if I spot something interesting for them, or think of something I can do to help them. As I've discussed before, I review my contact list monthly (weekly for high priority contacts) to try to see if there's anything I can do to further my relationships. By embedding the contacts details in my mind, a lot of this activity happens automatically during the month anyway.
It triggers me to think about immediate follow-up. If there's something useful I can do for them within a few days of the event we met at, I will become much more memorable to them and be remembered with gratitude rather than just as a contact. A few minutes invested in thinking about what they said, the needs or interests they expressed and about the resources I might have access to that could help them always pays dividends.

Now, of course, you could get an assistant to type the raw details in, and then review yourself and do the tasks I've just talked about. But that has really never worked for me. I need the physical prompt of being forced to type the details to make me get round to thinking about the contact and potential follow-up.

So for me, this admin time is time very well spent indeed.

Featured

Marketing

Know, Like and Trust – the Keys to Cross Selling

Posted by

Ian Brodie on May 8th, 2009.

Know, Like & Trust It's one of the oldest (and truest) phrases in selling: people buy from people they know, like and trust.

But it actually applies much wider than buyer-seller relationships.

One of the emerging findings from my research project into law firm business development best practices is the importance of cross-selling – especially in today's economic climate. It's so much easier and better for professionals to sell more work to their existing clients – those who already know, like and trust them – than it is to hunt out new business. And it's also better for the client too – their risks are greatly minimised by doing business with people they trust and they know will be looking out for their best interests.

Yet sadly, most professionals aren't great at cross selling. My research has identified two main barriers:

Most professionals have very limited knowledge of the services their colleagues can deliver. They don't know who their ideal clients are, what to look for to spot an opportunity, or what to say to begin to engage with the client.
Sadly, many professionals also don't trust their colleagues enough to want to pro-actively cross-sell their services. By this I don't mean that they dis-trust them. Simply that they don't know what they do well enough, or have enough experience of working with them to feel confident that they would do a great job. And if they're not confident of that they will hesitate to recommend them and put their strong client relationships at risk.

So in fact, success in cross-selling is driven primarily by whether you Know, Like and Trust your colleagues.

How can we increase the level of knowledge and trust in professional firms? It's something I discussed over a few drinks with Will Kintish last night.

Will has come up with a great idea. As many readers will know, he's the UKs leading trainer and expert in Business Networking. He runs a lot of courses teaching professionals how to network externally: how to build relationships based on Know, Like and Trust with potential clients and external referral partners. But, of course, the same skills can be applied internally. By asking the same questions and networking internally, professionals can begin to break down the silos between their different units and teams. In Will's Internal Networking training sessions, not only do participants get to learn great networking skills which can be used to great effect externally; they also get to experience networking live with their internal colleagues. As part of the session they essentially “speed network” with many people from different functions and tak the first steps to building the trusted internal relationships which will give them the confidence to cross-sell.

Another approach to this I've used in the past is to hold an informal “trade show” event for staff. This can be an evening or Friday afternoon session where each practice area showcases its client work to the rest of the firm.

But it's not dry, formal, powerpoint presentations. Instead, each practice area or specialism hosts a “booth” – rather like at a tradeshow – with posters and charts giving examples of client projects they've done. Each example is in story or case study form:

Who was the client we worked with?
What was their business issue?
How did we help them? Did we do anything unusual or different for them?
What results did they achieve?

They close with talking about the sort of clients they're looking for introductions to.

The audience organises into small groups (preferrably mixed from across practice areas) and gathers round each booth for a 10 minute interactive presentation. Because the presenter is talking to a small group rather than presenting to the whole audience, there's a lot of interaction, questions and discussion. After 10 minutes, the groups move round to the next presentation which is repeated for them.

For a firm with 4 practice areas the whole thing can be done in about an hour. But be sure to add at least as long afterwards for informal networking and discussions as individuals follow-up on interesting things they've seen and areas where they've spotted opportunities.

They key is to keep it informal and client focused. No presentations about how great your team is, what revenues you achieved last year, or how you're better than that PI practice down the road. Focus on who your clients are, and what you've delivered for them.

By doing this, not only will staff get a much better understanding and knowledge of what each practice area does and how well they do it – but by interacting personally in small groups they'll begin to develop the level of trust between each other that's necessary for cross-selling to work.

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Marketing

Sales Excellence Podcast – Episode 4 : Lead Nurturing

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 30th, 2009.

In most businesses, between 70-80% of your leads are long term. They're potential clients who pass all your qualifying criteria – but they're just not ready to buy right now.

Ideally, you want to begin to build a relationship with these potential clients so that when the time is right to buy, you're in the front of their mind.

Unfortunately, most firms tend to drop leads the moment they find out they're not going to close in the short term. This is a huge mistake. Almost all these potential clients will buy from someone in the next 24 months. The role of Lead Nurturing is to make sure that someone is you.

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News

Pain at John Lewis – a lesson in awful customer service

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 22nd, 2009.

One of the prerogatives of being a fairly well read blogger – especially of a sales related blog – is that every now and then you get to rant about a bad customer service experience you've had.

This is my time.

And it's a doozy.

I've just spent the best part of an hour being grilled by the security staff at John Lewis in what I would describe as a deliberately (policy driven) accusatory manner. I've been a very valuable customer for them over the years and they've just lost me for life.

I went to John Lewis today to buy some stuff – a solar charger for my iphone and a new wallet. For those outside the UK, John Lewis is a well known national chain of department stores – they usually have pretty good items at good prices – and they have a good reputation for customer service. They're fairly unique in that they are owned by the 69,000 employees (or partners as they call them) and were voted Britain's favourite retailer in 2009. Well, they're certainly not my favourite now.

After I'd bought the solar charger I started looking at wallets. The reason I wanted a new one was that although my current one works well in a jacket pocket – it's just too big to slip into the pocket on a pair of jeans or trousers if I'm not wearing a jacket. I wanted a nice looking one – but the main criteria was that it was small.

In order to find the right wallet I spent quite a bit of time at the stand testing them out. There were some very small ones – just big enough for a few credit cards, and some slightly bigger ones which allowed more stuff to fit in them. I took my existing credit cards and tried them in the new wallets, putting the wallets into and out of my jacket and trouser pockets to test. At one point I went to the counter to buy the very small one – then had second thoughts and tested it with some extra cards I have in my wallet and found it a very tight fit for them. So I went back to the slightly larger ones – some nice Ted Baker branded leather wallets. I “umm'd and ahh'd” for a bit over the choice of a black leather one matching most of the other stuff I carry, or a cooler brown leather one. In the end I went for the plain black leather one.

I tried to check out the prices of the wallets – but struggled to find any price tags (I later found out the tags are usually inside the wallets – I was looking on the boxes). The wallet I wanted was next to two empty boxes – one with a price in it and one without (to be honest with all the swapping and moving I have no idea which box it was originally in) – but both were Ted Baker boxes.

I put the wallet in the box with the price tag and took it to the counter. When I got served, I specifically asked the assistant to double check the price of the wallet as I wasn't sure I had the correct box and I wanted to make sure I was paying the correct price.

He disappeared for a few minutes and then came back and confirmed the price on the box was correct – a relatively cheap £35.

So I bought it, and after fiddling with my iphone for a bit, left the store ready to head home.

Outside the door I was confronted by three big security guards. One asked me to show him what was in my pockets, which I did (I actually had the new wallet in my hands at the time and was busy transferring my credit cards into it as I walked). After confirming that, of course, I didn't have an extra wallet anywhere, they said they still wanted to take me to the security area so I was escorted back through the store into the private room they have.

When there I told them I wanted to record the conversation we were about to have on the voice recorder app on my iphone (it would have made a fun podcast!) – they disappeared for 10 minutes and came back saying that they had been told by group security that in would be “inappropriate” to record it on a mobile phone (!?!).

They then took my name and address – and then told me that they suspected me of something called “ticket swapping”. Apparently this is where someone swaps the price tag on a high priced item for a lower priced tag.

I explained how I had been selecting my wallet and trying out sizes and that I understood it may have looked strange. I then explained how there had only been one box with a price on so I had picked that but had deliberately asked the sales assistant to confirm the correct price so that I didn't under or over pay. I checked with them that they'd spoken to the sales assistant and confirmed this had happened.

“OK I thought, that's that cleared up. They're only doing their jobs – but now they understand what happened I'll get an apology and it'll all be over with”.

But no.

I did get an apology of sorts. The main security guard offered his apology saying “there's been confusion and mistakes on both sides. On this occasion we're prepared to let you leave right now.”

I did a double take. What did they mean “mistakes on both sides” and “on this occasion” – what “occasion” is this? Me buying for and paying for goods and taking extra steps to make sure I paid the right price.

So I checked with him: “Are you agreeing that you were mistaken and that I made sure I paid the correct price? Or do you still think I was up to something?”

He stated that in his view “A ticket swap was attempted – but I (the guard) intercepted this and made sure the right price was paid”.

I couldn't believe it. I checked again. “Look, I specifically asked the assistant to check the price and make sure it was right. There's no way I could have been trying anything. Think about it – I deliberately made sure I was paying the right price.”

But he wouldn't back down.

“Are you still accusing me of trying to do this ‘ticket swap' thing?”

“Yes”.

Unbelieveable. I go out of my way to make sure a mistake isn't made – and I get accused of trying to steal something.

Well, that was it for me.

As it happens, I am absolutely scrupulous about honesty. If I get undercharged for things or get an accidental refund I will point it out and pay the right amount. The flip side of that is I am absolutely relentless if someone accuses me of dishonesty.

Despite his apologies he was not going to admit he was wrong. He was still accusing me of theft.

Obviously I called for the manager – I was furious.

To his credit, the manager listened to my story and apologised. He said all the right words – but it still hurt.

I wouldn't leave until the security guard backed down and admitted I was clearly innocent. Maybe it's just me but I couldn't leave there knowing that someone – for whatever foolhardy reason – thought I was guilty of something. It just seemed so obviously wrong to me.

After they backed down I went downstairs with them just to make sure – for my own sanity – that I hadn't been undercharged. I didn't want to walk out of that store thinking “perhaps an accident did happen and I've paid less than this is worth”. And of course, the assistant confirmed I'd paid exactly the right amount. Of course I had – I'd asked him to double check originally.

The guard walked out of the store with me. (Eventually) he was apologetic. But even then I couldn't help thinking – “Is he just saying this because it's ‘good customer service'?” “Does he really believe he was right all along?”.

I'm still thinking that now – and I hate it. I can't bear to think that out there someone thinks I've been dishonest and “got away with it”.

I'm not naming the individual security guard. I really don't think it was specifically him. Clearly guards are trained to be suspicious – to distrust. They need to do so to do their job. My issue is with the procedures they followed.

The problem was that the whole procedure seemed designed on the assumption I was guilty. So even when
it became startlingly clear that I had in fact gone out of my way to be honest – the guard just couldn't accept it. The words he'd been trained to use – apologising without admitting a mistake; then admitting a “partial mistake” but still claiming that I was guilty. Then trying to close the issue (by “letting me go this time”) without resolving the mental turmoil that any genuine customer would have been going through.

And what if I hadn't gone the extra mile and asked the assistant to double check the price? What if I'd just done the perfectly reasonable act of picking the nearest box to the wallet and taking that to the checkout? Would they ever have backed down? I'd probably still be there now. I'd never have got any mental resolution to the issue of being under suspicion. And my God, it was so painful to be treated with such suspicion – that was a real revelation for me.

A simple step for them would also have been to check my name against their customer records (they had plenty of time while they were “checking with legal”). While having spent thousands with them over recent years isn't a guarantee of my honesty – it would have told them what they had at risk, and that maybe they should proceed carefully and try to ensure that the process was as painless as possible for me.

And their procedures let them down with follow-up. When they thought I was guilty they wrote all my details down. When it became clear I wasn't, they gave me back the sheet to prove they were keeping no records of the incident. But they have also kept no records in order to redeem themselves. They have no idea who I am or how to contact me. Now they can't follow-up to apologise or do anything. Their much heralded John Lewis Customer Service has no chance of working.

So what have I learned from this?

Well, firstly it's reminded me that blogging is a pretty cathartic experience. I feel rather better for having written about this. Perhaps I should have written this as a letter of complaint rather than airing their dirty laundry in public. But – bah! I'm a blogger Goddammit.

Secondly, it's really driven home like a nail just how important customer experience is in selling.

I've spent literally thousands of pounds in that John Lewis store over the years. From prams for the kids when they were born, to toys, tons of electronics, some artwork and home furnishings, right through to some lamps last week. They're a good store with good products and excellent value – I know that rationally. They have good principles – I've seen them, and I know people who work there and they're lovely people. But right now I cannot imagine myself ever shopping there again. This incident has cost them many thousands of pounds (not counting the bad PR from all the people I inevitably rant to – and the people who read this).

We all talk and advise our clients about the importance of good service and making amends when something goes wrong. We all know it rationally. But you never know it fully until you experience it yourself. I'm still fuming over an hour later. My pain will be rekindled later when my wife gets home and I tell her about it. As I said, I can't imagine ever shopping there again.

Now let's put this in perspective: I haven't lost a loved one, been detained illegally for years, or been beaten for being somewhere in the vicinity of a protest march. I've just had a bad experience. But it shows how something as rationally small as this can have such a huge emotional impact on customers.

Finally, it's highlighted the importance of making sure you have a way of making amends properly. They let me walk out of that store with no way of contacting me again. Now sure, I might not have wanted to give them my details – but they didn't ask. As it happens, even requesting my details so they could follow up, perhaps do a “post mortem”, would have made me feel better. What I really want is for them to review their policies so that innocent customers aren't made to feel like criminals like I was. But I'll never know if that's happening and they have no way of telling me if it is.

Well, rant over. Thanks for staying with me. Hopefully we learnt a little along the way about how to treat customers and how to make sure you have an avenue for making amends.

Ian

Featured

Selling

Sales Velocity: The Hidden Lever

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 21st, 2009.

It seems to be a trend at the moment amongst sales gurus to highlight that “there are only three ways to increase sales”: More leads, higher conversion of leads to sales, and more revenue per sale for example.

Leaving aside the fact that pointing this out is hardly a revelation – and that the real value comes not from naming the three levers, but from actually figuring out the best way of “pulling” them for a specific business; in fact there is another, often overlooked lever: velocity.

Sales velocity is the cycle time of the sale from initial lead to closing. Complete that cycle faster, and you free up time to work on another sale. Double the velocity of each sale – and you can sell twice as much.

Of course, it's not that simple: of all the sales levers, velocity is often the most difficult to improve. Push too hard too fast and your potential client will push back. There's often an optimum pacing for each sale and to go faster than that optimum can in often lose you the sale completely.

Veteran salespeople are used to naive sales managers pushing them to try to accelerate a close to hit this month's or this quarter's targets. But there's a huge risk that pushing to hit an internal target can damage your chances of making the sale. And it's one of the easiest negotiating weapons for purchasing professionals: if you know when your salesperson's quarter-end is you can often get a huge discount by timing your purchase right so that the salesperson gets desperate as the end of their reporting period looms.

But putting that aside – velocity can often be a valuable area of focus for improvement for salespeople – simply because most salespeople rarely consider it.

The best way of looking at the sales velocity lever is not to think about speeding up – but instead to think about avoiding delays and removing roadblocks.

Roadblocks can take many forms: you don't identify underlying client concerns early enough and as a result they hesitate to make a decision; you forget to follow-up on time or wait for your client to take the initiative; you're not aware of the timing of financial approval committee meetings in your client's company and as a result your client misses the deadline for submission and has to wait a quarter.

One of your key jobs as a salesperson is to know what these roadblocks are likely to be and to make sure they don't happen. Work to surface concerns early on and address them, never be late with follow-up, understand the client's decision-making process (see my post Avoiding the Treacle Effect for more details of this one).

Your first step though is to understand the impact of velocity: simply put, halving the cycle time of a sale can have as much impact as doubling your conversion rate or number of leads. Having that message in the front of your mind, should help you pay attention to this hidden lever and suddely you'll spot opportunities to avoid delays and remove roadblocks.

Happy driving!

Ian

Featured

Mindset

Helping Professionals Sell Using Empathy Styles

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 10th, 2009.

One of the biggest barriers professionals have in developing their selling skills is that they simply don't see themselves as salespeople. Many carry round negative stereotypes of salespeople – but even when they don't, their image of a successful rainmaker is of a charismatic extrovert with highly developed social skills.

Not fitting this model themselves, they often fear that they don't have what it takes to sell effectively. This mental block can prevent them from taking some simple steps to improve their sales capabilities.

Jim Wigg of Epicurean Associates presented a seminar on “Empathy Selling” at a recent pro-manchester meeting. The seminar looked at different Empathy Styles – and how each style had different sales related strengths.

The advantage of this model over other psychometric assesments is that it doesn't focus eccessively on one particular type being the “natural salesperson”. By highlighting the sales strengths of each type, it allowed the professionals attending to see how they could grow their sales capabilities without having to have a “personality transplant” and adopt an extroverted style that simply wasn't them.

By breaking down that initial barrier and helping them see that there are multiple ways to succeed in selling, and that you don't have to fit a particular stereotype personality or style; they were freed up to think about how they could improve.

Jim's an engaging and knowledgeable presenter. If you get the chance to attend one of his seminars I recommend you take it up.

You can take a simple “empathy styles” questionnaire here

Featured

Marketing

Sales Excellence Podcast – Episode 3 : An Interview with Mike Southon

Posted by

Ian Brodie on April 9th, 2009.

The Sales Excellence Podcast Mike Southon is one of the UK's leading business experts and entrepreneurs. He's best known today for his best selling “Beermat Entrepreneur” series of books and his regular column in the Financial Times.

Mike built his reputation, however, in sales – and in particular: selling professional services.

I caught up with Mike recently and asked him about how professionals can differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace; and how firms can build more sales oriented cultures.

Mike has a number of free resources available on the Beermat Entrepreneur site – I thoroughly recommend you head over and take a look at them.

Featured

Selling

Book Review: How to Win a Pitch

Posted by

Ian Brodie on March 31st, 2009.

If you're short on time, here's my review in a nutshell: Buy this book.

Before the full review though, an admission: I hate the word “pitch”.

Now don't get me wrong, I've been involved in more than my fair share of pitches; won (and lost) multi-million pound consulting contracts as a result of “beauty parades” and “bake offs”. And I've learnt what works for me by learning from my mistakes and watching true experts perform in the field. But for me, the word “pitch” brings up all the wrong images: slick haired, dark suited, fast talking professionals who pitch at the clients rather than engaging with them.

So in truth, when author Joey Asher offered to send me a review copy of How to Win a Pitch, I wasn't really looking forward to it. I was expecting the usual platitudes about dressing well, body language and performance skills.

I couldn't have been further from the truth.

What the book does deliver is a no-nonsense guide to the key fundamentals needed to win sales pitches. Page after page I found myself nodding in agreement, or occasionally thinking “great so far – but I bet he doesn't cover X” – only to find it explored in detail a few pages later. And I don't just mean coverage of the basics – there was plenty in here that was new to me – despite my years of experience.

Asher's five fundamentals are simple: ensure that the pitch is

Focused on a business solution
Simply organised
Delivered with passion
Interactive
Well-rehearsed

As he points out, so many pitches are done so badly that simply doing well on at least some of these fundamentals can significantly differentiate you from your competition. But the book doesn't settle for that – it delivers rock-solid techniques and methods to excel in each area.

Take the first fundamental: focusing the message on the business problem. Rather than just stating that this is important, Asher delivers a strong questioning methodology to enable this (and more importantly – highlights the importance of genuine listening over using techniques), and then gives multiple examples of solution focused pitches for the reader to learn from.

This is repeated throughout the 5 fundamentals. Strong advice, strong examples, elegantly and effectively communicated.

And make no mistake – these fundamentals are absolutely vital – but often overlooked. The number of senior professionals I've seen violating Asher's principle of rehearsal, for example, is simply staggering.

This book is one of those rarities that presents a simple framework that “beginners” will be able to understand and use – yet still crams in multiple gems of wisdom and insight that even highly experienced sales people will learn from.

If you get involved in sales pitches and presentations in any way (and if you want to sell big, there's no doubt you will) – then you must buy this book.

Ian

*** Update *** Joey has just emailed me to say that the book will be in stock at Amazon on May 17th. But if you want a copy now you can buy one at www.howtowinapitch.com.

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