In How Clients Buy, Tom McMakin and Doug Fletcher present seven elements that must be present before a prospect will be ready to buy a professional service. They must

• be aware of you
• understand what you do
• be interested in your services
• respect your work
• deem you worthy of their trust
• have the ability to make a decision, and
• be ready—the timing must be right.

Like the essential ingredients for making bread, Tom asserts these Seven Elements represent a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (“MECE”). Consequently, they constitute a list of essential ingredients for business development success. Using the Seven Elements, you can conduct a self-assessment at the firm, practice, or personal level to gauge your relative strengths and weaknesses.

There are no tricks to translating the results into remedial action. However, discipline is required.

• Unlike the children of Lake Wobegon, not all professional services firms are above average across all Seven Elements. Be honest with yourself.
• Focus on your weaknesses. I know, it’s hard—most of us would rather double-down on our demonstrated strengths.

Expertise and integrity don’t translate into business success unless there is sufficient awareness among those you wish to serve. Similarly, improving on already strong awareness will be for naught unless prospective clients understand how you can help.

When researching How Clients Buy, Doug Fletcher and Tom McMakin interviewed dozens of successful rainmakers. Their subjects ranged from solo practitioners to managing partners of global consulting firms. Doug and Tom’s goal was to field test their business development hypotheses. In addition, as Doug explains, several themes regarding the essence of rainmaking emerged from their conversations.

Don’t Call it Selling

“Sales” is a word loaded with baggage. Dump it if it makes you uncomfortable. The task remains:

Identify a community of companies and executives to which you would like to be of service and then do everything you can to help connect those in that industry with introductions, smart articles, and peer meetings.

Add value. Be of service.

Do Great Work

In the long run, no amount of clever marketing will overcome poor execution. You are the product. Future sales depend on your reputation, which is built one project at a time. In a connected world, there is no room for anything less than great work. It’s table stakes—a necessary but insufficient requirement for sustained success.

Take Responsibility for Business Development

Doing truly superior work is easier said than done. Nevertheless, to maintain personal and professional flexibility and freedom, it’s imperative that you take personal responsibility for business development. Commit time. Be disciplined. Make it a habit. Start now.

Build Relationships

Effective networking isn’t a matter of exchanging business cards in a generic hotel ballroom while drinking insipid wine from plastic cups. Make time to seek out interesting people. Be generous with your time. Give away your best stuff. Invest in others without expectation of return. Cultivate serendipity. It’s worth it.

Wear the Style That Fits

Actually, Doug and Tom advise, “Develop your own style.” However, I think that’s inevitable if you take responsibility for business development, build relationships by being generous over time, and consistently do great work. The clients you serve, the culture of your firm, and your personality and experiences will shape what works. Go with it. Resist the temptation to imitate slavishly. Being authentic in our approach is not only more effective, it’s easier to sustain.

Stay Persistent

Satisfying the Seven Elements of Business Development can be devilishly difficult. On many occasions, I’ve been devastated upon discovering that my carefully cultivated prospect simply isn’t ready to engage. While disappointment may be inevitable, hearing, “The timing isn’t right,” should be affirming. After all, it suggests your prospect:

• is aware of you
• understands what you do
• is interested in your services
• has come to respect your work
• deems you worthy of trust, and
• has the ability to make a decision.

Stay in touch. Continue to add value and cultivate your relationship. When the time is right, you’ll be in the position to engage. It’s a marathon consisting of a million sprints. Know that and you’ll be less inclined to quit.

When it comes to professional services, Tom McMakin believes trust is everything.

Trusting the person you’re going to engage with is the whole ball of wax…There’s an information asymmetry in the world of expert services.

To sustain and grow our practices, those of us who offer professional services must be trustworthy.

True Expertise is a Credence Good

Not all goods and services demand the same level of trust. Trust is paramount in professional services because real expertise is a credence good. That means the risk of exploitation of the buyer by the seller is high. According to Wikipedia,

A credence good is a good whose utility impact is difficult or impossible for the consumer to ascertain. In contrast to experience goods, the utility gain or loss of credence goods is difficult to measure after consumption as well. The seller of the good knows the utility impact of the good, creating a situation of asymmetric information.

As Tom explains, the professional service provider diagnoses the disease and the cure. The cost of the treatment is often high, and the consequences of failure substantial. As a result, demonstrated competence is a necessary—but insufficient—condition for engagement. Clients must trust you.

Types of Trust

Kent Grayson is a professor at Northwestern University who studies information asymmetries and trust as a member of The Trust Project. He highlights three factors that determine the degree of trust:

• Competence—the perceived capacity of the service provider to do what she says she can do
• Honesty—the perception of truthfulness and commitment to do what she says she will do
• Benevolence—the believe the service provider will not exploit information asymmetries to your disadvantage

Tom describes trust along two dimensions: one of the head and one of the heart:

• Will you do you what you say you’ll do?
• Will you have my back?

Based on their work developing The Six Temperaments™ framework, Charles Green and his colleagues at Trusted Advisor Associates conclude something similar. They find the most trustworthy people represent a combination of high reliability with a capacity for intimacy.

The Calculus of Trust

Trust is an accumulation that depends on our behaviors over time. As Tom notes, “Do you have my interests at heart? The thing that really fuels that kind of trust is experience.” Furthermore, trust is easier to destroy than to build. That’s not to say that we can’t accelerate the development of trust. However, be cautious and respectful of the process. Trust-building is subtle and a function of the interplay among the frequency, substance, and mode of interaction. Frequent interactions can increase trust, and technologies such as email and video conferencing can increase frequency. That said, such technologies are “narrowband” in the context of emotional range. In addition, frequent interactions sometimes come at the cost of substantive depth.

Being Trustworthy

Trust isn’t earned. That is, our behaviors can’t demand obligatory reciprocation in the form of trust. Trust must be granted. However, we can—and must—be consistently trustworthy. The folks at Trusted Advisor offer these principals of trust-based selling, which serve as excellent guideposts:

• Client orientation for the sake of the client, not the consultant. “Client focus” for the seller’s sake is the bogus focus of a vulture.
• A medium- to long-term perspective. Focus on the relationship, not the transaction.
• A habit of collaboration. Don’t speculate about what clients are thinking—ask them.
• A willingness to be transparent. Nothing destroys client trust faster than the consultant who appears to be withholding information or trying to control the client.

Money Talks, and Bullshit Walks

Again, trust is such a central feature of professional service relationships because of information asymmetry. A key way to demonstrate trustworthiness is to better align your interests with those of your client. You can do so by having skin in the game.

Skin in the game can take many forms. Not all currencies are money. Some forms appeal to the head, others the heart.

Demonstrating emotional authenticity and intimacy is difficult for many of us who wish to be perceived as being professional. That’s because authenticity and intimacy are risky. As Bill Noonan explains,

Defensive routines are patterns of interpersonal interactions people create to protect themselves from embarrassment and threat. The conditions of threat and embarrassment arise when our abilities are negatively evaluated by a colleague or authority figure.

Being vulnerable is uncomfortable. Visible gaps in our emotional armor can be interpreted as weakness. Weakness can be exploited by others. However, by abandoning our defenses we demonstrate trust. Such a gesture can go a long way toward evoking trust in return.

For a more hard-headed approach, consider guarantees. David Maister—co-author (along with the aforementioned Charles Green) of the classic book, The Trusted Advisor, and a man How Clients Buy co-author Doug Fletcher considers a mentor—advocates professional service providers offer unconditional satisfaction guarantees to their clients.

Many will dismiss the prospect of offering a satisfaction guarantee as being “unpractical.” Maybe. On the other hand, there is no denying its usefulness at communicating skin in the game. Besides, if you don’t trust your skills and client enough to offer a guarantee, maybe you should reconsider the gig.

Don Scales runs Investis, a large digital communications agency. He is a marketing guy who talks about brands and their power to convey compelling stories. But he is also a numbers guy who holds a degree in chemical engineering and mathematical physics from Rice and an MBA from Harvard. In a world where selling is often pitted against marketing, Don has a foot planted in both camps.

The Sales and Marketing Spectrum

Traditionally marketing and sales are two poles that define a spectrum of work companies do to drive revenues. The work is different in several important respects:

• Focus: Marketers ask themselves how to effectively communicate with broad audiences. Think websites, brochures, and campaigns. Salespeople ask themselves how to effectively communicate with individuals or small teams.
• Time: Marketers play the long game. Think brand, research, and product launches. Salespeople play the short game. The product is set. It has advantages, and it has a price. Their job is to tap the ball in the hole.
• Push and Pull: Marketers speak of demand generation. Their focus is on bringing products to market that inspire customers to beat a path to a company’s door. Salespeople get in planes, trains, and automobiles to go meet customers. They offer what a company has to sell. Their focus is not on demand (that would be order-taking in their world) but rather on supply generation.

Much of this language comes from the world of consumer products. But does it apply to the provision of professional services? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is that in a world where individuals and their expertise are the product, professionals need to have both long and short-game skills to finish the full eighteen holes.

Above All, Think

Ask Don about how to land a new client and his main advice is, above all, to think. He says that professional service providers don’t have a product to brand or sell, per se. They have their experience and their brains which they bring to the table. They are solution providers. In that world, your market research and product development (things that marketers do) happen in the same instant as you are presenting and pitching (the work of salespeople).

This a radical notion that undermines centuries of conventional wisdom about the power that stems from a division of labor workforces. Nineteenth-century sociologist, Émile Durkheim, wrote the division of labor inevitably produces “a proportionable increase of the productive powers of labor.” It is as if the world of professional services is a throwback to a time when those in business were craftspeople who had to be skilled in everything from design and production to marketing and sales.

Marketing and Selling Required

That is why professional services are so hard to scale. An expert point of view can scale. Write a book and it can be read by thousands. But experience and brains are difficult to productize and deliver to large numbers of customers. Which is why Don’s message that we need to both be marketers and salespeople continues to be critically relevant to anyone who is in the business of building a practice around their expertise.

Doug Fletcher is one of the most likable people you’ll meet. His easy-going manner puts one at ease. So, it’s a bit jarring to hear Doug advise, “Forget about being likable.”

Instead, Doug encourages us to do great work and take really good care of our clients. In his estimation, respect and trust trump likability.

How to Win Friends

In 1937, Dale Carnegie published How to Win Friends & Influence People. The book is still a bestseller more than 80 years later. How to Win Friends is part of the sales canon. Doug calls it the “better personality” approach to business development success. Doug’s admonishment to forget about being likable seems heretical in the face of such sustained popularity. There’s nothing wrong with being likable, of course. When it comes to professional services, however, it’s easier to learn to be likable than it is to develop real expertise and cultivate respect and trust. Likability isn’t a discriminate factor.

Fake It Until You Make It?

Early in my career, I did not yet know what I didn’t know. My ignorance was no sin and could be remedied with experience and effort. My arrogance, on the other hand, was a problem. I was guilty of believing that by adopting the dress, look, and patois of my profession, I could fake it until I made it. To a degree, I conflated fitting in and looking the part with becoming a true craftsman. Unfortunately, my faking it camouflaged the degree to which my understanding was facile and my presentation glib. By over-emphasizing appearances, I underserved my clients and missed opportunities to develop a deeper capacity to serve effectively.

Surgeons Should Not Look Like Surgeons

Philosopher and gadfly Nassim Taleb goes further. He notes, “Reality is blind to looks.”  True expertise is complex and difficult to explain. Consequently, “The people you understand most easily [are] necessarily the bull***tters.” He advocates selecting among experts via negativa: look for signs of success when the expert doesn’t look the part—when they aren’t conventionally likable. For instance, when faced with a choice between two surgeons at a reputable hospital—one highly polished and credentialed and the other rough around the edges—Taleb leans toward the latter. To earn respect and trust with a personality that runs counter to received wisdom is difficult and, thus, suggests hidden, superior quality. It’s no wonder, then, that Taleb features the following praise for his latest book, Skin in the Game:

The problem with Taleb is not that he’s an asshole. He is an asshole. The problem with Taleb is that he is right.

Being an Ass Isn’t a Strategy Either

Going out of one’s way to act like a jerk isn’t a great idea. As Doug notes, “Like is a tie-breaker.” Sometimes, though, being right means losing popularity contests. But being right—and having the courage of one’s convictions—are the keys to building respect and trust That, rather than likability, wins new business over time.

As You Sow, So Shall You Reap

Levison Wood knows something about generosity and so does Kris Klein.

As documented in his Walking the Himalayas series, Wood shared a meal with Kirgiz shepherds in the Wakhan Corridor in the remote northeastern corner of Afghanistan.  In the documentary, the chief welcomes Wood over the open fire and offers him the eyeball of a sheep and then a bowlful of brains. Wood explains these are the choicest pieces. Kirgiz tradition is that the good stuff is always shared.

While the prospect of chewing on an eyeball might seem foreign to you or me, the idea of sharing the good stuff with others is familiar.  The world over, people in a community are taught to share with others, particularly strangers, with no expectation of return.  Call it karma or paying it forward, human beings have a sense that what goes around comes around. As the early Christian writer, Paul, wrote to a community in Galatia, “As you sow, so shall you reap.”

The Secret to Effective Content Marketing

Kris is the CEO of the well-regarded marketing and sales strategy consultancy Lenati.  He believes in “top funnel demand.”  From where he sits, he sees a lot of small professional services businesses initially rely solely on their network of relationships to scale.  Over time, however, those relationships cannot keep the firm on a high-growth path.

I asked Kris to hazard a guess about the relative proportion of demand-driven business to non-demand driven business that exists in his own firm.  He reported that it used to be that 100% of new business came from the network, but now the firm is generating about 30% of its business using automated outreach and content marketing, so-called demand marketing.

Here is how it works:  You give something of value to the audience you hope to court on your website.  This can be anything from a consumer’s guide to an instructional video or a whitepaper.  The important thing is that the target audience finds it when they are looking to learn more about the subject on which you are an expert and then is attracted to the content.  From there, marketing automation takes over. Software can track who is downloading your content and then follow up (automatically) with additional useful content.  Over time, having reminded your would-be customers about your expertise, having given them something of value and stayed top of mind, they either call you asking for your help on a project, or you can call them.

I asked Kris what made him so successful at this approach.  He confided that there is a secret to content marketing.

His secret?

“You have to share your good stuff.”

Give Away Your Best Work

Seth Godin has written, “In the digital world, the more free samples you give away, the better you do.  The miserly mindset that afflicts the merchant watching inventory walk out the door at the market is counterproductive in the digital world.” But what Kris is talking about is somewhat different from Godin’s philosophy of free samples. Kris is talking about giving away your best work, and that is harder.

Like the Kirgiz herdsman, don’t sandbag your generosity. If you believe that welcoming a guest is a duty and a high honor, then serve up the eyeballs and don’t keep them for yourself to munch on after the party is over.  Serve them without a feeling of loss but instead with a feeling of creating something greater: a new friend or ally.

The same goes for content marketing.  If you hold back your “good stuff,” your efforts will be less effective.  Your good stuff is, by definition, the most interesting stuff.  If you hold back and offer up only your not-so-good-stuff, your offering will be less compelling.

Giving away your best work won’t be easy. “This was hard to create. I want to be paid for it. What if I do attract a new client, what will I have to show them that they haven’t already seen? Then there are my competitors. Won’t they just rip off my stuff?”

All good points, and all are wrong.

Salma Jafri writes,

Give away the why, what and who. Give away the inspirational content. Give away the content that shows people what’s possible. Give away the results. Give away the stories. Give away your opinion. Give away your best thoughts on the topic.

Instead,

Charge for the how, Charge for showing people how to get from A to B. Charge for the processes that you’ve made. Charge for showing the systems you’ve set up that they can replicate. Charge for the templates. Charge for, “I’ll hold your hand all the way.” Charge for customization. Charge for training. Charge for empowering your audience.

Indeed, Salma gave away that insight for free and look what happened. I received that gift and found it valuable and now am passing it on to you. It is as if there is a direct relationship between the value you offer and the speed at which word spreads that you are a source of expertise and insight.

So, don’t hog the eyeballs, share them with every honored guest who shares a meal in your yurt. “Share the good stuff,” as Kris says.

According to The 8 Rules of Business Golf,

Golf isn’t merely a leisure sport. It’s the martini lunch of the modern workforce, the buoyant venue where work gets done.

That may have been true, but golf—and country club memberships—are in decline. It’s been said that golf is too time-consuming, too slow, too expensive, and too difficult. I think Tom McMakin has identified another reason for the structural diminishment of the sport: it’s become a less effective way to cultivate business relationships over time.

The Propinquity Effect

With due respect to Mark Twain, “propinquity” is a useful five-dollar word. It refers to the psychological proximity between people. It can derive from physical closeness, kinship, or other similarities. Propinquity is one of the main factors leading to interpersonal attraction.

As Tom explains, professional services are bought based on relationships and trust. Not surprisingly, the cultivation of propinquity is a key indicator of potential business development success. Frequent interactions over time are the building blocks of relationships—something social psychologists call the mere-exposure effect.

White Shoes and Golfing

A white-shoe firm describes professional services firms in the U.S. that serve large corporations. Historically, the term referred to firms run by WASP elites, particularly those in Boston and New York who attended Ivy League schools, where the white buck dress shoe was a distinctive fashion accessory.

The people in white-shoe firms lived near one another. They attended the same schools, went to the same churches—and played golf at the same country clubs—as their prospective clients. Propinquity abounded. More often than not, the resulting familiarity bred affinity rather than contempt.

As Tom explains:

So maybe our parents were accountants in Poughkeepsie. In order to generate business, in order to create those relationships off of which they’d scope business, they’d meet people at the synagogue or church, or they’d meet people at the golf course. They’d get to know them over a lifetime, and then they would scope business off of those relationships.

However, the emergence of new technologies—and the globalization they have encouraged—are undermining these traditional sources of propinquity, trust, and new business opportunities.

Globalization, Specialization, and Complexity

More than 200 years ago, Adam Smith noted, “The extent of the division of labour…is necessarily regulated…by the extent of the market.” Small towns have general stores, while big cities have boutiques. Small towns have all-purpose CPAs. Global markets have, “very narrowly niched accountant(s) that sells expertise around transfer pricing as it affects sovereign wealth funds.”

• Communication and transportation technologies have extended the scope of the markets we providers of professional services can serve. That’s enabled specialization.
• If you can reach a global market, so can your competition. Our desire to differentiate ourselves encourages specialization.
• The resulting proliferation of diverse and inter-dependent service providers has fueled complexity. In turn, the management of complexity is enhanced by cognitive diversity. That demands specialization.

Niches tend to breed more niches in an expanding market (e.g. heavy metal genres). The more specialized we become, the less likely it becomes that our practice will be supported locally.

The Challenge of Building Long-Distance Relationships

Golfing may be on the decline for a variety of reasons. I suspect that globalization is a primary cause. As the scope of our services narrow, we have to reach farther afield to make a living. The effectiveness of hanging out at the country club as a business development strategy is diminishing.

That’s not to say the importance of relationships, referrals, and trust has diminished. In fact, there is a reason to believe that trust may grow in importance.

Have you ever tried to explain to your child or parent what you actually do for a living? People think they know what accountants do, but few will immediately grasp “transfer pricing” as it relates to “sovereign wealth funds.” As we specialize, our services are increasingly likely to be characterized as credence goods.

In “On Doctors, Mechanics, and Computer Specialists: The Economics of Credence Goods,” economists Uwe Dulleck and Rudolf Kerschbamer observe,

Education and experience give experts the ability to diagnose the exact needs of customers who themselves are only able to detect a need but not the most efficient way to satisfy it. The information problems in markets for diagnosis and treatment suggest that experts may be tempted to defraud customers.

Our specialization creates an advantage. At the same time, it pushes us away from local clients, makes what we do harder to understand, and can increase the threshold level of trust required to engage our services. It’s tough to build trust across distance—even more difficult than playing golf well.

Even if the primary purpose of your practice isn’t to make money, making money is a requirement for sustaining your practice. By definition, a sale is the exchange of a service for money. So why isn’t selling featured in the curricula of business schools—or any other professional schools?

The Rise of Intellectualism

In his most recent book, Skin in the Game, Nassim Taleb defines intellectualism as, “the belief that one can separate…theory from practice.” The problem with intellectualism, according to Taleb, is that it obscures the causal links between thoughts, actions, and consequences. Theories not subject to the balancing feedback of consequences are dangerous to one’s commercial health.

Nevertheless, beginning early in the 20th century, businesses schools embraced intellectualism and scientism, which Taleb defines as, “a naive interpretation of science as complication rather than science as a process and a skeptical enterprise. Using mathematics when it’s not needed is not science but scientism.” As Tom McMakin and Doug Fletcher note in How Clients Buy:

Like other social sciences, including sociology, anthropology, and psychology, the study of business suffered from an inferiority complex as newcomers in the academic ranks. Business departments made up for it by emulating the hard sciences like mathematics and physics, teaching economics, finance, the management of resources—anything that could be quantified—while eschewing soft skills like people management or sales, which might be better learned standing at the side of an experienced practitioner.

As a consequence, “intellectual” marketing pushed aside “commercial” sales as a featured topic of discussion within the academy.

The Perception of Sales as Being Grubby

The omission of sales from the curricula of academic training need not be a constraint. If it’s truly important, we would expect firms to make an investment in developing the sales skills of its employees and partners. We don’t, though. More often than not, junior partners are left to their own devices.

While selling is acknowledged as being necessary to a firm’s survival and success—and “rainmakers” rewarded handsomely—the act of selling is commonly perceived as being grubby or déclassé. It’s not something done in polite society.

Part of that perception is due to our self-awareness that professional services are a credence good. Per Wikipedia,

A credence good is a good whose utility impact is difficult or impossible for a consumer to ascertain…The seller of the good knows the utility of the good, creating a situation of asymmetric information.

Asymmetric information gives rise to the agency problem, in which the seller of a service can be tempted to exploit the buyer. Professional ethics and misunderstanding of what selling entails result in a misperception of sales as being inherently manipulative and, in the long run, potentially damaging to our reputations.

Even while acknowledging the requirement for sales, we cringe at the thought of being labeled a salesperson. Too often, that aversion stunts our professional growth and ability to make a living.

Misguided Essentialist Philosophy

Plato and Aristotle cast long shadows. Essentialism as applied to sales—the persistently popular view that salespeople have intrinsically different and characteristic natures or dispositions—is a perspective that diverts our attention from what is actionable. That is, it focuses on the seller and ignores the buyer. That’s a mistake.

The American Bar Association reports that there has been an 18% increase in the number of lawyers in the United States over the last 10 years. That’s somewhere between 2-3 times the rate of growth of the country’s population. The competition among providers of professional services continues to heat up. Relative market power is shifting to buyers.

Focus on Clients

Business development is a practical requirement. It’s worthy of our study and understanding—notwithstanding the neglect of sales by schools. Furthermore, a seller-centric perspective that emphasizes persuasion and manipulation are short-sighted, outdated, and ineffective. Bullshit and exploitation aren’t sustainable in a competitive environment predicated on trust.

Tom and Doug offer an alternative path, one characterized by the following:

• An empathic view the client’s buying process
• The demonstration of trustworthiness and competence, and
• The cultivation of meaningful relationships over time

A focus on how clients buy reconnects theory and practice. It acknowledges the reality of the marketplace. It allows us to be more effective salespeople without compromise.

In the second of a series of interviews, Andi Baldwin of Profitable Ideas Exchange spoke with How Clients Buy co-authors Tom McMakin and Doug Fletcher about the framework they call, “The Seven Elements.”

A Set of Conditions

The Seven Elements is a set of conditions that must be present in order for a prospective client to buy your services:

• Prospective clients must, of course, become aware of your existence.
• They must understand what you do and how you are unique.
• Prospects must develop an interest in you and your firm. Your services must be relevant to their goals.
• They must respect your work and be confident in your ability to do what you say you can do.
• Potential clients must trust you to have their best interests at heart.
• They must have the ability to engage you, which means they have sufficient authority, budget, and organizational support.
• A prospective client must be ready to act. The timing has to be right. Sometimes all other conditions are met but some other priority supersedes.

Not a Linear Process

The buying process for professional services and consulting isn’t linear. You can’t drive prospects through a funnel. The dynamics of each prospect’s buying journey will be unique.

However, you can anticipate your prospective clients’ buying needs and take actions that facilitate their buying.

• What can you do to make prospective clients aware of your firm? How might you stay in touch and add value over time to help ensure you remain top of mind?
• How might you sharpen your messaging to make it easier for prospective clients to understand what you do and how you are different? Are you making it easy for champions to explain to others what you do? Alternatively, are you guilty of being intentionally vague about your core capabilities?
• Have you done your homework to understand your prospective client’s needs and priorities? Have you made an honest assessment of your capacity to help them achieve a material objective?
• Have you provided objective proof of your capabilities? What testimonials, referrals, case studies, and guarantees can you offer?
• How might you demonstrate through words and actions that you place your prospective client’s interests above your own? Do you lead with value without expectation, or do you take a narrow, transactional approach to the relationship? You can’t earn trust in the sense that you can’t demand trust. But, you can demonstrate you are worthy of trust.
• Are you clear about how your prospective client makes budgeting and buying decisions? How might you support an advocate in her efforts to gain the support of her colleagues?
• How might you stay on top of the dynamics that can shift a prospective client’s priorities? If all other preconditions have been met, how are you staying in touch so you’ll be there when the timing is right?

Honest Self-assessment Pays

If our role in a firm is marketing, there may be a tendency for us to rate others’ awareness and understanding of our services highly. On the other hand, if we are primarily focused on business development, we may tend to rate the trust and respect felt by others as being high. Nevertheless, we probably have weaknesses that could be our undoing.

After all, it’s insufficient for a client to reach six of seven thresholds. A prospective client might be very aware of you, understand your services, respective your capabilities, have an important and pressing need and have the budget. If they don’t trust you sufficiently, you’re unlikely to get the gig. So, continuous and honest self-assessment is required to identify and rectify deficiencies. Cultivating The Seven Elements is a discipline and practice rather than a campaign.

In the first of a series of interviews, Andi Baldwin of Profitable Ideas Exchange asked How Clients Buy co-authors Tom McMakin and Doug Fletcher to explain the premise of the book and why they were compelled to write it for those professionals tasked with selling services.

The Problem

You have to demonstrate you can “make it rain” In order to become a partner in an expert services firm. You must prove your capabilities to develop new business. However, you probably were never trained how to sell.

In part, that’s because providers of professional services tend to have an adverse reaction to selling. Their instinct is to view selling as manipulative and coercive. Selling in the mold of a used car salesman contradicts strongly held values of trustworthiness and stewardship.

This antipathy is reflected in the absence of sales from business schools’ curricula. While some of us benefit from effective mentorship, many of us are left to our own devices.

The Opportunity

According to Doug, “There are almost six million Americans today who are practicing some profession or some type of consulting.” Furthermore, participation in consulting professions is “growing at five times the rate of the overall economy.” Not only is demand for professional services growing, competition is becoming more intense. Consequently, the need to learn how to develop your practice is more pronounced than ever.

A Different Approach

Notwithstanding the explosion of business-related books over the last several years, there is a relative paucity of books devoted to selling professional services. Most of the sales books that have been published tend to emphasize “things we can do to become more persuasive,” says Doug. He goes on to explain how he and Tom took a different tack, “We turned the camera from ourselves onto the client…Rather than [ask] how do I sell, [we asked] how does a client buy?”

In Tom and Doug’s view, a seller-centric approach to business development that emphasizes persuasion and manipulation is, indeed, counter-productive. It undermines the trust that is essential for long-lived, productive relationships. By focusing on the client and their buying journey, you can help them make good decisions and, in the process, cultivate the conditions necessary to earn their business.

Nate Bennett is the real deal. A Professor and Associate Dean of Business at Georgia State’s Robinson College of Business, he is in demand as a consultant to companies like Accenture, McGladrey, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, and McKesson. Nate is smart, high energy, and interesting. Quick with a quip if he thinks something is absurd, he is an original. In an interview conducted by my colleague, Jacob Parks, Nate points out the importance of authenticity when pitching expert services to would-be clients. It’s as though he intuitively knows his success as a consultant is a function of how good he is at keeping it real. And Nate is not alone. When Doug Fletcher and I interviewed consulting pros about business development for our upcoming book, How Clients Buy, one of the things they said most often was, “It is important to be authentic.” But what is this thing we call authenticity?

The Authenticity Debate

The word itself means to be genuine and not copied or fake. In the case of people and not things, it means that a person’s action reflects their true nature, as in, “Matt Damon’s Boston accent in Good Will Hunting is authentic,” or “Ralph’s outrage at the prison reform was authentic, a function of him having been mugged.” That is the way Nate strikes me. He’s authentic because he seems completely unaffected, a person who is not trying to be something he’s not. Turns out this quality is magnetic in Nate and can be in others as well. Nate makes reference to a debate going on in academic circles around this notion of “authentic leadership.” On the one hand, Bill George, the former CEO of Medtronic who is now a professor at Harvard Business School and the author of Authentic Leadership, says,

The debate over which form of leadership works seems settled, in my view. Most leading companies globally are focusing on developing “authentic leaders” within their ranks. Executive courses at Harvard Business School in authentic leadership development are oversubscribed and expanding every year. As the Harvard Business Review declared in January 2015, “Authenticity has emerged as the gold standard for leadership.”

The essence of authentic leadership is emotional intelligence, or EQ, as articulated by Daniel Goleman. People with high IQs and low EQs can hardly be called authentic leaders. In contrast to IQ, which basically does not change in one’s adult lifetime, EQ can be developed. The first and most important step on this journey is gaining self-awareness.

On the opposite coast, Jeffery Pfeffer, Stanford Graduate School of Business’ long-time professor and author of Leadership BS, takes the opposite position:

The last thing a leader needs to be at crucial moments is authentic.

One of the most important leadership skills is the ability to put on a show, to act like a leader, to act in a way that inspires confidence and garners support — even if the person doing the performance does not actually feel confident or powerful.

Leaders need to be true to what the situation demands and what the people around them want and need. Each of us plays a number of different roles in our lives, and people behave and think differently in each of those roles, so demanding authenticity doesn’t make sense.

So, is authenticity a critical attribute or not? And why is it that so many in the consulting and professional services field talk about how authenticity is a critical component of successful business development? A clue might lie within the definition and use of the word authenticity, which has a strange relationship with itself.

Is Authenticity Defined by Its Absence?

In the interview, Jacob mentions job applicants who “tout their authenticity” and Nate reacts violently. “The first thought that [comes to mind when I hear that] is how inauthentic they are.” It is almost as if this word doesn’t like itself. The mere mention of authenticity is proof positive you don’t have it. We’re a lot more comfortable with the concept in its negative form: “That guy was a fake.” “There was something about how she presented herself that seemed affected.” “It felt like he had an ulterior motive.” “She was telling us what she thought we wanted to hear.” “They seemed phony.” “Too slick by half.” “A poseur.” “Rehearsed.” Academic Jacob Golomb writes in his book, In Search of Authenticity, “Authenticity is a negative term… [best] discerned in its absence.” I agree. A better approach might be to look at the word functionally and ask why do clients so consistently say they look for authenticity in those with whom they are considering working?

Why Clients Value Authenticity

Clients value authenticity primarily because it is useful to them. Perceiving whether or not someone is authentic helps clients make better buying decisions. Here’s why:

• Credibility – Clients buy from those they respect and they think can do the job. If someone comes across as shifty-eyed and inauthentic, it makes would-be clients wonder if all the case studies, endorsing quotes, and talk of a track record might not be true. Inauthenticity feels like someone is presenting a face to us they want us to see and saying things we want to hear. That raises the hair on the back of our neck. As Kellie Crantz, EMC’s vice president of talent strategy and development says, “Everyone filters. As human beings, we’re wired to know when someone is being disingenuous.”
• Trust – Clients buy from those whom they believe have their best interests at heart. When someone seems overly affected or slick, it makes clients wonder if the expert might have an ulterior motive. Professional services are credence goods. Buyers have to have an extra measure of trust before engaging with would-be partners because the potential consultant is the only expert in the room and is charged with both diagnosing the problem inside a company and suggesting a fix. Because the prospect for self-dealing and conflicts of interest exist in this sort of arrangement, clients are desperate for clues on whether or not they can trust the consultant.
• Leadership – When clients engage with an expert, they’re looking for someone to tell them the truth. They’re surrounded sheep. They need someone who is unafraid to speak truth to power. But if someone seems inauthentic, will they have the guts to speak their mind even if it is unpopular? Clients register inauthenticity as a fundamental lack of confidence. If you are more concerned with how you are being perceived than being who you are, that suggests in the future, the tool you will reach for first will not be honest assessment.
• Interestingness – Originals are always more interesting than copies. As humans, we’re drawn to people who are interesting. Perhaps it is because we find interesting people entertaining but maybe it is also that we sense interesting is code for different and only in different is pressure put on orthodoxies and innovation produced. Or maybe it is even more elemental – that as humans we crave diversity as evolutionarily advantageous and our best defense against constantly evolving threats.

Being Authentic

Nate is right. Being authentic is an important way in which we can drive engagement with those with whom we can most help. But how do we increase our authenticity quotient? We know we need to be authentic when we meet with would-be clients, but we also know that the surest road to inauthenticity is to try too hard to be authentic. It feels like a Catch-22.

A few tips to authentically be more authentic:

• Listen first. Actors are taught to not just memorize and deliver their lines but to react to the other actors on the stage. Not to memorize or rehearse these reactions, but to really listen to the other characters as they speak and then to really react. Listen to those with whom you are interacting. Be present. Don’t half listen as you think about what you are going to say next, but track the meaning they are trying to communicate as it is happening.
• Be real. If you call on a potential client and it is snowy and miserable out, it is okay to say, “Man, it is freezing out,” as you shudder to kick off the cold. We’re taught to keep the personal separate from the professional, but letting the personal bleed into the professional is better even if it doesn’t seem relevant. “How’s it going? Thanks for coming in.” “I’m actually doing great. My wife and I just celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary. Hard to believe!” Says, Andrea Procaccino, Chief Learning Officer of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, “An authentic leader shows you who they are as a person, and they focus on engaging others.”
• Don’t equivocate. If you think something is not true, don’t soften your delivery in an effort to avoid offense. “I have to tell you, I wouldn’t migrate from Dropbox to Office365. Microsoft doesn’t quite have their act together yet.”
• Show you are self-aware. Self-deprecating humor signals you know your limitations and aren’t in the business of presenting yourself (or your business case) as something it is not. “As you can see from my grey hair, I am no spring chicken, but I’ll tell you, I am clever enough to surround myself with smart young people and they tell me that Millennials prefer crowd-sourced recommendations.”
• Make your values transparent. We make decisions based on what we think is important. Don’t shy away from letting clients know how you think about right and wrong. “I’d love to help you on your go-to-market strategy, but I am working with Kroger right now and that feels like a conflict. Let me recommend another firm. I’ve worked with them before and know they are very good.”

Authenticity Isn’t Free but It’s Worth It

In the end, being authentic is critical to successfully engaging with would-be clients, but you can’t game it. You are who you are. Either you are comfortable in your own skin and don’t mind putting it out there, or you’d rather hide behind a heavy coat of who-you-think-they-want-you-to-be. It is your choice. Clients, though, are clear: They want to do business with partners who are the real deal. Which means that authenticity comes at a cost. Here is Nate on the subject.

The issue of authenticity comes down to fit. If your authenticity is a square peg and the problem is a square hole, great. If the hole is instead a circle, as a consultant, do you change (fake the authenticity of being a circle), convince the client the hole is a circle (what most do), or take a pass on the gig and look for a square hole?

What [consultants] need to understand is that authenticity will win you some relationships and those relationships have a much better chance of becoming deep and ongoing, but it will cost you some relationships, too, as people won’t warm up to you. I had a student evaluation say, “Nate will not be everyone’s cup of tea, but this was by far the best class I have taken in this program.” They are right. A certain percent of each class doesn’t really “get me.” There is a cost to [authenticity].

Do not let that deter you, though. As Nate says, “The benefits [of being authentic] far outweigh the costs. And being authentic is both easy and helps you sleep better at night.”

Walking through the Detroit airport, I saw a billboard for Accenture and wondered: Does advertising drive business development for consulting and professional service firms? Someone thinks it does. Marketers spend $600 billion a year on ads. Of that, significant funds are spent building awareness for law firms, IT firms, and consulting firms.

We spend money on advertising because we know that before clients can engage with us, they have to know who we are, what Doug Fletcher and I call Awareness in our new book, How Clients Buy. Does that mean that advertising is a pre-requisite to consulting and professional services success? The answer is, “No.” Walt Shill, Global Managing Partner for Client Services for ERM, helps us understand why.

Walt has seen it all. He’s been a partner at McKinsey, run the management consulting business in North America for Accenture, built a successful start-up, founded an investment firm, and run a multi-billion environmental risk management practice. More importantly, though, he has been on both sides of the business development equation. He has sold consulting services to large firms and, as an operator, he has bought those services as well.

When we sat down with Walt, he spoke about advertising. He remembers being surprised by how effective the Tiger Woods campaign was at building awareness for Accenture, especially in the early days. That said, he still believes that consulting and professional services are bought more than they are sold, and that trust and relationships drive that engagement. His view is that one-to-one marketing is both necessary and sufficient for building a consulting business. Advertising, on the other hand, is just the cherry on the cake – nice to have but not necessary.

Walt reports that at McKinsey, the most important measure of engagement with a client was how they were affecting the client’s performance. The highest virtue was to have “impact” – impact on companies, impact on industries, and impact on the world. If a McKinsey team works with a chemical company on a more efficient pricing model, its goal should never be anything other than to create exponential increases in growth and shareholder value.

Think of what Walt is saying in terms of quadrants where one axis is the mix between one-to-one marketing and mass marketing and the second axis is the object of that marketing – are you trying to build a brand or share stories of impact?

Quadrant IV is best. We should always prefer to talk with clients about their problems and how we can (really) help. That said, mass marketing your brand is not all bad. It is just that mass marketing where the focus is on impact is better, and 1:1 marketing with a focus on impact is best.

Accenture’s example is helpful. At first, they advertised using Tiger Woods to equate Accenture with performance in the clients’ mind, a brand message:

Over time, though, they moved away from Tiger, to a more (effective) use of mass marketing to drive home an impact message – telling stories about how they helped companies:

Walt reminds us that we shouldn’t forget where the real action lies. Consulting and professional services are bought by real people who get to know and trust you, one relationship at a time. When relationships like these are married to a point of view about how you can meaningfully impact a business, the result is new business.

What really strikes me about Walt’s perspective is the emphasis on substance. The goal is not to create “thought leadership” – content for content’s sake that can be pushed out to the world through social media or spam. The goal is to have an experience-informed perspective on a company’s challenges that is able to drive big, positive change for a client.

And so, the answer to my Detroit airport question is that advertising can help consulting and professional services firms, but it is, on the whole, a poor investment. Much better is to spend time developing strategies and processes that can meaningfully move the needle for your clients. That’s what drives referral and grows your reputation.

Several years back, I attended an Accenture event where Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics, headlined a lunch for senior executives from a cross-section of industries. He spoke compellingly on the subject of how blockchain technology was transforming business. After the event, a clump of executives huddled around Don, asking him questions. He spoke with each at length, handed out his contact information and agreed to six or seven follow up calls.

It reminded me that professional services are sold from the front of the room.

Sell from the Front of the Room

Speaking before audiences is great because it gives you a chance to demonstrate your expertise and not just tout it. Providing insight into blockchain technology is stronger than saying you are expert at such things. Better to show your acumen and let others conclude you are an expert than to make the claim yourself.

The effectiveness of this tactic is why, increasingly, conferences are monetizing the dais by charging professional service providers for the chance to speak to their audience – the so-called “pay to play” charge.

The Power of the Peer Panel

But what if you don’t have the budget or prominence to keynote? How do you harness this kind of “front of the room” power to drive your outreach and engagement?

Paul Quigley, a project manager at PIE and a veteran of the live event circuit tells us how. He recommends the peer panel. He likes to invite between three and five leading executives to headline an event focused on best practices. Generally, Paul “levels up” for the panel. In other words, if he is focused on an audience of CFOs of $50 million companies, the panelists are CFOs of $500 million companies.

Paul interviews each of the panelists beforehand on the topic to get a sense of where the gold lies and then moderates a conversation among the group before opening up to questions from the audience. When he sends out invitations, the invited “stars” help drive participation, which gives the event luster. Importantly, Paul (or his client) is well-positioned as the host of the conversation. There is a halo effect for the facilitator of the conversation. The moderator benefits because:

• They demonstrate their expertise by asking great questions.
• Their brand becomes associated with the success and status of their panelists.
• They communicate they care about the issues.
• They position themselves not as an expert with a point of view they are trying to hawk but as a “bee”, cross-pollinating best practices.

Become a Partner in the Conversation

Follow Paul’s lead, and the next time you write a prospect requesting time, they will warmly make time for you. Wouldn’t you want to sit down with an expert who is smart, connected, who cares deeply about the problems you face and who carry with them the latest in best practices? Hosted panel discussions position you as not just another subject matter expert but as a partner who cares enough the problems facing companies to underwrite the conversation that is inventing the future.

Cavin Segil has an easy laugh and long, unmanageable hair. It wasn’t always so. He used to have short hair, but he heard about a program that donates wigs to cancer victims made of real hair and decided he wanted to help out. Commendable to be sure, but the problem for all of us who count him as our friend is that the long hair looks good. We will miss his curly mane when it grows out and starts its second life on someone else’s head.

I mention this because Cavin has great heart for others and that includes those whom he would like to help with his expertise. It shines through when he gets on a call with someone whom doesn’t know him but is interested in what our company does. Cavin has a good manner with them that is one part active listener, one part coach and knowledgeable guide. He knows that intent matters. A phrase can be spoken with happy, generous intent or it can come from a cloying, manipulative place. The difference is not in the words, but in the heart that Cavin brings to the call.

I sat down with him and asked him to narrate a typical introductory call with a potential client. He says they always include a handful of key components. Call them the ABCs of an introductory call:

A. Learn who they are
B. Share what you do with an example
C. Schedule a follow-up call

Understanding the Client

He starts by laying out the agenda.

“I’d like to hear a little bit about your role and the work your team is doing. Then I thought I might share some of the work we have done with other consulting and professional services firms. Finally, I thought we might just open it up to questions and have a conversation.”
This initial agenda-setting does a few things:

• It establishes you as the driver of the call. As a consequence, it relieves the potential client of that responsibility.
• It lets you obtain permission to ask them questions. We all know we shouldn’t be doing all of the talking, but sometimes it is hard to get a would-be client to open up. They’ll say something like, “Why don’t just tell me what you do.” By suggesting it makes sense that you both share and asking them to agree, “It makes it easy to then segue into a handful of questions about their objectives and challenges.”
• It lowers the temperature of the call. You are letting the client know that this is about information gathering and that they will not be pressured into making a decision.

Once they agree, you can open things by asking an initial question. Cavin suggests asking about their role in the organization. In his experience, this question is less threatening than, “Tell me your goals.” When a person starts to talk about their place in the organization, they inevitably will tell you about their practice area and the place they are trying to head.

Too often when introducing our consulting or professional services offerings we forget that clients have alternatives, including, importantly, not doing anything.

Cavin then asks follow-up questions, including, “What activities are you doing right now to get where you want to go?” Too often when introducing our consulting or professional services offerings we forget that clients have alternatives, including, importantly, not doing anything. Cavin feels it is important to understand and respect efforts underway before talking about how he could complement existing work. He knows that ignoring projects that are already underway is a sure path to creating institutional detractors inside the organization. They may generally support what you’re doing, but if they perceive your services as being in competition for time and resources, you will be surprised by how creative they can be behind closed doors with reasons why what you are proposing is a terrible idea. Be their ally — their wingman — not their competition.

Sharing What You Do

Only after he has gotten a good sense of a client’s domain and where they would like it to go does Cavin begin to talk about PIE. This allows him to use an example which is relevant to the client and allows him to show, not just say, that he has been listening. The example is more important than the abstract description of what you do. In PIE’s case, we say, “We help connect experts with those they most want to serve,” but that is an abstraction. People have a hard time hearing those words. They have to climb up from the particulars of their situation to the remoteness of your words before lowering themselves back down to how you might help them. Easier is to relate to the story of how you helped others. “We were contacted by a practice head who was charged with building his book of business in the cybersecurity space. The problem was that he didn’t know any of the decision makers in the companies they thought they could help. Here is what we did for him….” Human beings are much more adept at seeing how parallel experiences relate to their situation than they are at inferring value from the world of big words.

Answering Questions

Quickly, though, he tries to stop talking. Hearing them out and sharing what he does shouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes, leaving plenty of time for questions and discussion.

“How is that possible,” you ask? How can you be expected to make your pitch in only five minutes? The answer is you only need to get the headline of what you are offering out on the table and give an example of what you do. The temptation is to try and say too much. You have been on dozens of these calls before and know what the objections will be. Why not get the words out before the objections come? Let it go. Questions from a would-be client are not bad — they are not some admission that you failed to adequately present — they are the beginning of a conversation. People’s brains work better when they are engaged. If they are asking questions, it means their synapses are firing, making connections and they are thinking of possibilities. This is what you want.

Setting Follow Up

After you have had some back and forth, your time will start to draw to a close. Be aware of their time. Do not assume you are the only call on their calendar. Five minutes before your call is supposed to end, say, “I want to be mindful of your time. I am wondering if it makes sense for us to send you a short deck explaining our capabilities?” Your would-be client will always say yes. You have put yourself out on the call and they feel like they owe you something. Reciprocity demands they give you something in return. If you ask to send them some materials, they will agree because it is a low consequence way of fulfilling this obligation.

Next say, “Sounds good. Why don’t we set some time in two weeks to follow up? If you have your calendar handy, maybe we could set some time right now?”

It is highly unlikely — like the odds of an asteroid wiping you out on the way home — that you will sell a services contract in one thirty-minute call.

As Cavin says, your goal is the next call. The key here is to take the pressure to “sell something” off of yourself. It is highly unlikely — like the odds of an asteroid wiping you out on the way home — that you will sell a services contract in one thirty-minute call. It just doesn’t happen. Knowing that, you can relax and realize your only goal is to start a conversation and clear a path to that conversation continuing at a later date.

Carlie Auger has been on more than 500 introductory calls. She has a uniquely engaging way of speaking with those she does not know that makes her a natural at making new friends. One thing she has noticed is that as the thirty-minute introductory call comes to a close, there is always a pregnant pause when the prospective client knows that they should talk about next steps. But rare is the client that says, “Sounds good. How do we get started!” Much more likely is they push you off. “They seek to create space to consider what you have said to them,” says Carlie. Enter “The Deck.”

“Do you have a short piece that describes what you do and perhaps what you have done for others?” This is the most common end to an introductory conversation with someone you think you might be able to help with your expert services. They ask you for what is essentially a brochure for your services.

Your audience here is not the person you spoke with on the phone, it is the colleague or boss to whom the deck is forwarded.

A strong deck includes four elements: a statement of capabilities, case studies, a credibility page, and contact information. “They want to talk to others on their team,” says Carlie. “But they also want to test you. How quickly do you turn something around? Is it high quality? We try and send out a deck by at least the next day.”

A Statement of Capabilities

Can you clearly explain what you do in a way your grandmother would understand yet is sharply enough focused that it positions you as one of the foremost leaders in your niche? Your audience here is not the person you spoke with on the phone, it is the colleague or boss to whom the deck is forwarded. You need to be able to explain your value proposition to them using a handful of printed words.

Case Studies

This is where you draw from your library of experiences to describe how you have helped others in similar situations. Make sure the examples are relevant. A small firm is going to wonder if the success you delivered on behalf of three very large firms can be duplicated for them if they are much less well known or command far fewer resources. Likewise, if all of your cases involve small clients, a large firm is going to wonder if you have the chops to play in the big game. Carlie suggests a good case study includes the task you were assigned by a client, what you did, and, finally, the resultant return on investment for the client.

Credibility Page

It is said, “No one was ever fired for hiring IBM.” Clients have problems which need to be solved, but when engaging you, they want air cover. They don’t want to be defending how they hired a firm with no track record and no references to tackle an important challenge. That would be a quick way to lose their job.

The logo page in the deck is where you include logos of important present and past clients. Who you have worked with in the past helps build your credibility—the idea that you can be trusted with a task and that you will do what you say.

Contact Information

This may seem silly. You attached the deck in an email which has your contact information. But once sent, decks take on a life of their own. They get passed on to others you have never met. Make sure you leave your calling card.

I sat down with Andi Baldwin recently. Andi works with a number of consulting and professional services firms and is expert at facilitating conversations between the executives her clients most want to serve, teeing her clients up as trusted advisors to the group. Andi lights up the room with her energy and has the kind of focus and intelligence that makes you feel like she has set aside everything in the world to speak with you. It is not surprising she is great at interviewing clients.

Her interviewing happens within the context of a business development setting. She works for a client who has expertise. On behalf of those clients, she aggregates groups of executives who would benefit from that expertise. She moderates a best practices conversation between the executives, positioning her clients as a trusted advisor to the group. In that context, her clients tell stories and share examples of others who have struggled with the challenges being discussed. The consultant’s role is like a bee, cross-pollinating best practices among the executives.

Andi doesn’t trust this conversation to serendipity, however. It is not improv. She does her homework and interviews each executive beforehand, asking questions like:

“What’s top of mind for you?”

“What are your biggest challenges? What gates you from progress?”

And most importantly, “If you could ask a question of one of your peers, what would it be?”

Using their answers, Andi constructs an agenda that cuts through the academic headlines of what an executive should be thinking about, say, “Business model disruption,” and instead gets to the juicy core of what the executives are really thinking about — “Is it better to start a corporate venture fund and seed new business models with an option to buy, or pay up to buy a company once the marketplace has already decided on the winners and losers?”

By asking what an executive would ask of peers, she is really asking, “What keeps you up at night? What scares you.” That’s because,

We rarely need help when we feel capable. It’s when we feel uncertain, we seek assistance.

You may have heard that successful consultative selling starts by asking prospects to describe their “pain points.” Unfortunately, this approach rarely yields results. The problem is that when we ask people to describe their pain points, they rarely give you very much. Instead, they look at you with the kind of slightly pained expression that suggests their minds are being strafed by the nagging feeling that their entire jobs are a “pain point.”

Here’s the theory of pain points articulated by software entrepreneur Mike Suster in Inc. magazine:

Pain is a reminder that unless your prospect has a need to solve a problem, they are not going to buy a product. Customers sometimes buy things spontaneously without thinking through what they actually need. But, often, there is an underlying reason for a purchase, even if the buyer doesn’t bring it to the surface.

The problem is not the theory. The theory makes sense.

Better, though, is Andi’s approach of asking would-be clients, “What would you want to talk about with a peer if you had the chance?”

That’s because we naturally seek assistance from those who are fellow travelers.

Fellow travelers are people who have the same responsibilities and reporting relationships in similarly-sized companies. Their advice is the gold standard. They have walked in our shoes. They know the complexity and politics we face. They understand the world of constrained resources. These are not ivory tower, never-run-a-thing experts. They are us, only with more experience.

That is why in front of peers, over drinks at the conference, that we confide and tell the truth. It’s only with peers that we talk about our strengths and talk about where we need help.

And that is Andi’s secret. It is what makes her a higher-level interviewer. She isn’t just asking a series of compelling and artfully-worded questions. She is actively harnessing the power of peer trust and using it like a can opener to get at the good stuff — the gray, squishy, I’m-not-really-sure place that sales executives call “pain points” but executives call “need.”

Clients aren’t sold services. They buy them based on their evaluation of need, resources, capability, and fit. Doug Fletcher, my co-author and fellow service sales geek, describes the seven elements that must be present in a client before they buy.

1 | Awareness — Have they heard of you?

If clients are not aware of your firm, you can neither scope nor engage with them. The branding work done by our marketing colleagues is useful here. In the whitespace of corporate need, it is helpful to be known as an option. Think websites, social media, and airport signage. Being known in advance, of course, is not a necessity. Sometimes awareness first comes when you send an email or introduce yourself over the phone.

2 | Understanding — Do they know what you do?

Potential clients need to have an understanding of your capabilities. This is not a trivial point in a world where many firms offer a wide range of capacity. We often ask firms “What are you selling?” only to have them offer up a slurry of undigested professional services pap. Here is the rule: Specificity attracts. For example, “We sift through retail register data and are able to pinpoint which customers and which offers will help you optimize your marketing spend” is more compelling than “We drive digital transformation and strategy in a full range of industries across the globe.” Boil down what you offer to no more than a handful of value propositions where you have a) some form of competitive advantage, b) a data-rich track record of success and c) a statement that is easily understood by a parent or a neighbor. This is your elevator pitch and is the definition of your niche.

3 | Interest — Do they have a problem for which you have an answer?

In order to sell consulting services, your client must have a felt need, an interest. At least they should be open to the idea of improvement. Create distinctions which illuminate challenges or opportunities to which you are the answer. This is why practice leads write thought leadership, speak at conferences and more generally work to articulate the kind of “burning platforms” on which urgency and engagement are built. “Did you hear they changed Regulation 8b?” you whisper to a potential client. “We are seeing a variety of responses. How is your company prepared to act?”

4 | Belief — Do they think you can do the job?

Potential clients might know you, know you are active in a vertical and have a problem they need to solve, but they need to have a belief that you can do the work effectively. The secret to creating “Belief” is to clearly describe the promise of your service (“we lower costs,” “we drive revenues,” “we position you for future success”), while at the same time highlighting your track record of doing “the same thing for companies in your similar situation.” Think case studies and references.

 

5 | Trust — Do they trust you?

For professional services business development, reputation is the Holy Grail. When you hear, “I’ve worked with her before; she’s a solid player,” you know someone is about to ink a new engagement. Here is the formula for creating trust: (Your effectiveness) x (Your “fit” with the client) x (The amount of time you have known the client) = trust. If you are super-smart and have been calling on a client for five years, you will not win an engagement if the client feels “she just doesn’t get us.” Ask yourself, “How can I demonstrate value to a potential client in advance of the sale, provide evidence of my fit with the buyer, and do this repeatedly over a long period of time?” Working shoulder-to-shoulder with executives builds trust, but so does staying continuously connected over time, so long as you add value when you do. This is why people travel, offer free audits, and distribute research. Abuse this imperative to repeatedly connected, however, and you risk being thought of as human spam.

6 | Ability — Does your target have the ability to pull the trigger?

Is the company (or division or unit) big enough to afford you? Are you talking to a decision-maker? This is not about pining after those hard-to-get CFO appointments; it is about being thoughtful about where the preponderance of decision-making lies. Here is a clue: It is generally not the CEO and often not in the C-suite at all. Yes, your partner went to prep school with a CEO and that resulted in a new engagement, but mostly, you are selling to the “head of retail operations” or the “director of compliance.” These are the problem solvers in an organization. Seek to be in front of the right level — not too low, but not too high, either. Target those with budget, authority and for whom your services move the needle on their objectives. Understand their mandates and responsibilities. Do your homework. What does the world look like from their perspective, not yours? Care enough to walk a mile in their shoes.

7 | Readiness — Is the timing right?

Often you have convinced the decision-maker but for reasons beyond their control, she cannot make it happen. Be patient. You are selling to large organizations with their own idiosyncratic biorhythms, including planning and budget cycles and the Byzantine politics of who is on the rise and who’s not. Be attuned to timing, and never write off a potential client. No one ever needs a consultant, until they do, and then, when they do, it is the professional who has invested in a relationship and who is most proximate to the opportunity who wins the day. Stay in touch.

Doug Fletcher has a long list of fans, brought close by his easy laugh, charming tidewater drawl, and a razor-sharp intellect. After meeting when our kids were still young, I too came to quickly admire his simple way of boiling down the complicated into cornerstone statements — the kind on which you can build a stable structure.

The Client’s Perspective

Recently, Doug has been hammering on me about client empathy, design thinking, and the customer journey. He says whenever we offer something for purchase, the temptation is to start from ourselves and then build a bridge to those whom we think we can help.

Start from the customer you most want to serve. Work from there.

We build a phone that is light, fast, takes great pictures, and serves as a platform for a variety of powerful apps. Now our job is to market the phone. Marketing 101 tells us to segment the market — to figure out who would most likely buy the phone — then to communicate with them. We push focus group-tested hot buttons and, if we do it often enough to cut through the noise, the would-be customer is powerless to resist our pitch. We have a gizmo with certain features. Our job is to shout those attributes from the rooftop: It’s lightning fast! More pixels! Effortlessly manages ten different streams of communication! Lighter than air! Cheaper than dirt! If we hit the customer with an average of 12.7 impressions, they will march like zombies down to Verizon and buy the phone.

Doug co-teaches a design course with a member of the architecture school. He argues this kind of marketing is crazy. “Start from the customer you most want to serve. Work from there.” What are their needs? Maybe they don’t want infinite complexity in a phone but rather one that simply pulls in emails, texts and allows for quick phone calls. Maybe they intend to use the phone for gaming, and power and a large screen are paramount but weight and price are secondary.

Observing How Our Clients Buy

Armed with something that is designed to solve a set of specific problems as opposed to be the fullest manifestation of technological prowess, ask yourself, how does your customer buy? What are the stages they go through before pull the trigger on a purchase? The idea is not to “drive” them to your site but rather, to go where they naturally congregate.

In Why We Buy, Paco Underhill taught us that retailers who position their most seductive offers at the front of the store don’t understand how customers buy. Buyers walk into a store and use the front of the store to orient themselves. They can’t help it. They need to know the place is safe. Where and how many people are inside. Is it hot or cold? Are they supposed to grab a cart like when they go to the grocery store, or should they be prepared to say, “Hi,” to a greeter? Only after they have taken a few steps inside can they turn their focus to what the retailer is offering. Underhill filmed hundreds of customers and learned that most retail customers swing right as they begin to browse. They aren’t drawn to a colorful display to the left. They naturally move to the right. The lesson for the retailer? Position your best offers just to the right a half dozen steps into the store. That’s where and when customers start to pay attention. Next time you enter Target, check out the rack of magnetically placed items on the right a few strides past the double set of doors. You look at the hats and purses and seasonal baskets because that is where you want to look not because Target caused you to look there.

Doug says this is because Target has empathy for their customers. They have sought to walk a mile in their shoes before trying to sell to them. First, they sought to understand the problems customers are trying to solve and then they observed how the customer naturally shops. They started from the customer and built a bridge to their offerings. Not vice versa.

Show, Don’t Tell

Nowhere is thinking about your customer more important than when you are selling consulting or professional services. Covering up your potential clients with the features and attributes of your services just doesn’t work.

• “Smartest accountant in the tri-county region!”
• “Fastest attorney according to independent speed trials (we’re often wrong, but we’ll get you an answer in 30 minutes or less or your money back)!”
• “Cheapest logo designs on the internet. Pennies will get you a brand you will have to live with for the rest of your life!

And more impressions (Is it 7, 20, 12.4? No one really knows), only adds injury to insult. That is because consulting and professional services are sold on the three R’s:

Relationships — “I’ve worked with Jamel before. He never disappoints.”

Referrals — “I’d recommend Carolyn. She helped set up my folks’ trust and was great — smart and sensitive.”

Reputation — “I heard a cyber-security talk at the CPA convention from this guy who audits all the mid-sized firms. I think we should give him a call.”

None of this starts from the consultant or professional services provider. No one is talking about how cheap or fast someone is. All the statements start from the customer saying, “I.” They start from where the customer is when they ask one of three core questions which drive all consulting and professional services sales:

• Who have I worked with or know who might give me a hand with this?
• Who do I know who would be able to recommend someone good?
• Who is the best at this?

Doug is right when he says that no one likes to be sold to. This is doubly true in consulting and professional services. Consider the following, which I have heard from large company executives in the last twelve months:

• “It used to be all I had to read was the Harvard Business Review and the McKinsey Quarterly. Now I receive a dozen white papers each week from consulting firms. It’s overwhelming.”
• “I get invited to Fortune 500 CFO summits all the time, but it’s false advertising. It’s never CFO of companies my size. It is filled with CFO wanna-be’s, controllers or the fourth person down in the finance function at much smaller companies.”

Each of these efforts to attract clients have something in common, they start with the consultant or professional services expert at the center of their thinking.

• The supply chain expert decides to share a case study of their success in a white paper, thinking of it as a ten-page brochure for their services.
• The finance consultancy aspires to serve big company CFOs but welcomes all because, in the end, they need to justify their marketing spend on the conference.
• The IT consultant wants to walk prospective clients through her capabilities and turns to a webinar to make the sales pitch efficiently to a number of prospects.

Not one of these efforts starts from the place of where the client is in their effort to achieve their goals. They start by asking “What can I do to get the word out to the people who are best positioned to buy my services?” Not, “Who might my experience help, and how can I better understand how they perceive their challenges so I can begin to offer genuine value in advance of a sale?”

Ann Kieffaber recently retired from the healthcare practice at Accenture as a Managing Director working out of the Hartford, Connecticut office. Before that, she worked for IBM. In both roles, she was charged with helping the largest healthcare organizations transform how they collect, understand and use data. Whenever she started an engagement, she asked herself one powerful question: How do I create outrageous success for my clients?

I love that. Ann doesn’t just look to create success but looks instead to create outrageous success—the kind of success that clients shout from the rooftops (recommending Ann’s team to peers across the industry). It got me thinking. What would be my formula be for creating success?

Under Promise and Over Deliver

The alpha and omega of consulting is the quality delivery of services. Does that mean working nights and weekends to deliver the best possible solution? Yes. But it also means being mindful of how a project is defined at its start. I have a friend who says client satisfaction is all about putting time into the scope. He will write up a statement of work and review it with the client, taking notes on their input. Then he will sit down with the client (no passive emails — “revised Statement of Work attached”) and go over the scope a second time, saying, “I want to understand this. The project will feel like a success to you if we do the following three things? If those three things happen, you will feel like this was money well spent?” A client whisperer, he is embedding the language of success in his clients’ heads. Then he checks in with the clients periodically over the course of the engagement and reiterates how they have defined success and the progress that is being made. Finally, and this is the crucial part, he does more than promised. That is what makes clients say, ‘Wow!’”

Move the Needle

Consultants get “A’s” for results, not for effort. Clients hire expert service providers to do a job, and that job is always tied to an operational result whether or not they make this second goal explicit. The client might hire you to launch a social strategy around content or ask you to install a point of sale system in all of their retail locations, but in either case, they are really hiring you to boost revenues or increase efficiencies. While some companies are explicitly driven by managers’ ability to “make the business case” for an expense while other companies are less focused on demonstrating a return on every investment, ROI is never far from the door. Is this project going to drive revenues in the short or long term, or is it going to save the company money and therefore drive greater profits?

Be Mindful If Clients Are Managing the Upside or the Downside

Ann makes an important point: Some clients define success as being “on time and under budget.” Others want a project to drive differentiation and are looking for leading-edge solutions. The ability to understand the personality of those you hope to serve is important not just for landing the assignment, but also for driving success.

Live and Die for Your Client

Clients will not give you an “A” for effort if you do not drive results in their organization. That said, they do want to see you bust your tail on their behalf. No one wants to think their project is easy, high margin work for which they are, perhaps, overpaying. They want to see you work. That is because work is a proxy for your commitment — that you are “all in.” Why is that important? Because they’re all in. Their careers are on the line, and they want to see that you are acting like your career is on the line as well.

How about you? How do you create outrageous success for your clients?

The Blue Devils were down. Duke would either advance to the Final Four or get washed out of March Madness. With less than a minute to go, they hit a three-point shot and were up again. The crowd went crazy. Stephanie Cole and her husband Dave were at home on the edge of the sofa shouting at the TV. Neither were Duke fans, but both had Duke winning. The path to a winning bracket seemed much more in reach.

Suddenly Stephanie, a managing director at PIE, remembered the LinkedIn profile of an executive she had been trying to meet. “I knew we could help him, so I had decided to cold call him.” She had left voicemails and sent occasional emails for more than a year, but he had been unresponsive. Now as students rushed the floor after the final buzzer, she turned to Dave and said, “He’s a Blue Devil.”

Make a Human Connection

In an age when computers are ubiquitous, it is easy to want to automate the selling of expert services. Software can have its place, but nothing replaces human contact. If you see someone you feel you can help, sometimes it just makes sense to just pick up the phone.

Let’s be clear here: Phoning someone you do not know can be scary. We would much rather publish a whitepaper on a subject and hope that customers beat a path to our door, but to rely on that as your only means of making new friends is crazy. Overcome the fear, find the phone number, and make the call — resolute in your belief that your experience can complement the experience of the person you are calling, and that together there is a least the possibility of creating value that each of you could not create alone.

The Method

Stephanie’s method to the lost art of the call:

Develop a thesis: What companies can you potentially help with your expert services?

Identify the role: Inside the company, what is the function you would be helping?

Find the person: Call into the switchboard, search online. Identify the name of the person you are trying to reach.

Call in through the switchboard: Leave a voicemail for the person you are trying reach. Most people don’t pick up their phones these days. Your job is to communicate that you are a human being and not a robot. Don’t sound too polished. Cold calling is not your full-time job. Tell them you must have missed them and that you will send an email.

Find their email: Look online. Look for email patterns in a company. Don’t be afraid to send several different email combos in the hope that one hits.

Keep your email short and ask for a call: Reference your voicemail. Try and reference something personal or points of intersection. Research what is happening in their lives or their companies. Don’t get carried away, though. Research can be a way to put off the call.

Double-check your email: This is your first impression. It is worth a second read before you press “send.”

Follow-through: Says Stephanie, “I am committed to appropriate follow-up.” The people you are trying to reach are very busy. What they have no time for today, they may have time for tomorrow.

 

Ann Kieffaber recently retired as a Managing Director of the healthcare practice at Accenture — years on the road visiting clients and helping them with their problems. I sat down with her and asked her what advice she would give others around business development at professional services firms.

Communicate

Ann says both listen and learn, but also to lead when speaking with clients. Getting this balance can be tricky. There are two traditions in consulting. One is consultative selling. Ask lots of questions to understand what the client needs. For example, a client might tell an attorney, “We need to make sure we have patent protection in South America.” Further questioning, however, might uncover a need for a systematic way of tracking and complying with IP demands across the globe. The consultative seller knows to dig past a client’s pat first answers.

A second approach used by consultants is disruptive selling. Here the consultant tells a client what they are doing is wrong. The Chief Information Officer of a $500MM company asks for recommendations for a client-based ERM software. The IT consultant tells them, “I won’t give you a recommendation because I don’t believe in client-based solutions. The future is the cloud.” With disruptive selling, the consultant offers a distinctive and well-informed point of view. Says Ann, “They don’t pay me to just listen. They want advice.”

The answer, of course, is to do both — listen and learn but also lead. As F. Scott Fitzgerald famously wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” Or as Ann puts it: “Thread the needle.”

Work the Plan

Ann believes in being intentional about understanding would-be clients and current accounts. To do this she asks a set of questions:

What is the company’s strategy? This may seem obvious, but how many consultants ask a very different question: How can I get this company to buy what I am selling? By asking first about a company’s strategy, you ensure you are focused on moving the needle on what matters most to your clients.

What motivates your clients? Are they focused on making a big splash and being celebrated as a leader by their peers across their industry, or are they playing catch-up with short resources where a patch will suffice? Where are they in their career? Is this the project that will win them a big promotion or is it an afterthought that must be covered off so they can spend their time on what is really important to them? Knowing what motivates a client is a key way to unpack what success looks like for them.

Who decides? When selling services to large organizations, there is never a single decision-maker. Ann runs into three types:

• The Decider — When speaking with a company about how your services might help them, you are often talking with a key lieutenant who has been asked to research possible service providers. Your job over time is to level-up and earn the right to speak with the decision-maker.
• The Influencer — Most managers want their team to buy off on a project, especially if they are to have a hand in implementing it. The manager might be sold on your services but suggest, “Let’s set up a call with the team. I want to get their input.” While generally a good sign — they are the boss after all — it creates a strange dynamic where in order to add value to the conversation, the only thing a team member can do is point out risks or unintended consequences associated with engaging with you.
• The Vetoer — These are important stakeholders who have enough political capital in an organization that they can object to you being hired. Often, they come from left field. You are talking to a VP of Operations about auditing the energy efficiency of their manufacturing facilities and the Chief Purchasing Officer weighs in with a desire to competitively bid the project. Or you are working with a managing director of an analytics practice on sponsoring an industry summit when the CMO jumps in and says she wants to be involved because conferences come out of her budget.

Ann assures us that each of these relationships can be managed, but strongly believes in mapping and researching all the players. Individuals buy, but they exist within a buying ecosystem. Understanding and respecting this sea in which your prospects swim is critical to engaging with them and helping them achieve their goals.

Develop Multi-Dimensional Relationships

A senior partner at a Big 4 accounting firm said to me, “My advice to young people is to make friends with whom you work at client companies. Keep track of them and build the relationships over time. These will be the people who are running companies when you are my age.” Ann echoes this advice, urging expert service providers to build multi-dimensional relationships with those with whom they work. “It is a balance between the personal and the professional.” Be interested in their lives but not over-emphasize it. “When I see them, I try and tell them something about their company they don’t know.” Ann knows the right partner is the one you trust with your work, the one with whom you have a rapport and the one that consistently over-delivers value.

Robert Greenleaf writes “Good leaders must first become good servants.” This concept of “servant leadership” has rolled around in my mind for many years, pregnant with possibility even as I am not exactly sure what it means. Is servant leadership synonymous with what might otherwise be called humility, or is it something more? Greenleaf helps us along when he writes, “Don’t assume because you are intelligent, able, and well-motivated that you are open to communication, that you know how to listen.”

Leadership is not just Braveheart-come-follow-me. It’s also a healthy dose of listening to those one wants to lead. What is the market saying? What are those closest to your customers hearing? What are your potential customers reporting?

PIE Director, Susie Krueger, describes the art of active listening with passion. Much of Susie’s workday is spent interviewing executives with whom her clients want to work. Susie says that when she talks with executives, their first instinct is to throw up an everything-is-okay smokescreen. It takes some digging to get to the truth. Simply asking, “What are your challenges?” is not sufficient. You have to ask five whys to uncover the heart of their challenge.

Q1: “What are your biggest challenges?”
A1: “I am working to drive interest in our website.”

Q2: “How are you thinking about doing that?”
A2: “The best way to get people to a website is to send out thought leadership with an offer that refers back to the website.”

Q3: “What are the barriers to you as you try to get that done?”
A3: “I have to create a thought leadership engine across the organization that serves all stakeholders.”

Q4: “As you think about that, where are the sticking points?”
A4: “I have to coordinate our managing directors who have research they want to publish with our brand people who want to present a consistent look and feel to our calls to action.”

Q5: “What makes this coordination difficult?”
A5: “Look, my job is to drive traffic to the website. That is something against which I am measured. The practice leads just want to get their stuff out to customers but don’t have an ROI, much less brand perspective. But they have much more power in the organization than me. I end up with the political problem of how do I reconcile their more powerful, but uninformed instincts, with a cohesive marketing strategy.”

Uncovering deep challenges, however, is only part of Susie’s job as she tries to be of service to the executive who has just bared their soul. There is a second step.

It is as though there is a part of servant leadership that might be termed called “servant sales,” and it sits right at this pivot from a deep understanding of those whom an expert wants to serve to the potential to collaborate. It’s not this:

Sounds like you have a mess over there. Let me send you a brochure of our offerings because we are the best people you could hire to straighten things out.

Rather, begin with a simple positioning statement:

I hear that a lot of that from marketing professionals.

This validation of the challenge the executive is facing is both comforting to the executive (No, I am not stupid or incompetent) and positions the service provider as a bee buzzing around companies cross-pollinating best practices. It positions the expert services provider not as the font of all knowledge (I am smarter than you), but rather as a smart peer who happens to have a different but complementary set of experiences which, when combined with the expertise the executive has about her company, could be the foundation upon which a collaboration might be built.

Susie says it best. Your job is to be an “ally in their quest to overcome their challenge.” In a phrase, be a servant leader.

Spanning the Peace Corps, a highly innovative franchise operation, private equity, and expert services, Tom McMakin’s career reflects his innate sense of adventure and curiosity. So, during the nearly 20 years I’ve known him when Tom says something like, “Selling expert services is different,” I pay attention. That’s because I know Tom thinks critically and practically.

Notwithstanding the intuitive appeal to me of the distinctiveness of selling expert services, I was initially skeptical. After all, Tom sells expert services (as do I). It’s self-serving to declare the process of selling expert services somehow special. Nevertheless, I’m persuaded by Tom’s logic:

Selling expert services is different in the sense that expert services are sold on reputation or referral or relationships, not like goods which are sold on features and attributes.

Furthermore, I believe the consequences of failing to act upon the implications of Tom’s insight are likely to become increasingly catastrophic.

What Are Expert Services?

Before we proceed, let’s agree on a definition. A service is defined as an act of helping or doing work for someone. Services encompass everything from TaskRabbit to the work done at the Mayo Clinic. Tom is interested in a narrower scope differentiated by expertise, the application of which yields results vastly superior to those obtained by the majority of the population.

Expert services include, but are not limited to, what we know as professional services that typically require certification (e.g. lawyers, architects, and auditors). Of course, the requirement for a license or certificate is no guarantee of expertise. Instead of ensuring expertise, licensure may instead serve to limit competition. In other words, expert services are a subset of services that includes, but is more encompassing than, most professional services.

For example, Marko Djuk is the artist who created the illustration of Tom embedded below. Marko is a purveyor of expert services, as his artwork is vastly superior to that which might be produced by the majority of the population.

Marketing Physics

In order to understand how marketing expert services is different, let me introduce Doug Hall’s “marketing physics” framework. Doug’s framework clarifies the elements of an effective value proposition:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The perceived value of a product or service, too, is contextual. That is, value is personal, relative, and dynamic.

While a clear statement of the benefit of an expert service is necessary, it’s insufficient. In fact, Hall’s data indicates the more powerful the statement of benefit, the greater the requirement for real reason to believe.

Per Hall, there are five strategies for conveying reason to believe:

Kitchen logic — explains how the promised benefit is delivered using language to which prospective customers can easily understand and relate.

Personal experience — is about providing the opportunity to see, feel, and experience the benefit of your product or service.

Pedigree — is about providing confidence by detailing the development and marketing heritage behind your product or service. A well-established brand is a source of pedigree.

Testimonials — can be from customers, acknowledged experts, or independent third parties.

Guarantee — can provide a powerful reason to believe, if inclusive and credible.

To some degree, each of the preceding is a substitute for another. Testimonials, for instance, might overcome a lack of personal experience. Furthermore, different products and services are amenable to different combinations of sources of reason to believe.

Product Features and Kitchen Logic

When Tom asserts that products tend to be sold on features, I hear that he’s suggesting that product marketers tend to emphasize kitchen logic in their sales strategies. For example, consider the following advertisement for the iPhone 7 by Apple. It makes a kitchen logic link between features and claimed benefits:

It makes the things you do with your iPhone better, faster, and more powerful.

The advertisement enumerates features — new camera systems, stereo speakers, and “the most powerful chip ever in a smartphone” — to explain how the new phone is going to be “better, faster, and more powerful.”

Of course, the accumulation of positive consumer experiences that constitutes the overarching Apple brand is also a powerful source of reason to believe. The point, though, is kitchen logic links product features with the claimed benefit. Kitchen logic tends to be a primary source of reason to believe for products.

Logical Disconnects Around the Kitchen Table

Arguably, the “features” of expertise are more difficult to convey in a readily understandable and persuasive manner. The iPhone 7’s kitchen logic is compelling:

“The most powerful chip ever in a smartphone” → “faster and more powerful”

In contrast, I find it difficult to formulate a concise explanation of how my studies of system dynamics, complex adaptive systems, and real options theory translate into a differentiated capacity to advise burgeoning e-commerce businesses on strategy. I believe it to be true, but a concise statement of cause and effect eludes me.

The (Relative) Diminishment of Brand

In the world of management consulting, there are few firms with brands as well known and highly regarded as McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Bain, and Oliver Wyman. The pedigree conveyed by having such a brand on one’s business card is significant. Even so, the world seems to be shifting to the detriment of brands.

Consultants at these firms are likely to be students of the moral and political philosopher, Adam Smith, who wrote in Wealth of Nations:

As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, by the extent of the market. When the market is very small, no person can have any encouragement to dedicate himself entirely to one employment, for want of the power to exchange all that surplus part of the product of his own labour, which is over and above his own consumption, for such parts of the product of other men’s labour as he has occasion for.

As Smith would have anticipated, transportation and communications technologies have shrunk the world, enlarged potential markets for expert services, and encouraged specialization. As a consequence, the relative value of general service brands is diminishing.

Consider the small, London-based firm of Strategy Dynamics. In the domain of quantitative, dynamic modeling of strategic processes, Kim Warren’s firm can go toe-to-toe with any of the strategy powerhouses — even without the brand pedigree recognized by the general business audience.

What’s Left for Expert Service Providers?

If kitchen logic is evasive for highly specialized service providers and the power of pedigree diminishing in the face of market fragmentation, what’s left for a seller of expert services? Let’s set aside guarantees in this context for another day.

Tom might say there are two viable strategies for communicating differentiated levels of reason to believe:

Personal experience — which includes all types of trials and sampling

Testimonials — including referrals by, and testimonials from, past clients

As Tom puts it:

You don’t talk about your expertise, you demonstrate your expertise.

Of course, that’s what content marketing is meant to address. Writing books, whitepapers, and articles create the potential for a form of sampling. So do podcasts, webinars, and videos. They are mechanisms through which one can demonstrate expertise prior to the sale. Strategy Dynamics, for example, offers a wide array of free resources on its website. Relatedly, the techniques associated with sharing digital content are designed to encourage referrals and other casual forms of testimonials.

Effective sales techniques aren’t limited to digital content. More than ever, carefully selected and executed talks and conversations are means by which expertise can be demonstrated.

In short, I believe Tom’s assertion is fundamentally correct. Selling expert services is different. Product firms can more readily draw upon kitchen logic to persuasively link features with claimed benefits. Furthermore, I suspect that product brands may be more resistant to erosion by specialization and market fragmentation than are service brands. By process of elimination, sellers of expert services must become masters at providing real reason to believe in the value of their respective offerings through personal experience and testimonials.

The Consequences of Failure

If we fail to heed Tom’s message, we risk the commodification of our service offerings. The emergence of platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, Uber, Fiverr, and a host of others make the consequence of commodification clear. Even on more supplier-friendly platforms such as Uber and Etsy, it’s damned tough to make a living unless your value proposition is compelling. In a world that already has LinkedIn, PrestoExperts, and Maven, how long will it be before the scope of your expert services domain becomes uncomfortably broad and undifferentiated?

Dave Bayless provides expert services to “human scale businesses.” An MBA, serial entrepreneur, former banker and private equity investor, he brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to his clients. It is surprising, then, to hear him say that the biggest challenge he sees in his own practice and in the expert service practices of others is the tendency to be “intentionally vague.”

I see this all the time with practice leads and consulting partners. I’ll ask them, “What are the services you provide?” Their answer will be, “Depends on the problem…” Expert service providers do this for two reasons. First, they are smart and can legitimately offer help in a variety of different situations across industries and geographies. Second, they know new business is hard to find and if they get a nibble on the hook, their first instinct is to start reeling, regardless of whether the fish is in season or out.

Dave reports he learned the need for focus the hard way, defining his consulting practice broadly but over time narrowing it and, in so doing, expanding his right to own that niche. (For more on the need to shrink your pond, click here.)

With his focus tight, he began to build his practice by offering up sips of his expertise in the form of audio, written and video posts. These bits of useful content feed his business because they offer potential clients four things:

Value

Relationships ignite more quickly when one begins by making a gift. Offering value invites those you want to serve to move closer to you, as opposed to starting off by asking them to do something for you. “Add value with every touch,” says Dave. Often this can mean pointing would-be clients to a colleague or other resource. This is somewhat counter-intuitive. Most people would be inclined to try to pull the would-be client closer, but actually being their ally as they seek assistance positions you as a trusted advisor and not a salesperson.

A “Taste”

Expert services are sold only after a would-be client knows and trusts you. As Dave points out, it used to be that a big-name firm on your business card and a degree from a name-brand graduate university was enough to not only gain entre but to establish your bona fides. Now, with expertise more broadly distributed, clients need to try before they buy. Recording audio casts, writing blogs and filming video clips give expert service providers a chance to demonstrate their expertise — not just talk about it.

Personality

Hiring expert help is a very personal decision. You have to feel like you can work with the person you are hiring. Pushing out snippets of expertise allows you to showcase who you are, and this helps would-be clients cross the important bridge to a place where they can start to say, “I could imagine talking with and working with this person.”

Efficient Access

The world is increasingly flat, meaning that expert service providers are specialists with technology-enabled global practices but thin coverage in any one geography. This is exciting because a pension benefits attorney in Sydney can work with clients in Toronto as easily as they work with clients in Melbourne. The downside is that it is hard to wade through the proliferation of advisors to find just the right expert. By generating bits of useful content that showcase your expertise, you begin to participate in a web of socially-defined ties — links to other online work, for example — that enable others to more efficiently find you.

Managing Director at PIE, John Nord has worked with top-tier IT consultants, strategy consultants, and the Big Four. I spoke to him recently about his success in selling across an organization. A native of Minnesota and a big Gophers fan, John grew up in an agricultural community. It didn’t surprise me that in seeking to characterize his efforts, he referred to it as “farming.” I love this term because it connotes stewardship and sustainability.

John’s Four Rules of Farming

Delivery Sells

The quality of the work comes first, says John. Whereas other clients might be impressed by the logos in your deck describing work you have done with numerous big clients, inside an organization the only thing that matters is the quality of your work. Set clear expectations with clients, over-deliver, produce results. Everything flows from that.

Be Proactive

As much as delivery sells, it is not enough. Successful farmers need to pick up the phone and make new friends. John sets goals for himself on the number of new people he can meet in a client organization. Walk into his office and you see large lists on his walls, tracking the people he has met. He tries to hold these relationships loosely in his hands. They are not prospects to be pitched so much as a living ecosystem in which his practice thrives as he develops relationships.

Include Your Current Relationship

John never cold calls into a different department or division without first speaking with his main relationship. He argues that expert services work is fundamentally built on trust. To reach out across the organization without first making your primary relationships aware of your efforts is to communicate that you are not to be trusted. He tries to enlist their help, asking what is the best way to connect with a functional equivalent in another department. Would they rather make an introduction or have John just reach out cold and reference his work with them?

Share Your Story

John never thinks of making new friends as selling. He finds that executives are interested in what you are doing elsewhere in the organization. They know that borrowing brilliance is key to their success in the company and want to hear about innovation. They know that their success in the organization means paying attention to what is working elsewhere and importing it into their practices. John always speaks with an honest sense of sharing: Here is what we are doing with one practice that works well. What are you all doing?

Bonus Tip

John describes live events as “target-rich environments.” If you are invited to help with a client’s conference, make sure to meet the other subject matter experts who are coming from different parts of the company. Over a glass of wine after events, it will be natural to ask them what they do and, in turn, for them to want to know what you do. Bring business cards and follow by setting a call.

Matt Ulrich loved living in the shadow of Wrigley Field. “With eighty-one home games, it always smelled like popcorn and hot dogs. I loved that. On game day, you’d hear the bucket boys playing five-gallon drums for tips and neighbors hawking their parking spots to the highest bidder. It was like a carnival all the time.” A former professional football player, Matt confesses he finds the actual game of baseball a little slow. “I’m just saying…,” he says with a boyish grin. “But that’s why it was so great to live next to Wrigley. I’d turn on the TV and, with the seven-second broadcast delay, the crowd would tell me when to pay attention to the game. Thirty-thousand people would explode, I’d set down what I was doing, look up at the screen and catch every big play.”

Rounding the Bases

Matt tracks business development like it’s baseball. “The game is pretty simple. You’re at bat and the trick is to round the bases. Think of BD baseball as a series of bases you are trying to cross.”

Home plate—You’re ready but haven’t done much to make new friends.

First base—You’ve had the first call, and you’ve been introduced.

Second base—You’ve begun to understand the challenges of the people you are trying to help.

Third base—You’ve scoped a project and made a proposal on how you can help.

Home run—You’ve overcome outside factors like timing, budgets and stakeholder buy-in and work is sold.

Main Takeaways

I love the simple elegance of this model. Who can’t relate to pushing from first to second? Here are my main takeaways after talking with Matt:

1. A series of singles: Matt says the single biggest mistake he sees in would-be business developers is they get up to bat and want to hit it out of the park when the surer strategy is to systematically load the bases, advance prospects from one base to another, and work runners in one play at a time. When it comes to building the relationships off of which expert services are sold, patience is a virtue.
2. Keep score: Good business developers track what they do. If you are reaching out diligently, trying to make new friends, the details of any given relationship quickly outstrip your brain’s ability to remember them. That’s where putting outreach into buckets helps. It also helps in directing your attention to where it is best put to use. “I’ve got five relationships on third base, fifteen on second, but only one on first. I need to get back out there and introduce myself to people I don’t now know.”
3. Leadoff of second: Align your tactics with the relative maturity of a relationship. If you meet someone for the first time, it is probably too soon to offer to fly across the country and present to their board. Better to set up a thirty-minute introductory call. If you have had several good substantive conversations with someone inside of an organization, it is okay to say, “Who else in the organization should I be speaking with?”
4. Rounding the bases: Good business developers are not only digging hard to get to first or second but are also, eyes up, looking and thinking about how to get to the next base. If you had a great initial call, do you end the call by saying, “It was nice to meet you. Thank you for your time. Give us a call if we can ever be of assistance.”? Or, are you saying, “It was great to meet you. Maybe by way of a next step, I’ll send you a couple of case studies of work we have done. Why don’t look at them and let’s chat again in two weeks. What would be a good day to connect?”

 

Jacob Parks has been helping expert service providers (consultants, attorneys, accountants) connect with potential customers for fifteen years as the chief operating officer of PIE. With a shock of brown hair, an easy smile and an open, attentive manner, he speaks with the confidence of someone who is an expert in his own right.

I am struck by the number of times he uses the word, “value” in conversation. Value, he says, is the key to creating relationships off of which one can scope business, but, and this is counter-intuitive, the trick is to create value before the sale, not after. This makes sense to me. We buy expertise from people we think are smart and whom we trust. Traditional marketing, which relies on telling us why to buy, doesn’t work well in this context. Imagine a strategy consultant putting up a billboard in Manhattan that read, “Tom: Smartest strategist on the planet! Trust me.” Expertise is better demonstrated than described. Likewise, trust is earned, not demanded.

Based on his experience helping some of the biggest expert service providers with their business development, Jacob recommends the peer forum as a way to learn about and connect with potential customers. His tips on how to create a strong interaction:

Identify Those Who You Most Want To Serve

This is easier said than done. There are many sizes of companies and functions who you may be able to serve in your practice, but, says Jacob, pick one because the key to creating a successful forum match group of executives with others who have their same job. As Jacob says, “CFOs don’t want to talk to Controllers.” Neither does the CFO of a $10B revenue company want to talk with a CFO of a $100MM revenue company. So, how do you pick between the executive functions that could be your buyer? Look to executives you have successfully served in the past. If you have done good work for two mid-sized mining companies lifting their finance function up in to the cloud, you have earned a right to talk with other CFO’s of billion-dollar mining companies, if for no other reason than you have good stories to tell. This is what it means to build a practice around a niche.

Gather Them by Phone

Jacob is passionate about the power of a phone-based group interaction. Yes, gathering them for a conference or a dinner is good — who doesn’t bond over a good bottle of Chianti? But if you plan a swell dinner and no one comes, have you really done anything? Jacob sees this all the time. A consulting group decides to host an expensive event. They send out Save-the-Dates but only their customers respond. Suddenly, feeling desperate they put out the call for bodies and their premier CFO conference turns into a mix of people they already know and ones they don’t want to know. The mistake these providers make is to make too big an ask too soon. It’s like that dating service you see in the airplane magazines, It’s Just Lunch. Start with the easy ask — will you join us for a call where fifteen of your peers will be speaking together about best practices? Do that for a while, adding value and earning trust, before you ask them to fly across the country and spend two days with you.

Make It About Them

Jacob is a sales radical. Instead of gathering prospects together and talking about the benefits or working with you, he suggests making the forum about the people you most want to serve. Don’t make it a webinar — “one to many” where you are the expert. Make it a true exchange on what’s working and what’s not. Have faith. It will redound to your reputation. You may be saying to yourself, “I am paying for this platform; shouldn’t I be able to talk about my services?” You can, of course, but it is such a turnoff. People you want to serve have problems and those problems consume them. Your desire to expand your roster of clients is not. Better is to put yourself in their shoes and help them solve their problems. Do that successfully and they will want more. No slides, no long-winded explications of your offerings by industry, function, and geography. Instead, ask lots of questions.

Interview Them First

Jacob calls the pre-interview PIE’s “secret sauce.” He counsels us to do our homework and call participants in an exchange and a series of questions:

• What are your biggest challenges?
• What gates you from what the CEO is asking you to do?
• If you could benchmark what you are doing against what peers are doing, what questions would you ask them?

Only then should you turn to the task of forming an agenda. Asking your customers what they want to talk about is the best guard against the temptation to turn your agenda into a “brochure” for your services. Executives who are likely buyers of your services are smart. They can smell whether the “best practices forum” is about them or about you.

Deepen the Relationship Over Time

When an expert service provider becomes a “trusted advisor,” the relationship with those they are helping tends to bear fruit over a long period of time. This is because productive collaboration is hard to come by. While the expert service relationship has a long sell cycle, the lifetime value of a customer can be very high as can be margins. So be patient. Add value, add value again, built trust, meet up with the executive at a conference, visit them. Always look to deepen and engage. Pull the big brown trout from the Yellowstone River too quickly and you yank out the hook, but fail to reel the fish in, and it will continue to swim free.