focus on their needs, not yours.
by martin bissett
business development on a budget
let’s start with two simple definitions to avoid any confusion:
- the purpose of marketing is to create the opportunity.
- the purpose of business development (sales) is to convert that opportunity into a paying client.
more: four reasons accountants struggle with selling | think of it as service, not selling | stop waiting for business to come to you | afive questions to help forecast your firm growth | four key questions about leadership | does client perception match your firm’s reality? | showing leadership through customer service | firm not thriving? five fixes | the real math behind the sales pipeline | five questions for grading prospects | be clear about your roi proposition | keep business development going during busy season | don’t let recurring fees kill your practice
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when we meet with prospective clients – and i say this as someone who has sat in on many hundreds of meetings of this nature – we rarely give potential clients a reason to buy from us that they care about.
there might be a number of reasons that we believe are strong and compelling factors for them considering engaging us, but what about them? what about how they feel? what about their decision-making factors? what about their concerns and objections? that’s where the focus needs to be.
if we don’t understand the value we deliver beyond traditional compliance work, then how are we going to convince anyone else?
if we don’t believe that we can positively differentiate from any other competing firms, including the incumbent firm the potential client might be with right now, how are we going to stand out from the crowd? if we don’t believe we have the solution for them, why are we expecting them to believe we have the solution for them?
i would love you to take away this point, embed it deeply and recall it regularly: we are our first client.
we have to understand why clients buy from us. we have to understand how businesses and business owners think about their businesses and how our value and our skill set aids their goals, ambitions and strategies.
once we understand our value, self-confidence stops being a problem in client meetings. answers to unusual questions occur to us far more promptly as we are freed from worrying about whether we’re going to look good or lose the work based on our answer. we change from talking about features (the vehicles of delivery in our firm that perhaps reinforce our technical competence) and we’ll focus on benefits, the reasons why this potential client should engage us in order to forward their own goals.
so becoming our first client is a process that should happen every single day. in motivational speaking circles i hear it talked about as positive self-talk or affirmations. whatever system works for you is great, so long as it helps you understand the reality, not some fantasy, but the reality of what you, your firm, your people, your service offering, impacts the wellbeing of a business that you might go and talk to.
physiology, or in other words body language, is 55 percent of the impression or perception created by the client about us, regardless of the reality. therefore we need to be able to positively influence their perception of us and our body language (open arms, relaxed posture more than folded arms, crossed legs) plays a 55 percent role in achieving that.
the tone of our voice is said to constitute 38 percent of our client’s perception of us. you can tell when somebody says something to you that they don’t believe. you can pick up doubt or insincerity in a voice. that’s 38 percent of the whole picture that is painted of us, so it’s a very big deal.
believe it or not, the actual words we employ and the order in which we employ them to convey and communicate our value is only 7 percent of the total equation.
so the “winning the first client” concept comes into its own here in that we understand why we’re valuable, so we’re relaxed. we can really help the business owner we’re talking to, and so the tone is positive, engaging and enthusiastic.
this means that the words must come naturally to us. we know our subject, we know our value, we know what they and their business need because we’ve been asking those questions and they’ve been telling us the story of where they’ve come from, where they are now and where they and their business wish to go.
getting those skills together gives us the process we need to start winning new work.