Selling services is a tough challenge. You don’t have a product to demonstrate. Often your prospect isn’t even sure what they want.

When it comes to selling, consultants and service providers usually handle this challenge the wrong way: they wing it too often. (Even once is too often!)

They don’t have a process or methodology for systematically finding the right prospects, putting the right message in front of them, and closing deals.

Winging it = poor results!

Have you been winging it? Think you could succeed more with sales? What about the consultants that work for you?

If you are looking for a better way to be more successful with your sales efforts don’t miss our new online learning program Selling Consulting Services with RAIN Selling. In this program we’ll walk you through the Selling Consulting Services Roadmap to Sales Success, a process you can follow to become a top performing rainmaker.

Click the image above to download the Selling Consulting Services Roadmap

Through six core modules and 27 intensive lessons in Selling Consulting Services, we’ll give you every last piece of the puzzle you need to fill the pipeline with qualified leads, win more new business, and command higher fees.

>>> Download a PDF of this roadmap including an overview of what you’ll learn in each of the program modules and lessons.

Here are some of the topics we’ll cover in the program:

• How to keep the front end of the pipeline full with qualified prospects while maintaining your practice with active clients
• Step-by-step how to lead masterful sales conversations in any situation
• The real deal with objections and how to overcome them (often it’s not what you think)
• Follow-up techniques that turn prospects into clients
• The 4 things to do when clients pressure you for lower fees
• 3 keys to developing a winning value proposition and describing complex services in a non-technical way to get prospects excited about you and your services
• Questioning strategies and techniques that allow you to uncover the full set of needs and provide maximum value
• How to make the business impact of your services clear so you can sell more with less buyer resistance
• Why buyers want to pay more for your services
• Your step-by-step guide to creating proposals that win
• How to bring in a predictable flow of profitable new clients

The first time we offered this program we received rave reviews.  Here’s what some of the participants have had to say:

“I’ve done many online training programs over the past 10 years, and this is, by far, the most well thought-out and best presented program I’ve seen.”

-Ghennipher Weeks, Applied Connectioneering

“Selling Consulting Services with RAIN Selling has given me greater confidence and comfort with selling my services. The program structure and tools are logical and practical, and have helped me learn how selling can be a natural extension of who I am and what I have to offer. Additionally, it allows me to go at my own pace, which given an already busy schedule is a huge plus. This program is really enjoyable and valuable.”

-Jeremy Bromberg, Bromberg LLC

If you want to take your selling to the next level, check it out:

Selling Consulting Services with RAIN Selling

Stop Winging Your Sales Conversations and Start Winning New Clients

by Mike Schultz and John Doerr on June 25, 2010

Selling services is a tough challenge. You don’t have a tangible product to point to, and oftentimes your prospect isn’t even sure what they want.

Consultants and service providers usually handle this challenge the wrong way: they wing it.

They don’t have a process or methodology for systematically finding the right prospects, putting the right message in front of them, and closing deals.

Winging it = poor results!

If you’re honest with yourself, you may realize that you’ve been winging it a bit too much. Or maybe the consultants that work for you are.

If you are looking for a better way to lead more successful sales conversations check out our new online learning program Selling Consulting Services with RAIN Selling. In this program we’ll walk you through the Selling Consulting Services Roadmap to Sales Success, a process you can follow to go from service provider to rainmaker.

Click the image above to download the Selling Consulting Services Roadmap

Through six core modules and 27 intensive lessons in Selling Consulting Services, we’ll give you every last piece of the puzzle you need to fill the pipeline with qualified leads, win more new business, and command higher fees.

>>> Download a PDF of this roadmap including an overview of what you’ll learn in each of the program modules and lessons.

Here are some of the topics we’ll cover in the program:

• How to keep the front end of the pipeline full with qualified prospects while maintaining your practice with active clients
• Step-by-step how to lead masterful sales conversations in any situation
• The real deal with objections and how to overcome them (often it’s not what you think)
• Follow-up techniques that turn prospects into clients
• The 4 things to do when clients pressure you for lower fees
• 3 keys to developing a winning value proposition and describing complex services in a non-technical way to get prospects excited about you and your services
• Questioning strategies and techniques that allow you to uncover the full set of needs and provide maximum value
• How to make the business impact of your services clear so you can sell more with less buyer resistance
• Why buyers want to pay more for your services
• Your step-by-step guide to creating proposals that win
• How to bring in a predictable flow of profitable new clients

The first time we offered this program we received rave reviews.  Here’s what some of the participants have had to say:

“I’ve done many online training programs over the past 10 years, and this is, by far, the most well thought-out and best presented program I’ve seen.”
-Ghennipher Weeks, Applied Connectioneering

“Selling Consulting Services with RAIN Selling has given me greater confidence and comfort with selling my services. The program structure and tools are logical and practical, and have helped me learn how selling can be a natural extension of who I am and what I have to offer. Additionally, it allows me to go at my own pace, which given an already busy schedule is a huge plus. This program is really enjoyable and valuable.”
-Jeremy Bromberg, Bromberg LLC

If you want to take your selling to the next level, check it out:

Focusing on a broad audience means you have a bigger audience but not a better one. You can’t be all things to everyone, nor do you want to be. Instead you want a targeted approach.

In Danita Bye’s article, How to Put Your Firm Out of Business, Bye explains how a targeted approach allows you to better target sales and marketing budgets, offer services that better meet your target’s needs, and get better referrals.

“Because your focus establishes you as a specialist, your business is the first one that existing customers will think of when associates mention a problem you can solve, giving you a prequalified and, in some cases, presold lead,” Bye says.

Having a targeted approach goes hand-in-hand with building your value proposition. Figure out who your ideal clients are and then determine the value you offer them. But your value proposition is more than a simple value statement, writes Mike Schultz and John Doerr in 3 Rules for Building a Value Proposition that Sells Like Crazy. It’s a concept about why people buy your services, and it’s woven into the fabric of your firm and your relationships with clients. And to develop that concept, you must determine what resonates with your buyers, differentiate yourself from others in the market, and build trust.

When you know who your targeted audience is and the value you have to offer them, then sales conversations are much easier. You have a strong foundation and can focus on conversation and presentation techniques that help you stand out even more among firms vying for the same buyer. In Deliver the Perfect Pitch: 9 Rules for Winning Clients, Charles H. Green explains how it isn’t your PowerPoint presentation that buyers want to see. They want to feel what it’s like to work with you. Follow his guidelines to meet that desire.

Strong Company, Strong Brand

Accenture is one company that seems to have embraced all of these best practices. Teresa Poggenpohl, Executive Director of Global Image for the firm, says the company has created a client experience that is strong, consistent, and differentiated. In addition, everyone in the company understands the value the firm offers, buys into its brand, and is motivated to contribute to their clients’ success.

All of that has resulted in a strong brand and brand strategy that allows Accenture to attract and retain its targeted clients. It also enables the firm to endure any marketing issues it may encounter, such as the one with Tiger Woods, Poggenpohl explains in her podcast interview, How a Strong Brand Helped Accenture Withstand the Tiger Woods Scandal.

“Our brand strategy didn’t change [because of what happened with Tiger Woods]. We used Tiger Woods in a very specific way. He was our metaphor for high performance, and he enabled us to own that idea,” she says. “We made the decision that we had to move away from Tiger. It was really that he was no longer the right metaphor for our high performance message.”

And rather quickly and seamlessly, the firm replaced its metaphor and has continued to offer clients high performance.

Now take a look at your firm, the value it offers, and its brand. Are you on your way to establishing your firm as the most valued, most trusted firm in your target market? Have you already done so?

After you cast your net for prospects, make sure you keep only those good for your firm

When times are tough and it’s difficult to sign on new clients or get current clients to buy additional services, we’re all tempted to take any business that comes our way. But that is a mistake. You must have a discriminating eye when considering prospects. You want a client who will stick around for the long haul and will help you grow your business.

With that in mind, Vickie K. Sullivan this week writes about the types of prospects you must have in your sales pipeline (3 Types of Prospects You Want in Your Pipeline Now):

• The Ready and Willing
• The Willing and Exploring
• The Small and Steady

Each group has its own qualities, and their members are all serious buyers.

We’d all be wise to look at each prospect that comes along and evaluate whether it’s the right fit. If it isn’t, throw it back. As Sullivan says:

“Pipelines with too many false buyers create a low close ratio, a low cash flow, and a high degree of frustration. Effective lead generation campaigns catch the attention of many buyers and have a system to distinguish between serious prospects and the wanderers in the wilderness.”

Buying Is an Emotional Experience

Martin Lindstrom, author of Buyology —Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, says buying is an emotional experience for the purchaser. Whether people buy a product or services, their emotions are always part of the equation.

Mike Schultz and Robert Croston explore that concept in their article, Use Your Brand Symbol to Trigger Emotional Responses in Buyers. Looking at the successful use of cookies in the marketing strategies of DoubleTree Hotels and Midwest Airlines, Schultz and Croston point out how those two companies used a brand symbol to appeal to travelers by creating an experience those people will value.

Professional services firms can do the same thing, they say. Ask yourself what feelings are associated with working with you and then find a symbol that represents and elicits those feelings.

Another way to get prospects comfortable with you and help them understand the value you offer is to produce online audio such as podcasts, says Randy Shattuck in his article, Podcasts: Powerful Marketing and Sales Tools. They can significantly improve lead nurturing and give you a leg up on the competition. Shattuck says:

“Audio tools such as podcasts and MP3 files can have a major impact on client acquisition, perceived value, and profit per deal. When prospective clients understand your firm’s value, expertise, and unique vision before they talk to you, you’ll realize a shorter sales cycle, higher close rates, and enhanced profitability. “

The key, however, is to produce business-class audio. Badly created audio will hurt you—you won’t be considered professional. Review Shattuck’s five best practices for producing online audio so you can avoid that.

Such communication with prospects and clients is actually public relations, Drew Gerber points out. You’re developing relationships with them—your public—and you need a strategy for doing so, he says in this week’s podcast, Get Prospects to Notice You: What Every Marketing Campaign Must Have. Listen as Gerber discusses techniques for reaching your public, whether it’s via traditional or social media; what’s required for a good PR campaign; and the success businesses can see as a result.

What's your brand message? (Photo by gtmcknight)

Pick 10 people at an accounting, law, consulting, or other professional services firm and ask them to describe what their company does. In most cases, you will get 10 very different answers.

What does this mean for your brand message?

Unlike product companies that spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars developing and distributing their brand message through slogans, spokespeople, and jingles, a professional services brand message is developed and delivered by each of its people.

If you get 10 different answers when you talk to your professionals, imagine what they are saying:

• When they are on a sales call
• When they are at your client’s site
• When they are writing an article for your website
• When they meet someone at an industry conference
• When they send a sales letter

Each professional in your company needs to be able to articulate your brand message in a clear and consistent way.

To do that, your brand message needs to be communicated internally just as strongly as it is communicated externally through your website, corporate brochure, and other marketing materials.

In services, your professionals (especially client- and prospect-facing ones) are your brand. The reputation and impression they leave becomes that of your firm.

So, I challenge you to ask at least six people at your firm to describe what your company does. Do not just ask senior management. Ask a mix of people from junior level staffers to those all the way up the ladder.

Do you hear a consistent message?