Don't confuse buyers. Clearly and boldly state your purpose.

You can have the best looking website, ad, proposal, or email template, but unless you have a strong value proposition and state it clearly and boldly, no one is going to pay attention.

Buyers are deaf to marketing speak. They have no patience for a jumble of buzz words or praise and promotion about what you or your firm has done. They have real problems, and they want to hear how you are different from all of the other providers and how you can improve their lives.

As Michael W. McLaughlin says in his article State Your Perspective As If It Were a Tattoo on Your Knuckles, we look for shortcuts when processing new information. So, if someone visits your website and doesn’t see information immediately how you differ and can help, they will soon be on their way.

“You’ll have more success in all your marketing and selling efforts if you state boldly and confidently what your practice stands for. No one wants to hear boring claims about how you help organizations ‘manage change.’ To grab and hold clients’ attention, show them your compelling sense of purpose,” McLaughlin says.

Beth Carter, author of this week’s RainToday article Does Your Website Follow This Wrong Advice? agrees you need to be smart about what you say on your website. Also important is how you say it, she says.

“Visitors to your website are there for a reason; they’re not there just to browse around. They’re looking for specific information. Maybe they’re trying to determine if you offer the particular service they need. Maybe they want to know if you have the credentials to back up your claim. Maybe they want to know where you’re located or your hours of operation. These are specific goals,” Carter writes. “Your job is to help visitors easily accomplish those goals—with as much copy as it takes to get the job done: no more, no less.”

The need to clearly state your ideas and perspectives applies to conversations as well. Successful networkers are adept at this, writes Ivan Misner in his article 10 Traits that Make You a Master Networker—and Grow Your Business. They know that if they want to receive referrals, networking partners must clearly understand what they do and how they’re different.

“The faster you and your networking partner learn what you need to know about each other, the faster you’ll establish a valuable relationship. Communicate well, and listen well,” Misner says.

Buyers Are Users Before They Are Customers

With prospects’ increasing reliance on websites to do buying research, as well as make purchases. Business owners must make sure they meet the needs of those “users,” says Aaron Shapiro, author of Users Not Customers: Who Really Determines the Success of Your Business.

“We’re at an inflection point that’s happening right now, which is that the majority of sales that are happening are because of digital,” says Shapiro in his podcast interview Why Users, Not Customers, Are Key to Business Success. “What we expect to see is the pace of acceleration is speeding up where all of a sudden companies really need to think about a digital strategy as the way to become successful.”

The need for a strong digital presence continues after the sale, he adds. Online customer service is critical to maintaining customer relationships over time.

Successful Digital Strategy

SingleHop, an Internet-as-a-Service company, understood that the faster their users could get something implemented or installed, the better. So it built a platform where “customers could use an online interface to order the services they needed. Instead of waiting for days for new servers to be manually installed, customers could access services from virtually any computer or mobile device,” writes Gwen Moran in her case study IT Hosting Company Differentiates in a Highly Competitive Market to Propel Growth.

The on-demand aspect of SingleHop’s automated services, which required no human involvement unless the customer wanted it, helped the company stand out among the thousands of other hosting providers. To further differentiate it from the crowd, the company allows buyers to purchase only what they need—an a la carte-like menu.

To get the word out about its services, the company partnered with area businesses. High visibility combined with clear explanations of what it does resulted in 60% of its business to come from word of mouth.

The result: SingleHop grew 7,034% in just three years and landed the #25 spot on the on the 2011 Inc. 500 list.

Photo by Guudmorning!

In 2010 firms wanted to be as memorable as the Lollipop Guild, not another munchkin in the crowd

In 2009 professional services firms focused primarily on making it through the economic storm, but in 2010 they started poking their heads out to see what the new landscape looked like and how to move forward. Much like the munchkins in The Wizard of Oz after Dorothy’s house landed, they slowly emerged from their hiding places while a voice coaxed them, “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Firms that were not crushed by houses landing on them discovered they had to change the way they marketed and sold their services. They realized it was more important than ever to stand out from the crowd—be more like the lollipop toting member of the Lollipop Guild rather than the hundreds of other munchkins who blend into the background.

The most important aspect of standing out from the crowd, services professionals discovered, included creating a value proposition that not only got people to take notice but prevented them from competing against price. RainToday.com readers craved information about that. They also sought out information to help them determine the most effective ways to generate leads, conduct high-performing email marketing campaigns, have effective conversations with buyers, and handle client objections. The demand for those topics helped get the following articles, podcast, case study, webinar, and research report onto RainToday’s list of top content for 2010.

Jill Konrath, author of SNAP Selling

Stay Away from the B Word

Traditional sales training tells you to make sure prospects have enough money in their budget to afford your services. But asking “what’s your budget” would be the wrong thing to do when your prospect is interested but hasn’t committed to taking action, says contributing editor Jill Konrath in RainToday’s top article of the year, The One Question that Can Kill Any Sales Conversation. If there’s a desire and a need for your service, but no budget specifically allocated, a prospect will find the money. Asking about budget right off the bat stops the conversation in its tracks.

Make a Bad First Impression, and Watch the Door Shut

Kelley Robertson, author of The Secrets of Power Selling

You have an extremely short window in which to make a connection with your prospects and pique their interest. Make a mistake during those first few seconds, and you can say to goodbye to the sale, says Kelley Robertson in his top RainToday article, How to Lose a Prospect’s Attention in 5 Seconds. Robertson says there are eight things guaranteed to put sales conversations on a downward slope, starting with the seemingly benign question, “Hi. How are you?” followed by an introduction of you, your company, and what you do. Those seemingly innocent statements are red flags for prospects. They know a sales pitch will soon follow. So, stay away from them, as well as the other six conversation mistakes so many services professionals make.

Keep Readers Away from the Unsubscribe Button

Eric Rudolf, THEsmall COMPANYBLOG

Over the past eight years, a lot of things have changed with direct email. One thing that has not changed, unfortunately, are the poor practices many businesses—large and small—continue to use, says Eric Rudolf in his top RainToday article, 5 Rules for an Effective Direct Email Marketing Campaign. And the result has been readers unsubscribing in droves, decimating the results of what can be perhaps the most effective marketing tool in your toolbox. Success is possible, however, if you follow the guidelines explained by Rudolf.

Mike Schultz, President of RAIN Group

Avoid Competing on Price

Why do people buy from you and not your competitor? Is it a higher level of service? Is it a diversified level of service? Is it a complex niche that you’re in that because of your experience or industry will give you a leg up and help your clients?

When you can answer that—explain your value proposition—then you can build out your marketing plan, target your ideal clients, and grow your business. You won’t have to compete against price, says Mike Schultz in RainToday’s top podcast interview, How to Use Your Value Proposition to Stop Competing Against Price.

But if you don’t have a strong value proposition—if “there’s no reason for [people] to buy from you versus all of the other options, then they’re just going to shop around for the better price,” Schultz says.

Stop Giving Away Your Services

Nancy Juetten, Main Street Media Savvy

After offering professional public relations services to small and medium-sized companies for seven years, Nancy Juetten, founder of Main Street Media Savvy, realized she spent too much time having coffee or tea and giving away free publicity advice to prospects who ultimately could not afford her services.

Rather than looking for ways to halt such requests, Juetten, a solopreneur in Bellevue, WA, saw it as a market opportunity and used that information to reinvent her business, a move that helped Main Street Media Savvy thrive despite the recession, writes M. Sharon Baker in her top RainToday case study, A Blueprint for Professional Services Reinvention: PR Maven Turns Free Services into a 6-Figure Business.

Juetten learned how to reach out to more people using different techniques: booklets, audio products, workshops, and training events. As a result, she was able to reach organizations that have little budget as well as firms that are willing and able to pay for her services.

John Doerr, President of RAIN Group

What to Do When a Client Says No

No one likes it when a client or prospect pushes back or says no to what you propose. We’d love it if everyone went along with what we suggest and didn’t balk at the cost of our services. But getting objections doesn’t have to mark the demise of a sale. It’s actually the opposite, says John Doerr in his top RainToday webinar, Don’t Take No for an Answer: How to Handle Common Client Objections.

In fact, objections are an opportunity to understand your prospect better and move him closer to the sale. But responding to them does take some tact. In this webinar, Doerr explains how to overcome objections, especially the most common one of “Your price is too high,” how to get to the heart of an objection, and mistakes to avoid when responding to objections.

Top Research Report of 2010

The Best Ways to Fill the Pipeline

As companies struggle to compete in a crowded market and gain the attention of busy buyers, lead generation has risen to the top of technology and professional services marketers’ priority lists. Facing such competition, how can you keep up and compete to win new deals? Lead Generation Benchmark Report: How the Best Firms Fill the Pipeline, RainToday’s top report of 2010, shows you. It examines the lead generation practices of professional services companies and identifies the best practices that drive superior business performance. As you look to 2011, now is your chance to adopt some of these winning lead generation practices.

You need to do much more than just hang up your shingle (Photo by Anthony Catalano)

It used to be that if you provided a service, you simply hung your shingle and people would come to you to buy your service.

Soon, however, lots of people had shingles hanging. You were one of many law, accounting, consulting, or marketing firms, and to buyers you pretty much all looked the same. That meant you had to step up your game, differentiate yourself from your competition.

So, you became more articulate, confident, and succinct. You became a great communicator that instilled trust in all clients and prospects. You were the one everyone wanted to work with.

Once again, that’s no longer enough.

“From a style standpoint, these items are no longer a differentiator; they are expected from any content provider,” says Vickie K. Sullivan in her article, Great Expectations: What Buyers Want from Service Providers. “We’ve become so articulate, in fact, that we all sound like one another. As a result, we all appear nondescript, regardless of how polished we sound.”

Just to play the game you have to be confident and clear, clever with words, and succinct and to the point. You must now develop a compelling style that taps buyers’ emotions and draws them to you, Sullivan says.

Successful salespeople also share 10 common beliefs, actions and attitudes that set them apart from the pack, says Mike Schultz in his article, The 10 Principles of Highly Successful Sellers.

After years of research at RAIN Group in the fields of selling and sales training, observing the best sales professionals in action, and working with sales people to dramatically increase their results, Schultz says successful sales people all follow 10 rainmaking principles. Top on the list: putting clients’ interests first while at the same time “exhibiting the hustle, passion, and intensity it takes to achieve what only the elite achieve.”

Rainmakers are also goal-setting and goal-following fanatics, and they seek to accomplish more every day, Schultz says. They’re also always working to improve their pipelines.

“Rainmakers either push sales forward or push weak prospects out of their pipelines. And they always put better prospects in, which leads to better deals coming out,” Schultz says.

That philosophy matches what Randy Shattuck tells people: firms should strive to take on only ideal clients.

“If you don’t make an ideal client profile and don’t make acquisition of ideal clients a top priority, typically in my experience … you’re going to continually find yourself just taking what you can get as opposed to being what I call successful on purpose,” Shattuck says in his podcast, Why You Must Resist the Urge to Take Any Client, which is an excerpt of his webinar, Top 5 Client Acquisition Strategies in a Tough Economy.

You want to understand who your ideal clients are and take action based on that data, not guesses, Shattuck says. “These are the things that cause companies to far outstrip the market,” he says.

Flexibility Important

A firm’s and a brand’s endurance also depends on flexibility, says Ashley Goodall in his article, Good Brand Guidelines Are a Springboard, Not a Straightjacket. While stamping your brand on the marketplace and providing a consistent image helps establish trust, savvy buyers now want to see brands evolve and become part of their lives.

The idea is to engage staff and buyers, inviting them to interact rather than give them directives on what to do and what not to do, Goodall says.

Consider, for example, the Coca-Cola branding. For years, it stamped its red and white branding all over the globe. Now, as the official sponsor of The Championship Football League, it allows the colors to be changed to match that of the home teams.

“Flexibility is the key to successful brand guidelines, and companies need to have the confidence to allow the brand to grow and build relationships with different audiences across multiple platforms,” Goodall says.

Do you differentiate your services?

As Ren J. Carlton began to get Dynamic Advisory Solutions  (DAS) off the ground in 2000—or, at least, out of the basement of his metro Detroit home—he began to realize just how many other people offered services similar to his. Certified public accountants, garden-variety tax prep specialists, enrolled agents, retail storefronts selling financial services—the market was awash in people making a living doing other people’s tax preparation on the cheap.

“I heard a statistic once that there are more people who prepare tax returns in the United States than people who are in the military. So, at first, [our new business philosophy] was ‘anything for a dollar,’” he says, describing how he eked out a living.

But after spending thousands on a direct mail coupon campaign that generated zero results in spite of the 20% off services discount it offered, Carlton knew something had to give. He had to find a way to differentiate his firm from the many other tax preparation and financial advisory firms in the market.

Here’s what Carlton did:

• Stand out in a saturated market. Rather than promoting generalist accounting services and trying to be all things to all people, Carlton realized he had to differentiate the firm. He did that by taking a laser-focused approach to target clients in his most profitable segment: serving as an outsourced CFO or controller for small and mid-sized businesses.
• Build a reputation in a niche. To succeed in this niche Carlton had to build trust. So, he focused on networking with key influencers in the market.
• Become the expert in the field. To further build his reputation and give himself an even bigger boost as an expert, Carlton spread the word about his business with speaking gigs, a radio talk show, and a book.
• Leverage what you’ve built. To grow the firm even more, Carlton realized he could leverage the business processes he had already created and developed a plan for franchising.
• Follow a different path. The firm’s success at every turn was based on bucking conventional wisdom. Carlton narrowed his niche in a crowded market. He offered franchises—something few accounting firms do. In doing so, he increased the quality and profitability of his client base.

[Excerpt from RainToday case study Accounting Firm Discovers Niche and Sees Business Take Off by Gwen Moran. Photo credit: Jessica Spengler, WordRidden]

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?