Good communication is the cornerstone of every client relationship. Heck, it’s the cornerstone of any type of relationship—whether it’s with your spouse, partner, child, best friend, neighbor, you name it. Fail to communicate well, and a whole range of misunderstandings can pop up and possibly damage the relationship.

Think about the last time you had an argument with your significant other. Did you keep your mouth shut while they aired their concerns and really listen to what they said? Or did you interrupt them, trying to show that you—and only you—are right? Or maybe you “yes-ed” them without caring about what they said just to get them to stop talking and make them think that you care.

Unfortunately professionals use those same bad tactics when communicating with prospects and clients. With client relationships, however, you have the added risk of loss of business and revenue.

If you don’t address a prospect’s objection, for example, you could find yourself out of the running for the job. You could finish your presentation to your own satisfaction but turn the prospect off because they felt you didn’t care about their concerns.

“If you don’t get a sale, it is oftentimes because there was still a roadblock between where you wanted to take the prospect and where they thought they should go—they didn’t see the need, they didn’t see the urgency, they didn’t have trust in you, they couldn’t find a way to do the funding,” says Mike Schultz in his podcast interview, Dealing with a Client Objection? Don’t Do This. ” The problem is if you leave it unsaid and you leave it unasked about, then it will block your sale and you won’t even have had a chance to face it.”

You must unearth all concerns and address them, Schultz says. Ask questions, air the concern, confirm it, respond to it, and make sure they agree with what you’re saying.

Strategic Questioning Critical

Michael W. McLaughlin agrees that asking strategic questions is critical. That’s because your prospect’s face might portray a certain sentiment, but inside they could be thinking the opposite. In many cases, our perceptions of people are way off base, he says.

“Like you, I’ve heard the advice that we should listen carefully and observe the behavior of others,” McLaughlin writes in his article, Your Perceptions of Clients Are Probably No Where Near Reality. “But active listening and observation don’t necessarily tell you what motivates the people you’re working with. Why? Because a person’s beliefs and motivations take shape at the emotional level, so you can’t always understand those motivations simply by observing behavior.”

Ask prospects and clients to think about their roles and the reasons for their actions and beliefs, advises McLaughlin. Stay away from lame questions such as, “What worries you about X?” or “What keeps you awake at night?”

Effective Email Communication

Communicating via email can bring its own list of problems. We’ve all run into the problem where our tone wasn’t appropriately conveyed and the recipient mistook what we were trying to say—hence the increased use of emoticons to make sure a joke or sarcasm is interpreted correctly.

When conducting email campaigns with prospects, however, you need to be extra careful. The point is to get them interested in you and your services, not have them block your email and report you for spamming them.

You want your email to be valuable and not “Buy Now” messages that go nowhere but into the delete folder.

“You want people to look forward to getting your email, not dread it. You want them to stop everything and take a few minutes to read it,” writes Todd Schnick in his article, How to Conduct an Effective Email Campaign: 11 Pieces of Real World Advice.

Prospects are more likely to buy from you if your email provides help, guidance, and advice. When you do that, you build trust for when the prospect is ready to buy, Schnick says.

Schnick is also a strong believer in auto-responders, which allow you to schedule email for lead nurturing campaigns.

“For example, no matter when a new subscriber joins the list, they will receive the first email after seven days, the second email after 14 days, etc. This allows predetermined—and valuable—content to be distributed on a preset schedule,” he says.

Lumension benefited greatly from an automated lead nurturing campaign. Its marketing team needed to increase the volume of qualified leads by 12% to help the company meet its revenue goals s, but budgets had been cut and it had little money to spend on the effort. So, it developed a comprehensive lead-nurturing program to improve its ability to convert top-of-the-funnel leads into sales-qualified leads. The results were more than it expected: a 105% increase in sales-accepted leads, writes Stephanie Tilton in her case study about Lumension.

“The goal of the program was to deliver relevant and contextual content to contacts based on their specific business challenges, and to then drive them to a product trial to accelerate their movement through the demand funnel,” says Sam Erdheim, Director of Marketing Programs at Lumension.

Lumension’s marketing team tailored the content based on the role of the prospect (executive, end user, technical evaluator, etc.) and where the prospect was in the buying cycle. They personalized the emails as much as possible, and they sent additional email to people only if they responded to offers in a previous email.

“Many companies talk about engaging contacts based on behavior, but [they] end up bothering these people with irrelevant and unwanted content. That’s because organizations fail to pay attention to what contacts are not doing. The actions that prospects do not take, such as not responding to offers, are just as important as the ones they do take. By watching and listening to our prospects, we know better when to re-engage them,” Erdheim says.

The Importance of Goals

Lumension’s success can be attributed in part to the fact that it had goals. With its marketing team being given a clear role in generating leads and therefore revenue, it knew it had to come up with goals and plans for meeting those goals. It could have, like so many businesses, flitted around trying this or trying that based on whims or someone’s latest idea. But that butterfly tactic is far from effective.

“Rainmakers, those in the top 10% of all sales performers, believe in the power of goals and action plans,” say Mike Schultz and John Doerr in their article, Live by Goals to Achieve Sales Success. “They live by goals, and they are committed to doing what they need to do to achieve them.”

To get started, all you need is a target. It can be as simple as the Lumension marketing team’s goal for a certain number of leads, it can be a revenue goal, or it can be as lofty as wanting to purchase another company. Once you know where you want to go, commit to a goals routine and stick with it, Schultz and Doerr say.

Don’t let potholes and detours keep you off your road to success. Go around them and get back on the road.

“Remember that the road to success is always under repair. Live by goals and you won’t get lost on the side streets wondering why you’re not there yet,” Schultz and Doerr say.

Photo by: larrysphatpage

Are your sales and marketing practices as out of date as Polaroid pictures?

Ah, the good ‘ole days. We often have fond memories of times gone by and wish things could always stay the same. But change we must, especially when it applies to business.

As I’m sure you’ve noticed, buyer behavior and habits have significantly changed thanks to the Internet and the increasing amount of information available. More often prospects go to the web first to research their options before making a purchase rather than waiting for someone to give them information. That means you have to have a presence there, and you have to offer educational material—no hard sales pitches.

Those are just two things Colleen Stanley points out in her article, You Know Your Sales Process is Outdated When …. Other things to avoid: pestering prospects until they finally relent and say yes and using leading questions.

“Today’s prospects identify leading questions and know the salesperson is trying to lead them to your answer, not their answer,” Stanley says. “The walls go up, and ’sales dodge ball’ begins. Prospects start holding their cards close to the chest, and information gathering gets tighter and tighter. The result is a superficial conversation.”

Genuine sales conversations put the buyer’s interests, challenges, and concern in the forefront. In fact, Jill Konrath advocates treating prospects like they’re already clients. Give them ideas and suggestions to help them solve their problem. This is especially effective when your communication with prospects is part of the RFP process, she says in her article, One Game-Changing Strategy that Will Lead to New Clients.

“To be most effective in sales today, it’s imperative to drop your ’sales’ mentality and start working with your prospects as if they’ve already hired you. When you do, it shifts your relationship to a whole new level from the very start,” Konrath says.

The RFP process may try to push you away from that, asking you for information about your company, its background, your qualifications, and your clients, but don’t allow it. Provide all of that information in a handout, but use your meeting time to delve into their problem and offer suggestions. It will help you stand out among the other sellers who follow the standard RFP process.

Being well-prepared for your sales meetings will also help you stay ahead of the competition, and there’s a plethora of technical tools to help you do that, write Joseph Riden and Nancy Rossiter in their article, Tech Tools that Enable You to Sell Smarter and Faster. CRM systems help you store and share valuable client and prospect data, email marketing driven from your CRM system will give you targeted emails that get prospects to respond, and webinars can help move prospects through the pipeline.

“You can use such tools to win the day, every day, whether sales is your primary function or one role you fill as a solo entrepreneur,” Riden and Rossiter write. “In today’s challenging business environment, integrating a powerful digital tool set is a key to success that offers you a significant competitive edge regardless of the size of your company.”

We All Need the Human Touch

As you embrace such technologies, be careful that you don’t lose the human touch that prospects want and need. Anything impersonal will be seen as a sales pitch, and they won’t have anything to do with it. It’s that human touch that shows prospects you care about them and leads to greater sales success, says Dan McDade in his podcast interview, Lead Generation: Prospects Need a Human Touch.

“There are so many companies now, and rightfully so, looking at marketing automation solutions and other tools. Those are all great, but remember nothing really happens until somebody has a conversation with somebody else,” he says.

That human element can also prevent firms from losing the many long-term opportunities that get “left on the floor” because the prospect isn’t ready to buy. You need a process that moves them closer to the sale, McDade says.

F5 Networks combined a human touch with technology when it realized its clients were struggling with new changes to their computer networks. New network security protocols had them unsure what to do, so F5 launched a webinar and email campaign to educate them about the new protocol and solutions to help them with the switch.

“The technology leader prides itself on advising customers of issues that might affect their IT departments. Its first step was to approach large financial institutions and web-based organizations that would feel tremendous impact based on this new standard. After explaining a simple resolution that involved BIG-IP settings, these grateful customers urged F5 to share the solution with more customers,” writes Stephanie Tilton in her case study, Webinar Campaign Helps Global Tech Company Expand Accounts and Generate $12 Million in Sales Opportunities.

The company was also careful not to leave any leads behind. Using a CRM system, it developed a process for nurturing long-term leads. At the same time F5’s inside sales team and an external marketing partner reached out to more than 6,000 contacts.

“Our focus was to make all affected customers aware of the issue and how they could address it with [F5's] BIG-IP products,” explains Christine Pomeroy, Director of Marketing Communications at F5.

As a result, the company had more than 3,000 inquiries and nearly $12 million in sales opportunities. “This campaign gave us account expansion opportunities, and provided a very efficient way for our major account teams to reach new contacts within existing accounts,” explains Pomeroy.

What about you? Are your sales and marketing processes current or in need of an upgrade? Are you tapping new technologies while retaining a human touch?

Photo by: Bartek Ambrozik

Get more email marketing tactics in Kendra Lee's on-demand webinar, Email Strategies to Break the Delete Barrier

You have 3 seconds to capture a person’s attention via email. That’s all it takes for a prospect to decide if they’re going read your email, save it for later, or delete it.

And the deciding factor is if your message is personal, says lead generation expert Kendra Lee, who presented a webinar titled Email Strategies to Break the Delete Barrier. If your email sounds remotely like a marketing form letter, you can count on the prospect deleting it right away. It doesn’t matter how good your service is. If you can’t write clearly, succinctly, personally, and with your buyer’s concerns in mind, prospects will ignore any email you send them.

“Email is very effective, and, in fact, it is now the number one tool for prospecting,” says Lee, President of KLA Group, in a recent RainToday interview. “It has surpassed cold calling. But it is only effective if it’s written with your client in mind. You don’t want to write about your services. You have to focus on the issues that your clients have. If you do that, you are going to get responses.”

Listen to the full interview here:

What kind of responses can you expect from a well-written and well-managed email campaign? Lee says one client of hers got six appointments and one huge proposal from a four-email campaign.

“We have had clients who are emailing to their top prospects—people who they’ve not been able to get access to with all of the different attempts that they’ve tried—and just by switching up how they write their emails, they get responses. They’ll actually secure appointments right through email,” Lee says.

One thing they’re changing, in addition to the obvious bad subject lines, is how they open the letter. An absolute no-no in Lee’s book: starting an email with a question. So many people do that because it’s easy, but it causes people to think it’s a marketing email, not a message from someone who cares about them.

“Think about it. When you sit down to write somebody an email, how often do you start with a question? Almost never,” Lee says. “When you start with a question, no matter how personal it is or how pertinent it is, it doesn’t feel like you sat down to write me that email. It feels more like a marketing email, and they think, ‘They’re trying to fool me by making it sound personal.’”

Don Draper knows a thing or two about communicating with clients

You’ve been invited to a party where you will be socializing with executives from companies you’d like to add to your client list. Do you use the event as an opportunity to pitch them your services? If you said yes, think again.

Even Don Draper from TV’s Mad Men knows it isn’t the right place to give your elevator pitch. As Don said in a season 3 episode to co-head of accounts Pete Campbell, when Pete was drooling over the CEOs present at a party, “Don’t hand out your card.”

There is a time and place for such conversations, and social events are not one of them, agrees Charles H. Green in his article, When to Ditch the Elevator Speech and Take the Escalator or the Stairs. In those situations, it’s better to avoid the Elevator Speech and instead use what he calls The Stairs Speech.

“In this situation, if someone says, ‘What do you do?’ they’re not inviting you to assess their business, much less pitch your own. And remember, they probably don’t care much about your answer. “Their question was a social nicety; they didn’t come to this event looking for business contacts,” Green says.

Keep your answer brief and simple, and “toss the conversational ball back to the other side,” he says. The dialogue is back and forth, taking the conversation one step at a time. If they want to continue the conversation, then do so later—away from the event.

Should the person turn out to be a promising lead, be prepared to nurture that relationship. It can take several “touches” (sometimes as many as 10) before the person decides to purchase your services, John Doerr and Mike Schultz write in their blog post, Prospecting 101: How to Improve Prospecting Success. In addition, each person responds differently to different types of touches, so be prepared to do more than send one email.

“Use a variety of touches to reach out and warm up your prospects—and make sure each touch has value in and of itself,” they say. “When you think about providing value, don’t think only about the value you will eventually provide when the prospect buys from you. Think about the value they’ll get just from speaking with you.”

Conversations with Clients

Should your prospect become a satisfied client, don’t be afraid to ask for a testimonial of your services or to ask for referrals. If you dread cold calling, a referral or testimonial can warm prospects up, giving you an in with prospective buyers.

“Referrals are the preferred way to generate leads and to win new business, yet well over 80% of salespeople just aren’t asking. They worry that if they ask for referrals that they will appear desperate and needy,” says Colleen Francis, president of Engage Selling. “But studies show that 85-90% of your clients, when they’re satisfied with your work, would gladly give you referrals.”

The key is to ask for referrals correctly, says Francis in her podcast interview, Mistakes that Keep You from Getting the Referrals You Deserve. “The key is to be very specific and to give direction and to be directive with your clients,” she says.

The same applies to testimonials, which should be on every firm’s website to help persuade potential buyers to purchase your services. Testimonials build trust and give insight into your company, your services, and you as a professional.

Testimonials, like case studies, demonstrate that your solution works—that others have used it successfully to improve their business. This type of content appeals especially to website visitors who know their business issue and have narrowed down the solution to a handful of providers, says Jon Baer in his article, Offers that Convert Website Visitors into Qualified Leads.

Successful websites should have several offers that appeal to various visitors, stresses Baer. In addition to case studies and testimonials, offer an opportunity to subscribe to your newsletter so people early in the sales cycle can learn more about you. You should also provide an easy way to contact you once they’re ready to speak with you.

Communicate Your Value with Content

You should also provide content—articles, research, white papers, etc.—that communicates the value you offer and pulls prospects to you. More often than not, buyers are turning to search engines when starting the sales process. Having such content on your website will help draw those buyers to you.

Peak Cost Containment greatly improved its lead generation from its website after publishing search-optimized content on its website. It developed case studies, executive briefs, and blog material to spread the word about new developments.

Traffic to the website steadily increased—attracted by the informational content—and those website visitors began to convert to leads, according Van Haas, founder and CEO of the company.

In a case study about the company, How a Consulting Firm Quadrupled Its Client Base and New Business Opportunities in Six Months, Haas says he also used email to nurture leads. He wanted to follow up with prospects in a tactful way with useful information to deepen their understanding of his services and build trust.

The efforts paid off. Visitors who came to the site from organic search had a conversion rate of more than 3% by August 2010. And within six months, Peak gained 130 leads.

When it comes to selling your services, do not underestimate the power of communication. Whether you’re meeting someone for the first time at an event, following up with potential buyers via phone calls or email, or communicating with current clients, what you say can lead to new opportunities or to closed doors.

Avoid hype and hard sells. (Photo by Deb Walker)

I’ve been seeing many more articles about how professional services firms need to stay away from using over-hyped marketing copy. Stay away from the hard sell, and do not make promises of miraculous results to hook prospects in. And if you’re thinking about adding an exclamation point to that eye-popping copy, think again. Buyers do not want to be yelled at.

But you need to catch prospects’ attention immediately if you want them to eventually buy your services. If super-charged copy or sales pitches don’t work, then what does?

You have to demonstrate that you’re an expert and that you can help a prospect solve a particularly challenging business problem, says Kelley Robertson, President of The Robertson Training Group, in his podcast interview, Perk Up Their Ears: Sales Techniques that Get Prospects to Take Notice.

Before you make a prospecting call, research the company to uncover their challenges. Then figure out how to position your service and how it can help solve their challenges. Whatever you do, resist the urge to focus on the features of your service. Prospects don’t care about those. They want to know how to solve their problems.

If you “can accomplish that, then resistance will drop and the person you’re calling is more likely to stay on the telephone or give you time to meet with them face to face,” Robertson says.

If you shudder at the thought of cold calling, you can warm up the prospect with an introductory letter. But again, stay away from typical sales letters. Use a trigger event, such as the opening of a new office or the promotion of an executive, to introduce yourself, says Kendra Lee in her article, Prospecting Letters Still Open Doors with New Clients. And if you send it as a handwritten note, that’s even more effective because people are becoming numb to the overabundance of digital exchanges, she says.

“In this digital age increasingly people respond positively when you take the time to write a personalized letter,” Lee says. “Chances are the company president will not only take your call, but he may even reach out to thank you for acknowledging his company’s accomplishments. Once he does, you can segue into setting an appointment to get to know him and share ideas you have for his business.”

It all begins with a letter the executive appreciate and remembers, such as this one Lee includes in her article:

Dear Tom,

Congratulations on your outstanding success! I saw your award as one of the Top Places to Work in Houston. What an honor! You’ve built a business of high caliber. I look forward to congratulating you personally at an upcoming Chamber event!

Sincerely,
Sarah James
Company Name

Lee provides more examples and tips for composing letters in her article.

You Got the Prospect to Buy. Now, How Do You Keep Them Buying?

If you can get the prospect to buy your services, you’ve accomplished the hard part. Now you need to hold on to them. While that’s easier than wooing new clients, it still takes work. You can’t sign them up and then forget about them. You must provide an exceptional experience—one that not only makes them want to stay with you but also gets them referring other businesses to you, says Michael McLaughlin in his article, What It Takes to Keep Clients Coming Back for More.

“Today, competence is rapidly becoming a commodity, that is, table stakes to get in the game. Every serious contender for a client project can claim [and substantiate] a high degree of competency. Predictably, when faced with numerous, equally skilled providers, clients look for something extra to help them choose,” McLaughlin says. “Increasingly, they are thinking about the experience they can expect while working with you as a way to sort out the competition.”

To address the experiential aspect, you have to understand all of the possible sources of value for your client. Try asking this question, McLaughlin advises: “If we had already completed this project and you were looking back on it, how would you describe the project if your experience was an ideal one?”

If the response focuses on schedules, budgets, and delivery of promises, follow up on the intangible sources of value, “especially how the clients might have changed and what they gained personally and professionally,” McLaughlin says. Only then will you get a true picture of what’s important to them and how they want to work with you.

Don’t Go It Alone

For many professional services firms, the journey to attract, sign, and retain clients is a one-person project. That doesn’t mean you have to go it alone. In fact, you shouldn’t. You need feedback and outside opinion on what you do. To get that, Lisa Nirell suggests starting or joining a “mastermind group.”

“Our careers may have become more sophisticated in the past few decades, but the need for collaboration and support in this volatile economy is stronger than ever,” writes Nirell in her article, The Secret Weapon for Outpacing Your Competitors.

Mastermind groups offer “endless benefits,” Nirell says. They minimize the sense of isolation, foster new ideas, and provide a forum to help others.

Nirell says she needs to belong to a mastermind group because she lives in a remote area and cannot find a group of like-minded business owners in her local area and the support and accountability the group provides keeps her on track and energized about her company’s mission.

Many successful business owners have participated in such groups, including Benjamin Franklin, Nirell says. You may want to, as well.

Is online lead generation relevant to you and your company if you sell B2B services? Or is online marketing just another shiny-new-object distraction?

Rather than building online communities and optimizing your website, should you be making phone calls and attending events? Should you rely on proven, offline lead generation tactics?

The short answer: different lead generation approaches work well for different companies, depending on the target audience, where the prospect is in the buying process, and how well the company implements the lead generation program.

Should you use online lead generation or is it just a shiny, new object?

Sorry to disappoint, but there’s no one-size-fits-all tactic here.

You’ll need to figure out which approaches work for you—based on your targets and your abilities. Who is your ideal customer? How do they buy? Where do they gather? Once you answer those questions, then you can move on to find the prospects for your services and build relationships with them to develop potential new business opportunities or “leads” for your services. In other words, you’re ready for lead generation—online or offline.

Which Online Lead Generation Tactics Work?

While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, it’s helpful to see which tactics other B2B service providers use and which ones are proving most effective. Here’s some data from research RainToday.com conducted in partnership with ITSMA (2010).

Top 4 online tactics used.

We asked B2B service providers which online tactics and strategies they used to reach potential leads. Email (90%), social networks (78%), and website search engine optimization (SEO) (used by 76%) topped the list.

Most effective online tactics for lead generation.

But when we asked respondents to rate the effectiveness of these tactics in generating leads for their services, company-authored content published in their own online publications moved to the top of the list—with 27% rating this tactic as very or extremely effective.

In fact, the most effective online tactics are all content driven.

We also found that the best performing companies—in terms of profitability and lead generation success—shared a best practice: the use of content that is relevant (focused on the business issues), provides support for claims (proof points), and builds credibility.

This content can take different forms—based on your service, the audience, and where the prospect is in the buying process—such as white papers, custom content, ebooks, articles, blog posts, videos, case studies, and more.

But, remember, before you jump on board with content creation and online lead generation plans, make sure you have a good understanding of your target audience and their buying process. Map your content to your buyers’ needs based on where they are in the buying process. Then, take a lesson from the best performing companies and build your lead generation around content that is relevant, substantiates your claims, and builds credibility.

And, if the only thing holding you back then is your ability to implement… get help!

What do you think? Do you find your most effective tactics are driven by content?

(Photo by Athena Workman)

Focus on your clients and prospects. You’ve probably heard those words many times, and know you should do it, but are you actually doing it? These days, when all buyers are busy and seemingly more providers than ever are vying for their business, this client-centric focus can make the difference between winning a deal and losing it.

As C.J. Hayden says in her article, Prospects Are People, Too, “Successful selling is not a power struggle between two opposing sides; it’s a friendly conversation between peers.”

You cannot make the mistake of thinking that the perfect sales letter or phone script will guarantee you new clients, she says. Treat your prospects like humans, not robots, and focus on personal exchanges of useful and targeted information.

Matt Heinz, author of the new book Successful Selling, agrees with Hayden. In his podcast interview, How to Avoid Becoming a Commodity in a Buyer-Centric World, Heinz says, “Sales has changed significantly over the past years. No longer can firms have the same approach for every prospect.”

And if you want to differentiate yourself from the competition and avoid becoming a commodity where buyers make a decision based simply on price, take the time to analyze your prospect’s problem and explain how you can solve it for them, he says.

“Take their problem and ask them questions to identify and quantify the problem in a way they might not have been able to do themselves,” Heinz says. “Too often when they can’t do that, they find the easiest thing that they can understand, which is price. And you don’t want to have to compete on price.”

One company who has seen great success with a client-centric approach is On Your Mark. In M. Sharon Baker’s case study on the firm, Market Research Firm’s Client-Centric Approach Leads to Many Cross-Selling Opportunities, co-founder Brenda Laguarta says she knew they needed to focus on their current clients if they were going to weather the economic storm.

By focusing on existing clients and increasing their visibility, On Your Mark found new opportunities in different divisions of their current clients. And to keep the pipeline full, the team started looking and thinking ahead about new opportunities.

“We’re intensely involved in our clients’ businesses, with projects going all the time,” says partner Jeanne Corrigan. “We started to take a look at what we were doing now, what we still needed to learn, and what could help our clients based upon what we were already doing.”

Laurie Young and Bev Burgess further state that the development of new services should focus on buyers’ unique needs. Using a process they call New Service Design (NSD), “allows marketers to create a new perception of value for the core service. They can create different versions of the core service for different segments of buyers and introduce innovations, both large and small, that enhance the existing service and improve its perceived value over time,” they write in their article, How to Develop Innovative and Profitable Services.

In general, services that are high-volume, low-margin, and easily reproducible can more easily be developed using a rigorous design plan than those that are highly customized (like consultancy or other professional services). But it is possible to apply the rigorous innovation process to professional services using their NSD approach, Young and Burgess say. Doing so will enable firms to produce much more lucrative services that are distinct and different from others.

How you communicate with clients and prospects also makes a huge difference. When you communicate using jargon and “corporatese” you alienate them. How can they possibly understand how you can help them when they can’t figure out what you do,” asserts Ernest Nicastro in his article, Is Your Writing Driving Away Clients?

Consider this real-world example from a firm’s website:

“Leader Coaching leverages a proprietary coaching framework, proven over years of practical application and success, to collaborate with clients in pursuit of shared goals.”

Such writing is “flat out bad communication, and bad communication is bad for you, bad for your reader, and, if you’re communicating in a commercial way, bad for business,” Nicastro says.

Fortunately such writing can be easily fixed using a simple tool in Microsoft word—Spelling & Grammar Check. It provides four important results that can make the difference between good writing and bad writing. Businesses would be well-advised to use it before sending out or publishing anything.

Now that you know how some firms are benefiting from a client-centric focus, tell us what you’re doing—or plan to do. What results have you seen?

How can you break through the in-box clutter? (Photo by xJasonRogersx)

Everyone’s email in-box is crowded with messages from clients, prospects, colleagues, friends, marketers, newsletters, and the list goes on. With all of this in-box clutter it’s no wonder that it is becoming more difficult to get your emails opened and read.

So what can you do break through all the noise and stand out in the in-box? Here are five secrets to make sure your email is read:

1. Write a Killer Subject Line

To compete against the hundreds of other emails your clients and prospects get in a day, you have three seconds and 35 characters to grab their attention with your subject line. In my experience, a subject line can cause 5-50% more of your email subscribers to either gloss over your message and click the “delete” button or be hooked and open the message right then and there. Here are three subject line concepts to consider testing:

• Keep it short and punchy: Look at the first two or three words. Are they compelling? If not, move the attention-grabbing words to the front and cut as much of the rest as you can. For example: 9 Tips to Get Prospects to Call You Back
• Include your company or newsletter name: A plain Jane subject line that calls attention to your brand name can be extremely effective and in some cases even outperform a sexier subject line. For example: RainToday’s August Enewsletter
• Highlight several topics from the content of the newsletter: If your newsletter covers a broad range of topics, try highlighting a few of those topics in the subject line. The idea here is that you increase your odds of one of the topics catching the readers’ interest. For example: Tips for Filing Your Taxes, 6 Questions to ask Your Accountant, and much more

The key is to test a few different concepts to find what works best for you.

2. What’s in It for Me?

Do you send emails to clients and prospects only when you have a new service to announce, or a new consulting methodology, or a new vice president, or when other changes occur within your organization? If you do, my emphatic advice is: don’t do it. Instead, follow the what’s-in-it-for-me (WIIFM) rule and email prospects only when you have something interesting and relevant to them. (Save those other announcements for your internal email list.)

For example, your clients and prospects don’t really care that you have a new consulting methodology around increasing operational efficiency—unless they directly benefit from it. Instead of simply “announcing” this new methodology, create a white paper on the Seven Best Practices to Increase Operational Efficiency. Then send an email to your prospects with an offer to download this new white paper.

Not only does that approach increase your intellectual capital and thought leadership, it also gives the prospect a value-based offer they can respond to. Many more prospects will fill out a form to receive a white paper than will reply to an email with a press release about your new service.

3. Limit Yourself to One Message

If you are going to run an email campaign, why not include multiple offers in one email—a something-for-everyone approach? We see it all the time, but multiple messages can create confusion for your prospects. Focus your emails on one strong message rather than five weak messages. (Even if you have five strong messages and offers, they will dilute each other if they’re presented together.)

Remember, you have only a matter of seconds to grab your prospect’s attention. Use this time to get a strong message and offer across. A single offer stands out, is easy to digest, is easy to remember, and will generate the higher response you are looking for.

4. Simplify the HTML Code

Writing code for any newsletter and email is becoming particularly tricky these days. Not only do you have to deal with those folks who don’t “download images,” creating a pox of red Xs where any image of your email would normally appear, but you also have to deal with the many different types of email clients and various configurations that each cause your email to render differently. Lotus notes, Outlook ‘07 and ‘03, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo; Mac, PC; Windows, Windows XP; Firefox, Internet Explorer, and the rest, all make your emails appear differently on readers’ screens.

First, accept as a fact of life that it is impossible to design for every email platform out there. And then simplify your design and HTML code to give yourself the best shot of it being readable on the recipient’s screen.

And always include a link to view the email online. If all else fails and the user cannot get the email to render properly, they can still get to a viewable version of your message.

5. Design to Get the Click

Use the design and layout of your email to guide the prospect to where you want them to go (clicking a link).

It is a best practice to keep images to a minimum (unless, again, you want your prospects viewing a pox of red X’s). Only use images that will enhance your message, such as buttons, headshots, or thumbnail images—these images will help draw the eye. And be sure to hyperlink these images to your landing page.

Finally, test the placement of links. Try including links throughout the email, try putting the link near the top (viewable from the preview pane). Try only including the link at the end. Track not only the number of click-throughs, but the response rate when you put the links in different places.

Like anything you need to test to find what works for you. But by starting with these five secrets you’ll be well on your way to breaking through the clutter and engaging with your readers.

With so many tactics to choose from to generate leads, and so little time to decide (if you don’t want to lose prospects to faster-moving competitors), how can you create conversations with the most qualified buyers for your services?

You can speak at conferences or seminars. Take advantage of the many PR opportunities available. Or you can cold call, send direct mail pieces, set up affiliate or referral programs—the list goes on.

Not knowing which tactic to choose and what to expect from your lead generation efforts can be a service provider’s worst nightmare. You have to zero in on what’s going to make the biggest splash in your pool of prospects. But how do you know?

Over the course of 2010, Wellesley Hills Group has conducted research from over 800 professional services providers; they’ve told us what’s worked, what hasn’t, and how they plan to generate leads in the future.

Join us on June 15 as Mike Schultz will be sharing findings from Wellesley Hills Group’s yet to be released What’s Working in Lead Generation 2010 report.

You will learn the answers to those sticky questions such as:

• How can I fill the front end of the pipeline with qualified prospects that will buy?
• Which tactics look good, but don’t work well for lead generation?
• How does lead generation work with other marketing and business development activities?
• Which tactics will work for my firm, given the dynamics of what I sell?
• What are the keys to developing a culture that supports ongoing lead generation success?

When: June 15, 2010 at 8:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. (continental breakfast and networking begin at 7:30 a.m.)

Where: Newton Marriott – 2345 Commonwealth Avenue, Newton, MA 02466

All attendees will receive a complimentary executive summary to the What’s Working in Lead Generation 2010 benchmark report.

Register for Lead Generation Success for Professional Services>>>

Are you tracking down the right leads for your firm? (Photo by Borghetti)

Leads—they’re always important and good ones are often elusive. Professional services firms have a variety of strategies in their arsenal for generating them, but according to research from The Shattuck Group five are most preferred. In the podcast, Preferred Lead Generation Tactics for Professional Services, Randy Shattuck says email marketing rises to the top as the most preferred tactic, followed closely by thought leadership.

All of the techniques focus on pulling prospects and leads to you, Shattuck says. And to ensure you’re pulling the right people, you have to first identify them and target your efforts toward them. A general blanket email blast will not give you the results or the clients you want, stresses C.J. Hayden. “The universe is simply too big to market effectively to everyone in it,” she says in her article, Do You Know Who Your Clients Are?

When you choose a target market, you can get to know that market better, position yourself in the marketplace as a specialist, save money and time, and attract clients to you. When your client definition is too general, your client universe remains overly large and your efforts and message will be diffused.

Lack of focus is just one reason why salespeople fail, says Colleen Stanley in her article, Top 9 Reasons Why Salespeople Fail.

“A poor producer can work very hard. Lack of sales isn’t from lack of effort; it’s that the effort is focused on the wrong prospect, activity, and partnerships,” she says. “Top producers have clearly identified their ideal client and have built a strategy around meeting, influencing, and creating value for that specific client. They are very clear on to whom they will sell and what they will sell.”

Sales tools and client relationship management (CRM) go a long way toward helping salespeople focus their strategies. In fact, recent data from Aberdeen Group shows that firms that employ such sales tools sell significantly more. That’s because such technologies allows representatives to gather more information about their prospects and clients and gives them more ammunition to get the job done, according to Aberdeen’s report Sales Intelligence: Preparing for Smarter Selling.

Social Media Strategies

The Shattuck Group’s surveys did not name social media as one of the top five lead generation tactics, but several professional services firms are having success using it, including Shaev & Fleischman LLP. In Law Firm’s Blog Leads to More Clients and Coaching Opportunities, Gwen Moran writes about how Shaev & Fleischman gave up traditional high-priced marketing techniques and started writing a blog. That blog has evolved into a hub for bankruptcy advice and information that accounts for 70% of the firm’s business.

In addition, the social media success of the firm’s partner, Jay Fleischman, led to a new consulting practice. The great results the firm saw as the result of using social media tactics caused many other firms to ask how they, too, can succeed with it.

If Twitter is your social media channel of choice for marketing your firm or your expertise, there are a few rules you should follow, says Eric Rudolf in his article, Dos and Don’ts for Using Twitter to Grow Business. In this follow-up to his 5 Twitter Rules Firms Should Never Break, Eric Rudolf offer five more rules businesses should follow, including being cautious of what you tweet. Competitors are always watching, he warns.