Are you laying the foundation for a strong, long-lasting business?

When times were tough this past year, did you find yourself taking on any paying client? Are those clients now much more work than the revenue they bring in? Are you still worried about generating enough revenue and making it through to the end of the year? Are you struggling to grow your firm? If you answered yes to any of those questions, chances are you’re marketing plan is lacking.

It’s no secret. If you want a long-lasting, successful business, you have to start with a strong foundation. And that foundation includes having a strong marketing plan that can guide you into making the best decisions to grow your firm, not just doing anything because it will bring in a few dollars.

“In the past, the normal was your professional services business could survive if you had a pulse,” says marketing strategist Lisa Nirell in her podcast interview, Setting the Foundation for a Strong and Wealthy Company. “You could have a few good paying clients and get by pretty well. But today, the only way you can thrive is if you have a plan. And the plan is the only way to navigate through what we’ve seen in the last five or six years.”

What should your plan include? To start, you have to acknowledge the pressures buyers are feeling about having little time and too many options, and make sure your messaging clearly articulates your value and how you can help them with their challenges. Stay away from talking about your services and instead talk about how you can make their lives better—eliminate the problem, save money, save time, etc.

“The more time you spend talking about your service, the less inclined a prospect will want to continue that conversation,” says Kelley Robertson in his article, How to Lose a Prospect’s Attention in 5 Seconds. “The more you focus your attention on their situation and their problems and demonstrate how you can help them improve their business, the more you differentiate yourself from the competition.”

When you discover a niche that few if any providers are addressing, you can further differentiate yourself. That was the case for Robert King when he founded Legally Nanny. He wanted to hire a nanny and could not find anyone who could help him comply with all of the legal and tax requirements employing in-home staff. And so Legally Nanny was founded, writes Gwen Moran in her case study, How a Legal Services Firm Grew Revenue by 66% in One Year with Low-Cost Marketing.

King used that niche, as well as extensive content marketing, social media networking, and word of mouth, to make Legally Nanny a go-to provider.

“We do tons of marketing and absolutely no advertising. I don’t pay any money for advertising, and I take advantage of all the free sources of marketing that are out there,” he says.

What does Legally Nanny tweet? They share articles in which they are quoted, partnerships, training opportunities, King’s upcoming speaking engagements, and articles King has written—to name a few things.

Joseph Riden, author of Twitter Tactics That Help You Get New Clients, stresses that firms (or people tweeting on behalf of firms) should stay away from tweeting the boring irrelevant things that have given Twitter a bad name, such as what you had for breakfast and your morning walk with your dog.

“Consider tweeting something that would contribute to the conversation you want with clients or prospects,” Riden says. “Put yourself in their shoes. Ask, ‘What tweets would make me feel smarter or better at business?’ ”

In his article, Riden explains an excellent Twitter campaign that he says caught the attention of prospects and got them to take action—click over and get more information.

Nothing, however, beats referrals for generating new business. People come to you already trusting you because someone they like and trust pointed them in your direction. But to get those referrals still takes work. If your referral engine isn’t chugging along as good as you like, C.J. Hayden suggests partnering with others.

“There are many possible referral sources for any business other than its own clients. You can begin to build your referral base dramatically by seeking out referral partners,” Hayden writes in her article, Need More Referrals? Partner Up.

Potential partners include other prospects, colleagues, and competitors. Yes, competitors. You may have a specialty that they don’t cover. And there could be times when they’re unable to take on new business, perhaps they don’t have the resources or there is a conflict.

“The best partnerships are reciprocal. If the two of you share the same target market, the possibility of two-way referrals is high,” Hayden says. “But even if you can’t imagine how you could refer business to a potential partner, don’t let that stop you. Savvy business people are always looking for qualified professionals like you to refer business to because it helps them take care of their own clients.”

(Image by Mohamed Ibrahim)

The uncertain economy is making it difficult for many firms to break out of the economic doldrums that have been sitting over us for what seems like a really long time. Every once in a while we get a peek at the sun coming out from behind the dark clouds, but the clouds won’t move completely out of the way. The result is worried professionals trying to get business from companies whose leaders are also worried, stressed out, over worked, and bombarded with offers.

What does it take to get through to those buyers, who don’t see an end in sight to the chaos? It calls for analysis, planning, and old fashioned hard work. No one is going to give you a magic wand to wave.

You want to start by acknowledging your buyers’ predicament. They are, as Jill Konrath writes, suffering from “Frazzled Customer Syndrome,” and you need to approach them differently than how you have handled other prospects and leads in the past. In fact, “traditional sales strategies actually create insurmountable obstacles that can derail your sales efforts,” Konrath writes in her article, What to Do When Clients Suffer from ‘Frazzled Customer Syndrome’.

Following Konrath’s SNAP Rules, however, you can change how such prospects react to you. Start by keeping it simple. Make it easy for them to buy from you, she says. You also want to show that you’re invaluable, align what you do with what they want to achieve, and raise priorities.

Colleen Stanley adds that successful selling starts with having the right intent. Enter each sales call with a sincere desire to understand and help your prospects and clients, not simply make a quick sale.

“A salesperson who enters a sales call with a sincere desire to understand the prospect’s business and challenges will close more sales than the articulate, polished, lower-priced competitor,” Stanley writes in her article, The #1 Factor to Increase Sales Results. “Human beings are wired to sense dishonesty and lack of authenticity. Likewise, they can spot a person who is genuine and desires to do the right thing. Whom would you rather do business with?”

If you follow Stanley’s advice, not only are you more likely to win that sale but chances are high the client will refer you to others—the sweet spot for generating new business. They key is to make sure they’re quality referrals, which can be more challenging, writes Daniel Kehrer in his article, 7 Steps to Better Client Referrals. And that calls for first implementing a referral-generation plan, Kehrer says.

“Referrals aren’t automatic. Some business owners assume that a great product or terrific customer service will generate referrals by default. Not so. You have to learn to ask, and make sure employees are on board as well,” Kehrer says.

Follow that with giving clients some ammunition to help them refer you: business cards, brochures, link to your website or blog, he says.

If those items are content from your thought leadership platform, that’s even better. Those pieces of content—blog posts, white papers, bylined articles, articles in which you are quoted—help establish your authority.

You can also use those content pieces to build up your brand and become a go-to person in your industry, says Craig Badings in his podcast interview, Stop Practicing Random Acts of Content. But they must be part of a thought leadership platform that your entire firm adopts, says Badings, author of Brand Stand: Seven Steps to Thought Leadership.

“If thought leadership is not a part of corporate culture, then that thought leadership campaign is going to limp along and will never really achieve any great height,” he says.

Doing otherwise is just a PR campaign to drive coverage that is dressed up as thought leadership, Badings says.

Photo: Jason Gulledge

Last week, I had a long-overdue chat with a former colleague, a marketing director. We met in her office, and as I sat down at her work table, she scooped up piles of papers to make space for my coffee.

“Sorry,” she said. “I’m in major overwhelm mode here. Juggling too many writing projects and a new product launch.”

Well, I know that feeling, so I jumped right in.

“What are the writing projects? Is there anything you could hand off to a freelancer?” I asked.

“Well, there’s a white paper that needs writing, and we have no sales collateral for the new product launch,” she responded. “Why, do you know someone?”

“Sure.” I rattled off the name of a writer who specializes in writing white papers for the IT industry and another who would be a good fit for the sales collateral.

My friend was thrilled. I was happy to be able to help. And, importantly, those two writers each just received a referral. And, not just a generic “I need a writer referral.” I didn’t simply offer my friend the names of some “writers;” I gave her the names of an “IT industry white paper writer” and a “sales collateral writer.” Professionals who specialize in solving the exact problems she was facing.

Despite the growing number of ways to generate leads for professional services, e.g., direct mail, cold calling, email, online, webinars, and more, research shows that referrals are still the top way professionals generate leads.

Yet many professionals I speak with wonder why they don’t get more referrals. They wonder what they’re doing wrong—Not doing enough networking? Not going to the right events? Not asking for referrals? And often, those are indeed real problems. However, in many cases the lack of referrals stems from something else.

How did I know whom to refer to my friend the marketing director? Well, each of the professionals I referred did the groundwork for me.

Each has a tightly defined niche. They describe the work they perform in terms of the types of writing they specialize in, as well as the industries and clients they serve. Not only have they clearly defined their niche, but they communicate and reinforce that message.

• One is a frequent speaker at events that showcase her white paper expertise and industry experience. She reinforces her niche on her website and in her tweets. She writes blog posts and articles about white papers on related industry sites.
• One keeps in close contact with me, with phone calls and email updates. She lets me know about projects she’s working on, recent successes, and her availability to take on new work. Her email signature includes her special focus, a link to her blog and website, and association awards she’s received.

Unlike some professionals who try to be all things to all people, neither is afraid to define the niche they serve and devote all their energy to cultivating that niche.

They make it easy for me to refer them.

How do you make it easy for your contacts to refer you?

Get Back to the Basics: Services Marketing 101 (photo by drp)

Back to School;
Back to Marketing Basics

It’s that time of year: back to school time. You can’t visit a mall or department store without seeing kids fighting over backpacks and picking out their first day of school wear.

This is also the time of year when vacations wind down and professionals return to their offices recharged and ready to kick off new initiatives to carry them through the end of the year, as well as set the table for a strong 2011. (Can you believe we’re already thinking about 2011?)

As students get back into their school routines, we’re getting back to the marketing basics for professional services firms. Here are seven foundational elements that should be a part of every services firm’s marketing plan:

1. Writing: Writing articles is a great way to increase your reach and your authority. Look to publish your articles in industry and association publications, business journals, on your blog or newsletter, and on industry websites. It takes time for this tactic to take hold. You can’t write one article, publish it on a website, and expect the leads to start flowing in. You need to write and publish on a regular basis. Do this and you can start to build a real guru status for yourself in your particular niche.

2. Speaking:  Public speaking goes hand-in-hand with tip #1. Speaking engagements are an incredibly powerful way to share your expertise, boost your credibility, and meet new prospects. I know of professional services firms that have been successful in building their entire firms simply by getting their professionals out and speaking on a regular basis.

3. Networking: When it comes to marketing and selling professional services, it’s all about relationships. The first place to look for new business is from the relationships you already have with family, friends, colleagues, past clients, etc.

You should work constantly to build up your network and to strengthen your relationships. Find two or three industry groups or associations that your clients and prospects are members of. Attend events held by these groups. Better yet, speak at these events (see #2), write in these industry publications (see #1), and then network with the members.

4. Referrals: This is an oldie but a goodie, and it’s something that often gets overlooked. Diligently ask for referrals. Your clients want to help you succeed, so help them help you.

5. Warm and cold calling: Warm and cold calling are tremendously effective tactics to generate leads with prospects. While many professionals shy away from making calls—and it’s certainly not for everyone—if you have a good list and strong message, it can get you in the door of prospects who may not have even known you existed. For tips on how to get started, check out these three  Cold Calling Scripts.

6. Direct mail and email: Warm up your cold calls by sending a direct mail letter in advance. I’ve found that a letter, call, email, call sequence works very well to warm up cold prospects. Use value based offers  such as a recent article you wrote (see tip #1), information on an upcoming speaking engagement (see tip #2), or an upcoming networking event (see tip #3) that they might like to attend.

7. Lead nurturing: You can implement all of the above tactics and generate a steady flow of new leads, but if you don’t have a lead nurturing plan, all’s for naught. Don’t let the prospects that you’ve worked so hard to get fall through the cracks. Stay in touch and walk them through the sales process.

While there are many tactics (too many to list in one blog post) that can, and do, generate leads for professional services firms, these seven will help you build a strong foundation for additional marketing activities. The key is to not rely on one tactic alone. You can see how each of these tactics work together to help you build credibility, boost your authority, and generate new relationships that ultimately lead to new business.

So this fall, get back to the marketing basics, and you’ll start to see the new leads and new business begin to flow in.

(Photo by Ravenwood)

How are you reaching prospects and clients? If you’ve settled on one tactic (email, social media, or phone calls, for example), you might want to reconsider that. Chances are that one tactic doesn’t allow you to reach your entire audience. Different people like different approaches, and you owe it to yourself and your business to figure out what those are and use them.

What tactics are working for B2B professional services firms? Let’s take a look:

Online video: Prospects, when they don’t have a referral, turn to the web for advice, solutions to their problems, and companies who can help them solve their problems. Even if they get a referral, they will still go to your website to learn about you before meeting you in person. They’re trying to get a feel for you and if you are a right fit for them, and online video can help win them over.

“Videos are a strong marketing tactic for any type of professional services firm,” writes Sharon Berman in her article, How to Use Video to Get Up Front and Personal with Your Prospects.

You can create videos that show the people behind the firm, as well as video testimonials that have clients telling powerful success stories. Either strategy will allow you to connect with website visitors on a personal level, Berman says.

Webinars: Webinars take the online experience for prospects up a level. They allow you to demonstrate your expertise and skills, as well as interact with attendees through Q&A segments. For an hour you can help attendees work out a problem and give them an opportunity to get to know you and start to trust you. At the same time, you help build your brand and establish your thought leadership.

When done well, webinars can result in new clients. But the key is to do them well, stresses Lee Salz, author of Stop Speaking for Free: The Ultimate Guide to Making Money with Webinars. For example, you can’t write a white paper (which people can download for free) and then do a webinar on that white paper. That’s because you’re basically giving an infomercial on the paper, which people already have access to. No one will attend a free webinar on that topic, let alone pay to attend.

Salz explains in his podcast interview, How to Attract Clients and Make Money Using Webinars, strategies for producing webinars that not only get people’s attention but lead to new business and revenue for your firm.

Mobile devices/smartphones: These days when nearly every professional has a BlackBerry, iPhone, Android, or some other smartphone, you can count on those people to use those devices to access information quickly while they’re on the go. It could be to check email, get directions to your office, or learn more about your services after their friend recommends you. Is your marketing email mobile-friendly? Is your website optimized for mobile access? Can they easily find your phone number and address on your site?

Those are just a few things to consider when devising your mobile marketing strategy, writes Jessica Wilganowski in her article, The Rise of the Smartphone: Why Your Business Needs a Mobile Presence. If you have loyal clients, you might also want to consider developing a mobile application to keep them engaged with you and your firm.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming your prospects and clients aren’t interested in or won’t respond to mobile marketing techniques. Do the research to find out for sure. If there’s interest, and your competitors aren’t using them, this is your chance to distinguish yourself from the pack.

Articles and white papers: Increasingly traditional advertising and PR campaigns fail to generate new leads. There’s too much competition and what prospects see doesn’t help them connect with providers. They’re seeking advice and solutions, and articles and white papers provide that while at the same time put your name in front of them.

e-LYNXX Corporation, a high-tech firm that helps organizations with print projects, has seen significant success with that type of content, writes Karen E. Klein in her case study, How a Specialized High-Tech Company Used Monthly Articles and White Papers to Reach C-Level Execs. The company is leveraging in-house expertise to write monthly articles, building media relationships, and taking advantage of free online posting opportunities.

“We feel that an article or an interview carries more influence than a paid-for advertisement, and that is another reason why we develop editorial content as tools for telling our story,” says company founder William Gindlesperger.
The effort is paying off for e-LYNXX. As a result, it gets its expertise in front of thousands of c-level executives and it ranks at the top of search engine results.

What Doesn’t Work

If prospects and clients think Requests for Proposals (RFPs) will help them make a good decision about which provider is best for them, they are greatly mistaken, writes Charles H. Green in his article, Open Letter to Clients: Why You Should Drop the RFP.

While RFPs serve a purpose for government contracts, where “the appearance of improper influence is per se destructive of our faith in government,” and in private organizations where there’s a history of buying abuse, in most other cases they are used “to the detriment of the buying organization,” Green says. For example, they prevent prospects and clients from having open dialogues with providers. With RFPs clients shut themselves off from any advice and guidance a provider could offer—usually for free.

Fear is often the motive for RFPs, as buyers are afraid that weasely sales people will talk them into something they don’t need. But any professional worth his grain will stay away from doing that and instead provide “some level of insight, perspective, and information that the client didn’t have, if only to demonstrate their competence,” Green says.

Your goal as a services professional is to help prospects and clients understand that.

(Photo by Taro Yamamoto)

We’ve all seen blogs that have made us shake our heads. The design is outrageous, you can’t find contact information to save your life, there are broken links, pages don’t render, or (here’s a comical one) they have keywords listed over and over again in attempt to fool the search engines.

As bad as those are, they aren’t the worst things you can do. The worst thing you can do with your blog is pretend to be something (or someone) you aren’t. This is especially critical for services professionals, as you are essentially selling yourselves. You are providing the services your prospects seek. They need to trust you and believe in you. And that can’t happen if you are a phony.

Unfortunately this misrepresentation happens all too often, professional blogger Chris Garrett told me in a recent interview. In his preview to his upcoming webinar, Attract Clients and Grow Your Business Using Blogs, Garrett said he sees people taking other people’s blog posts, changing the name and posting them as their own. Sometimes they don’t even change the name and republish the work in its entirety without permission. He also sees people making outrageous claims about what they can do.

People—your prospects—want to connect with real human beings, Garrett said.

Chris Garrett presents "Attract Clients and Build Your Business Using Blogs" on Aug. 26

“The power of being yourself means you do create a bond with your prospects. People do feel like they have a connection with you. And they feel like they’d rather work with you than somebody else,” he said. “Whenever I write about a mistake I’ve made so people don’t make the same mistake, I get more inquiries because people see me as someone not trying to be this perfect robot. I’m a real human being.”

Blogs, when done correctly, allow you to establish trust and build relationships. Both of those are critical when selling professional services.

“Given the choice, we’d rather work with people we know, like and trust. And blogs help you do that because you’re communicating over a period of time. You’re not trying to get the sale in 10 minutes on the first visit. You’re actually building up a relationship, and that is really powerful stuff providing you’re open and authentic rather than trying to be a fake,” Garrett said.

Want to Hear More?

Listen to the full interview with Garrett to learn more about mistakes people make when blogging, features that work well on blogs, and techniques to get people to notice and comment on your blog:

And for even more information about the business benefits of blogging, watch Garrett’s webinar (available on-demand), Attract Clients and Grow Your Business Using Blogs.

(Photo by Microstock Photography)

It would be nice if we could say someone or something else is the reason for our not succeeding. The burden would be off of us. Someone else is making us do something, so blame them. It’s kind of like when you were a kid and everyone else controlled what you did—your parents, your teachers, your coach, etc. “It’s not my fault. Dad said to do that,” as my 13-year-old daughter is fond of saying.

She may be right in a certain sense. But it’s those guidelines and restrictions that enable us to eventually make our own decisions. As an adult, you cannot say, “Blame my mother. She told me to do that.” As an employee, you cannot say, “It didn’t work because my boss didn’t tell me I had to do that.” As a business owner, you cannot say, “It’s not my fault we don’t have clients. It’s because of the economy [or the weather or the holidays or the full moon].” You are the only person who can determine your success and your business’s success. It’s up to you to take ownership of it and do all that you can to make it work.

Consider professional services sales. Are you doing all that you can to generate leads and keep the pipeline full? Are you in contact with prospects, making sure they understand the value you offer over others in your field? Are you maintaining and even building on existing relationships with clients? As Rob Benson writes in his article, How to Deal with Lost Sales: A Lesson from the Links, you have to “work the system. Do the basics, and do them well.”

Yes, you will lose sales and clients may walk away, but those misses won’t cause you or your business to fail if you have a strong sales system, Benson says. If you work the system effectively—clarify your value proposition, establish credibility, and put yourself in a place to meet those who might need your services—you will generate enough leads so that a lost sale doesn’t hurt so much.

Get to the Decision Makers

Working the system effectively also means figuring out how to get to the decision makers and get them to listen to you. There’s no doubt that they’re insanely busy and that many firms are vying for their attention, but you cannot let that be an excuse. You must find a way to stand out among all the others, Larry Stybel and Maryanne Peabody write in their article, Selling Services to Time-Starved Executives Who Desperately Need to Ignore You.

“You are seeking to get noticed by leaders who have too many responsibilities and too little time. If they pay equal attention to all stimuli, they will surely be ineffective. Cognitive guidelines that allow them to avoid paying attention can be an important leadership mechanism for success,” they write. “This is The Spiro Agnew Framework. And it is both crude and necessary for leaders to be successful.”

It is up to you to break the Spiro Agnew Framework, and you can do it if you follow Stybel and Peabody’s suggestions: create a new category and dominate it and focus on your services as an answer to a management dilemma.

Blogs can help you achieve that, as The Search Agency discovered. Until recently, the online search marketing firm had a relatively low industry profile. It decided it had to change that if it wanted buyers to not only find it but recognize it as the online search marketing firm. It turned to blogging as a way to establish itself as a thought leader and trusted resource, and as a result has grown revenues by 37%.

“Our company is engaged in dialogue that shows our depth and breadth of expertise. And with our team members in India and the UK contributing, the blog helps position us as a global agency with the talent and technology to optimize search marketing campaigns in many different markets,” says Alec Green, vice president of marketing for the agency.

Communication is Key

Your sales success also depends on your non-verbal communication skills, says Sharon Sayler in her podcast interview, Is Your Body Language Hurting Your Sales Efforts? You can have the best website with all of the SEO tactics in place, the most creative blog, and the most dynamic sales collateral, but if you give off negative signals during meetings with prospects or during presentations none of that will matter.

Your body movement, voice, and eye contact all play a role in drawing people toward you—or pushing them away, Sayler says. For example, breathing quickly can cause prospects to think there’s something wrong and being too friendly too quickly can cause them to think you’re ingenuous.

You might think that those are your personality traits and that’s just the way you are, but then you would be pointing the finger again instead of taking responsibility if the deal falls through. You can change these things. All it takes is practice, Sayler says.

When you win the deal and sign the new client, you’re not off the hook. The success of that business relationship depends on you making it work. Be up front about what your new client can expect from you, initiate dialogue so that you both understand each other, and encourage them to be a part of the process so you can better help them.

In Michael W. McLaughlin’s recent article, A Letter to Your Client: Help Me Help You, he has written an open letter to a new client about how to make the project a success. While I don’t suggest sending this letter to your new clients, I do think you need to address the issues included in it and make sure you and your client are on the same page. Your initiative will help you deliver what you promised and help you retain the client for future work. You, and only you, are responsible for its—and your—success.

Are you doing the right things to turn cold prospects into new clients?

There’s a distinct difference between those prospects who contact you to learn more about your services (we’ll call these inbound leads) and those prospects whom you contact and secure a meeting with to talk about your services (we’ll call these outbound leads).

When it’s an inbound lead, the prospect comes to you because they have a need and already have an understanding that you are someone who could help them.

When generating outbound leads through your marketing and selling efforts the dynamics are very different. The prospect often is unsure of the need, the value you bring to the table, and if it’s worthwhile to engage in a conversation with you.

The differences are obvious, yet our marketing and sales process and communication for both types of leads is often the same. This leads to unproductive conversations with cold prospects that go nowhere. Outbound-generated leads can and do result in new clients; however, the process requires a different approach. Here are five tips to help you turn those cold prospects into new clients:

1. Be patient with the prospect.

Don’t expect the prospect to go from a first conversation to a new client in 30 days. It rarely happens that quickly. Remember, this is a “cold” prospect, he’s never heard of you before, and you are initiating the conversation.

Have patience with these prospects, and be prepared to shepherd them through a long buying cycle. Trust, credibility, and expertise are essential elements to a professional services sale and do not happen overnight. Be prepared to invest time in the relationship to help it grow.

2. Stay in touch with the prospect.

Nurturing and planned follow-up is required. Refer to tip #1—it is a long buying cycle. Develop a touch plan where you reach out to the prospect monthly through direct mail, phone, and email. Stay top of mind, and when the prospect’s elusive time of need does arise, you’ll be the first person they think of.

3. Provide value in each contact.

With every touch provide some piece of value. Following up just to “see how it’s going” will not enhance the relationship. Instead, answer questions and send articles. Have a reason to reach out. Provide examples of how you helped similar companies with case studies and stories.

If it is a first conversation, have questions that start a dialogue and uncover needs related to your services. Then share some best practices based on your experience working with companies in similar situations.

These types of value touches help build the credibility and trust necessary to win an initial engagement with any prospect.

4. Focus your energy on leads that will be a good fit for you and your services.

Your first task when initiating a conversation with a cold prospect is to determine if they are a good fit. This involves knowing your ideal client profile, including industry, revenue size, and level/title of individuals within the company.

Beyond that, it also requires determining the prospect’s BANT—budget, authority, need, and timeline. Focus first and foremost on the authority and need. If you can uncover a need with a decision maker and move it up his priority list, that person can usually find or make a budget and develop a timeline.

5. Have a clear value proposition.

The goal with any prospect is to start a relationship, and all relationships start with a first conversation. The key is to have a compelling and succinct value proposition so the prospect understands the value you bring to the table and the areas where you can help. Demonstrate how you are different from the thousands of other accountants, lawyers, or consultants out there.

With these five tips you’ll eventually see the temperature of those cold prospects rise, along with your revenue.

(Photo by Yosep Sugiarto)

Cold calling—for many the mere thought sends shivers down their spine. They don’t like to do it and in many cases justify their refusal to cold call by saying it doesn’t work. But they’re wrong. When done correctly, cold calling is an extremely effective sales technique.

What does it take to succeed at cold calling? Here are some best practices, which are discussed in depth in RainToday’s New Cold Calling Strategies Kit:

1. Make sure you talk to the right people. Don’t blindly call people. Start with a list of qualified prospects—people or businesses that have a need for your type of services. When you call a business and are unsure who the best person to speak to is, ask. Ask the operator or the president’s assistant. What the operator may not feel comfortable telling you, the president’s assistant almost always will. But do not use the assistant to get to the president; it is his job to insulate the president.

2. Do your research. Take time to get to know the businesses you’re calling. What do they sell? Whom do they sell to? How is the company structured? Regarding the person you’re trying to contact, do some biographical research. Check the company’s website or look for a profile on LinkedIn. You want that biographical information so you can make sure the person is the right person to contact and so you can incorporate their wording and language into your messaging. It’s important to speak the same language as your prospect, as it allows you to make a connection with them.

3. Get to the point quickly during your call. Identify yourself, explain what you’re able to provide to help them, and propose a date to meet. Do not go over 20 seconds or you will lose them.

4. Do not tell them all the benefits of the services. That isn’t the purpose of an introductory call, and it’s a waste of their time because they have no reason to believe any of it is true.

5. Put yourself in the prospect’s position. Think about what would be effective for someone trying to sell to you. What would turn you off? What would excite you? Stay away from big, salesy hyperboles and instead focus on the value proposition.

Mark Fortune, a cold calling specialist at Wellesley Hills Group, spoke with me about his approach to cold calling as part of the Cold Calling Strategies Kit. He has been on the phone talking with people for nearly 15 years and says you will succeed if you follow a well-planned strategy.

“Anybody who can think on their toes, speak clearly under pressure, shift gears, and ultimately put in the time to make multiple dials and get used to the environment of cold calling can be good at making outbound dials and reaching out to prospective executive-level buyers,” Fortune says. But you have to remember “to be honest when speaking with prospects. Always be sincere in what you have to offer and then, of course, be prepared for the call.”

Listen to an excerpt from Mark’s interview to hear more about how he sets up meetings using cold calling.

Access the complete Cold Calling Strategies Kit to listen to the full interview. Other items in the kit include:

• Cold Calling Works: You Just Do It Wrong (article)
• 3 Cornerstones to Delivering an Effective Telephone Pitch (article)
• Cold Calling Scripts that Work: 3 Proven Introductions that Break into and Close New Clients (article)
• Top Four Things NOT to Do When Cold Calling (article)
• How to Leave Voicemail Messages that Have Prospects Begging to Meet You (article)
• What to Say During a Cold Call (podcast)
• Voicemail Strategies that Get Prospects to Take Notice (podcast)
• How to Develop Your Calling Script (worksheet)
• Appointment Setting through Cold Calling (checklist)

If you’re starting out with cold calling or your results are less than stellar, it’s worth your while to check out the kit.

(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?