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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.
