The media likes cold calling. I got a call from Bruce Sellery of Workopolis TV a few months back and he asked me to give an interview on cold calling for his show. It aired last week on BNN, the Canadian equivalent to MSNBC, with approximately 4.2 million viewers per week.
The interview was conducted at the NASDAQ in New York City. This sounds glamorous, but like all TV interviews, I was stuffed in a tiny room, given an earpiece, and Bruce jumped into my head and asked me questions. I answered them to a camera, and that was that.
Enjoy the interview!
I’ve now read quite a bit of David Maister‘s new book Strategy and the Fat Smoker. As usual with David’s work, I’m enjoying it and finding myself nodding often in agreement. (Which is better than nodding off…what typically happens when I read business books.) I’m guessing most folks, should they read this book, would say, “Not only do I agree with David’s strategies, I already held the same beliefs before I read the book, and could articulate them if asked.”
And that’s the point: most folks know what they need to do to run a successful professional services firm. They just don’t do it.
David says, for example:
- We know what to do, we know why we should do it and we know how to do it. Yet, most businesses and individuals don’t do what’s good for them.
- A strategy is not just choosing a target market, but actually designing an operation that will consistently deliver the superior client benefits you claim to provide.
- Even the most senior vice-presidents and partners indicate that they do not think the new strategies and polices they have designed themselves will be implemented. If they are skeptical about their own ability to implement their own declared strategy, can you imagine how cynical the employees are?
- People may say they want the benefits of romance, but yet they still act in ways that suggest that they are really interested in a one-night stand.
- Conversational skills apply to effective marketing and selling. You may remember to behave this way at a dinner party, but do your client meetings really meet these criteria?
Pretty straightforward points, if you ask me. That doesn’t make them any less powerful or less relevant.
Strategy and the Fat Smoker is a winner. Well worth the time and effort to read. Also, keep a look out for a RainToday.com webinar based on the book this May 15th to be delivered by David. The webinar’s content will focus specifically on how to build the strongest business relationships possible.
I received the following question from a listener of our recent teleseminar Selling To Big Companies: How To Secure Your First Meeting (download available).
I have a question on free services as a hook. We have started an offering of free assessments and 40 free hours to work with any client’s particular needs. We advertise this in our marketing e-mails and direct mail. In your experience, does this really sway a decision maker into thinking, “Well I can try this company and if does not work out, then we can both walk away, and it does not cost me anything.”
Offering a service sample or an “entry service” can be a powerful marketing tool. After all, most firms would agree, “Once a company experiences our services and our people, they have a high degree of likelihood of continuing to work with us for the long-term.”
One Wellesley Hills Group client, when they have an initial business development call with a new prospect, sets a team of people on a two week research engagement to deliver primary data and analysis during the initial call. Prospects are impressed as a matter of course. Our client’s average sales are in the six and seven figures, so as a business strategy, the serious staff time investment is well worth the return.
That being said, here are a few thoughts for you:
* Offering hours isn’t particularly appealing. Indeed, folks like Ron Baker at Verasage would argue you’re making a pretty big mistake even using “hours” as something you sell.
* Consider offering a particular service – regardless of the time commitment – as your initial strategy. Then you can build marketing and business development campaigns around that service. “We’ll study your ABC strategy/situation/problem and give you our complimentary 123 Strategy Assessment.”
* Make sure you deliver strong value in the service. It can’t be pitchy or a thinly veiled sales tactic. It has to be good. Many folks, when they read this, might say, “Duh! Of course we’ll deliver high quality.” Still, I’ve often observed providers falling into the trap of making their front-end services (free or paid) too salesy or not meaty enough.
* Target carefully. Some prospects might be worth the effort, and some not. Plus, make it exclusive and it becomes more desirable.
* Don’t be surprised when fewer people than you think take you up on the service. You might think, “This is great. It’s worth tens of thousands of dollars. We may get flooded with people taking us up on it!” Yet, it doesn’t often happen. Many buyers are leery of free service tests and/or don’t want to feel obligated to buy something even if the service test is appealing.
* Don’t let your prospect think that your services have little value. Make sure they understand that a five figure service offered for free is still worth five figures.
It’s tough enough transitioning from free work to paid work. You don’t want free offers that portray your expertise as any less than it’s actually worth.
* Consider packaging a strong initial service and charging for it versus delivering it for free.
More and more around town and around the web, I’ve seen consultants and professionals fascinated with the prospect of self-publishing their books, and disgruntled with the prospect of working with traditional business book publishers.
Avoiding the hassle of writing a book proposal, selling it to a publisher, hitting content deadlines, losing control over the artwork and title of the book…all of that sounds like a good idea. Plus, as we all know, publishers don’t do a thing for you when it comes to PR. Might as well just take the book to a print shop, take it to market a year earlier, and make more money from each copy of the book, right?
Not always. Not most of the time, I’m guessing. It all depends on your goals and your book publishing history.
Most consultants and professional service providers that I know write books (or, at least, talk about writing books) so they can build their brands, get more speaking engagements, become recognized thought leaders, raise fees, and grow their practices and companies.
The question I have is, “Does self-publishing your book help you with the brand…speaking engagements…thought leadership…fee raising?”
Having researched and published The Business Impact of Writing a Book, and having spent a lot of time in the industry talking to authors, my instincts say that self-publishing may actually do more harm than good. I’ve spoken with numerous folks who’ve actually derided self-published consultants. “Didn’t have the stomach for the real book publishing process? Quality of your work not good enough to make it through a real editor? Don’t have enough followers to interest a real publisher in you or your work?”
Now, for those big-name consultants who have already published a book (or five) with the big boys, they won’t have this problem. Assuming they have a following, they might even sell a nice pile of books.
Most self-published authors won’t sell a nice pile of books, and won’t get the benefit that selling a lot of books can get them. In our research, authors who self-published sold around 2,000 copies of their books. Those that published with a major business book publisher (e.g. McGraw Hill, John Wiley, AMACOM, Berret-Koehler, Jossey-Bass, Penguin, Henry Holt, Adams Media, Dearborn, etc.) sold on average more like 12,000 to 14,000 copies.
How much does volume of copies sold matter? Some food for thought data. Said the report:
- Overall Effect: Authors who reported a “positive” overall effect on their practices sold a median number (at the 50th percentile) of 5,000 copies of their first book, whereas those who reported an “extremely positive” overall effect on their practices sold a median number of 10,000 copies of their first book.
- Raising Fees: Authors who reported a “strong influence” on their ability to raise their fees sold a median number of 4,000 copies of their first book, whereas those who reported a “very strong influence” on their ability to raise fees sold a median number of 20,000 copies of their first book.
- Generating New Clients: Authors who reported that publishing books had “some / a little / no influence” on their ability to generate new clients sold a median number of 9,000 copies of their books, whereas those that reported publishing books had a “very strong / strong” influence sold a median number of 20,000 copies of their books.
- Generating Better Speaking Engagements: Authors who reported that publishing books had a “very strong influence” on their ability to generate better speaking engagements sold a median number of 25,000 books over their careers, whereas those who reported a “strong influence” sold a median number of 8,200.
It’s clear that selling 4-5,000 copies of your book can bring measurable success to your practice. However, what I found even more impressive only emerged after analyzing all the measures of success in the study… to reach the strongest positive impact on their practices, the authors seem to have to cross two critical hurdles when it comes to the numbers of books they’ve sold:
- Hurdle 1 = 10,000 Copies: Authors that sold over 10,000 copies of their books by and large reported strong positive effects on their businesses as a result of publishing books. This group of folks seemed very pleased with the return on their investments in effort, time, and money for writing and publishing books.
- Hurdle 2 = 20,000 Copies: Authors that sold over 20,000 copies of their books reported phenomenally positive effects on their businesses. In most categories where we studied this data, the results achieved by authors that sold over 20,000 copies of their books were far and away stronger than those that sold less than 20,000 copies.
The virtues of business blogging are well established. (Google the topic. You should find plenty.) So why won’t more service business leaders blog?
- Blog posts take sustained energy to write.
- Blogging takes marketing support (such as online linking, keyword optimization, technology, etc.) to get the full effect.
- Blogging takes time to take hold.
- Leaders still don’t understand (much as you might tell them) why they should blog.
- The blogger has to have something to say.
- The blogger has to have the boldness to actually say it.
- Legal departments have to get out of the way.
- Service business decision making takes too much time. Setting up the focus of the blog, who the bloggers will be, and what the topics the bloggers should post about would take forever at most firms.
- The decision to spend brain time blogging means that brain time won’t be spent on something else that someone else is advocating for. Leaders often hear the following request, “Boss, we need your time to focus more on <insert strategy here>.” There’s only so much time.
- Service firm marketing strategy is generally behind the rest of the business world. Blogging is still too new.
All of these: tall orders to overcome.
I spent some time this weekend with Trust-Based Selling, a book written by Charlie Green from Trusted Advisor Associates. I actually found something new and worthwhile! As the publisher of RainToday.com, people send me books on marketing and selling all the time for me to review.
Sometimes I read them, rarely do I review them (and never on RainToday…we don’t do book reviews), and almost never do I find something truly worthwhile. In a rare turn of events, this time I did. In the best appendix to a book that I’ve seen in years, Charlie has inserted a “compilation of lists.” Here’s one of them:
Why Client Focus is Critical (Chapter 4)
1. Client focus improves problem definition for customers who deal in complex problems.
2. Client focus allows constant learning on the part of the seller who can’t know all the answers.
3. Customers won’t let you earn the right to offer solutions until they feel you’ve understood their situation – and that comes about from truly paying attention.
4. True client focus works competitively – because few people really practice it.
5. Customer focus encourages the customer to share more, open up, and allow more access.
6. Client focus leads to collaboration by the client.
7. Customer focus fosters acceptance of recommendations.
8. An outsider’s perspective often brings new insights that help all involved.
9. Focusing on another enriches our own lives.
Other lists in the Compilation of Lists:
- 22 Benefits of Trust-based Relationships for Buyers
- Reasons Why We Resist Collaboration with Customers
- 23 Ways to Get and Stay Client-Focused
- A Beginning List of Curiosity Questions
- Reasons to Invite Customers To Your Meetings
- Eight Things Not to Do When Facing Formalized Buying Processes
For these lists alone, I’d recommend this book.
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