You may be saying to yourself “if I knew the answer to that question, I’d be very wealthy!” However, the answer isn’t really all that elusive.

The CEO of a technology company recently offered the following insight to his sales and marketing team. “I’m the one who signs the cheques. For me to buy, you need to solve the two things that keep me awake at night - net profitability and getting our product to market faster than our competitors. If you can prove to me that you will improve either of those, I’ll sign the cheque … and I don’t really care what you’re selling !”

It’s easy to forget this simple principle: people buy to meet their needs or solve their problems. To get them to buy from us, we need to clearly address whatever matters most to them. In other words, we need to show them a clear value proposition - WIIFM or What’s In It For Me?

Some of the reasons your clients will buy your services include:
• seeing a positive impact on their business
• improved financial performance
• increased market share
• higher client/customer retention rates
• improved market position
• automation of labour-intensive processes
• to beat a competitor to an important commercial advantage
• to avoid or reduce unacceptable risk
• regulatory compliance.

There are many other objective. To sell effectively, it is critical to identify their objective - the issues that keep your client awake at night.

Copyright 2001 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

We’ve all had the experience of watching a TV commercial and wondering “what was that all about?” … or reading a sales promotion letter and thinking “so what? why should I care?”

Or even worse, receiving a proposal and groaning at the thought of reading the whole document …

Persuasive messages can be characterised by the four Cs:

Clear
Compelling
Concise
Convincing

Next time you are writing a proposal, preparing a presentation, or pitching for business, test your key messages against these four Cs to be certain you will persuade your audience.

Copyright 2001 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

Sorting through what’s important to your prospective client and determining what will differentiate you from your competitors can be a daunting task. In hard-fought competitions, how we deal with even minor issues can make the critical difference between winning, and losing.

This list is a useful starting point in determining how best to position your proposal to maximise your probability of success.

• Credentials and evidence of your experience in each area or field required
• Evidence of successfully handling routine matters in each are of interest
• Evidence or examples of successfully handling unusual or high-risk matters in each field
• Depth of your team
• Specialisations of your firm or practice group
• Participation, representation, and profile of your firm in each service area required and the client’s industry or markets
• Any special techniques or strategies used/developed by your firm
• Evidence of the effectiveness of your recommended strategies and approaches
• How can you best demonstrate your track record of success?
• How many files will each lawyer handle?
• What is the right number of files for this type of work?
• Geographical coverage - appropriateness of the location/s at which you offer service
• How you’ll handle regional matters and work outside your normal home patch
• How you” manage the account
• Who will be your key liaison point?
• What service or client satisfaction guarantees will you offer?

This checklist will help you work through issues of fees, pricing, and billing when developing your proposal.

• Structure of fees: hourly rates, day rates, fixed fees, event costs, capped fees, fee estimates, volume discounts, project budgets, success or “at risk” components, retainers, client satisfaction components, other fee alternatives and hybrids
• Predictability and certainty of fees - for the client
• Controllability of fees - for the client
• Protocols for managing time spent (in the interests of the client)
• Reporting on fees and progress on project budgets
• Reporting on services availed under retainer arrangements
• Disbursements: what is classified as a disbursement?
• Overhead (e.g. photocopying, faxes) disbursements: no charge, charged at notional cost, charge rate, outsourcing arrangements
• Other disbursements: at cost, at cost plus mark-up
• Disbursements control mechanisms and reporting
• Billing frequency
• Billing styles and options: level of detail, management summary, electronic billing
• Payment terms: within x days of billing, deferred payment, pre-payment of disbursements, hybrids
• Discounts: on time payment, rebates on volume use of services, etcetera
• Pricing validity period
• Pricing/fee review frequency and mechanisms
• Value-added services: free value adds and chargeable add-ons
• How the pricing arrangements you propose serve to align your rewards with your client’s interests.

Sophisticated clients buying behaviour increasingly reflects the value they place on expert professional services providers who can deftly manage relationships and who are sensitive to personal and organisational dynamics.

This short checklist will help you to work up selling arguments centred on relationship dynamics.

• Your team leader, his/her credentials for the role, and how s/he will relate to the client
• What you plan to contribute to the relationship, besides technical expertise
• Where you can add distinct value to the client’s organisation: the network of useful contacts to whom you will facilitate introductions and related services which the client will access through you
• “Feel good” aspects of being a client of your firm - and how that differs from the alternatives
• Value-added services you will offer - and deliver
• Techniques you propose to obtain client feedback
• How you’ll evaluate you client’s satisfaction - measures or indicators you will use
• How the client satisfaction feeds into your internal appraisal, recognition, and reward systems
• How you will deal with problems and issues which arise
• What action you promise if your client is dissatisfied
• What else you’ll do to establish a relationship with the client which ensures they derive maximum value
• Examples of other clients with whom you’ve developed similar relationships and evidence of the benefits to these clients of your relationship - testimonials, references, case studies
• What this relationship means to you and the “price” you’re prepared to pay for it - how important the client will be to you
• How far you’ll go to protect and advance your client’s interests
• The difference they’ll notice in dealing with you and your firm.

Be clearly and convincingly painting a picture of the working relationship you have in mind, demonstrating that you’ll constructively engage problems, and showing downstream benefits your client will derive, you will vastly improve your prospects of success.

Previous eTips have suggested possible selling points which will help you to positively differentiate your proposal in a crowded market. Increasingly, astute clients value law firms and other expert professional services providers who show that they are both fully aware of and respond appropriately to concerns about commercial sensitivities and conflicting interests.

This quick checklist will help you to develop the key selling arguments you will use to position your proposal.

• Your understanding of this client’s sensitivities to commercial confidentiality issues and conflicts
• Protocols to maintain confidentiality (no, don’t just treat this as a “given”)
• Systems and processes you use to recognise potential conflicting interests
• Due diligence you have conducted to establish that there is “no conflict”
• Real life examples of commercial sensitivities you have recognised and your response to these
• Examples of actual and possible conflicts - and what you would propose to do about them
• On-going input and collaboration from your client on these areas, and how you propose to obtain it
• What work/other clients you would be prepared to relinquish in order to establish and maintain a long-term relationship with this client - that is, how much this relationship does/will mean to you and what “price” you’re prepared to pay for it
• How far you’ll go to protect and advance your client’s interest.

By proactively and constructively dealing with your client’s commercial sensitivities, and any possible conflicts, you will advance your prospects by reducing perceptions of risk in accepting your proposal and establishing a business relationship with you.

Copyright 2001 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

We’re often asked how many PowerPoint slides should be included in a presentation and how much time a presenter should spend on each. 

Of course, the answer varies according to slide content, presentation format (proposal or tender highlights as opposed to small group discussions or full-scale lecture presentation topic, audience size, your objectives, and other media or presentation aids which you may use in conjunction with PowerPoint.

Presenters may appropriately spend up to twenty minutes on s single slide, but wisely spend just a few seconds on others.

Slide which contain pictures, graphs, charts or diagrams, animations - and even video - are usually better subjects for long-stay slides than mere bulleted lists.

Too often we see overly-dense text material which presenters design as talking points and mistakenly think are great as full text notes.

Remember, on of your key objectives is to keep your audience interested and engaged in your presentation: very difficult to achieve if they are bored to death!

But, interested and engaged does not mean “Dazzled” by exotic special effects which detract from your message.

Copyright 2001 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

Maybe you’re one of those fortunate professionals who has such a stand out service to offer that it’s clearly technically superior, demonstrably better, and so reported by objective analysts and high-profile “industry authorities”. More likely, the professional services you offer - while better than many - are neck-and-neck with alternatives.

If you belong to the second category, it’s essential to work hard on perceived advantage.

In the first category, you already have a clear advantage, but adding perceived advantage is always a good idea.

Perceived advantage is about what happens in the mind of prospective clients and clients. It results from:
• branding
• profile
• reputation.

A professional services firm with strong and distinctive brand personality, impressive profile, and the right reputation will enjoy success with even “average” products. Their perceived advantages may be sufficiently strong to overcome apparent service weaknesses, at least for a time. (Beware: never recommended to rely on marketing to paper over problems !)

You can also develop perceived advantage by designing and developing your service delivery processes to:
• more comfortably fit with clients
• ease interaction between your business and theirs
• provide minor desirable add-ons at no-charge
• minimise their concerns
• mitigate the insecurities and risks they perceive in proceeding with your service.

A better professional service may deserve to win over the rest, but the fact is that perceived advantage often wins the race.

At moments of truth - the critical times when consumers are selecting the professionals with whom they will entrust their work - by mustering the most appropriate and effective business development behaviours, you will create and leverage strong perceived advantage.

Copyright 2006 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

No one is irreplaceable.  No expert, no professional, no one.  But if you want to push yourself up the continuum towards “irreplaceable” status, here are some things to work on. Don’t just focus on routine work - no matter how profitable.  Work that can easily be reduced to a set of rules, routines, instructions, or procedures, is only work which will make it easy for you to be replaced - either with a lower priced competitor, someone more convenient, another professional who seduces your client, or to “offshoring”.

Deft negotiation is hard to replace.  Work which requires subtle negotiation, expert conflict resolution skills, and other truly bespoke creativity on the fly pushes you up the irreplacability continuum.

Empathy with your client is a winner. Really getting to grips with a client, their business, and what matters to them will make the difference and is a great formula. Truly caring: sincerely, genuinely, deeply caring.

Create a truly new service.  Best of all, invent a service that the client didn’t even know they were missing.  A great way to become more valuable is to do high-quality conceptual work which is difficult and risky to substitute.

Don’t do work which a computer can do faster. Leverage technology and the internet to deliver your services rather than simply doing the same old low-tech stuff, the same old way, at the same old price.

Don’t spend professional time doing work which could be handled by a paraprofessional. If a paraprofessional - paralegal, clerk, early-career professional, or some less expensive resource can do the work adequately, then stop doing it yourself.

Delegate. Find a way to manage it so you can be certain the client is both perfectly satisfied and benefits from lower cost of production.

Ensure that you and your service appeal aesthetically and emotionally. Prosperous clients will pay for what feels “right” and matches their self-space or corporate-image. Make certain you look like a right-fit, reflect their business values, and go well beyond the merely functional.

These same clients want to feel cared for, and “at home” with the values and behaviours of you and your colleagues.

These are some ways you can avert risks of commoditisation and preserve the premium pricing which can attach a unique professional service experience you may offer. Most clients want more than mere correct technical advice - and they will reward you for it with a professional future.

To sell your expert professional service you need to satisfy each clients quest to be cared for and achieve their superordinate goals. To maintain - or increase - premium pricing, avoid commoditisation and pursue high customisation.

Copyright 2006 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

Niche business development strategies are hardly new, but too often they’re overlooked in a rush to sell professional services to well-known, large, popular, ready-made market segments.Taking a niche focus is the antithesis of scattergun, broad-brush marketing.

Niches which are small, specialised, low volume, or poorly understood may not yet have drawn large or strong competitors.

By focusing on niches which are:
• clearly definable
• closely matches for your skills
• good candidates for specialisation
• suitable for the economics and resources of your professional practice
• large enough to be profitable and sustainable
you may enjoy the many benefits of strong competitive advantage, including premium prices for your professional services.

Focusing your business development efforts in this way will:
• give you rapid traction in a niche
• help you to develop clear, appealing messages to prospective clients you’re ideally positioned to serve
• reinforce your reputation and profile among your established clients in this niche
• allow you to carve out a position of strong perceived advantage
• give you opportunities to enter larger markets from your niche toehold.

Put possible niche opportunities to these tests:
• Does the niche really exist ?
• How many participants and who are they ?
• Where could we source data to assemble a list of participants ?
• Is this a niche where participants meet through professional bodies, industry associations, or interest groups ?
• What specific professional services will you offer to this group ?
• Can you make a distinctive offer which will appeal strongly to this niche market ?
• Is there an opportunity to achieve premium price for your services by focusing on this niche ?

You’ll discover niche markets through a deep understanding of how markets segment and consumer participants behave.

The best starting point will be some of those clients with whom your professional services already achieve the strongest resonance.

Copyright 2006 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

Don’t pollute your communication with clients and prospective clients with unnecessary or unhelpful jargon. Straightforward, clear language will take you much further than jargon and corporate-speak.

Some studies have shown that using jargon is likely to earn you the labels of “rude, obnoxious, arrogant, and out-of-touch”. Clear communication is far more likely to identify you as “energetic, friendly, and one of us - in touch”.

Straight-talkers (on all levels) are more likeable, overall. And being persuasive is substantially a function of being likeable and resonating with your audience.

More dangers attach to jargon than mere alienation - it’s so easy to get jargon wrong.

Many words are indigenous to a particular industry. Be certain you know your audience before you toss them into the language you choose for a meeting or presentation.

Take, for example, “redundancy”. It has a particular meaning - and positive connotations - in technology.

Not so in scores of others. Outside their element, some words take on entirely different meanings.

Rather than impressing your audience with jargon, focus on informing them and avoid the risk of getting jargon not quite right or “off-key”.

Jargon dates, and may date you. Once, a quick, unscientific test of potential success of an idea or product was “to run it up the flag pole”. Now, it’s the “smell test”. Plain old “follow-up” or “getting back to me” is rapidly morphing into “circling back”. “Prohibited” or “not allowed” is now jargonised as “circle slash” (the oral equivalent of a circle with an oblique line through it - like road sign). You can be certain these will date quickly.

Suddenly, it’s fashionable to “empower” your offsider rather than to just plain “delegate”.

Savvy, passionate professionals don’t need obscure language and “clever” jargon to communicate. Rather than conforming to transitory fashions in jargon, which can usher you into obscurity, clear communication is plain to all.

Overcome the jargon epidemic and speak with candour and clarity.

P.S. If you want to be really original, create your own verbs from favourite nouns by adding on “ed” suffix. Like you’ve been “eTipped” on this !

Copyright 2006 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

Clients have problems which professional experts are equipped to solve - that’s our raison d’etre.Too often, though, professionals fail to make the connection between the expertise they possess and solutions to the problems clients confront.

A client’s legal problem is also a business problem, and most show a whole lot more interest in the “fix” you offer than the technical stuff.

Here are some tips to engage a client’s ready-made interest in solving business problems :
• do your background research
• anticipate their issues
• offer a creative and effective solution to their problems
• develop specific details of how your solution will work in practice
• assemble evidence of how your solution has worked for others
• prepare for likely questions
• offer clear, short responses to queries
• devise presentation media or hand-outs to support your case
• reinforce your solution with examples
• quantify expected benefits.

Clients buy the lawyers and other professional experts who convince them that their services will solve real business problems, and offer better solutions than alternatives.

Copyright 2006 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd

Because few lawyers and other expert professionals have had professional sales training, they frequently mistake telling the prospective client lots about what they can do for effective selling. Yet, getting meaningful and frank input from prospective client is vital early on, and throughout the process of converting a prospective client to a client.

Only rarely should your goal for first encounter be to give as much information as possible to the prospective client.

Most often, your goal should be to gain the greatest understanding you can of:
• what that individual or organisation needs
• their business environment and functions
• their objectives
• what might stand in the way of their enlisting your support.

Because it’s your prospective client who knows about their business, their needs, and their buying preferences, you need to get them talking about that.

It makes perfect sense for them to tell you all of this before you start selling any specific service or solution. After all, you don’t know what to sell until you know what they need and want to buy !

For a prospective client to spend time and energy telling you about their needs, you’ll first need to establish your credibility. That done, it’s time to ask questions, probe out their responses, and get your prospective client to invest in bringing you up to speed with their world and their needs.

Then, you’ll be positioned to make a productive contribution with:
• anecdotes illustrating your credentials
• ideas
• preliminary suggestions
• reasons to engage your services.

Your prospective client knows their problem - probably much better than you, and definitely in ways you don’t. Your first task is to understand their problem and then show your capabilities and willingness to help.

Copyright 2006 Julian Midwinter & Associates Pty Ltd