Maverick Selling: Build a Better Client Base with Counterintuitive
Sales Techniques
by Ken Lizotte and Patricia Coate
Back in the early days of building our business, we earnestly
followed every effective selling technique taught by the
sales gurus at the time. A few of their requisite rules
included: “Always respond to a prospect’s inquiry
as quickly as possible; always attempt to get a meeting
with a prospect right away (lest it go stale); use proven
techniques during a sales meeting to “close”
the sale; and, when making a formal proposal, be sure to
be thorough and comprehensive, especially in the section
that contains your fees.”
But our results were often frustrating. In fact, whenever
these techniques actually worked, the new client often exhibited
an ongoing skepticism about whether or not he/she did the
right thing by signing on. Even after we delivered what
we had promised, the client didn’t always appreciate
it or believe that it was worth the investment.
What’s more, we found the traditional sale techniques
cultivated few long-term relationships. Many clients seemed
to resent that they had been “sold,” and thus
a second sale, to develop an ongoing client relationship,
was either tough to obtain or out of the question.
Then there were times when a sale was reversed the next
day. Call it “buyer’s remorse.”
Before long, we realized that many of our early sales failures
were being caused by these traditional sales techniques
and the reason was simple: we were following tips that were
designed to sell commodity products, not consultative, strategic
business services.
Assume for a moment that you are in the market for a new
refrigerator or a new car. You may not like the sales reps
you meet during the process but most likely you are willing
to endure manipulative selling techniques if you know
that the product is truly what you want. We do this because,
at the end of the excruciating experience, we know we won’t
be taking the sales rep home with us; we’ll be taking
home the new fridge or auto, and we’ll never need
to see that sales rep again.
In purchasing consulting services, however, a prospect
is buying a relationship as well as the service
or expertise needed to solve a problem. We have learned
that if we fail to engender trust in our first few connections,
a prospect often feels that “this is not a person
I want to work with.” If we manipulate that person
into signing on with us, by using some carefully constructed
closing techniques as taught by the gurus, the feeling of
partnership and its concomitant commitment rarely materialize.
Our success rate improved when we began listening more
closely to our prospects, customizing our explanation of
benefits to fit their needs and showing genuine concern
for them and their challenges—not just for landing
the business. We developed a consultative selling approach
that allowed our prospects a get to know us as genuine,
ethical, and trustworthy consultants. As a result, they
began to evaluate us and our services in a more effective
way.
But we weren’t convinced that these more consultative
sales techniques were enough. Would they always lead to
long-term relationships with our clients and continuing
business? Would our clients begin to see us more
as their business partners rather than a vendor? Would we
become such a trusted business advisor that our clients
would never consider running off to someone else for help?
Would we be viewed as consultants who always delivered what
their clients paid for—and more?
We finally concluded that we needed to go beyond
these consultative selling techniques to have a better success
rate for turning clients into long-term relationships. Therefore,
we created our own counterintuitive, selling system—one
that isn’t really selling at all. And it’s working.
Today, using non-traditional marketing and sales, we successfully
cultivate affinity relationships and then build
on them to form long-term business partnerships. With our
system, potential clients seek us out. We no longer
are in a position where we “sell, sell, sell.”
We don’t measure “closing rates” with
prospects or the numbers of clients we have captured over
the years; instead, we measure the quality and longevity
of our client list.
And our success has skyrocketed. Our clients now stay with
us not month after month but year after year. Most of our
prospects are highly qualified, thus the pickings are never
slim. And most importantly, no more boom-then-bust: At any
one time, we have a dozen good prospects in our pipeline,
sometimes so many it’s hard for us to keep up!
To attain such success, your own “maverick selling”
approach will require that you always keep your eye on the
balls that you want to hit, and no longer worry about every
ball (or prospect) that gets thrown your way, at whatever
angles. Once you get the process rolling, you’ll be
able—indeed, be required—to pick and choose.
What, then, are the “techniques” of this approach?
How does the Maverick Sales methodology create a stable,
ongoing family of great clients?
Here are the top, counterintuitive points that we now follow
as part of our Maverick Sales methodology:
1. Get them to call you. Too often we
think we have to go out and find prospects, by cold-calling
or sending out snail-mailings or advertising. Alan Weiss,
author of Million Dollar Consulting, instead, insists
it’s always far better to get prospects to call us
rather than us trying to call (and sell) them. Some of the
ways to do this include publishing articles and/or books,
speaking to targeted groups, sending out a monthly e-letter,
and networking in places where your target market communes.
What these activities do is to position one as a “thoughtleader.”
By doing this, you’ll attract far more qualified prospects
than if you went out searching for prospects. This first
point is 90 percent of the Maverick Sales methodology.
2. Respond slowly to prospects. Sometimes
when business consultants respond immediately to a prospect’s
phone call, they feel self-conscious about their ability
to do so. They might even say to the prospect, “I
don’t want you to think from my rapid response I don’t
have anything else going on.” In our experience, our
prospects do not resent that our initial response is one
or two days later; rather, they actually seem to appreciate
it. They willingly accept that we might be too busy to get
back to them right away. When we do set up our initial call,
our prospects often express to us (between the lines), how
lucky they feel to have been able to reach us at all.
3. Rate your prospects so you know their potential
for hiring you. Before breathlessly rushing off
to set up a sales meeting or send an inquiring prospect
a proposal, we step back and gauge how qualified a new prospect
is for us. We use a point system that we created as a device
to provide some early perspective. Through years of experience
speaking to potential clients, we are now able to judge
very accurately when prospects have the potential to turn
into clients. Here are just a few examples of our point
system. When a prospect is referred by a satisfied client,
we give the prospect +3 points and when the prospect is
the decision-maker (not just one of many), we give the prospect
+3 points. And, if the prospect is a new and struggling
company, we give him/her -1 point because we know from experience
that emerging consulting practices are not in a position
to hire us.
Creating a similar rating system is easy to do for any
consulting business. Think through your own history of which
prospects have tended to become your clients and which have
not. Then establish a rating system of your own.
4. Make it hard for prospects to hire you.
Don’t make it impossible, but just not too easy. For
example, don’t do a proposal right away. Instead,
ask for materials to review. Take the time to survey the
client’s Web site. And then send the client an article
you have written (and hopefully published) about the specific
problem. Try to meet with clients a second or even third
time. It’s not that you’re trying to waste their
time—you’re just trying to be thorough about
what they need from you and what you can give them.
It’s true that during every point of connection,
the prospect may bail out. But we have learned that it’s
far better to have this happen early on than to have it
happen after we’ve “sold” them and popped
a champagne bottle. If a prospect does not bail out, but
keeps at it, then we know we’re looking at a motivated,
committed prospect who is probably sold on us and highly
values the relationship we are offering.
5. Do not try to “close” your prospect,
in person or ever. Of course, this isn’t
literally true. At some point you may have to say, “Well
should we do business together” or “I’d
love to work with you” or something similar. But usually
what happens is far different. Your prospect asks you, “What’s
the next step?” or “How can we work together?”
When he/she pops the question, it’s just a matter
of details.
6. Leave fees out of your proposal (at first).
At the point that you have qualified your prospect
and want to do a proposal, you may have already discussed
fees. But, if you haven’t, any proposal at this stage
can benefit from leaving these numbers out. By sending off
a preliminary proposal, covering everything except fees,
you can further the relationship-building effort and confirm
the conceptual agreement of what your prospect wants from
you. We generally say something such as: “I’ve
left the numbers out for now so I can be sure that I’m
proposing to you exactly what we discussed.” Prospects
typically respond, “Yes, this looks right, send me
the numbers.” By now, you’ve got them very interested
in your services although they may be nervously hoping they
can afford them. Not a bad position for you to be in.
Will our Maverick Sales techniques work for any consultant
the way they have successfully worked for us? We cannot
say for sure, of course, as most consultants conduct their
practices in very personalized ways.
Whatever methods you use, the goal of any selling process
is to earn and sustain a loyal and partnership-minded client
base that will keep coming back for more, eagerly appreciate
what we do and promote us to their own business friends
so that they, too, come looking to us for help. Our approach
accomplishes this for us and provides us with a profitable
and steadily growing business as well as one that is enjoyable
and personally rewarding.
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Ken Lizotte and Patricia Coate are principals
of emerson consulting group, inc., which transforms consultants,
law firms, executives and companies into “thoughtleaders”
by helping them develop their expert ideas for publication.
To learn more, visit www.thoughtleading.com.
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