Never Say Sell. Tom McMakin

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СКАЧАТЬ be MECE, we'd want to specify whether it is a list of corporations or brands. Barbara argued that when comparing apples, we need to make sure not to add in any oranges or the result will be muddled thinking.

      Barbara was our inspiration when asking the question: How do clients buy expert services? Each of the seven elements is logically distinct and together they represent an accurate picture of the whole. For example, a prospect needs to understand what we do in order to engage with us. Separately, they need to be able to buy from us or all the understanding in the world won't lead to them scoping a project with our firm. And the list goes on; in order to buy, all seven elements need to be present.

Any Step Can Be the First

      The Seven Elements paradigm is not a series of steps to be climbed. We can enter the set of preconditions from anywhere on the circle. Understanding what our capabilities are does not necessarily precede the need for a potential client to trust us implicitly.

For example, you might have known a woman from church for 10 years, voted for her to join the congregation's leadership council, and thanked her for writing a college recommendation for your son, without ever knowing she was an expert at integrating stand-alone accounting software plug-ins with Salesforce. You trusted her completely as a person before ever understanding what her service offering was (or that she even had one).

      The opposite can be true as well. You might have always known there was a franchise attorney the next town over named Frank, but you've never known whether he was any good. Then one day, you're having coffee with the CEO of a housecleaning franchise at the International Franchise Association Annual Convention in Las Vegas, and he raves about Frank. You trust this CEO's opinion. Hearing his description of the excellent work Frank did for them, you can feel your trust in Frank grow, as a potential representative of your own interests. You may have understood what Frank's services were for the past decade, but until now, you wouldn't have known he was the right one to trust with your business.

      The seven elements are a set of preconditions that must be present before clients engage with a new expert services provider.

How Do the Seven Elements Apply?

      Using the seven elements as our guide, engaging more deeply with an existing client should be easy.

      1 Clients are already aware of our firm.

      2 Clients understand what our firm does.

      3 Clients have an interest in us because we're already helping them on a project.

      4 Clients respect our work, meaning we've earned credibility as they know we'll get the job done.

      5 Clients trust us because in ways large and small, we have demonstrated we have their back.

      You should only have to wait until:

       They have budget and are able to pull the trigger on new projects.

       They have support organizationally and are ready to pull the trigger.

      Sadly, it's not that easy. You pole-vaulted over the high bar once to win the work, but now you're running 1,000-meter hurdles.

      Awareness

      If you work for a client, they know who you are. That's self-evident. Maybe you have been working shoulder-to-shoulder with them for the past 36 months, building a hiring, training, and retention model that will support their growing workforce needs. They know you. You've gone out to Ruth Chris's for fancy steaks that cost more than an upgrade on United. You've eaten mushroom and sausage pizza late at night as you worked to get a project phase done before your client had a status presentation due. You've visited them in their shop, and they have visited you. You've swapped Netflix suggestions. You know each other.

      But, do your buyer's colleagues know you? The answer, probably, is no. We all run into this. Our buyer's colleagues might have heard of our firm, but, just as possible, they have a vague impression that our buyer is simply “doing good work on that initiative” on his own. Although we may feel like ‘insiders,’ we may still be completely unknown to others in the company.

      Hurdle 1: We are not known outside a small cadre of people with whom we are collaborating on a specific project. We lack broad awareness within the client organization.

      Understanding

      When we work with a client, they know what we do.

      Maybe you offered to audit their marketing mix and how efficiently their spending was generating traffic. When you show up in their offices, they know you to be the “marketing analytics team.” They definitely know what you do and your capabilities, because when they first engaged with you, they called references and asked questions like, “Did you feel like the quality of their marketing analytics work stood up to firm-wide scrutiny?” You know they understand what you do because when they have a problem making sense of marketing data given to them by online sites or media buyers, they turn the data over to you and ask you to make sense of it for them.

      But perhaps they've come to think that your firm only specializes in marketing analytics. Do they know your firm also does media buying, graphic design, and copywriting? Or do they just think of you as the data folks?

      Hurdle 2: The full range of our capabilities is not known – even to clients who know us well – because they have come to define us in terms of the capabilities we offer them now. They lack a complete understanding of all the services we are equally capable of offering them.

      Interest

      Our clients would not have engaged with us if we had not been responding to a felt need on their part. All business objectives lace their way through an analysis of causes and a strategy on their way to a statement of a problem to be solved. For example, a client may want to raise revenues and decides that its poorly trained sales force is the reason it is not selling as much as benchmark companies. The chief sales officer of a company asks her head of training to throw out a net to people they know to identify great sales trainers. Your name is given to the head of training by a satisfied client who was asked for suggestions, and you get the gig. Perfect. In short order you're invited to solve precisely the kind of problem you have decades of experience addressing.

      But, once you're in and doing your thing, there's no guarantee you'll get a shot at the next problem you are qualified to solve. Maybe you do some sales trainings that go well. But you quickly see that the client also needs to do a better job of recruiting experienced salespeople and updating their compensation system to better align with the goals they are trying to achieve. However, your project lead inside the company, the head of sales training, has a single task he or she has been assigned – to beef up sales training – and has no interest in your other ideas or services. You don't have access to the chief sales officer who decided the secret to more sales is better sales training, leaving you unable to get either the chief sales officer or the head of sales training interested in your additional services.

      Hurdle 3: Our client has identified a nail and we СКАЧАТЬ