and 8 things to stop doing right now.
by martin bissett
there is one promise i can confidently make to you: if you follow the steps contained in this blueprint you will be successful in your bringing in new business proactively. the reality, however, is that things don’t always run as smoothly as they should.
more on business development: how to calculate your growth target | close the deal and get paid | change your mindset, change your future [video] | how to create a winning proposal | how to prepare for the first meeting with a new prospect | the five fastest ways to kill a new opportunity [video] | use this spreadsheet to evaluate prospects | before the sales meeting | do you deliver on your website’s promises? | lowballing is undervaluing yourself | appraise your prospects | how to win your first client
based on my many years of working with accounting firm partners, i have observed that lack of success usually boils down to the following five factors:
- unfamiliarity with the discipline. in the accounting profession we have not had to acquire these skills before, and doing so brings us out of our comfort zone.
- lack of time. we are all busy professionals, and we feel we don’t have the time to devote to acquiring this new skill set.
- lack of urgency. gross recurring fees provide the revenue to cover overheads, and many of us have achieved the lifestyle we want, so there is no great urgency to obtain new fees. some of us are close to retirement, and our enthusiasm for our careers may be winding down.
- lack of caring. although most would be reluctant to admit it, many just don’t care about their clients, and so they can’t demonstrate to potential clients how they would work to help them attain success. they just want the fees.
- lack of confidence. some professionals do not have confidence that they or their team have the capacity to win the big, high-grade, new work the firm needs in order to grow.
when you don’t “close the first sale” on a regular basis, your self-esteem is dictated by your success in selling situations. low self-esteem when you lose, high self-esteem when you win. so when you close that first sale, that sale of yourself to yourself, you will regularly feed your own self-esteem.
this in turn means you will have the assurance that you have something of value to bring to your clients. you will understand the value you have brought to clients’ lives in the past, and be able to demonstrate that to potential new clients.
those who do well on the first meeting do two things very well:
- they maximize the creation of empathy and interest the client perceives they have in the business and
- they minimize the length of time it takes to meet again.
a strong proposal is the next step, and it is consistent with the process you have gone through. it
- introduces the practice,
- reviews the needs of the business and the solutions you can provide and
- illustrates how you have done this for others.
it is a summation, rather than an explanation, and it demonstrates that you have listened and understand what is important to the client. in this way, it justifies the fee you expect to obtain by demonstrating how the value you will bring will help them reach their desired outcomes. it also includes authorization and the means of payment to seal the deal.
when you present your proposal, you will undoubtedly need to resolve certain concerns they may have. you will hear such comments as: we need to think about it, that’s too expensive, we can do it ourselves, what you propose is too time-consuming, we need to talk to someone else before we come back to you, our current accountants have been with us for years — and myriad others along the same lines.
it is your job to know in advance how you will counter these objections in such a way that the weight of your solutions is greater than the weight of the issues they raise.
you must learn to treat the close of the deal as simply a logical next step to the conversation you have been having with the prospective client. if you have
- created empathy,
- answered their concerns,
- proposed a justifiable fee and
- created an urgency to begin,
simply asking for the business is the logical next step. the easiest close will come when you have done everything right in advance.
become familiar with the a.c.c.o.u.n.t.s. process of grading and qualifying all the prospects in your pipeline. this will help you identify those with a high probability of winning the work, and those whose likelihood is so low you would be well advised not to waste time on them.
those are the things you must do to build an effective business development program.
by the same rule, there are eight specific things you should always avoid doing:
- losing control of the timetable. if the prospect breaks his promise to get back to you and you spend your time chasing them without knowing if you will ever meet with you again, you have lost control of the timetable.
- chasing the prospect by phone. if they don’t answer your calls or emails, you wonder if you are being a pest or if you should continue to reach out. you don’t know if they are just busy, on holiday or truly not interested. you have lost control of the process; you don’t know when things will be resolved so you can’t include the business in your forecast.
- emailing the proposal. seek every opportunity to present the proposal in person so that they will understand the full impact of your thinking. if you send it by email, you have no control over how they will receive it.
- selling features. features are your great tax department, car parking on site, clichés like big enough to cope but small enough to care. none of these things has any relevance to the client. focus instead on them, their aspirations, their desired outcomes, not what you think makes you look good.
- lowballing fees for no good reason. remember that $1,000 discount 100 times a year results in a loss of $1 million in a decade.
- failing to ask for the business. don’t stumble over the close and let the meeting end with no resolution. if the prospect promises to send you their books and records to have a look, beware the non-arrival of those books and records. never leave without the next meeting in the diary.
- ignoring silent influencers. more often than you might think, personal assistants, bookkeepers and other non-decision makers have opinions that are valued by the real decision makers in the business. ignore these people at your peril. instead, make a friend of every person you meet in the prospective client’s business.
- sending or presenting weak proposals. weak proposals
- don’t demonstrate why you are a superior choice over their existing or other advisors,
- don’t justify the level of investment that is needed for them to work with you and
- don’t demonstrate how you are going to help them. such proposals will undermine all your hard work and will not get you the business.
simply cutting these eight practices out of your business development activities will quickly show a spike in your conversion ratios and the turnaround time from first meeting to welcoming them aboard as your new client.