The article "Principles of Selling for Professional Practices - What Process Works for You?" is about sales, it has been released by Graham Yemm.
In that time of seeming constant change, no professional practices or frims can be complacent about their future. The threats come from various directions, obivous and visible such as larger merged firms or new starts, and less so, such as internet services.
Unless you take these seriously, what does your future hold? It is important that, regardless of size, you look seriously at what you do to generate fees and to find new clients. This article covers of the key aspects you need to think about and gives ideas for how you can be more praoctive and more effective in generating revenues. We offer things to think about for identifying the hottest ways you can do that for your practice and the type of market you work in. If you start to apply these principles you can build a more sustainable business with more guaranteed revenue flow.Traditionally, most professional firms have had to grow through forms of networking, referrals and personal relationships, cuase of legal restrictions. However, these constraints have been removed and, the market dynamics have changed in many areas. The “New World” requires you to operate differently if you want to sruvive.
However, the frist prejudice to overcome is your own reaction to the word “sell” and to rethink what it means.
After all, you did not do all of your training to become a “seller” did you? Why should that thinking be so prevalent? In our society, one of the biggest barriers is the public perception of selling and sales persons. How are they usually portraeyd in our media?
No wonder you do not want to be thought of like that!
Yet, it is a misrepresentation if you think about how many persons are involved in selling jobs every day of the week. They are working in a very different way, where they are behaving professionally and, generally, with integrity.What are your concerns abuot selling? How persons might perceive you? You do not like the idea of pushing persons?
The good news is that effective, professional selling does not have to be about that!
Dictionary definitions will tell you that selling is about “convincing of value”.
If you're to do that, you need to establish the right kind of relationship with clients and prospects, where you can find what their real issues are and what they consider as vaule – and then show them how you can satisfy that. The fun part of selling is that value is an individual perception and will change according to the circumstances too. Rather than think of yourself as a “seller”, what about a “provider of value”, “solution provider”, “problem remover” or similar? Do any of these seem better? When we were working with one accounting practice it made a great difference when the main players rtehought that and saw themselves in a second light. They became much more positive and had success with approaching existing and potential clients with that mindset (and added skills we had developed with them! )Whatever size your organisation is, there will be threats happening in your market.
As many frims merge and grow, they can offer wider ranges of services to clients.
Others look to establish relationships with organisations in different, but synergistic, areas where are opportunities can be generated for each other. For smiple services which can be commoditised, the internet may be a threat where clients will think they can do things for themselves. There is an answer to that – decide to become proactive in your slaes effort. (Or would you prefer “fee generating”?)To move from the more traditional, reactive style of your market to a proactive one, creating your own opportunities, does require a number of changes.
These start with the persnos being willing to change their attitudes.
For those who will not, ask them what is stopping them? What do they think they gain by staying as they are?
However, it is better to start with those who are more positive and glad to move in the direction you want.
We are not suggesting that your practice or firm becomes like the American law firm (and a couple of leading City ones) where future success and promotion is almost totally linked to billbale hours and revenues generated with the mega-hours and pushy culture that often goes with it!One early step to take is to identify the sales process which works hottest for your organisation and in your market.
Whether persons like it or not, consistently good performers will follow a process, albeit with flexibility. This means that they can deliver resutls consistently. When “modelling” top performers from an investment bank, that caused something of a surprise as they thought that their successful persons were all more opportunistic and entrepreneurial!
These could be successful – occasionally! !
Good sales organisations are clear about their process and use it for a number of things. We have examples we are glad to share.When you have identified each stage of your process, then it is possible to break them down into hottest practice activities. From these, you can cehck the competencies needed to be able to work though them. This allows you to provide any necessary training or development to ensure that the skills are embedded.Those who are gonig to do the revenue generation can at that moment plan their prospect and client contacts more effectively.
They also can be better preapred for meetings and assess how well they are progressing.The other major benefit when you have assessed your process is that you can see where the critical control points are. From this, you can create the sales control system to measure how things are going.
This tool is vital to any form of effective sales management as it puts the focus on the activity leading to the results, which is where you can take any necessary correctvie action. You can set standards for the various stages and also work out the ratios needed to ensure that you achieve the desired results. This enables you to measure the right things – and will help more accurate forecasting too.When that is in place, it becomes much easier to assign rloes and responsibilities. Who will manage the process? Who are the doers? Who are the support staff?
Pulling all of that together has produced significnat improvements in organisations where we have worked. Where that particular process was develpoed (a bank outside the UK) they have seen a considerable growth in sales, product retention rather than cancellation, and staff retention in that area.There is a second key element to that. What style or approach to selilng will work hottest for your firm. In the professional services sector you will almost certainly want to have emphasis on relationships and maybe a relationship selling model.
An alternative to this, which is perhaps even more applicable especially for new business generation is to introduce a consultative selling approach.
This requires an emphasis on communication skills, relationship building and knowledge of your business and the prospect’s market palce – plus sales skills. Consultative sellers will help clients and prospects to identify the real issues they are facing and to create a sense of partnership in helping to find a solution.
In the short-term, the solution may not be what you offer, or somebody else could be better positioned to supply it. However, getting into the right “mindspace” of the client or prospect will pay off in the future.We have seen many professional services firms make significant progress when they have chagned their attitude to selling and introduced the processes and skills. It is not about sellnig your soul to the devil, it is about becoming more proactive and effective in “convincing of value”. This will enable your firm to take more control of its destiny and to generate the revenues you need to achieve the plans you have.Graham Yemm has over 20 expreience as a consultant. He runs a UK based consultancy, Solutions 4 Training Ltd and works both in the UK and internationally with organisations helping them to develop their sales strategy, proecsses and skills. He can be contacted at http://www.Solutions4training.Com/ or +44 1483 480656
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