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By Neil Rackham, Founder, Huthwaite, Inc.
This White Paper discusses the face-to-face selling skills of individuals or teams, as opposed to those of marketing or organizing professional services.
In this competitive age, the advice you’re often given in professional
services is that, in order to survive, you have to sharpen your
selling skills. You’re told:
“Selling is the crucial limiting success skill. No longer will business come to you just because you offer an excellent service. If you seriously want to survive, you have to play a bigger and better role in selling.”
But just a minute! Be very careful. A lot of missteps can be made; that word, “selling,” can be a very dangerous one. There are severe risks in trying to replicate in professional services some of the things that may have proven successful in other kinds of selling. Those who hesitate may well be very wise. It’s vital, first, to define “selling” in a way that’s appropriate for the effective selling of professional services.
Obvious Traps
Some years ago, the accounting and audit firms in the United States
found themselves thrust, unprepared and unwilling, into a brutally
competitive world. Suddenly, they were no longer protected — as
they had been since the introduction of the abacus — from a brutish,
cut-throat marketplace inhabited by less “civilized” mortals.
Previously, business development had been an unacknowledged
agenda item, hidden beneath the dinner menu or the golf card. In
this brave new world of competitive selling, not only had business
become something you were supposed to blatantly pursue, but your
future in the firm would be at risk if you were not successful in this
pursuit.
As typically happens under traumatic change, some firms
overreacted dramatically and began to urge their partners to adopt
approaches to selling that were almost farcically unsuited to their
clients and to their own cultures. They tried to adopt models that
had been successful elsewhere and which, by their very
aggressiveness, looked to be a good fit with this dubious gladiatorial
arena of “selling” into which they had so unceremoniously and
unexpectedly been dropped. Here are three actual examples of what
one such firm attempted:
- First, they borrowed an approach developed by one of their
clients whose business involved the retail sales of wall-to-wall
carpeting.
- When that didn’t work, they adopted training which
encouraged their conservative and stately partners to treat
sales as sporting events. Among other rituals, this included
physically giving each other “high fives” to celebrate a
successful sale. (It’s perhaps fortunate for all concerned that
this was prior to the current popularity of more passionate
signs of on-field congratulations.)
- Finally, they imported from another product sales
environment an approach based on military strategy which
was full of adversarial terminology. Clients became “them,”
the enemy; and “our” objective was nothing less than “their”
unconditional surrender.
Needless to say, the culture rejected all these extreme approaches.
With the benefit of hindsight, we can laugh at the obvious
inappropriateness of this firm’s early responses; but it may be
salutary to realize that this was, and still is, a major firm with
sterling world-wide presence and reputation — not some naive and
unsophisticated fly-by-night.
Still, these were very obvious mistakes. Every day we encounter a
wide continuum of different activities, covered by the simple word,
“selling.” These encompass the low value and the high, the tangible
and the intangible, the consumer sale and the business sale, and so
on. The solution being sold can be as simple to understand as a
push pin or as potentially confusing — and dangerous — as
derivatives. Product sales can range from paper clips to palaces,
from nuts to nuclear reactors. And it’s clear that the skills that
bring success at one end of the continuum can be — and often are
— dramatically different from those that bring success at the other.
But while it may be easy to differentiate at the extremes of low- and
high-end sales, it’s much less so as we try to compare and contrast
the high-end product sale with the sale of professional services. Yet,
some insidiously dangerous traps for people selling professional
services are to be found in some of these more subtle differentiators.
And the whole thing is complicated still further by the significant
ways in which high-end product selling has been changing recently.
Changes in the World of Selling
For the last 20 years, we at Huthwaite have been in the interesting
and possibly unique situation of doing massive research into the
high-level selling of products, while we have also been working with
some of the world’s leading professional service firms and
undertaking research studies into how they develop business. We’ve
been in the position of asking ourselves: Are these two things really
the same? Which are the lessons we can draw from the high-end
product sale that do apply to professional services, and which are
the lessons that do not apply?
What makes such a comparison even more challenging and
interesting is that we are today in the middle of a period when the
world of high-end product selling itself is shifting. In the years
that we’ve been doing our research, we’ve observed the selling of
complex, high-value products become progressively more and more
like the selling of less tangible professional services. And the speed
of this change has accelerated rapidly over the last few years.
We have seen very significant change in buyer/seller relationships.
Major organizations have moved from having a wide range of
suppliers, controlled largely by purchasing clout, through the
selection of a limited number of “preferred vendors,” to the current
trend towards the blurring of boundaries between the two
organizations and the forming of partnerships. With these changes,
the emphasis has been moving away from transactional selling to
the creation of deep, ongoing relationships between the parties. As
a result, the high-end product sale is also becoming less tangible;
and there are often many more customized elements within that
sale. A former mere supplier or vendor is now often found serving
as a consultant in their area of core competence to the “buyer” — for
example, UPS advising some of its customers on how best to manage
their own transport fleets.
This area of client or customer relationships is one where professional
services may once have been the leaders, but where now they are
being left behind. Today, many a professional service firm is
continuing to undertake a series of separate projects with the same
client and calling this a client relationship — but what it amounts
to is no more than a series of transactions. In contrast, a supplier of
thermoplastics or shipping services may be building a much deeper,
advisory relationship with a client — and giving themselves an
unassailable competitive advantage into the bargain. Here is an
area of difference where professional service firms may be well-advised
to catch up.
Common Ground
Let’s return to the commonalties between today’s high-end product
sale and the professional service sale. Unlike classic product sales
in the past, the focus is not on the product or service being sold. The
successful high-end seller focuses on the client’s or customer’s
problems. Discussions are concerned with arriving at a common
understanding of those problems — and then, and only then,
identifying the appropriate solutions. What is being sold is not a
commodity — but added value being brought to the client. Your
objective as the seller is not so much to sell; it is — as a result of
discussion with the client — to come up with a scope of work that
will allow you to add much more value. It is certainly not, as a
cynical view of classic product selling once expressed it, to convince
the client that you’re the right person to do the wrong thing.
Another area of common ground between the high-end product sale
and the professional service sale concerns the amount the client
contributes to the interaction. A question we asked here was: Who
talks more, the seller or the buyer? Unlike stereotypical, classic
“sales” interactions where the seller swamps the customer with
“features and benefits,” our research shows that it is typical of
effective discussions in both types of high-end sale that the buyer
talks more.
So, in the mid-90s, the top-end product sale is beginning to look
much more like the effective professional service sale — and has
even moved ahead in the area of partnering. But we must still be
careful that we do not let these similarities blind us to some very
real differences between them — differences which, if we do not
understand them, will severely impair our effectiveness in selling
professional services.
Avoiding the Less Obvious Traps
One characteristic of the professional service sale is that it is difficult
— and usually undesirable — to separate the seller from the service.
In a professional service sale, more than any other, the seller is a
part of what is being sold. In the professional service sale the
“product,” the service being sold, is intangible. It is a service which
will be provided by people. So the buyer has to make judgments
about the people who will provide the service as well as about the
quality of the service itself. What’s more, these two characteristics
of the professional sale interact and fuse together. It is conceivable
in a product sale that I might decide to buy the product — even
though I hated, distrusted, and despised the seller — because it is
the best product at the best price; and it fits my need. If, however,
as a client, I am trying to decide which lawyer, accountant, or
consultant I wish to hire, I am going to be evaluating who I’m talking
to as well as whether I like what they are offering. Because it’s
unlikely I will be able to touch, taste, or feel their service in advance,
I have to trust that what they assure me they will provide is what I
will actually get. In no other sale is the trust element more necessary
for success — and it is predominantly here where lessons borrowed
from other sales may turn out to be very false friends.
To avoid such traps, and to ensure that we use appropriate
approaches that will build client trust, we need first to be able to
identify accurately what the components of trust are. Then, if we
are to ensure their presence in our client interactions, we need to be
able to identify where and when the different elements will be most
effective.
As you might expect from behavioral researchers, we subscribe to
the maxim that you cannot measure what you cannot control and
have approached the subject of trust from this perspective.
Components of Trust
We were working with another major account, audit and consulting
firm at the same traumatic period of change in their marketplace
referred to above. When we talked with their senior partners, we
encountered serious concerns about how they could maintain their
independence, objectivity, and overall professionalism in this new
world of competitive selling. So real and widespread was this feeling
that we decided to carry out a study to ascertain what clients
perceived as desirable characteristics in a seller who was selling
them professional services. So, in our naive way, we went out and
asked them. When all the responses were analyzed, we found that
there were three consistent qualities that clients were looking for.
These, with our definitions, were:
- CONCERN
– Focus on your clients and their needs, not on yourself or your
products/services.
– Understand clients’ problems and why they matter,
- CANDOR
– Be straight; be honest.
– If you don’t know, don’t pretend.
– Don’t deceive or exaggerate.
- COMPETENCE
– Know how your products/services meet clients’ needs.
– Know how they solve business problems.
These three Cs have turned out to play such a crucial role in our
subsequent work with other professional service firms that each
deserves its own discussion.
Concern
Concern looks so immediately obvious a component of good client
relations that it may come as a surprise to find that clients
consistently rated this as the lowest of these three qualities displayed
by professional service providers. Figure 1 shows the results of a
study in which we sought client assessments of candor, concern,
and competence, comparing their ratings of capital goods salespeople
with their ratings of consultants.
Figure 1. How clients see consultants and salespeople.
As you can see, the major area of perceived weakness in the
professional service providers was concern. It’s intriguing to debate
possible reasons for this. Contrary to my expectations, I have had
very few professional service people question the data itself. In fact,
they have tended to accept it with what to me is a curious lack of
surprise. When asked why they think clients have this perception,
their answers are generally along these lines:
“In order to preserve our objectivity, we have been trained
not to display feelings.”
“If we focus on our solutions, the client is liable to feel no
concern.”
“It’s not to say that we don’t feel concern so much as we don’t
seem to show it.”
It doesn’t matter, in this context, how much concern we may have
inside us if the client is not aware of it. The issue is: How can we
make our concern visible? How can we show concern in a way that
truly impacts the client? Primarily, we can show it by demonstrating
interest in our clients and in the worries and problems they have.
It is by showing that interest and curiosity, by asking questions
that reveal our desire to understand the client’s point of view fully,
that we make our concern visible. On the other hand, if we
concentrate on showing how sharp, quick, and clever we are and
what elegantly elaborate solutions we can provide, we will not be
showing concern for the client.
Client Needs Are Not Static.
Let’s beware of another trap here
— the client’s focus may change. If we don’t follow these changes,
our previous concern can now appear irrelevant and even insensitive.
So it may be helpful if we can forecast how the focus will tend to
move.
While we may not be able to look inside the client’s head, we can
predict that the client’s anxieties will go through some pretty well-defined
stages as the decision-making proceeds. Initially, a client
will be preoccupied with the problem itself: “How big is it?” “Is it
really a problem?” “Must I do something about it?” If we are to
show concern at this point, how should we respond to the client?
We should show great interest, curiosity, and focus around the
problem. Help the client to define it, to shape it, showing that we
are putting effort into understanding it.
But be alert as client focus shifts. What happens psychologically
with clients who have come to the point of saying, “Yes, I know I
have a problem; and I have to do something about it,” is that they
now become disturbed by other issues. They start to examine the
various different ways in which they can hope to solve the problem.
At this point, all your efforts to show concern about the original
problem are no longer responding to where the client’s energy is, to
where the client’s anxieties lie. They’ve shifted. They’ve shifted to
the evaluation of their options for action. It’s crucial to stay with
the clients as that focus shifts.
Key Skills.
Asking questions and really listening are the key skills
here, and it’s terrifying how bad we can be at it. If you doubt this,
please accept the challenge of tape recording a reasonably complex
discussion with an important client. Unless you’re one of very few
exceptions, you’ll be shocked when you replay the tape at leisure.
You’ll be amazed at how many things the client said that you failed
to hear during a discussion when you thought you were doing an
exemplary job of listening.
What causes this? What is it that most of us are doing when we
should be listening? Could it possibly be that we’re preparing the
next verbal gem we’re about to utter? Could we be concentrating on
our own next response while the client is still talking?
Following the client’s thoughts and energy is crucial to showing
concern. For you to continue to focus on the knotty problem you
and the client have been discussing at length when the client has
moved on to wondering whether you are the right firm to provide
the solution will no longer feel like concern to a client whose energy
has moved on to the next stage of the decision process. Likewise,
discussing the selection criteria clients should use in selecting a
provider is not going to feel helpful if their decision to proceed with
the project is being held up by worries about safeguarding the
confidentiality of the report that will result from it.
Concern in this context is not measured by what you feel. It’s a
matter of what is visible to the client — how it is reflecting the
feelings the client is experiencing. And clients are forever saying
that consultants are not good at doing this.
Candor
We have said that concern, candor, and competence are the major
components of trust — and that trust is crucial in the professional
service sale as in no other. It is arguable that, of all three, candor
makes the most obvious and immediate contribution. Stop for a
moment to think of examples of people you trust. Probably these
will be people who tell you the bad news as well as the good.
Professional service providers who point out what their solution
will do, but also take care to point out what it will not do, are likely
to generate trust. On the other hand, people who dismiss potential
difficulties airily or assume a carefree “we can do anything” attitude
are likely to do the reverse. The worst offenders are those who lack
expertise in a particular area and try to bluff their way through.
Admitting that you do not know something is part of building trust:
blowing smoke runs the risk of rapidly destroying it. By its very
nature, trust, once destroyed, is usually destroyed forever.
Competence
Competence is the third trust element that clients selected in our
study. However, clients do not always measure competence in ways
we might expect. Tempting though experts may find it to deliver
learned and exhaustive lectures to demonstrate their competence,
the inability of most mortals to concentrate for long in areas where
they are not themselves experts makes this an unsuccessful strategy.
This problem dramatically increases with preoccupied business
people who are coping with the pressures of hectic schedules. So it
becomes an even less effective strategy with those very people who
are most likely to be able to make significant buying decisions in
our favor. This leaves one to wonder what it is that motivates so
many people to deliver these monologues if it’s not the seductive
appeal of hearing their own words of wisdom.
Clients may not judge competence by speeches, but they do seem to
relate competence to the understanding shown of themselves, their
feelings, and their problems. Consultants who use terminology that
reveals familiarity with the client’s world and ask penetrating
questions that show they can really appreciate the business
significance of issues to the client are liable to score high on the
competence scale.
A way to lose points is illustrated by the following example. Imagine
for a moment that you were unfortunate enough to have to take a
loved one to a doctor whom you did not know. Assume that you are
away from home and you have reason to be seriously disturbed by
the patient’s state. Now, suppose that this doctor shows little
concern. Ask yourself the question: What am I liable to mistrust
even if I know nothing whatsoever about related medical matters?
Is your answer, “their competence”?
This is the “competence paradox.” You can probably think of highly
technically qualified people you know who seem to lack the ability
to show concern. It may be that they are more interested in the
complexity of the problem — whose sheer apparent intractability
has a loving fascination for them — than in the client who owns it
and who is, incidentally, hoping for a swift and painless solution to
it. So here’s the paradox: The truly competent person who does not
show concern may well rate low on the client’s competence scale.
With all the predictability of Murphy’s Law, this is going to happen
most when the client’s problem is most painful and, consequently,
when the rewards for solving it are potentially that much greater.
Maintaining Consistency
As a provider of professional services, you are at risk if you deliver
one way and sell in another. If you consult, your consulting style
should also be the same style as your style of selling and delivery. If
your style, or your firm’s style, changes in different client
interactions, you will create confusion and mistrust in the client.
High-end selling and consulting are not different and separate skills.
As we have observed really world-class consultants over the years,
we have seen more and more evidence of this. When we are watching
the very best of them in their interactions with clients, we cannot
tell whether they are consulting, selling, or delivering. There is no
difference in style, no use of different behavior. What we see is a
professional ruthlessly focused on adding value for the client — and
this is demonstrated in a consistent manner whatever the stage of
the client relationship.
In Summary
The distaste that many professionals have felt for the word, “selling,”
has not been entirely misplaced. Professionals typically find models
derived from product selling to be pushy and manipulative —
unsuited to the cooperative, trust relationship that they correctly
aspire to have with their clients. Professional bodies have rightly
rejected concepts, language, models, and methods transplanted from
product selling which they have recognized as alien tissue. Like all
simple labels used to describe complex processes, “selling” can be a
misleading term — particularly if it raises images of tricks and
techniques used to manipulate clients into decisions that may not
be in their best interests. Such a definition is clearly inappropriate
for professional services.
An effective business development model for an advisory relationship
should be based on candor, concern, and competence. It needs to
support an approach where client and advisor/consultant are
collaborators, not antagonists. The objective of the selling process
is to bring them closer together — to reach a shared understanding
of the client’s problems, the significance of those problems, and the
value the client will gain from solving them.
Perhaps all this can best be summed up in a phrase frequently used
by Jan van den Berg, a Director at McKinsey & Co. with whom we
have had the pleasure of working for many years. Jan talks about,
“being on the same side of the table as the client.” With such an
agreed foundation, it is realistically possible to develop future
professionals who are skilled and successful in truly client-centered
business development.
The Delicate Skills of Rescoping
In the space of this short paper, I have tried to condense some of the
results of many years of observation of thousands of buyer/seller
interactions in both high-end product and professional service sales.
There is, however, one other major area which is predominantly an
issue with the professional service sale and which there has not
been space to address. This is when the need occurs for those
extraordinarily subtle skills required to handle the awkward
situation where the client wants you to provide a solution which, in
your best professional judgment, does not provide the value that
could be achieved for the client. Worse still, the solution the client
is asking you to provide is one that you judge so inappropriate that
you do not wish to take it on.
These skills, which we call rescoping, will be the subject of a separate
White Paper.
ABOUT HUTHWAITE
Huthwaite is one of the world’s premier sales effectiveness
consulting and training firms. During the past 20 years,
we’ve helped hundreds of organizations achieve competitive
advantage by developing sales skills, sales management
and strategy programs, and innovative sales force
responses to marketplace demands.
Our customizing team is second to none, with unparalleled
experience in developing both strategic and tactically
customized programs.
For more about how we can help your organization meet
its sales effectiveness goals, contact us at:
Wheatland Manor
15164 Berlin Turnpike
Purcellville, VA 20132
(540) 882-3212
spininfo@huthwaite.com
www.huthwaite.com
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