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Bridging the Client Belief Gap Clients know what they want—they see the end of
the bridge. However, the path to get there may be obscure or under-defined in
the client’s mind, as the fog obscures the bridge pictured here. In
consulting sales, the client is buying the consultant he believes will get him
to the end of the bridge. Top consultants help the client to "clear the
fog" from the bridge. By identifying a clear path, the client sees value.
The more value he sees, the higher a price he’s willing to pay. Clients know the end desired. They can’t always see the path needed.
Two skills bridge the prospective client belief gap: the ability to communicate effectively in client terms and the ability to create belief in the consultant’s competence to reach the end of the bridge. Clients gain belief not from what you say, but from what you do. When you’re selling an intangible service, one of the most memorable ways to communicate what you do (your competence), is a story of a previous engagement or project that relates to the bridge’s end. How do stories bridge the client belief gap? Stories work in sales to help us get, give and test to close. A story should do four things:
The story illustrates you have competence in an area. The length of the story matches the stage in the sales process. An effective story is an illustration of a point that helps a prospect "to see you in action." Used effectively, the story is woven into the process in such a manner that it is not a presentation, but part of the conversation with the client. For example, a prospect wants a better return on investment and point blank asks the consultant if he or she does that, the first question in a meeting. The effective consultant realizes he or she does not know enough about the prospect’s situation to relate an entire story. An effective response to establish you’re worth talking with might be, "We’ve helped many clients improve return, for example, one improvement resulted in a 45% reduction in time which translated into the ability to close more sales at less cost. I’d need to know much more about your situation before I could say whether I could benefit you. Tell me what led you to consider improving return at this time?" Your statement provides a window of credibility and does not paint you into a corner. Most importantly, it allows you to probe into the prospect’s real needs and values. It also provides the necessary information whether you and the prospect might be able to work together. A difficult prospect might say, "I want to hear some more about that." The best response is to respond with a statement, "I’ll be happy to relate that story to you, but I’ve found that it’s not what’s similar in a situation, but what’s different. We need to establish whether I can improve return on investment in your organization. Let’s get back to what you’ve done to date to improve return?" An extremely aggressive client may require a risky "push back" at this stage. "If you establish that our solution could improve your return, what is the process for making a decision on this project?" The consultant has established four things upfront:
By being difficult, the prospect has given the consultant a wonderful opening to establish the buying process upfront. If the prospect takes a more subtle approach, you still need the same information. Model the approach based on the prospect’s behavior. Ensure your competence, the prospect’s situation, a peer relationship and the buying process develop in the first meeting. The story established the consultant’s competence and his behavior established the consultant had something to offer. Most prospects will see value in continuing to talk. The question for the consultant is whether this assignment is a good fit. Why me, why now, why this assignment? The prospect understands how the story benefits him and applies to his situation. Have you ever had a prospect express?
To most prospects, consulting methods appear similar, if not the same. You won’t have enough information to relate your story, if you’ve tried to sell solely on method. You’re no different from others who do strategic planning, empowerment, sales development, or reengineering.
Prospects listen (with various levels of attention) to four things:
A good story helps you to communicate your solution because it tells how it benefited someone else in a similar situation. Prospects don’t buy methodology; prospects buy how you’ve benefited others. Prospects also look for compatibility in working with you. Will you work well together? The questions you ask are crucial to whether you gain the prospect’s idea or picture of what he needs and whether you can communicate your solution effectively. As you unfold the prospect’s needs, you unfold your story to keep him talking—and seeing increased value. Good questions that help the prospect think through his needs also keep him talking and involved. For example, you’ve gotten to the point in the sales process that your prospect agrees that what he needs is a strategy planning session and a subsequent meeting to involve employees. You ask, "Would you be able to accommodate taking your managers offsite for two days? If so, what would work best?" Listen to the response." We know we can’t shut down your business to improve it. Would your retail employees be able to handle one-hour sessions before or after work? How would you envision that working?" Stories provide tangible evidence that differentiates what you do to benefit the prospect. Stories make real how we increase profits, quantity, quality or speed or customize a solution—common benefits every prospect wants in one form or another. For example, a prospective client had been working with another consultant for the past year with very disappointing results. A colleague asked me to visit with the client to determine whether I might be able to better work with managers and front line employees. Superficially the initial consultant had done all the right things. However, probing specifics of how the consultant had worked with the organization provided me with the insight to use models and stories to differentiate myself from the consultant. Had I not taken those steps, my methods would have looked the same—a failed path to the bridge’s end. First I was able to ascertain that the method the consultant had used to make company values part of the decision-making process was totally impractical. The consultant also asserted that middle management was apathetic and should be fired. My experience is that practical individuals don’t commit to something that won’t work. The consultant could be right, but our approach was to gain our own experience with the managers. We built a clear path across the bridge one piece at a time ensuring at each step the prospect understood the difference. Upon meeting the managers, my colleague and I experienced a great deal of initial resistance. When we made it comfortable for the managers to be honest and share concerns, we found them to be responsive and interested in improvement—but too smart to jump on an impractical bandwagon. The manner in which the change was implemented, had made managers’ jobs more complicated, left employees confused, and the manufacturing floor not functioning any better. We related a story of how we had worked with a similar situation. We illustrated that management and employees had been able to refine our methods to grow even further and currently were using the same system three years later. The story had "convincers" such as decreasing service tech time one third, reducing time of a complex process from 10 days to 5.5 days, and increasing customer satisfaction 77%. Solid and impressive points are memorable and stick with your prospect. A skeptical client may ask for more detailed information than is ethical to provide. Be ready to not divulge information regarding your client that might breech ethics: tell your story in a positive way. We further solidified how important management commitment was through our proposal. We proposed to work with management first. The benefit to the prospect was to ensure that another implementation bust did not happen. Managers had to feel comfortable before we involved employees. Because we probed and listened, we didn’t fall into "The Methodology Box" of another consultant who also attempts to use vision and values to build an organization. Why the proposal is so crucial to bridging the client belief gap?
If you cannot describe the prospect’s situation as he or she has come to define it, what you say and what you do are not in concert. That’s why using phrases "as we discussed," using the client’s terminology and his understanding of the situation are all so important—there’s no disconnect between what you say and do with what the client wants. You proposed a clear path to cross and reach bridge’s end. If your proposal contains mutually shared objectives, measures of success and value from the prospective client’s viewpoint, your chances of a closed sale greatly increase when you’ve established belief through real stories that you can do what you say you can do. The key is bridging the client belief gap that you can do what you say. Your stories make your competence credible and believable—don’t fail to share them effectively. The proposal further supports that you do what you say you will. Bridge the client belief gap with effective stories and actions that increase your credibility. Being consistent from initial meeting, through the proposal, to how you work with the client during the engagement will build relationships based on trust and effectiveness. Disengage properly: that we reached the bridge’s end successfully. You’re nurturing more business for years to come. We now have a booklet that builds on this article that includes
Email Janice for more information. janicescanlan@earthlink.net
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