Be Specific When Selling Services, Or Risk Losing Current AND Future Opportunities

You really do only have one chance at creating a first impression; otherwise it wouldn’t be called a “first” impression. At no other time is a first impression more important than when you are selling services. The product you are selling is already intangible enough; it is expertise, experience or know-how after all. Being specific about what you are selling and the value that you bring to the table is paramount to moving key relationships forward.

Timing is everything. If you know your value proposition, then why hide it? Throw it out there right away so that your prospect understands immediately how you can help his or her business. Many sales people like to ask questions so that they can tailor their pitch. Ultimately though, this handicaps their pitch. How many people do you have working on that? What is your current process? Have you had trouble with this, that or the other thing? Although I am a big fan of question based selling (see http://www.qbsresearch.com/), once you have secured the meeting to discuss your services specifically, you owe it to yourself and to the prospect to be as clear and concise about what you can do for them as possible. It is the only way to get engaged in a constructive conversation about a specific initiative, which is where you get to explain the details of your services.

Recently, my sales team and I were in a conference call with a large multinational about a service that we provide. My sales director, who normally takes the lead in setting up conversations such as this, immediately started asking questions. Right away I could sense that the guy on the other end of the line wanted to know what we were selling and how we were relevant to his business. Previous information exchanges were via email with his superior, who asked that he meet with us. He even came right out and told us that he was not sure why we were meeting. That was generous. As he politely answered all my sales director’s questions, I could sense the growing frustration (“How to I extricate myself from this call, I have work to do.”). At that point, I stepped in and simply stated our value proposition with confidence that he was either going to be interested, or not. Either way was fine with me. I’d rather not spend one extra minute on the phone selling unless I thought we had a real chance of moving a project forward. Heck, I have better things to do too! In this case, as soon as he understood the value proposition he put us on hold to pull other people in to the meeting. Next thing you know we are part of their planning process for the next busy season and we were able to move the opportunity forward.

In another sales meeting recently, I was meeting with the president and chairman of a company that we had been referred to as a good resource for companies that needed project bandwidth. This meeting lasted five minutes. As soon as I understood their business better, I simply stated that we offered a different kind of solution and might not be appropriate for them. I didn’t waste their time or mine. But I know they appreciated the honesty and I might be able to call on them in the future. This relationship got off on the right foot even though no deal was done. Either way, they know that we are straight-shooters and the kind of firm they ultimately would like to work with.

In the end, I believe that people want to work with honest, straight-forward people. More importantly, everyone has limited time to deal with sales meetings. They want to know if you can help them right away or not and how you are going to do it. Why not give them what they need? In the end, if the prospect is not a good match for your services then you are wasting your time too. Better to find that out before you are engaged than after your client has started to spend money.