Once we understand that selling is simply helping, we need to create opportunities to find out what help our clients need. The best way to find out is to meet with our clients more often and ask them:
As part of your sales mindset, it’s important to understand the three freedoms your clients want.
These are powerful tools you can use to sell advisory services that your clients need.
The formula for change can help you understand why a client may be so resistant to change and that we all have some degree of resistance.
It can also help you understand the key motivators for change, being dissatisfaction with the way things are right now AND having a vision of a positive future state. If your client is happy with how business is going, or if they can’t see a better way forward, it is unlikely they will make any changes in their business.
The first steps in the direction of the vision need to be easy, for example, making a business plan. That’s the reason for the ‘f’ being in lower case.
We need to understand our client’s level of resistance to change, drill down into the problems and challenges in the business, show them the potential for a better future state, AND help them to take the first, simple steps towards that better future. To listen to a video explaining the formula for change and how you can apply it in sales conversations, click here.
You don’t want to come across as a product pusher. You want to come across as someone who cares and genuinely wants to help their clients succeed. When you’re positioning business advisory services, it doesn’t work to tell them what to do in their business. They may have tried some of these things before and may have failed. To sell business advisory services, ironically you need to take off your ‘Advisor’ hat and put on your ‘Coach’ hat. You need to ask and not tell.
Start by asking simple questions about how the business is delivering to the owners what they need from the business, focusing on the Three Freedoms (more time away, less worry and stress, or more profit or cash). Keep asking thoughtful questions about how the current position could be improved. You’ll recognise the point of client engagement. That’s when you stop asking and start listening, because now, it’s your client who is asking the questions.
This is a very powerful mindset for accountants to grasp. As advisors, we are so used to telling, NOT asking! Check out our ‘Ask don’t tell Video’ here for a great example of how to pursue a line of questioning, to get the outcome you need. The key is to Stop listening to reply – listen to understand.
The OPPS mindset demonstrates how important it is to first identify the opportunity to add value (linking that value to one of more of the three freedoms), to resist the urge to give an off the cuff answer (which could be ill considered or even wrong), to then clearly articulate your value in ‘what they get’ terms (for example, increased profit of $ X), and finally, to state your price for the services you are offering, and promptly shut up!
To increase your ROI from education marketing, make sure the content links to services you can offer. Then, present a call to action that makes it easy for clients to buy those services.
You don’t want to come across as being salesy, so offer 3 options. Offer a free option, for example, a free guide, so they can self-serve. Your second option could be the low cost option – a business review meeting where they do the pre-work themselves. The third option can be the full service option. Here’s an example of what we mean by a non salesy call to action, taken directly from one of our many webinar kits.
Proposals are not sales engines. A proposal is not an exploration; it simply documents conceptual agreement.
The nine components of The Gap’s proposal system are:
Learn the details on how to write great proposals by downloading our How to Write Winning Proposals Guide here.
In a nutshell, there are seven stages in the sales process, as summarised in the below diagram.
For a tour of our automated proposal tools, sales processes, and lead generating Webinar and Seminar kits, contact the sales team or take a trial of The Gap.
Written by: Viv Brownrigg, FCA | Co-founder and Director of Marketing and Strategic Partnerships
