Clients don’t care about your expertise they care about improving their condition.
Thomson Dawson
Modern elder, shaman, teacher, guide, author, advising small business leaders to strengthen the foundation of their competitive advantage.
In the business development and sales process, the default sales strategy for many professional services entrepreneurs is to put a lot of their attention in pitching their expertise and capability to prospective clients.
Naturally you believe your talent, capabilities, expertise, deliverables, service quality are what separate you (your firm) from your competitors and win the day.
The truth is prospective clients view “capability and quality” as the ante. ?
Table stakes.
Capabilities are commodities.
More than what you’re selling, clients care about something far more valuable–improving their condition. Or put another way, clients value desired outcomes more than your capabilities and deliverables.
Improving their current circumstances requires a change or transformation.
Change for individuals (and particularly for organizations) is a difficult thing to do. Change and transformation is risky.
When you understand, from the point of view of the client, what condition needs improvement and how you can inspire a bigger vision for achieving the desired condition, you build the necessary levels of trust faster and increase your power in the buying process significantly.
A sales conversation must never be about your capabilities– rather focus your sales conversations on how you will inspire a change for the better in your customer’s condition. This requires you have empathy, listen more and dig deeper into the client's desired outcomes.
And now for the tricky part...
Prospective clients will not always reveal what their current condition is that needs changing.
Often, clients don’t really know.
For example, people weren't asking for (or needed) an iPhone, but once revealed, the iPhone became something many could not live without. iPhone users’ current condition was changed forever by a device that revolutionized how they organized their digital life.? The iPhone was not created to help people make better phone calls.
The same same principal is true for you/your firm. You must offer a solution the client has been waiting for–just not asking for.
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Don’t be an order-taker.
Your solution or service offer, once revealed, must resonate with an unarticulated-pent-up-desire for an improved condition. This desire will often be a hidden aspiration for something rather than a blatant need for something.
And like my iPhone example, when clients finally do buy, they’ll gladly pay more to do business with you.
Bring more to the table.
In every sales conversation, bring something of value and share it freely. The old saying holds true, “to get what you want, help someone get what they want”.
Bring something more to the table besides your sales pitch.
Help your client-to-be see a bigger vision for improving their condition!
Thomson Dawson specializes in what’s next–guiding leaders in startup and early growth companies to 10X their understanding and accelerate their application of brand strategy as the source code unlocking change, transformation, future growth and potentially bigger exits.
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