Six Things Shy Sellers Can Do…..

Key Takeaways

Founders from large firms or senior management often struggle with business development and sales.

Common issues for shy sellers include over-reliance on marketing, excessive planning, and difficulty in negotiating and closing deals.

Strategies for overcoming these challenges:

• Believe in your expertise and use testimonials to boost confidence.
• Leverage marketing, branding, and thought leadership to pre-answer client questions.
• Shift from selling to consulting immediately to increase engagement.
• Engage with clients early in their decision-making process to build relationships.
• Use role-playing or personality acting to ease into sales conversations.
• Reframe sales meetings to focus on decision-making or as a skills development exercise.

Most founders that start their first small consultancy jump come either from a large consulting firm or a senior management position in a large company. In most cases, unless they were a partner, they will not have done (much) business development and will often not like it when they have to do it.

The Challenges Faced by Shy Sellers

This is a tragedy because without sales the firm will fail. In my advisory sessions, which here generally turn into coaching sessions, several things commonly happen to this person. They:

• Spend too much time and money on marketing in the (often subconscious) hope that this will supplant the need for sales
• Waste days locked in a room doing sales planning, strategizing and research, getting their fonts just so, and spending as little time as possible talking to potential clients.
• Are great at business development but falter when it comes to negotiating and closing the deal. Often giving discounts before they are even asked for.

Strategies for Shy Sellers

What to do? Here is what works for my clients (and me) that are shy of sales:

1. First and foremost believe in your expertise. Read previous testimonials and remind yourself of your successes. Remind yourself that even without any expertise, an objective, independent view is valuable in its own right.

You are an expert who can help some people, your job isn’t to persuade everyone to let you try, but to find out if they are in that group you can help and tell them how, so they can make up their minds.

2. Let your marketing, branding and thought leadership do most of the work. Clients want to know (i) can you do the work well? (ii) will you make their lives easier? (iii) do they respect you?

By the time you speak to them, you should have answered those questions for them with testimonials, thought leadership, videos and case-studies. If the answer is no, you shouldn’t be working with them.

3. Stop selling and start consulting immediately (see below). I love problem solving and I’m good at it, so I just start doing it as soon as I speak to someone. I estimate my ‘closure’ rate is around 90% and most of that 10% are people that I reject.

I would still say I’m bad at sales because I don’t fee like I’m selling.

4. Do not wait until clients are looking for people to fix their problems. By then it is too late and you may end up in procurement hell. Instead target your thought leadership, marketing and messaging to when clients are setting their priorities and prioritising issues (rather than solutions).

71% of clients say they want to be contacted earlier by consultancies[1], and the earlier you engage the more time you have to build a relationship and show clients that you understand their challenge.

5. When it comes to a sales event some act out a specific personality that helps them say things they wouldn’t normally be comfortable with. One of my clients channels Ruby Wax and another, Alan Sugar.

I’ve no idea if these work as sales tools, but they make them feel more comfortable.

6. Others reframe the sales meeting. Some focus on simply getting to a ‘no’, arguing that they are not trying to sell that they just need a decision. Others frame sales as a skills development exercise, often doing ten calls in the morning to get the day started.

Best of luck!

[1] Hinge (2018) Marketing planning for professional service firms. Hinge Research Institute: Virginia.