To close a sale you first have to open it. That’s the theme of my latest Q&A at Top-Consultant.com. People often talk about closing deals, but in a complex sale like consultancy closing is not the critical element. The real obstacle to going ahead may be something that has been overlooked at an earlier stage of the buying process.
For a detailed description of the situation read the original article. Here, I’m going to summarise the situation in terms of 12boxes.
The aim of the proposal is to prompt the client to express the desire to implement the solution. This buying effect is represented by the yellow box.
If you are not familiar with the 12boxes framework, the left hand column is about the client’s perception of their situation. The middle column is about their perception of the problems associated with it. The right hand column is about their perception of the solution. Reading from the bottom of each column, the sequence follows the AIDA sequence: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
The diagram on the left shows what the consultant in the article thinks should have happened. He has submitted a proposal and hoped it would prompt the client to express the desire to implement his solution. (This buying effect is represented by the yellow box.) But the client seems to be reluctant to give the go-ahead.
A proposal rarely creates the desire for a solution on its own. The client should have expressed the desire to solve the problem and demonstrated clear interest in the solution before the consultant agreed to write the proposal. The proposal reassures the client by addressing the issues that would otherwise inhibit them from going ahead.
The client has not expressed the desire to change their situation, represented here by the red box.
It is easy to be seduced into writing a proposal. Partly this is because clients think the proposal will somehow give them all the information they need to make a decision. But many proposals are written prematurely, before clients are ready for them. This is because the client may need to shift their perception of the situation before they can fully grasp what the proposal is about.
In our Q&A example, at least one of the directors has not really been convinced that their organisation’s current productivity can be changed for the better. This means that they are not ready to express the desire to change their situation.
Before they he can do so, the reluctant director may need to be exposed to similar organisations where productivity improvements have been achieved. Such exposure will not convince him that the solution will work in his own organisation, but it will show him that ‘things can be different’. The result will probably be a set of questions that can be translated into criteria for purchase, which the proposal should address.
Find out how you can use the 12boxes interactive approach to building a more profitable practice.
One of the themes in a recent session of the 12boxes Beta Group was about what you do when the procurement department structures the way you deliver services in a way that works against the interests of the end user.
For reasons of confidentiality I don’t want to be too specific about the example, but a summarised version of the issue with a suggested course of action, appears in my latest post at Consultant News.
This is about the practical application of influencing skills.
Small changes can make a big difference to outcomes.
I try not to bother my GP too much, but I find myself getting irritated whenever I enter his surgery waiting room. The first irritant is a sign on the wall. It draws attention to the waste of doctor’s time, and the inconvenience to other patients, which happens when people book appointments and don’t keep them.
I’ve tried pointing out that there are two simple remedies which would have an immediate impact on the problem, but it seems the practice manager does not want to know.
Remedy 1: Stop normalising the behaviour you don’t want. Normalise the behaviour you want.
To be fair, my doctor’s surgery is not alone in this. In the waiting room, prominently displayed, and regularly updated, is a sign that tells me exactly how much time is wasted in the previous month by patients not turning up.
What is the effect of this sign? It advertises to the occupants of the surgery that booking an appointment and then not turning up is something that a lot of people do. It normalises the behaviour, in the same way that when the press publicises that schoolchildren carry knives – more schoolchildren start carrying knives.
The notice allows people to think, “I know it’s wrong, but everyone does it don’t they?” So, when their symptoms have disappeared and they are rushing around preparing for work and trying to get the children off to school, looking up the doctor’s number and ringing the surgery to leave a message hardly figures in their list of priorities.
The remedy? Replace the sign with one that makes clear that the majority of patients who book appointments keep them – and says how much the surgery appreciates it.
Why am I so sure that changing the sign would make a difference? Professor Robert Cialdini is Regents’ Professor of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. He is a leading authority on the small changes that can have a large impact on the behaviour of target populations. In January 2007 he gave a talk at the RSA in London where he spelled out the impact of social norms and other influences on behaviour in society (PDF) (Sound file opens in browser. Use ‘File/Save page as’ to save file).
During the talk, Cialdini showed that changing signs to emphasise the normality of responsible behaviour had a significant impact on the behaviour of people who saw them. Here is a particularly graphic example from the Petrified Forest in California.
We did a study. We went to several paths, three paths that wound through the Petrified Forest and we placed signs in front of those paths that on the one hand simulated the kind of sign that we saw at the entrance. It admonished people against stealing the wood and it showed a depiction of three individuals who were stealing the wood with a red circle and bar across them. Now we salted the path with marked pieces of petrified wood so we knew what the consequences of passing that sign and winding through the park would be in terms of theft.
Compare that to those same paths when there was no sign at the mouth of the path. Let me show you what happened in the first place when there was no sign there: about 3% or 2.96% of visitors stole a piece of wood. When the sign that depicted three individuals doing so with the warning – “Don’t do this because it undermines the integrity of the forest” – the sign tripled theft. So the sign didn’t produce crime reduction; it generated crime production by spurring people into action.
Now at the same time we included another type of sign. This one was designed not to normalise the undesirable behaviour but to marginalise it. To show a lone thief despoiling the environment with the claim that if even one person steals it undermines the integrity of the forest. It halved theft.
Remedy 2: Get people to commit to doing the right thing.
Cialdini points out that people feel the need to be consistent. He says that once people have said they will do something, they are much more likely to do it. In the following example you will see how by using two words the receptionists at my doctor’s surgery could make a significant impact on the problem of people not giving notice when cancelling their appointments.
There’s a particular restaurant owner in Chicago named Gordon Sinclair who has figured out a way to significantly reduce the percentage of no-shows at his restaurant by having his receptionist change two words in what she says when someone calls to book a table.
Previously she said “Please call if you have to change or cancel your reservation.” You’ve heard that kind of thing many times. Now she said, “Will you please call if you have to change or cancel your reservation?” and she is instructed to pause.
What if I said to you “Will you please call if you have to change or cancel your reservation?” What would you say in the moment after that pause. How would you fill that moment? “Yes of course glad to,” and that’s the commitment. No-shows at that restaurant have dropped from 30% to 10% as a consequence of those two words.
It’s not hard to imagine that a similar effect could be achieved if the receptionists at the surgery adopted this approach when booking appointments. At the moment they certainly do not.
When I visit my doctor, he expects me to take his advice because he is an expert on what he does. If his practice manager does not respect my expertise, I hope she is prepared to respect Professor Robert Cialdini’s. (Respect for authority is another driver highlighted by Cialdini.)
I don’t want to go to a surgery where the staff is prepared to waste public money by being wilfully ignorant of simple measures that would cost nothing to implement. In these difficult times, GPs need to be making intelligent use of limited resources.
My latest article on the Top Consultant web site is about the danger of making assumptions about referrals.
Everyone likes referrals, but they should not be regarded as a moving pavement that will automatically carry you to riches. They make the entry process easier, but you still have to work to bring the opportunity to fruition. Full article >>>
During 2010 I have been working with colleagues to improve the way we teach the 12boxes value conversation, an interactive approach to building a more profitable practice. This has resonated with potential clients, and I am pleased to say that we are just starting our first contract with a medium-sized legal practice through our friends at Trafalgar – the people business, with more to follow.
In a few days, on September 28th, we are holding an evening event in London that will give consultants and professionals a hands on experience of applying the approach to familiar situations.
Following that, we are testing the new approach in a series of workshops as a pilot for what we are planning to do in-house.
If you would like to know more, get in touch.
As is often the case when you have two entrepreneurial people living together, Sunday afternoon discussions begin to turn to the week ahead. This Sunday after tea, while my Dad was immersed in the Antiques Roadshow, my partner and I sat down to think through a conversation he was planning to have with a C-level contact in a major corporation. I can’t say anything about the target or the subject matter, but at the end of it we looked at each other and knew that we had been discussing something important and ambitious.
One thing struck us: if the situation is this simple and obvious to us, why aren’t the parties concerned already addressing the issue with more energy and focus? We are pretty much bystanders. They are more intimately involved and have significantly more to gain or lose than we do. Is there something we don’t know? How can we be in a position to exploit this situation, when others with bigger stakes and resources seem to be failing?
Last evening there was not much time to pursue these questions, but this morning, after breakfast, as my partner was about to set off for the office, we talked again. Three factors emerged that explained our sense of unreality:
- It was the simplicity of the story that had taken us aback. Instead of thinking about ‘selling’ a concept, we had focused on the factors that were driving each of the parties. Each party had a different story, but the story was essentially simple.
- Did we deserve the ‘luck’? My partner had worked hard, but the work had been undertaken for another purpose. The contacts he now had, and the proposition he had to offer was a by-product of hard work, but not one of intention.
- Finally, we had a positive attitude. All the other parties were focusing on the negative aspects of the situation: the things that were restraining movement forward. While others were talking up the restraining forces, we were thinking about how to reduce their impact. And because of the ‘luck’ mentioned above, we had some answers.
Around lunchtime I today my partner called me. He had made the call to his target and relayed the ‘simple story’. Our hunch proved to be correct. A meaningful conversation ensued, which looks as if it will be the first of many.
After he rang, I jotted down some thoughts:
- Just because something is simple does not mean that ‘someone else must have thought of it’. Maybe they have been too caught up in the blame drama and have not reduced the story to its basic elements.
- Don’t undermine your position by going on a guilt trip about luck. Just because you got where you are by accident does not mean that you don’t have the resources and intelligence to carry on through. Even Isaac Newton ‘stood on the shoulders of giants’.
- If everyone is going on about how big the obstacles are, don’t focus on how puny you are in the face of them. Turn your attention to how you might dismantle them. Water did not erode the Grand Canyon, but it carried the rock and chemicals that did. Use your knowledge and position to erode rock with rock.
About me: I show professionals, experts and consultants how to attract and retain clients and obtain profitable and interesting work. My interactive approach to building a more profitable practice is backed by over 30 year’s experience as an independent consultant in business development for high-value services and intangibles. It’s easy to contact me to book an exploratory discussion by phone or face-to-face at my London base, just off Trafalgar Square.
e: malcolm
12boxes
com (malcolm12boxescom) t: +44 (0) 20 7100 1528
For some time I have been following Scott Gould on Twitter [@scottgould]. It’s not so much what he says that attracted me, but the way he interacts with others and builds a sense of community on his site. He both generates and receives a great deal of goodwill.
From time to time I contribute to the comments on his blog, and when he asked if he could reproduce one of them as the centrepiece of one of his blog entries I was gratified by his appreciation.
Since the text has appeared, there have been some interesting and inspired comments. These alone are worth the click.
Understanding Value in a Share Economy
I am currently experiencing emails bouncing back from some if not all email addresses I am sending to. I understand this is due to BT mailservers being blocked as a result of SPAM reports. One Twitter report suggests 200,000 accounts may be affected.
BT have confirmed on the phone that there is a problem, which they hoped to have resolved by this morning, but I am still getting mails bouncing back and there is no information on the web sites or status lines that BT have suggested I monitor.
There are other workarounds for transferring documents, but needless to say this is very unsatisfactory, and I apologise if you were expecting things from me which have not yet arrived.
Update: Since the afternoon of 17th August, outgoing email appears to have returned to normal. For some businesses, one or two days where they could not be sure which of their emails were getting through to their customers was very disturbing. A tweet from BT [@btbusiness] finally acknowledged that the range was blacklisted by a security company for spam. They said that if no further spam is sent from that IP range then the problem shouldn’t reoccur, but they couldn’t say what steps would be taken to prevent it.
The slowness in coming to clear statement of what was actually happening and the reliance on customers on information from each other and sources like Twitter is very reminiscent of what happened when we tried to travel by Eurostar at Christmas 2009. At least Eurostar offered us compensation and paid up quickly.
Thanks to Susan De Sousa for suggesting how we can put a workaround in place now to prevent future inconvenience.
When people present themselves as potential clients and invite you to ‘exploratory meetings’ or old acquaintances say they would ‘like to catch up’, it is easy to be seduced into giving away expertise that has real value. In my latest article on the top-consultant website I suggest some strategies for deterring ‘time-wasters’ while still engaging people who represent genuine opportunities.
Rod Silva of San Diego [@rfsilva123] said, “Read this from 12boxes, its worth your time”. Tony Restell [@tonyrestell] tweeted that it was “an interesting take on dealing with this consulting headache” and Clive Griffiths [@igriff] tweeted that you could “add free coaching”.
I would like to mention that the article was partly inspired by a heartfelt entry in the blog of Karima-Catherine, the founder of Three.angels marketing, a Montreal based Business, Marketing and Social Media consultancy. However, to avoid any confusion, I ought to make clear that she did not pose the question on which the article was based.
Read the article for yourself. Comment below and share how you deal with this problem.
Do you find that in your meetings with clients, things don’t happen in the order that the textbooks tell you they should?
The other day I wrote about ‘Three essentials for a successful business development conversation’. In short, I said the client needs to:
- be aware that a solution exists
- have identified an issue that merits serious attention
- have expressed the desire to change some aspect of their situation
In future postings and articles on this site I’m planning to write about why these are important and how they fit into a conversation with the client where they appreciate the full value of what you deliver. After all, it’s their appreciation of value that leads to client satisfaction and all the goodies that go with it for your firm, professional practice or independent consultancy.
But let’s take a moment to look at what happens in everyday professional life. In theory what is supposed to happen (and I am deliberately simplifying) is something like this:
- You establish rapport with the client on a personal basis
- You then begin to explore areas of mutual interest
- You reach agreement on their needs.
But in practice, it often seems a lot more chaotic.
For a start, there are interruptions and digressions. Just one example: the client tries to be helpful and save time by giving you a potted explanation of what they think they need. It turns out to be quite different to what you think they need and you find yourself having to gently unpick it and start again.
What many professionals and consultants tell me is that the conversation seems to go round and round, or all over the place, and then suddenly, everything comes together in their mind, and they can see clearly what the client needs to do. The solution pops into their head, just like that.
The difficulty is that at this stage the client might not be aware they have a problem, or how serious it is. There might be an amazing opportunity but they don’t want to look at it just now. A gap has opened up.
Does this happen to you? How do you deal with it?
Would the answers to the following questions be useful?
- How can I get a client to tell me the real value of my solution without having to negotiate or work out a detailed proposal?
- How can I get a client to ‘admit’ there is a problem?
- The client knows they have a serious problem and that I have a solution, but they don’t seem to want to take the next step. What can I do to motivate them to take action?
Email me in confidence (malcolm12boxescom?subject=Prompted by 'Our conversation about business development') or comment below. I promise that I’ll answer fully and frankly. This is not a teaser. You will not get emailed with spam about sets of CDs with bonus offers or webinars.
Why am I doing this? It’s because I’m working out better ways of helping people take action when they come together in small groups to find solutions to real client issues. Answering your questions and responding to your comments will help me do that and understand the best way of communicating what I have learned in this field over the past thirty years or so. I need to talk about it with you. It’s as simple as that.
To make sure you don’t miss out on the conversation, select RSS feeds or Email updates at the top of the column on the right.
In the meantime, please post your question or comment or email me in confidence (malcolm12boxescom?subject=Prompted by 'Our conversation about business development') , and I’ll respond. Let’s talk.
