Control
Your Client From The Start
Note: This article
originally appeared in The TAKING
COMMAND BLOG
To all of our TAKING COMMAND! Readers:
If your firm is a consultancy, and you are finding it difficult to win fee-paying clients, the letter which I recently wrote to a friend and colleague might provide you with some serious insights into what is required in order to actually land clients instead of just engaging with them. Could you be selling too hard? Could you be talking too much? Could you be permitting your prospective clients dictate terms and conditions to you?
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I am sorry to hear that
following a month of conversations, your prospective client has
decided to freely try to solve its capitalization objective on its
own without having retained the services of your firm. Your client
most likely doesn't know just how difficult it is and how much work
is required in order to obtain capital for the growth of its
operations in this difficult economy... where so many deals are
competing for limited, sophisticated investor and institutional
dollars.
Something must have gone
wrong – and that “something” might just have been your
over-indulgence of your prospective client. You've spent too much
time coaching (for free), educating and selling the prospective
client on your interest in acquiring it as a client and on your
capabilities as a consulting firm. Sadly, the more you try to sell,
the more that you will reduce your value in the prospective client's
eyes. That's just Human Nature.
You've invested your time
with that prospect in educating its president rather than in
positioning yourself and your firm. Too bad. A great deal of
conversation must have been wasted because you didn't set up the
ground rules and frame yourself and your firm's role at the
initiation of the relationship. Maybe you've forgotten that every
step in communicating with a prospective client is actually a (gasp!)
negotiation.
You see, prospective clients
secretly want to be lead by a competent and confident consultant.
They just are very hesitant to say this openly. And this means that
you must establish yourself and your firm as competent, confident and
in command and control. It begins with your very first conversation
with the client. An you must assume the alpha role right from the
inception of the relationship.
Now, getting back to the
case of your consulting firm and your prospective client...
It appears that your prospective
client's president views your firm not as a consultancy, but as a
mere "money broker," to serve the purpose of just shopping
his unsupported and somewhat amateur financing proposition to "real"
investors and arranging to simply connect him with them in exchange
for some unspecified commission -- without the burden of even
executing a fee agreement or paying a much-required retainer to your
firm. He was simply not made to be emotionally, intellectually or
financially invested in your firm, or in your value proposition.
His perception is that you are merely
hungry intermediaries and that his company has a "deal"
which you will happily shop. He evidently does not see your
value-added as a consultancy, and is taking an alpha (dominant)
posture and position in your relationship. He might have arrived at
(for whatever reason) this misconception of your value from the
start.
You might have made some inadvertent
missteps in the process of negotiating with him from the very
beginning of our conversations - if you don't introduce yourself
powerfully and establish a position of strength from the very outset
of the relationship, you might find yourselves faced with a
truckload of prospects, but no signed clients. That would be awful.
There's a definite demand in the
market for what your firm does and for the valuable service that it
provides. You'll definitely get many leads, and generate even more
through your website and through your networking efforts. But you
must establish yourself and your professional firm to every
prospective client as a valuable resource and achieve that
understanding from your very first communication! You must frame the
relationship and set the tone. You must take command.
Perhaps one of the things that you
should add to your weekly management meeting agenda is how you
present yourselves (as leaders of a firm) to prospective clients
from the very beginning, so that each and all of you can properly
represent and position your firm to prospective clients to better
insure control of the course of the relationship.
Additionally, you might consider
letting your wayward client's president take two weeks (to shop his
deal to "real" investors via LinkedIn and other means),
and let him meet with some failure and frustration before you even
accommodate him with further correspondence. Perhaps your errant
prospective client's president should be left without a reply from
you for two weeks – and then you can re-visit and engage with him
again – this time taking a dominant role and re-framing the
relationship. This short span of time might provide you and your
firm with additional negotiating leverage and an opportunity to, in
effect, start the relationship over and set it on its proper course.
Please give my suggestions serious
consideration. I look forward to discussing this, and to my helping
you to building a standardized approach for handling prospective
clients. You have a powerful and intelligent Team -- it's just
a matter of better-defining yourselves to prospects, taking the
controlling position in each relationship from the start, and using
your respective skills and talents with better organization and
united coordination to subtly overwhelm prospective clients. Yes –
they [prospective clients] want and need to be rapidly overwhelmed
by you and your firm.
I am confident that you can have a
full roster of fee-paying clients under contract if you simply
refine and polish your approach. You will win more signed clients,
and simultaneously limit any wasted time – consider this to be a
means of increasing your operating efficiency in client capture and
retention.
Thank you so much for giving me the
opportunity to offer my comments in response to your prospective
client's president's most recent email to you, which was tainted
with a bit of condescension, dismissiveness and some disrespect for
your value. Be confident that he will not get any financing ($50.0 -
$100.0 million!) by his current scatter gun methods and amateur
approach. I would suggest that you and your firm cool down and let
this wine (i.e., your straying prospective client) ferment a bit
more. Then come back heroically when your prospective client has
predictably failed in its efforts without your firm's help.
In Friendship and With All Of The
Best,
Contact me directly at http://bit.ly/CASTLEDIRECT
TAKING COMMAND! ACHIEVING YOUR OBJECTIVES.
http://takingcommand.blogspot.com
The Guide to self-mastery, goal-setting, strategic planning and decision making, leadership, management, contingency planning, leveraging assets, rule and domination, choosing allies, dealing with enemies, assessing risk, time management, negotiation... achieving personal authority, influence, wealth and success through total TRANSFORMATION.
Key Terms: Leadership, management, self-growth, self-mastery, personal power, career advancement, negotiation, winning, wealth, success
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