How To Use Sparkling Messaging To Convert Conversations To Consulting Clients
I'm sure you, like me. have been on a call or a networking event (can you remember those?) and you've been asked a question about what you do.
You answer it but as soon as you've answered you think
"Doh, I could have said it better than that".
Or you have been in an important meeting and someone isn't playing ball or engaging and you just don't know what to do or say.
Here's a process that you can use to quickly and easily
- Develop answers to known questions you'll anticipate you'll get
- Give yourself a framework to allow you to confidently think on your feet, deliver an answer and be happy about what you said
And as a direct result you'll be able to convert more of your conversations to cash.
The Building Blocks:
- The first thing you will do is schedule 20 minutes of time to implement
- In that time period, I want you to write down a list of reasons or problems that people give you for why they have reached out to you about your services or why they need your services
- Narrow it down to the top 5.
- Write out the tough questions and situations you face when undertaking business development and sales and mould the answer around the top 3 problems or reasons why people engage you. Now hang, you might say! You said narrow down to 5. I did. You'll use 3 in most answers but having 5 prepared will allow you to use situational fluency to pick the best 3 for the person you are speaking to.
- Apply the top 3 reasons as answers to the tough questions, use them and refine them. Don't worry - I give examples below.
EXAMPLE 1: When asked on a call (or networking) What do you do again?
In this situation you may be on an inbound enquiry where the person doesn't really know too much about you, a networking event or a referral from someone.
They are reasonably 'cold' and ask you what you do.
Answer Framework Example:
[name] that’s a great question. The best way to answer that is in 2 parts.
What we do and why people use us.
We are a revenue generation company for B2B Consultants. [The what]
We usually get called in when 1 of 3 things happen in a client’s business: [The Why]
- they have no lead generation strategy and their network and/or referral strategy isn’t driving ideal clients or is driving clients but not the ones they want.
- they’ve hit an income or revenue cap. This typically results from working on day rates and not knowing how to transition to value-based fees or project work that is not bound to time.
- whatever way they are generating clients just isn’t predictable enough and doesn’t provide a platform to scale.
Do you have any of these challenges?
---
Answer Framework Analysis
- Here you've told the listener - we help you. You have appealed to their What's In It For Me. You have said - we help people like you i.e. B2B Consultants. You have their interest.
- We usually get called in when 1 of 3 things happen in a client’s business - There is some subtle psychology at play here. Firstly you are setting the scene that clients call you as most in demand Consultants expect. Secondly, we are programmed to filter information in 3's. Again, you have the listeners interest because they want to either filter themselves in or out based on your 3 answers.
- The 3 you give should be based on your situational fluency for that environment i.e. if it was a solo consultant I'd answer with the 3 from the 5 more relevant for solo consultants but if it was a larger firm I'd modify them slightly for the ones I know firms struggle with i.e. getting access to senior decision makers, selling larger deals etc
- Do you have any of these challenges? - now you've transitioned to their engagement. Instead of leaving he conversation go on to a completely different route like "tell me what you do?", you are specifically asking them to engage with their experience based on the challenges you have articulated. Don't worry if they don't have those challenges. They will tell you No and very likely tell you what their challenges are.
EXAMPLE 2: A prospect in a call doesn’t express any pain points no matter how hard they are pressed.
Sometimes you'll be on a discovery call with a potential client and they love to give you the backstory but don't open up on their challenges.
They don't say "In a nutshell we are struggling in the area of" or words to that effect.
You sense that the call could go on for hours and at some point the potential client will say "OK tell me how much what you do is".
You know you can't answer that.
Even if you have a productised service you can't apply it to a situation where there is no need.
The quickest way to deal with this is to regain momentum of the conversation with this injection question:
Question Framework Example:
[name] I run around 20 of these calls a month and my best clients are looking to solve a few consistent challenges
- they have no lead generation strategy and their network and/or referral strategy isn’t driving ideal clients or is driving clients but not the ones they want.
- they’ve hit an income or revenue cap. This typically results from working on day rates and not knowing how to transition to value-based fees or project work that is not bound to time.
- whatever way they are generating clients just isn’t predictable enough and doesn’t provide a platform to scale.
Now…I’m curious as I didn’t hear you say any of those. Can you relate in any way to any of those or is everything 'A OK' in the business?
Answer Framework Analysis
- Here you've told the listener - most of our best clients. I mentioned this principle on the last newsletter. We use it a lot. A potential client wants the very best of the results you have to offer and it's subtle reminders like this that keep this top of mind. If you want the best results then you have to open up and put your cards on the table here.
- Using the top 3 challenges you solve as an easy way to grease the wheels of the conversation on the outcomes you provide linked to the challenges you can solve.
- The 3 you give should be based on your situational fluency for that environment i.e. if it was a solo consultant I'd answer with the 3 from the 5 more relevant for solo consultants but if it was a larger firm I'd modify them slightly for the ones I know firms struggle with i.e. getting access to senior decision makers, selling larger deals etc
- Do you have any of these challenges? - now you've transitioned to their engagement. Instead of leaving he conversation go on to a completely different route like "tell me what you do?", you are specifically asking them to engage with their experience based on the challenges you have articulated. Don't worry if they don't have those challenges. They will tell you No and very likely tell you what their challenges are.
- Now…I’m curious as I didn’t hear you say any of those. Can you relate in any way to any of those or is everything 'A OK' in the business? - What we are doing here is refocusing the conversation on the challenges and giving the 3 options as an easy starter for 10 or as something to disagree with. If they say everything is 'A OK' then you can now make a call to end the conversation.
MORE EXAMPLES
I've shown you the frameworks and given you 2 examples of how to apply it to tough conversation points.
You can take this and apply it to virtually all of the tough questions you have.
With a little preparation and planning you'll never be tongue tied, left feeling you've said the wrong thing or worried that you haven't uncovered the reasons a potential client may buy from you.
Oh... and if you want to drop a tough question in the comments I'll see if I can apply the framework to it for you.
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