“The high-net worth financial community that I’m involved with is small and tight-knit,” says Antony Abiatti, a director at SCS Financial, “so any time I can get in front of a member of that community and leave them with a positive impression of my firm, it’s time well-spent.”
However, at the same time, you want to make sure scarce sales resources are deployed effectively. To do that, your organization should already have in place a target client profile to use as a guide during the screening process. A prospect’s size, industry specialty, geography, and buyer description (CEO, CIO, general manager, etc.) should be established based on the organization’s success and failures serving diverse customers.
IN-PERSON MEETING AND PRESENTATION. You never get a second
chance to make a first impression. There’s no better opportunity to showcase your firm than during an uninterrupted, in-person 45 minutes with a prospective buyer. Making the most of that meeting—that is, taking the necessary steps to successfully secure a second meeting—requires staying focused on two initiatives:
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1. Mining the prospect for detailed information about his or her specific needs
2. Demonstrating deep competence and some form of differentiation
“Good services salespeople have a knack for being able to identify good prospects and then extracting an incredible amount of information from them during the buying process, especially during the first in-person meeting,” says Alan Osetek, senior vice president at Carat Interactive.
First meetings can be casual and informal or highly structured. Firms need to be prepared for either scenario, which can most times be ascertained before the meeting. To make the most of the initial meeting and get the organization in a position to craft an effective proposal, business developers need to be prepared to be active listeners and effective presenters.
A good business developer will have the following questions answered after the first in-person meeting:
• What is the driving force behind the issue being discussed (e.g., reduce operating costs, prepare for acquisition, improve profitability)?
• Who is most affected by the suggested improvement (e.g., CEO, shareholders, VP of HR)?
• What is an ideal outcome of what is being discussed?
• What, if any, budget has been made available, and how will the success or failure of this project be measured?
Depending on the nature of the project, there are endless additional questions to be addressed, many of them arcane and specific to the services being provided. But by making sure you also address high-level issues and, therefore, appeal to the fundamental needs of the buyer, who likely has to justify expenditures in some economic fashion, you ensure that the proposal will be aligned with the buyer ’s needs.
Firms also need to be prepared to address the core questions that every prospect is interested in getting answered:
• What does your firm do (services)?
• Who have you worked for (clients)?
• How do you do it (process/methodology)?
• How much does it cost (pricing)?
• When can you do it (timing)?
Though they won’t ask for it explicitly, prospects are also interested in how you differentiate from the competition. Firms need to walk a fine line here. You need to differentiate to stand apart in a crowd, and one way to do that is to address the preceding questions completely. Present irrefutable
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examples of your work, and be prepared to talk about them in great detail.
Tailor the examples to the expected needs of the prospect. Discuss the unique philosophical approach your organization employs when delivering services and how it benefits clients. Remember that prospects use the vendor evaluation process to attempt to mitigate risk while also maximizing return on investment and look good in the process.
LEAD EVALUATION AND APPROVAL.
After the in-person meeting, you
should have enough information about the prospect and his or her needs to determine whether there is a potentially good fit between your organizations. Can your organization serve the prospect successfully and profitably?
Is there an opportunity for a mutually beneficial, long-term relationship?
Depending on the nature of your business, this decision could have huge implications. When talking about large-scale information technology projects, for example, the upfront investment can be significant. Sarah Casalan, vice president of IT at Ecko Unlimited and former Accenture consultant, comments, “Sometimes we want to see a free proof-of-concept, on a small scale, before we’re willing to move forward on a project.” In these scenarios, firms need to have a solid understanding of the opportunity before making such an upfront investment. The following questions help determine an answer:
• Does the prospect fit in the firm’s “sweet spot”? If not, how far on the periphery is it?
• What is the history of the relationship between the firm and the buyer?
• What is the prospect’s history in dealing with service vendors? Is the prospect a veteran, successful user of services or notorious for squeezing vendors?
• What are the prospect’s future plans? Is the prospect on a growth tra-jectory or simply protecting market share?
Ultimately, the decision to move forward or not with the prospect relies on a variety of internal and external factors. The wise firm will walk away from a project for an attractive, strong brand name company that will bring a significant dose of favorable publicity along with it when there are too many warning signs—price sensitivity, low perceived value of outside vendors, no decision maker, and zero growth plans. The presence of several negative factors will turn an otherwise attractive prospect unattractive. Alternatively, firms also make the decision to take on projects as loss leaders because the prospect has the characteristics of a profitable long-term client, yet needs tangible evidence in the way of a small project to understand the value of the firm.
PROPOSAL DEVELOPMENT.
It’s usually time to develop a proposal after:
• A lead has been sufficiently qualified.
• A detailed needs assessment meeting has taken place.
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• A company has selected your organization to be one of a few on a short list to submit a proposal.
The core requirements of a good proposal are covered in the following section of this chapter, but there are two considerations to heed at this juncture in the sales process:
1. Understand the competition. Just as there’s such a difference between bad business and good business, there are times to submit proposals
and times to abstain. If you’re one of 10 firms submitting proposals and lack a strong relationship with the buyer, chances are you’ve been invited simply for comparative purposes and are wasting your time.
Knowing the competitive environment will help to differentiate.
2. When it makes sense, do your homework. “I see some proposals and it was as if the vendor had read my mind,” says Marc DeCourcey, a
Washington, DC-based political consultant who helps clients evaluate and select vendors for government contracts. “And I know from having been on the other side of the fence selling services that it’s because they did their research, talked to everyone in the community who
might be helpful, and got as much information as they could from the buyer.”
In an ideal situation, fee negotiations and other alterations to the proposal will be completed before the final submission of the document. But ideal situations require that many disparate factors come together neatly and cleanly, and they can be tough to come by. Thus, once the proposal is formally submitted, there is often the need to haggle and make changes. However, even when this situation arises, if business developers work to diligently follow a system—applying judgment when appropriate—each step in the selling process should build on the previous one and result in a firm’s being in a favorable position to win new business.
Written Proposals
Regardless of specialty, proposals from professional services firms should address five to eight main areas. Proposals typically range from 3 pages to 50 or more, depending on the nature of the work and the size of the proposed engagement. Proposals should be easy to read and error-free, but because this is not always the case, the result is a differentiation opportunity for firms that pay attention to the details.
Executives are partial to delivering hard copy versions of proposals to prospects (and other documents as well). Each interaction with a prospect or client is a marketing event in itself, and delivering hard copies allows firms to demonstrate their professionalism, among other things. But prospects
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SECTION
PURPOSE
Introduction
Provide a backgrounder that establishes and/or rein-
forces the premise of the project, especially if it
involves an emerging technique. Example: “According
to research by the Pew Internet & American Life Proj-
ect, the importance of the Internet continues to . . .”
Situation Analysis
Demonstrate your understanding of the client’s situa-
tion and be as specific as possible. I had one prospect
tell me, after reading a proposal, “Well at least you were