HabitShift™ Selling Your Consulting Services

Synopsis

How long does it take working as a consultant before we realize that a potential engagement can go off the rails in more ways than we could ever imagine? Whether consulting from the inside or outside, developing a business case for our expertise is often perilous, not to mention painful. And who knew we had to sell?!?

This session provides a framework for holding business acquisition discussions with prospective clients that dramatically improve the odds of landing an engagement. This session is also an eye-opener for the new practitioner who needs to confront this challenge sooner in their career rather than later.

If you sell clients solutions that truly meet their needs, everyone wins.  Selling Your Consulting Services teaches you skills and strategies that enable you to achieve this result. By practicing a common sense approach to asking powerful questions that are embeded within a larger persuasion architecture, you implement a profoundly logical interpersonal experience that is non-manipulative and respectful of the dignity of both you and the client. 

In addition, you will knock a significant amount of effort off what it now takes to get to a go/no go decision while improving your “go” rate. The logic: if there’s a red light somewhere down the road, both you and your client appreciate knowing about it sooner rather than later. Right?

Besides, just how tired are you of giving away free consulting?

Whether approaching coworkers from inside your organization or coming in as an outside consultant, the techniques you will learn – not merely know and understand – will dramatically improve your critical thinking skills, meaning you will add value in your very first conversation with your client. And you will stop wasting so much time in churning out proposals.

Using this model, I have been thanked by a newly-retired Army general, a senior manager in civilian life, for holding a sales conversation with them since they thought more clearly about their business after our conversation than before. Think of it – thanked for selling!

But in this day and age, no one in our field wants to “sell” and it’s best to assume that none of our clients want to be “sold”. Even so, all of us need to “buy”. Let’s not forget that part of the equation. We ALL need to buy.

So the questions become: How can we frame the selling/buying dialogue so that both parties get what they want? What can we do that removes the traditional stigma of “sales” and creates mutually valuable results? For everyone’s sake!
Here is a summary of the things you will take away from this workshop:

1. How to feel good – or at least a whole lot better – about working through the selling/buying dialogue
2. How to critically think through business opportunities to accurately judge their true potential, obtain a real-life sense of what the scope of the project is, and a firm grasp of where some of the pitfalls may be, all ahead of agreeing to timing and price. Wouldn’t that be handy?
3. What words to say during sales conversations that increase the probability of acquiring the engagement
4. How to determine if there is a solid business case for consulting services or any proposal arriving on your desk

 

Who faces challenges that this content would help?

• All independent consultants, project managers, large-ticket, non-commodity sales people
• Anyone working inside a company who does not have the formal authority to put the project in place on their own and who especially have to persuade people up the chain of command to part with recources for projects

 

Two – Day Workshop Outline

Day One

The Value Exchange Dialogue

Primary focus: Asking good questions.  Why questions?  How else do we know what solution our client needs?  There is a strong positive correlation between asking the right questions and effective business relationships.

The Seven Skills of asking effective questions:

1. What is felt overpowers what is seen.
2. Don’t speculate – investigate.
3. Dive for deeper meaning.
4. Questioning depends on listening depends on questioning.
5. Build an effective dialogue.
6. Be authentic…tactfully.
7. Grow a STRONG ego; shrink a BIG ego.

Day Two

Five Steps to Successful Business Development, The O.R.D.E.R. of Inquiry

Step One:  Mutually Explore the Business Opportunity

Step Two:  Ask Questions About Available Resources

Step Three:  Describing the Decision Process

Step Four:  The Exact Business Solution

Step Five:  Developing the Business Relationship

Schedule, Cost, Registration