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Seven simple steps to winning new clients

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7th Jul 2009
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Peter Gill of the Boreas Partnership (UK) Ltd outlines his essential strategy for attracting new prospects.

The professional landscape is continuously changing, and forward-thinking firms are always reviewing their approach to sales in order to attract the type of clients and work that they want to deal with. This tried and tested formula is consultative in approach and offers a helpful roadmap for accountants who want to benchmark their approach to winning new clients.

Step one: Research
Research can take many forms: At the very least it entails a simple review of their website and downloading the prospect’s latest financial reports, but you could also conduct a far more detailed analysis of the client’s competitive landscape and their position in the market, a search on directors and a whole host of other information gathering exercises. Having planned and prepared thoroughly, you can go into the meeting with confidence.

Entering a prospect’s premises allows you the opportunity to get a feel for them. A person’s office says a great deal about them so have a nosy around. Take note of what pictures/plaques are on the wall, and what awards are on display. How many chairs are in the room and how is it arranged? Typically a dominant ‘alpha’ type character will be surrounded by ‘success trophies’ and/or have a large desk that suggests ‘I’m busy and successful’; it will serve you well to play to their ego. A less dominant character will be surrounded by general clutter and won’t require their ego to be stroked quite as much.

Step two: Take control
You may have sent an agenda to the client ahead of the meeting (some people feel much more comfortable having done this), so now is the time to give an outline of what you are there to discuss. Introducing yourself and your business briefly at the beginning will remind the prospect of just how important it is for them to engage with you. Explaining the reasons for being there and what’s in it for them will get their attention and ensure they want to give you time. Check how long they have got free – more often than not people have more time available and will give it to you if things are going well.

Following a consultative style sales meeting is something which accountancy and advisory firms tend to prefer ,and for good reason. This consultative style fits with the approach taken by professionals to elicit information out of clients before then providing any advice. It does not follow the ‘push-sales’ approach of simply telling prospects about the features, benefits and advantages of the service being offered; the prospect feels more included in the process.

Step three: Needs analysis
The effective use of questions is vital. Only through asking questions will you determine the needs of the prospect. The key is to use a combination of open and closed questions at the appropriate time and in the appropriate way to find out where the issues are, what the prospect has done so far to resolve them, how critical the issues are and whether they are focused on resolving them.

Step four: Confirm and summarise needs
As we discovered in our soft skills update in May, communication can be challenging. The fact that you heard something in a particular way does not mean that it was stated or intended to mean what you have interpreted it to mean. This is why step four involves confirming precisely what the client means when answering your questions.

By summarising their needs back to them, you are able to demonstrate that you understand what they have told you. Importantly, it also shows that you are interested in them and have been listening attentively.

Step five: Present your solution
Having asked your questions, gathered the feedback and demonstrated that you have actively listened, you are now ready to present your solution, highlighting the benefits of every feature. This is an important step, because if you do not clearly state what you can do for them, what it will mean for their firm and the benefits this will provide, how else will they know?

It may appear obvious what you can do for them, but remember that your prospects may not experienced, skilled technicians in the field of accountancy, tax, tax planning or any of the other areas where you and your firm are the experts. Present to them in plain English and stress what it means to their business and them personally. Jargon riddled diatribes about the importance of a particular piece of legislation and the impact it had on the explicit area you are talking about is not of interest. However, the impact on their cash flow, profitability and personal assets is.

Step six: Closing the deal
The penultimate step is closing the deal, or asking for the business. Before you can start closing the deal, ensure you have:

  • Understood their issues
  • Understood their motivations to buy
  • Confirmed there is a budget and they are able to make the decision
  • Presented your solution
  • Dealt with any objections

Objection handling is often an area of concern when seeking to win new business. Objections are simply questions in disguise – the person posing them hasn’t been satisfied that they know enough to go ahead with the purchase. Objections should be welcomed and treated as the opportunity to ensure you have gathered all information and presented the benefits clearly which will mean the prospect can only come to one conclusion and that is that they should buy from you, ideally here and now.

It doesn’t always follow that it will be here and now, indeed it’s rare to find a sales cycle that closes each sale in the first meeting. People often want a proposal to read through, to have the time to consider everything that has been put to them. In some cases step five (the presentation of your solution) is delivered in a second meeting. Don’t be put off by the need to go back (it will depend on the overall value of the client as to whether you involve yourself in an extended sales cycle). Ensure that you actively follow up on these discussions – diarise it and ensure it’s on your CRM system. Send them the report, call as agreed, return to present a more in depth proposal. In short, do whatever it takes to secure that deal.

After you have shaken hands, completed any necessary documentation and confirmed fees, business working as a team may wish to introduce other services and colleagues to give the client an idea of the breadth of services available. Cross servicing is high on many firms priority lists, so start early, ensure your client has the names of key contacts who can help them and make the relevant introductions. This is also a great time to seek additional referrals – who else could you be talking to about helping to develop their business?

Step seven: Take stock
Ideally by this point you will have secured your new client, but whatever the outcome you will always learn from the process if you take time to reflect on it. Take time to review the meeting and learn from your successes or failures.

As a model for winning new business, these seven steps work very simply but there’s no need to be formulaic in your approach – it’s important to retain your own personality throughout the process and treat each client as an individual. What the steps do offer is an essential road map which can be adapted for each prospect – as long as you keep to the same basic principles, you can’t go far wrong.
 

Peter Gill is director of the Boreas Partnership, a business development consultancy working with accountancy practices to increase fee income, reduce costs and increase profits per partner.

www.boreaspartnership.co.uk
Email: [email protected]

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Steve pipe
By Steve Pipe
17th Jul 2009 12:41

How does that compare?
All good stuff.

A brilliant question to use towards the end of a sales meeting is...

"Tell me, how does what we have just discussed compare to what your existing accountants are doing for you?"

If you a different and better than the others, this question will get them mentally criticising the incumbent and convincing themselves that they really do need to work with you.

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Steve Pipe FCA - Author of the White Paper "The Proactive Accountant" and adviser to over 200 leading UK accounting practices.

[email protected]

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