Category: Random Thoughts

Selling and The 5 Questions Advisers Should Ask

Some time ago I presented a webinar on the 5 questions business advisers frequently ask which you can view by clicking this link. Or if you would prefer to listen to an audio of the presentation with the player below.

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In the presentation I referred to Aristotle’s 3 means of persuasion which I consider to lie at the heart of selling. They are Lagos (conveying the logic that sits behind your offering – the commercial value proposition), Pathos (helping your client establish an emotional connection to the outcome – the experiential value proposition) and Ethos (establishing a credibility connection – the trustworthiness value proposition.)

When I was reviewing the Webinar before posting it occurred to me that what I should have underlined more strongly is the fact that any interaction with a client is a brand building exercise in which you are really putting yourself out there for them to form a view about whether they want to invite you into their (business) life or not. For that to happen they need to trust you and what you can do, they need to feel the connection between where they are and where they could be and they need to see the numbers.

I suggest that you take a look at the video presented by Simon Sinek, the author of Start With Why, in which he makes the point that people want to deal with organizations that believe what they believe – his Golden Circle idea is definitely relevant to your firm’s brand, your personal brand and to your sales process. If you haven’t already watched the video please do it now – it’ll take 18 minutes.

Not long after he came back to Apple, Steve Jobs did a presentation to a group of developers in which he talked about marketing being about value and how your success is going to be tied closely to giving people a reason to want to identify with you.  This video is worth taking a look at.

httpv://youtu.be/keCwRdbwNQY

Harry Beckwith, the author of The Invisible Touch: The Four Keys to Modern Marketing and several other books (they are probably the only marketing texts a professional service firm needs) said “clients don’t care how much you know until they know how much they care.” Please think deeply about that. It’s important.

Just as I was reflecting on that I came across a brilliant little book just published be a fellow Aussie (via Ireland) named Bernadette Jiwa who lives in Perth called The Fortune Cookie Principle: The 20 keys to a Great Brand Story and Why Your Business Needs One. It’s a little book packed with big ideas that are so relevant to today’s business.  One of the many relevant points she makes is “people don’t buy what you do, they buy how you make them feel.” This is a relevant adaption of something expressed by Maya Angelo an extraordinarily well known African-American poet who wrote:

People will forget what you said

People will forget what you did

But people will never forget how you made them feel.

That is exactly what I mean when I say, repeatedly, when you can’t differentiate your product or service you must differentiate the process by which you deliver it and, especially in a professional service firm. It is really about how you make the people you are servicing feel – this is what Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People is all about – it’s the only sales book you’ll ever need to buy.  Take a look at Bernadette’s book it’s sure to give you some ideas for fashioning a vision for your firm which is one of the key elements for re-engineering your firm for the future.

The $50k Question

You’ve got to be in it to win it.  By that I mean if you want to grow your business you must, I repeat must, get out from behind your desk and talk to people. And one great way to do that is to have conversations with clients about things that are not directly associated with the typical stuff that accountants do. Continue reading “The $50k Question”

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The Power Of a Word and The Need For Management Innovation

I’ve been working on some pretty amazing initiatives that I know will turn a few heads in the coming months and in the course of doing some research I recently came across something that I thought I’d share. It relates to the incredible advances that are being made in neuroscience due in large part to Continue reading “The Power Of a Word and The Need For Management Innovation”

The Walk & Talk Client Retention and Growth Strategy

I was listening to an interview with Jon Ferrara, the founder of Goldmine, one of the first CRM systems and was so impressed with his observation that professionals need to get out of their office and connect with their clients that I recorded this part of the interview. Listen to Jon’s insights.

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Interestingly (to me anyway) this was exactly what I was saying at A Day with The Disrupters Conference I presented at in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago. I thought you might be interested in what I had to say because it may apply to you as well …

Ric Payne – A Day With The Disrupters.

 

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: Lessons for New Leaders

The first part of the title to this post is the name of Marshall Goldsmith’s brilliant best selling book. It’s a book, among many, that I strongly recommend to anyone who wants to excel in life and business but that’s not the purpose of this post.

One of the really big challenges business people face is moving from working IN their business to the more leverageable (is that even a word?) function of working ON it. OK so you’re probably thinking “we’ve all heard about this, Michael Gerber talked about it in The E-Myth so let’s move on.” But hold on, I want to make a point.

In professional service firms from the time you start working at “the firm” your performance is judged primarily, and in some firms exclusively, on the basis of the quality and productivity of y  our “IN” work. You can’t help therefore aligning your work behavior to the belief that you get rewarded (as in promoted, bonuses, more responsibility and ultimately equity) for doing well at the “stuff” the firm does for its clients.

The better you are at the IN work the more likely you are to be made a partner. Then you join rank with a bunch of other people who share the belief that doing IN stuff is where firm value is created–which is partially correct, but it’s not where significant firm value is created.

The challenge faced by many firms (maybe most firms is closer to the truth) is that when the majority of partners are “IN-orientated” people because that’s how they got there, the firm’s organic growth peaks and then stabilizes so that the only way it can continue to grow is through mergers and acquisitions. Now, I’m not saying M&A is necessarily a bad way to achieve growth but it rarely yields superior profitability and superior profitability (as measured by net profit per partner or net profit margin) is the measure of competitive advantage which in turn is the purpose of strategy.

Goldsmith is so right. What got you to the position of partner will not get your firm to the next level of performance. That requires a whole new set of skills not to mention an organization structure and governance model that recognizes the critical importance of the need to separate ownership from directional leadership.

I’ve used the phrase “directional leadership” to distinguish it from leadership generally because leadership should be exhibited at all levels, by all people, all the time. But let’s not go into that now. By directional leadership I’m talking about that person or group of people who’s job it is to be thinking about ways to re-design the business model to better meet existing or emerging customers’ needs.  This involves, among other things, conceiving, communicating and ultimately orchestrating a different and exciting vision for the future role and growth of the firm and the relationship it has and creates for its clients and its team members.

This is the most important element of the ON stuff.

Of course it also involves seeking and implementing best practice solutions in your current business process but most other firms are doing that so it tends to diffuse rapidly and doesn’t give any firm  a sustainable competitive advantage–it’s one of those “necessary but not sufficient” operational initiatives that manifests in competitive convergence.

And that brings me to the main point I want to make here.

New partners need to be made aware that the greatest contribution they can make to the firm is get good at the ON things. Things like contributing to the creating of a great vision, things like developing your people especially through training, mentoring and delegating, things like networking outside traditional circles and getting outside their traditional comfort zones, reading widely  and consciously challenging their beliefs about how a firm should be run.

New partners should ask themselves the question: what will it take for me to be the best? Why not ask that question? I’m sure you would not ask yourself, what will it take to be the worst? Would you even ask yourself , what will it take to be average? Seriously, who is going to do that so why not seek to be the best and THAT is ON stuff fair and square.  This is elegantly stated by Seth Godin in The Dip, when he says at page 13:

People settle. They settle for less than they are capable of. Organizations settle too. For good enough instead of best in the world.

If a new partner is not interested in, or naturally endowed to, work ON the business then she should focus on working ON herself! By that I mean work “ON” being the best tax or audit guy in the world, or the best business development guy in the world, or the best team developer in the world, or the best rainmaker in the world. Don’t settle for less and don’t just be an ordinary IN person. IN people don’t leverage. Leverage is the source of synergy. Synergy is the source of growth both for the organization and the people in it.

 

How do you price jobs that have unknown dimensions without timesheets?

I get asked this question quite often and I’m fully aware of the motivation behind it. By that I mean those people who do not want to let go of time-sheets ask it because it is a really tough situation to deal with as a practical matter and therefore they feel that it’s too hard so let’s stay Continue reading “How do you price jobs that have unknown dimensions without timesheets?”

A Business Risk Assessment Tool

It’s amazing what one discovers in the process of cleaning out your study. I came across this tool that I had been working on that would give you an opportunity to start a conversation with your clients about the need to work on their business to reduce the degree of business risk.  That, of course, would give cause to accept a lower capitalization rate and therefore a higher business value for any given level of profit. Continue reading “A Business Risk Assessment Tool”