The natural tendency of anyone brought up in the services industry is to say yes. Yes, to helping a customer with something “just a little” beyond scope. Yes, to meeting marketing’s seemingly endless requests for showcase account examples. And yes, to bailing out a salesperson who promised a ridiculous date on a client go-live. In fact, yes is often the first word that comes out of a services professional’s, services manager’s, or services leader’s mouth.

In many situations, it is the right thing to do--suck it up for the good of the client, your colleagues, and the company. A little extra effort on your part can do a lot of good. It is worth it.

Yet, there are some very negative aspects of saying yes too often. Based upon your agreeable past behavior, you set an unrealistic expectation with the people you deal with, as they assume you will always say yes to any request. So when the customer or the salesperson or the marketer comes to you with a truly outrageous request and you refuse, he looks at you with disbelief and mutters phrases such as “I wonder what has gotten in to him! or “she must be having a really bad day.”

Furthermore (and, of course, it was not your intent), you establish a perception that you are a pushover. This will never be stated, but most cultures (especially Western ones) don’t respect people who “don’t stand up for themselves” or who “lack backbone.” So your attempts at being a good team player backfire, and you are seen as being a weak manager.

So what is the answer? If you have fallen into the “pattern of yes” described above, you can’t just start saying no anytime you feel justified, or you’ll get the reaction described earlier--it is too abrupt a change. You have to earn the right to say no. You accomplish this by making a “just say no” personal strategy. Do your homework up front by defining appropriate boundaries of what you will do and what you will not do to make your services organization successful while supporting the overall business. Involve senior management in the process to gain agreement on how to handle all the special requests that you know from experience will occur, and get their commitment on how they will be handled. By involving other executives, and by having fair plans on what is acceptable and what is not, not only can you “do the right thing” for the business, you can build and maintain your own personal credibility.

Say yes when it counts, but just say no when it doesn’t.

Tags: professional development, managing

In the 10th commandment of selling services, “Continually Learn and Grow,” I talk a lot about management’s responsibility to expand the personal capabilities of their sellers. However, when it comes right down to the nitty gritty, the core essence, the prime directive for learning and growing requires individual ownership. Serious folks wanting to succeed welcome management’s help but don’t assume any assistance. They chart their own course and take full responsibility for success.

“So, Alex, where do I start?” you ask. That’s easy… research I’ve done shows that customers place a very high value on sellers and consultants who understand their business, their market, and their industry. They very much value the attribute of business acumen and will pay more to get it.

So if you want to stand out from your peers, get smart about business. If you take 20 minutes per day, five days per week, to study some aspect of business, you will be an expert in a few months.

Are you serious? If so, drop me a note, and I’ll send you some suggestions on how to get started.

Tags: training, differentiation, selling services, managing technical talent

This month’s article, “Commercialize the Sales Promise,” talks about effective ways to promote your services offerings. Here is one more to consider--write an article a month in your e-newsletter (you have one, haven’t you?) featuring one of your top service pros.

In order to gather the information you need, talk to customers and ask them:

1. What is there about Sam/Sally that you like?
2. What makes he/she different from all the other service people you work with?
3. What positive impact does he/she have on your business and on you?

You will learn all kinds of cool things--information that you can use to motivate and implement with your other service pros. In addition, this series will not only recognize your stars and give them visibility, it will also demonstrate the value of your services business to your existing customers, prospective customers, and everyone inside your company.

Plus it is easy, inexpensive, and fun. Start your series next month.

Tags: selling services, managing technical talent

In the 8th Commandment of Selling Services, Control the Cost of Sale, I lay out some simple yet powerful tips for easily controlling the cost of sale. If you haven’t read this month’s article yet, do so now.

Here is one example that will save you time, minimize hassle, lower your cost of sale, and most importantly, eliminate burnout of your most important reference accounts.

When a potential prospect asks you early on in the qualifying process to provide references, just say no. Here is one way that almost always works. Try saying this: “I very much understand the need for proof from customers who have implemented the services my organization provides. However, I’d guess that you face the same situation--your best references are busy executives and I don’t want to ask them for their valuable time unless an engagement is pending. When we reach an agreement to work together, I will make it contingent on you having conversations with two customers you will find relevant. I’m sure you understand. In the meantime, I will send you the link to testimonials on our web page from executives facing similar issues.”

This works almost every time, and after you have crafted a high-value proposal tailored to the prospect, more than half don’t mention references again.

Tags: professional services, selling services

In the 7th Commandment of Selling Services: Concentrate on the Stars, I make the case for sales management to “re-distribute” its coaching time to focus on “A” players--a strategy that pays off quickly and also is a lot more fun.

However, the premise behind it is that you have several “A” players in place--do you? Or, have you been so focused on filling positions that most of your sales force is composed of “B” players or (gasp) “C” players as well?

My point is that the easiest way to excel in sales management is to have a preponderance of “A” players on your team. So when recruiting, don’t settle for less than hiring stars. Yes, it may take more time. Yes, you may have to battle HR to get star-quality comp plans, but the potential rewards are huge.

Hire stars, learn from your stars, and the rest will take care of itself.

Tags: differentiation, selling services

As I point out in my 6th Commandment of Selling, “Compress the Selling Cycle Time,” there are a number of proven, highly effective ways to compress the cycle time of selling. In fact, by knowing your selling process, I can predict with decent accuracy the profitability of your services organization.

However, no matter how effective you are in qualifying and demonstrating your potential value, you will sometimes run across prospects that are very cautious in moving forward. In most cases, my approach would be to ask, “how far to the next prospect?”, and cut bait.

However, if any of the following three scenarios are in place, then there is another strategy to consider that may quickly bear fruit:

1. The prospect is strategic and you want to add them to your portfolio for marketing reasons.
2. You currently have people sitting on the bench.
3. Your pipeline is weak.

If any of these hold true, then offer to do something for your prospect up-front (an assessment, an audit, a competitive review) for out-of-pocket expenses only, with the agreement that if the results are positive, the deal will close. Of course you’ll need to have some objective criteria for what “positive” is. And get the prospect to verbally state their agreement.

This action demonstrates your confidence and should remove much of the doubt from the mind of a “Nervous Nellie.” If the prospect won’t agree to this, thank them and drop your efforts immediately.

Tags: professional services, selling services

This month’s Alexander Insights feature article is on how to best Coordinate the Selling Team when attempting to sell complex services and solutions to complex clients in complex environments. One of the key players I recommend having on your selling team is the business development specialist--the talented professional that gets the qualified first appointment with the appropriate prospect executive.

From my experience, this is a very important role that many services businesses fail to fill, leaving it to the services seller to handle. In most situations, this is a mistake. The skills of business development and rainmaking are different. Asking the same person to do both is inefficient and demoralizing. Yes, I know a really good BD person is both hard to find and (potentially) expensive, but don’t pass up the probable ROI.

Here is how to do it right:

1. Aggressively recruit. Go after the very best.
2. Make expectations crystal-clear. Provide an approved list of the people you want appointments with within your top prospects.
3. Pay only--but handsomely--for results. For example, pay $2,000 for each appointment set and an additional $10,000 when that appointment leads to business. If you have the right list, this is well worth the money.

I’m quite interested in your success with business development specialists, so please drop me a note and share your experiences.

Tags: professional services, selling services

My third commandment of selling services is to Customize Each Solution, in which I emphasize the importance of making each customer feel special and unique even if your solution is off-the-shelf.

All good services sellers know the importance of sharing stories from other experiences that are similar to the customer. For example, providing successful case histories from similar customers with similar issues builds your credibility.

However, no one likes to be told that their reality is exactly like those of others, and the seller that emphasizes similarities too much will find that this strategy backfires--causing resentment in the prospect.



The key is balance. After sharing similarities, jump to exploring the uniqueness of the customer.

Example #1
Share Similarities: “As you’ve seen, we have successfully implemented our technology in many companies within your industry.
Explore Uniqueness: However, I must admit that we have never worked with a start-up, and I’m sure there are some unique considerations. May we talk a little about how we can tailor our approach to best meet your needs?”

Example #2
Share Similarities: “Yes, we have trained thousands of executives in how to become better leaders.
Explore Uniqueness: However, I don’t recall our working with an organization that has the type of competitive challenges you do. I’d recommend that we first start with an assessment to make sure we focus on the right things. May I share with you different ways we could start?”

Example #3
Share Similarities: “We are pleased that over 80% of our customers are under services contracts and 93% score us as “Excellent” in performance evaluations.
Explore Uniqueness: You know, though, I’ve never been asked to provide a contract in North Africa. I’m sure there are some unique challenges to consider. May we flesh those out to see what we might offer?”

Pretty simple, isn’t it? Balance your selling strategy by always exploring the uniqueness of the customer. They will appreciate your transparency, and you will more quickly build trust.

Tags: selling services

My second commandment of selling services is to Communicate the Invisible, in which I point out the many--and major--differences between tangible products and intangible services, and what an effective seller must do differently to sell services.

A really big selling sin involves expecting customers to connect the dots--to understand issues, concepts, ideas, and services that they have little or no experience with. It is up to the services sales expert to help the customer make those connections. The best services sellers are masters at turning feelings into facts and concepts into cash through the use of stories and analogies.

Here are a few behaviors that I’ve observed the very best services sellers deploy:

1. Convey the importance of immediate action. Confirm that the issue being discussed is a business priority and also a personal objective of the customer, thus requiring immediate action.

2. Provide both positive and negative case examples that the customer can relate to in order to bolster your cause, spotlighting what businesses and individuals gained by taking action or what they lost by not taking action. Actively involve the customer in:

• Exploring the potential positive impact on both the business and the individual of addressing the issue.
• Exploring the potential negative impact on both the business and the individual of not addressing the issue.

3. Use a financial calculator to quantify the impact of taking or not taking action. Let the customer provide the inputs to the financial calculations using figures and terms relevant to his or her personally. Whether ROIs or TCOs or Net Present Value, it is good to make some suggestions, but let the customer come up with the numbers.

Explain your methodology in detail using already-developed figures and diagrams, or manually put them on the whiteboard with the customer, describing each action and the rationale for each step.

Break things down into stages to make it easier for the customer to understand, and then ask him to think through how it would work in his organization. This lowers anxiety as he applies the concept to his own reality.

Share examples of similar customers facing similar issues and how you tailored your approach to meet their unique needs and made them successful.

Predict where potential problems may occur, and then explain your remedy to pre-empt each issue and explain the actions you will take to minimize both time and hassle for the customer.

4. Share best practices. Customers find it reassuring that you have enough experience to know what the best practices are and that they are incorporated into your approach. By asking the customer how these best practices can apply to him, it helps him both relate cognitively and connect at an emotional level. This is a real confidence builder and something that can be made quite visible in the mind of your prospect.

5. Communicate stories and analogies that your prospect can understand and relate to. For example, the prospect may never have purchased a service contract for his equipment, but he may have purchased a service contract on his company’s copier. By asking him the reasons for his decision, he can better relate to the benefits of uptime, convenience, no hassles, etc., of your offering. If he has no business experience with service contracts, he probably has some personal experience, such as purchasing an extended warranty on a high-definition TV or other large purchase. Explore his thinking and relate it back to your offering.

In addition, a customer may never have purchased a business assessment before, but he can probably relate to the need for a physical checkup before taking on a new sport or strenuous activity.

Furthermore, if you find yourself in a competitive position, you might make the medical analogy that your organization is not a general practitioner but a heart specialist, and thus the most appropriate choice for an important decision such as the one the customer is facing.

Other non-business analogies can help bridge the familiarity gap as well. For example, if you know your customer is a big football fan, you can use the concept of “the huddle,” “going deep,” “game plan,” and many others as a way to relate the importance of ideas in terms the customer can understand.

6. Provide write-ups of high-recognition reference accounts that tout the value of you and your offerings. This acts as a shortcut to decision making. The more complex and unfamiliar the situation to the customer, the more he will look to references to help him decide. If two or three well respected people in well respected companies with similar issues are happy with your offerings, your customer will likely be willing to accept the premise that he will be happy as well.

Apply these concepts and you will become a master of selling the invisible.

Tags: selling services

My first commandment of selling services is to Clarify Complex Customer Issues in which I strongly state the critical importance of always starting with an assessment. How in the world can you make an accurate diagnosis and recommendations regarding complex situations from just one or two client conversations? If you go to your doctor complaining about chest pains, are you comfortable with her recommendation for heart surgery without more data? I don’t think so! You’d expect her to request a personal and family medical history, lifestyle inventory, blood tests, scans, and whatever else might provide insights. Not doing so would be medical negligence.

Your clients naturally have their own biases about their business and their world. For example, think of all the different perspectives of the people impacted in considering new software or hardware in a hospital. The CFO is probably most interested in cost savings. The CNO (head nurse) may well be most focused on improving customer care, with cost not being an issue. A physician may take personal pride in having the very latest, most innovative technology. A lab director may be most concerned with speeding up a cumbersome process. Consciously or subconsciously, each will see the situation differently and shape and articulate their desires from their personal perspective. Furthermore, even the most broadminded, intelligent, altruistic person only has limited information--rarely does he have knowledge of the broad systemic factors that impact success.

Therefore, making recommendations without a thorough examination of all relevant information is selling negligence!
Make selling an assessment as part of your modus operandi and reap the rewards.

Want more thoughts on assessments? Read my article, “The Secrets of the Super Sellers: Always Start with an Assessment.”

Tags: professional services, selling services

In a recent article* I wrote about the importance of providing customer choices, but limiting them to two options or ideally three. Doing so will lead to more sales and happier customers.

Now I’d like to share the best practices on how to do it:

1. Make it standard operating procedure to offer three choices. Require it of your sellers in all they do--from making suggestions during initial discussions to outlining three options in formal proposals. Customers like it, and are more likely to buy if you offer three alternatives.
2. Craft your three options based upon value potential that is easily discernable by the customer. Your comprehensive option should be both broad and deep, and hence will be the most expensive. Your bare-bones option should be the minimum offering that you are still confident in to meet customer requirements. This leaves your high-value option somewhere in the middle. Assuming that all three of your options are strong on value, about two-thirds of your customers will choose your middle choice.
3. Always start with your most expensive, comprehensive option, followed by your high value option, then finally your bare-bones option. This goes against a “logical” sequence from low to high, but this high to low approach has strong emotional appeal. Starting high makes your other two choices seem much more affordable by comparison. I am sure that you have seen this before in other scenarios. For example, if you go into a clothing store to buy a suit, shoes, and a belt, the savvy store clerk will always sell you the suit first. Once you have laid out $1,000 for the suit, paying $250 for shoes seems very reasonable, and a $40 belt seems like a bargain.

*Alexander, James. 2011. “Less Is Better than More: Offering Too Many Choices Is Bad Business.” http://www.alexanderstrategists.com/art_less_is_more.html

Tags: professional services, selling services

As savvy politicians and insightful leaders know, there is always a “90-day window” that opens after any significant change. This window is the time frame in which change adoption is the most critical--late enough for individual performers to have some familiarity with the effects of new roles, organization structures, and processes, and early enough so that organizational inertia has not stepped in, blinding individuals to objective evaluation and limiting their openness to the necessary enhancements required of any new effort worth doing. How this “time of correction” is dealt with has a marked effect upon long-term results.



Yet, it’s amazing to see, in situation after situation, this marvelous opportunity wasted on endless meetings on tactics, discussions with no plans, and speeches with no action. Soon the chance to move ahead is twittered away as the window closes, returning the old “way we did it before” behaviors and the mindsets that shape them.

So, adopt the mantra of sea captains of old preparing for an important voyage: “There is not a moment to lose.” Favorable winds can quickly shift direction, and incoming tides always turn to outgoing tides, making navigation difficult or impossible.

When the winds of change blow open the window of opportunity--be ready. Act as if you are facing an outgoing tide, making your every action advance your agenda while you still have the water to make headway. This is the time to lead, not manage; to be bold, not meek; and to move fast, not slow. Your dash and daring will yield confidence and commitment, speeding the voyage to success while keeping your best sailors from jumping ship.

Tags: leadership