Selling a professional service is generally more difficult than selling a product. Why? Products are tangible and services are not. Products have a fixed set of characteristics and configurations while services are usually dynamic and customized. Selling something intangible that will be customized is much harder than selling something tangible that is fixed.

If you sell cars, you need to learn about each model in the showroom, memorize the important features, know the competitive products from other manufacturers, and so forth. There is a finite amount of information to master, the product options are fixed, and customers can test drive the exact car they are considering. With services, the required knowledge is often vast, the work is usually customized to client needs, and clients can’t physically interact with the service before making a buying decision. This dynamic results in greater risk for buyers, increased scrutiny on sellers, and a complex sales process.

While selling professional services is difficult, there are some simple best practices that will help drive success.

Listen

Far too often, when meeting with a new prospect, firm personnel spend too much time talking and not enough time listening. Clients don’t want to spend an hour hearing about your firm’s accolades and delivery methodology – they want to hear how you will satisfy their unique needs. If you don’t listen carefully to their needs first, you won’t be able to engage in meaningful conversation about a solution.

The first half of your initial client meeting (or call) should be focused on learning about your prospect’s needs. Simply listen and ask questions in order to learn as much as possible. Once you have a general understanding, the second half of the meeting should be focused on how your firm would likely address those needs. If you have engaged in similar projects in the past, you can discuss how the needs of those clients were satisfied.

Research

Before any significant sales meeting (or call), put in the time to understand the client’s business, industry, and competitors. To put it bluntly, do your homework. If the client’s team has provided an overview of the business need (or possibly an RFP), read it carefully before any sales call. Try to understand the specifics of the pain, its origination, remedies attempted thus far, and the ultimate goals and objectives.

With a few Google searches, you can quickly educate yourself on the background of the company, industry, and key individuals. Coming into an initial sales meeting armed with that knowledge will always impress decision makers. Some of the things you can learn during just an hour of prep time include:

• The history of the company
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• The products and services
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• Background of the executives
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• Recent press and activity (such as mergers or acquisitions)
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• Backgrounds of all personnel you will meet with (use LinkedIn)
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• Competitors and their differentiators
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• Industry news and trends
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• The company’s financial performance (available for publicly traded companies)
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When prospects hear you speak intelligently about the topics above in the very first meeting, you are much more likely to make their shortlist. They will realize that you understand their business and that you do your homework.

Ask Questions

As you research the prospect’s business and industry, be sure to jot down specific questions that you can ask during the next call or meeting. Asking smart questions accomplishes two objectives at once for you. First, it helps you better understand the prospect’s specific needs and high-level objectives. Second, it shows the prospect that you are thinking through their business needs carefully. When prospects see a high level of effort and diligence during the sales process, they feel confident that your firm will sustain that level throughout the engagement.

Get Your Experts Involved Early

With professional services selling, you must convince prospects that your firm is a credible and high-quality provider. If you aren’t able to do this early in the sales process, you may not make the shortlist. For firms that have traditional salespeople (who are not “partners” or service delivery personnel), you want to ensure that delivery experts are also introduced to the prospective client early in the process. While salespeople are great at finding opportunities and articulating the high-level value proposition of the firm, prospects rarely make a buying decision based on the salesperson alone. They need to engage with the people who will actually be doing the work. Put your best delivery experts in front of your most important prospective clients.

Demonstrate

If a picture is worth a thousand words, a demo is worth a thousand pictures. If your particular professional service can be demonstrated reliably, it should be. Some pundits caution against “live demos” because demos can be prone to technical problems, unforeseen bugs, connectivity issues, etc. But, if you build a high-quality demo, it won’t fail and the connectivity logistics can be easily addressed (i.e. bring a Wi-Fi hotspot). A live demo will do more to win business than anything you put in a proposal or PowerPoint presentation.

Show Sample Deliverables

If your firm produces high-quality deliverables over the course of an engagement, showing samples of those deliverables to prospects can help win new business. Every vendor that is pitching a prospect will show colorful slides of their delivery process (methodology) and will list the deliverables that will be produced. But most of those vendors won’t bring a complete set of sample deliverables to the sales meeting. Allowing prospects to flip through actual past deliverables will go a long way in building credibility during the sales pursuit.

Note that since any such deliverables will likely be from an actual past engagement, you will need to change the client name, project name, and any other identifying information.

Produce High-Quality Sales Materials

Your presentation and proposal materials should be of the highest quality. These materials show the client how seriously you take your work. If the presentation has slide numbers that are out of order or your proposal lists a different client’s name in the page footer, it looks sloppy. Sloppy rarely wins.

If you don’t have creative expertise within your firm, this is one area where you should contract with an outside consultant or freelancer. Even if your firm is small, it should have a presentation template and proposal template that rival that of the best firms in your industry. The colors, branding, design treatment, style, fonts, table format, graphics, and other attributes should be coordinated and visually compelling.

In addition to the “look and feel” of your presentation and proposal, the content should likewise be impressive. You don’t want “fluff” in these materials; you do want substantive content that speaks directly to the prospect’s area of need.

Be Honest

Being honest with prospects is important for both the initial sale and the long-term health of the relationship. To become a trusted advisor, the client sponsor must realize that you consistently prioritize the client’s best interest. You start building that trust with the first sales touchpoint. If you aren’t the best provider to handle a project, be honest and recommend other firms that could be a better fit. If specific portions of the project would be better off delivered by another firm, make that clear. You’ll earn deep goodwill that will manifest in future business and referrals.

Be Personable

Professional services is a people industry. Clients aren’t just hiring a firm – they are hiring a specific team of people within that firm. The decision to work with your company is heavily based on how comfortable the client is with each individual involved in the sales process. Be engaging, be kind, be helpful, be informative, be funny, and be honest. Simply put, be personable.

Set and Meet Expectations

The sales process is essentially a “taste test” of what it will be like to work with your firm over a large engagement. Throughout the sales process, your firm should be setting and meeting expectations with the prospect. Some simple ways to do this well include:

• Sending meeting requests several days prior to meetings (or calls).
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• Providing all meeting materials at least 24 hours before each meeting.
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• Having a clear agenda (with objectives) for meetings and keeping meetings on track.
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• Taking diligent and detailed notes during meetings.
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• Committing to getting an answer and circling back as soon as possible if you can’t answer a question during a meeting.
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• Stating any action items for meeting participants at the end of the meeting, including action items on the client side.
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• Providing notes to all meeting participants within 24 hours of the meeting.
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• Communicating clearly, consistently, and efficiently.
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• Walking client personnel though your proposal over the phone or in person.
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• Regularly asking the client if you can be of additional assistance in any way.
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Many of the tasks above are essentially basic project management duties. If your salespeople aren’t capable of consistently handling these duties, you should attach a project manager to sales pursuits to run the logistics. A good project manager can spend 30 minutes per day ensuring that the basic tasks listed above are being handled.

Care About the Little Things

Oftentimes it is the little things that you do for other human beings that have the biggest impact. To do the little things well, you simply need to care, be present in conversations, and be well-organized. Send a birthday card to the client sponsor each year (put a reminder on your calendar), ask how the big internal presentation went, or send a congratulatory card for his or her child’s graduation. The little things often end up not being little at all.