Did You Get My Fax?

So, You Opened a Nonprofit
Have you ever gone out of your way to explain to a prospect exactly what you would do for them if you got their account? You might have created for them a detailed proposal. Maybe you gave them pricing. Perhaps you even provided them with a sample of your work. And then they disappeared. They stopped returning your calls. Later you discovered that they ended up using another vendor or even did the work themselves.

Congratulations. On your own you've discovered: Unpaid Consulting. Why congratulations: Because many salespeople never figure this out. They spend their careers doing work for free thinking that prospects will be appropriately appreciative of their efforts and give them the business. The prospects do, of course, "give them the business", just not in the way that the salesperson had in mind.

The problem is an especially expensive one if you're selling intellectual property. In that case you're not only working for free, you're actually giving the product itself away. Many people literally go out of business before they discover that doing unpaid consulting is no way to sell.

It's tempting to put the blame on the prospect. While some of them may actually be trying to cheat you, most are not. They're simply responding to cues that you are giving them and taking you up on offers that you're making.

It's very easy to get enthusiastic about a project, especially if you have a creative mind. It's easy to believe that once you demonstrate that you have great ideas that the prospect will see the value of your work and you'll get the project. Before you know it you're talking way too much about the product and discovering way too little about the prospect and the real factors that will drive a business deal. People who educated about marketing are especially vulnerable to this because they are trained to communicate to large audiences in a one-way format. The problem is that sales are made to very small audiences (often only one person) in a highly interactive two-way format in real time. Marketing is about presentation. Selling is about conversation. And the rules of sales conversation are very different than the rules about marketing presentation. In the sales game your natural instincts may lead you down the wrong path.

The solution lies in learning how individual purchasing decisions are made and crafting your conversation in conformity with those principles. You'll have to discover the prospect's real motives for doing business. You'll have to get them to tell you what they'd be willing and able to invest. You'll have to discover how they'll go about making up their mind. And you'll have to do all of this before you talk very much about how you'll actually do the project. Indeed, you'll usually have to get some sort of check before you share your ideas.

It's easy to see that selling involves much more listening than it does talking. The skills that great salespeople have are those that they use to get the prospect to do most of the talking. And we're not content with just talk either. What we're after is talk about the specific parameters about business deals outlined above. This is a very useful skill set, indeed. Anyone who was willing to do the work could acquire it. It takes some effort, sacrifice and investment.

Which is peanuts compared to the frustration and expense of unpaid consulting.

Mark Fitzgerald, Sales Training Institute, Inc., Tampa, Florida provides this column weekly. Mr. Fitzgerald provides both group and customized sales training for professionals and companies. For more information, please contact him by telephone at 813-831-5555, via email at mark@saleskills.com or visit www.saleskills.com.