consultant
support The
7 Step Process (Long
Version) This
process is proven in high-ticket items and
intangibles. It is perfect for consulting
and personal services. Step
2 - The First Call articles
index Articles email:
info@meyergrp.com
From Hanson Marketing
How To Turn Prospects Into Clients:
Peter Meyer's Seven Step Sales Process
The Seven Step Sales Process Peter has
developed enables him to:
» protect his hourly rate,
» raise his price when asked to
discount,
» avoid having to quote his hourly
rate,
»charge double what others do,
and
» uncover more sales
opportunities.
The key parts of the process are the
survey and the design session. This focus
differs from what many people are used to
because it removes emphasis (and pressure)
from the Propose and Close steps.
By the time you complete the Design
Session, the framework (and possibly the
details) of the proposal have been
developed.
Peter has practiced and refined this sales
process from his experience as a
salesperson and then as a sales manager
and now as a speaker, writer, and
consultant. Peter almost never shares this
sales process with others.
Peter Meyer's Seven Step Sales Process
follows Peter Drucker's lead. "My greatest
strength as a consultant is to be ignorant
and ask a few questions," Drucker said.
Peter Meyer enlarges upon Drucker's
statement: "He did not say 'pretend to be
ignorant;' he didn't say 'be a little
ignorant.' If you walk into a sales
situation thinking you are anything but
totally ignorant of your customer's needs,
you will leave money on the table. I don't
like to leave money on the table.
"The key component of the seven step sales
process is listening," Peter said. "And
the key component of listening is actively
trying to discover the problem or problems
that keep the potential client awake at
night -- whether or not they are ones you
can address. "And then you help them
understand that you are helping them
uncover these issues. Then you use this
process to involve them in the
solution."
1. Prospecting
2. First Call
3. Survey
4. Design Session
5. Propose
6. Close
7. Follow-Up
We at Hanson Marketing have used the
process in a variety of consulting
situations, and we got significantly
better results than with any other process
we have tried.
Step 1 - Prospecting
The prospecting step is
straightforward, and it is both reactive
and proactive.
Prospecting is reactive, for example, when
somebody calls and gives you a referral.
And it is proactive when you help the
prospect uncover his or her problems.
"You cannot create a need," Peter warned.
"All you can do is uncover needs and get
your prospects to understand them.
"If the need doesn't exist and you do
create it, what you end up with is the
customer coming back and saying, 'I didn't
really have this need. You forced me into
it, and I don't feel good about it.' And
that's not good if you believe in building
long-term relationships.
"If you are trying to convert somebody to
a client whom you are already dealing with
in another way," Peter said, "you don't
skip the first step.
"Or if you are trying to prompt an
existing client to sponsor new work, you
would start with this step. You are
proactive here, too. A prospect is created
sometimes by changing his or her
awareness."
During the first five steps Peter moves
the process forward by asking high-gain
questions. For instance, during the
prospecting step he may ask:
"If you had a magic wand to wave over this
problem, what would be the perfect
solution?" or
"What keeps you awake at night?"
Peter's wife, Eva, who works with him,
asks feeling questions such as, "What
would make you feel better about
this?"
"The first call is much more than
building rapport," Peter said. "It is the
spot in which you set the
relationship.
"If you want to be perceived as being self
centered, talk about your own products and
services.
"If you want to be perceived as offering
value, do not talk about your products and
services. Ask your prospects to talk about
themselves. If they ask you for solutions,
don't provide them yet unless they believe
that you really know the problem. Since
you probably don't yet, you would be doing
a disservice by attempting to
consult."
The first call is for listening. And it's
for moving the process forward.
As he begins this step, Peter keeps three
questions in mind:
2. Can you help them to solve that
problem?
3. Do you really want to work with this
person?
If at any time the answer to one of
these questions is no, you stop right
there. If, for example, the important
problem or problems are ones you can't
solve, you could say something like: "I
don't do that sort of thing, but Mary
Consultant does it very well. I suggest
you call her."
A good high-gain question to ask in
this step is: When we are done, what
will have changed? There will be both
positives and negatives. Negative
things may happen, and you have to
allow for them to come up. It almost
always causes people to stop and think
because it moves them beyond the short
term.
Here is Peter's example of how you can
use high-gain questions to move from
first call to survey. You can say,
"Tell me about your business." You
listen. Then you may ask a question
such as "When you are done, what will
have changed?" or "What makes you more
competitive than your competitors?" You
listen.
Then you ask the magic wand question.
You listen. You may respond, "I'm not
sure we can do all of that. If you want
to work on that we need to get more
information." You schedule the time and
move along in the process.
Step 3 - Survey
"Here you are working inside the
prospect's organization to understand
what needs to be done. That might
include a day or several days of
interviewing employees and even
customers. If there is a problem to be
solved, this is the time to make sure
you touch each stakeholder and get them
to tell you what that problem is from
their own perspective.
"You need to earn the right to make
suggestions and ask money for it. You
earn it by listening and
understanding.
"The survey is an important step. You
can't skip it," Peter said. "If you do,
you can't do the next session."
We sometimes stumbled during the survey
phase. Until we began to learn and
follow Peter's Seven Step Sales
Process, we threw out ideas right and
left during the survey. It didn't seem
to work, but we didn't know why.
The law of reciprocity is a powerful
one that almost always works, but you
need to keep it in balance. "If you
flood people with idea after idea,"
Peter explained, "they start losing
their sense of responsibility for
solving their own problems. You need a
balance. You need to ask and make sure
they understand that you've given them
something. Then they need to ask
themselves what am I going to do with
it?
"If you tell yourself you have a
problem because of questions I ask, I
become a hero. If I tell you that you
have a problem, I become a jerk. I am
discounted.
"It is not until you say it yourself
that it has weight."
Your prospects may ask during the
survey phase, "What would you suggest?"
Here's one way Peter would answer,
"There are a lot of things we could do.
I don't know yet. It's too soon to talk
about them now." You can continue, "I
have heard this.... Is that right?
We'll talk more about that later."
("Later" refers to the Design
Session.)
If you mix the survey and the design
session (by providing solutions as you
ask questions), Peter explained,
"People lose track of what they are
supposed to be doing and they don't do
anything."
4 - The Design Session
The design session is a group
process. It works best if all the
relevant decision makers in your
prospect company are present. "As a
group you prioritize the problems,"
Peter said, "and as a group you decide
what the best mix of solutions will be.
Rarely will you have the total answer.
Whenever you think you do, you are
probably headed for a disaster. The
customer will need to be an active
player in the solution.
"The design session is very informal.
Often you fill the entire white board
with gibberish before you get to
anything useful. It's part of the
process." Peter reflects back to his
prospect what has occurred so far,
"Here's what I think you said to me.
Here are five options we have to fill
those needs." Then it becomes your turn
to do a good job of explaining the
options to them.
"Based on what I
heard, it sounds like option two is the
one that will meet your needs. You tell
me what you think."
As Peter said, "You can never know
every- thing. Don't make
recommendations without understanding
distinctions."
Also, keep in mind that in going over
the options with them you may get new
information that can lead them to
choose an option you don't think is
optimum. Find out the reason why they
are making that choice. You may be able
to move them along to think in broader
terms with a statement, "I don't know
all the parameters. In an ideal world
is there a way we can do both _________
and _________?
"Often your outside perspective,
tempered with what you learn from the
survey, results in your coming back at
the design session and stating
something that should be clear to
everyone, but only you saw. You are
providing, in the design session, the
flash of the blindingly obvious. This
is normal."
Here's how a design session can work.
In the survey phase by active listening
you may uncover a list of five, ten, or
fifteen different issues. In the design
phase you prioritize them with the
potential client in some sequence.
"The sequence I always choose," he
said, "is to start with the most
painful problem with the worst
downside, then the second worst
downside, then the third.
"It's rare that you get much farther
than that without something happening
because people get so excited about
this one dramatic problem they sort of
beg you to please fix it. Maybe you
can, maybe you can't. You do not try
here. You get back on track with this
long list of things to work on.
"Once you have gone through the list,
you discuss solutions. Each one
includes a price in time, people, and
money, and that price needs to be
identified. Then you and those in the
design session tear the solution apart
to build a better one. Everyone in the
group has a stake in it...and in
helping to make it succeed.
"Then with the list you say we can do
this on this one and we can do that on
that one. Would you like me to work on
it?
"And if the answer is yes, then tell me
before we get started the definition of
success. Then tell me what it would
mean to have that definition of
success. And tell me what would happen
if you don't have that success.
"What would happen if we don't get
success is important because that tells
people how much they can afford to
spend. A part of the design session has
to be dollar trade-offs.
"And then you say O.K., now if we get
success, what is it worth? How much if
we win and how much if we fail? If it
is worth that much if we win and that
much if we fail, then your prospect may
ask how much will your work cost.
"At that point you can set a price and
a prospect can consider a price without
the pressure of price negotiations and
the hassles with it.
"In the design session you may uncover
things that are best done by outsiders
other than yourself. If so, don't be
afraid to say, 'Look, I am not the
right person to do that. Who would you
want?' Or you can recommend someone if
you trust them."
"And that is the risk in this step. You
may wind up with a solution that does
not include you.
"This is hard for many of us to
consider, and we tend to want to do
things to keep the discussion from
heading there. I tend to push it there.
One of two things will happen: The
prospect will decide to do it without
you, or he or she will make a strong
commitment to work with you.
"The first of those two situations
happened recently. An exec with a large
software company decided that he could
do the work internally as well as we
could. I congratulated him and
encouraged him to replace me with
internal resources. This made him feel
better.
"It made me feel better, too, because I
give an unconditional guarantee for my
work. If I do not add value to what his
internal team can do, should he pay
me?
"The second one occurred the last time
I pushed that idea with the same exec.
He said loudly and clearly in front of
his people that they could not do it
and that he absolutely wanted me to.
The idea of my not doing it frightened
him. It was not until after he had made
that loud and public declaration that
we discussed price. He never questioned
my fee and neither did his team."
Peter sees the design session as a
change for most sales people. "They
will go from prospecting to qualifying
to closing, and during closing they
will do a demonstration of their
product. After years of experience I
tend to stop doing demonstrations. It's
counterintuitive, but the results are
usually very good."
People who are selling a consulting
service may want to do a demonstration.
In Peter's terms this means "an
explanation of what you do and how
wonderful it is." Peter often advises
against it. What does he replace it
with? A design session.
The design session succeeds because you
and the prospect interact and together
work out what the solution might be.
"They have a sense of ownership," Peter
said. "And it is more likely to work.
And it is more likely to be
implemented."
The design session becomes a series of
steps, and as you are going through the
process you are, in fact, demonstrating
your skills and ability.
Your prospect may ask, "How does option
two work?" And then you respond,
"Here's what happens . . . ." In this
case, it is your prospect asking for a
demonstration, instead of you setting
up a formal demonstration.
Step 5 - Propose
"If you do a design session really
well, the proposal can be matter of
fact and anticlimactic," Peter said. He
has seen it become a "nuisance" with
the customer saying, "Come on, come on,
give it to me so I can sign." The
prospect has designed the project and
agreed on the payment. All you need to
do is reflect accurately the outcome of
your design session in your
proposal.
Step 6 - Close
The closing is organic to the
design session, too. The client may be
ready to sign. Maybe not. If not, you
need to ask "What else do you need to
do before you sign?" If he or she has
to talk to someone else, you will have
to work that person into the process
now. Even better is to find out much
earlier in the process who the decision
makers are and to bring them into the
design session.
Step 7 - Follow Up
You make certain you have a happy
customer or client to create the
opportunity for your being involved in
future work.
"Look at the cycle this way," Peter
said. "If most of your profit comes
from clients who repeat, and you live
by the guarantee, why would you not sit
down with your clients after you are
done and ask them if they are happy.
Then ask what the next steps are.
"If they have none, whose fault is
that? Define and integrate a process
into your work so that two things
happen whenever you finish a
project:
- you have a set of questions designed
to focus the customer on his or her
success."
Both the survey and the design session
require a commitment of time on the
part of your prospect to participate.
And if you have worked well with your
prospect, he or she has made a major
commitment towards generating an
acceptable solution to a nagging
problem. And you are well placed to
become part of that solution.
The Seven Step Sales Process focuses on
your prospects, not yourself and your
services. By not approaching your
prospects with preconceptions and
ready-made solutions, you are open to
their unique situations and true needs.
By following Peter's sales process step
by step you will uncover more needs and
generate many more opportunities for
consulting jobs. And it will help you
convert more prospects to clients.
That's exactly how it worked for
us.
The framework is extremely flexible --
the steps unfolded in a form that each
of our singular prospects felt
comfortable with. (And that happened
because of our active listening.)
Guided by the seven steps, we were able
to develop with one prospect, for
example, an innovative marketing pillar
and an intricate financially rewarding
results-based agreement. To arrive
there we engaged in a lengthy survey
and an intriguing (almost as lengthy)
design session. The propose and close
became a matter-of-fact result of the
strategy we generated together and the
relationship we built in the
process.
top
of
article
index of articles
Articles
Business
Growth
Executive
Management
Marketing
Consultant
Support
Technology
Management
List
of All
Articles
The Meyer Group
883 Cadillac Drive
Scotts Valley, CA 95066-3303
(831) 439-9607
fax (831) 461-0211
Business
Growth
Executive
Management
Marketing
Consultant
Support
Technology
Management
List
of All Articles
phone: (831) 439-9607
home
| corporate
page
| hot
topics and links
| articles
| books
| have
a question
print
and broadcast media
page
| about
us
| meet
the team
| search
| the
meyer index
© 2000 The Meyer Group | All rights
reserved