Create and keep a customer
For all the talky-talk about consulting, it really comes down to what Peter Drucker said 60 years ago, “The purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer.” BOOM, how simple and beautiful is that?
- Create: know them, know which customers are “not for you”, offer unique value
- Keep: serve them well, even if they are different than you, even if they change their mind
Q: How do you sell B2B professional services?
This is a fascinating topic. All solo consultants want to know this. Heck, I want to know this.
- I asked friends
- I attended seminars
- I read books
- I wrote proposals
- I learned, experimented, failed, (did I mention failing yet?)
A: You don’t. You Do great Work
This is the most common refrain when you ask successful partners. While this make sense, it also is an annoyingly obvious response. Okay, smart-guy, how do I get the first customer? It’s like the cold-start of a networking problem; who buys the first fax machine?
- Short answer: Find non-paying, low-paying clients for you to demonstrate your work. Think free samples at Costco.
- Long answer: Develop a portfolio of work, deliverables, relationships, evidence, testimonials, references, stuff which speaks for you
David Maister, Managing a Professional Services Firm (1993)
If you want to know how professional services firms work, this book is the gold standard. The book (affiliate link) is mandatory reading in consulting class.
Marketing is a long game
David Maister sees the professional services marketing process as 5 steps (yes, I am telling you, “buckets” are the way to go). When you add Drucker’s thinking with Maister, it looks like this:
Walking through this chronology, it might sound like this:
- Broadcast: Generating leads: seminars, articles, newsletters, speeches
- Court: Starting the relationship with a single, specific buyer
- Super-please: Delighting the customer; get them bragging about you. Word-of-mouth
- Nurture: Earning future business, not taking the client for granted
- Listen: Gathering marketing intelligence; understanding how clients think
For the B2C marketers, this is not a) awareness b) interest c) consideration d) trial e) purchase. This is not a progression of lots of random people, prospects, then customers. Instead, it’s the long and deeply personal game of marketing yourself through your words and relationships. Be so good they can’t ignore you.
Too much #1 broadcasting, #2 courting
Maister makes the observation that firms often over-weight #1 and #2 (creating a new customer). Isn’t that the truth. Tons of random “networking”, out-going sales calls, request-for-proposal (RFP) responses, meetings and administration. Once you start layering in digital life (Linkedin posts, social media, email campaigns, SEO, etc. . .) this is a fairly large time-suck. Oye-vey.
Lots of input, not a lot of focus. Like a boy throwing seeds around, thinking he is a farmer.
#3 Super-please your current clients
The merits of doing great work for your clients (who are already paying you) seems so obvious, I am a little embarrassed typing this sentence. Yet, we consultants can get complacent and lose our professional edge. This gets especially dangerous with longer-term clients and employers.
Because of the proclivity of professionals to become more fascinated with the intellectual challenge of their craft than with being responsive to clients, all too often clients are mocked for their lack of professional knowledge, despised because of the demands, and resented because they control the purse strings, and hence the autonomy of the professional. – David Maister
This is not someone else’s story. I’ve been this way before. We’ve all have complained about clients, or our boss, or the company we work for. Which is both ironic, and a bit stupid. Two perfectly good reasons we should double-down on our current clients.
- Professionally, we are measured by our work and attitude. We are the product.
- Logically, cynically, greedily, it’s the profitable thing to do. Super-pleasing your existing client, boss, company has a high return-on-investment.
Work is everywhere
After spending 20+ years in corporate America, trust me when I say there are plenty of problems that consultants can help solve. In the extreme, I remember one client who had 4 different consulting firms running around the same building. All you need to do is flip through the “registration” book at the front lobby.
- Good news: There is not a scarcity of client problems; there is enough work to go around.
- Bad news: It’s still not easy to find a) problems you can help with b) right decision maker c) right way d) right time
Business development: do good work + pay attention
Perhaps this is reductionist, but new problems from old clients are the best opportunities. If true, then everyone at the client site should do two things:
- Keep doing great work; develop a reputation for cracking tough problems, collaborating well, getting things done
- Be on the look out for adjacent problems which your team could help with
Yes, this means that everyone (not just the partners) can help:
- Often times, the client executives don’t even know the extent of their problems
- Partners and directors are not on-site all the time like you are
#4 More nurturing of existing clients
Maister argues there are two activities we should do more. Courting new clients with proposals, RFP, pitches and Nurturing existing clients to see if they have other problems which we can help with.
- Courting = if you are not having meaningful conversations with qualified buyers, your pipeline will dry up.
- Nurturing = if you are not asking your client real questions, finding new ways to add value, it will be a hamster wheel of finding new prospects and starting the conversation all over again. More first dates.
#5 listen better
I’ve gotten better at this, but you need to get feedback. Feedback from clients, partners, students, team members. Tout le monde. Think of your business like Toyota’s production system. Continuous improvement. Defects are fun to find, so you can fix them.