prseo.org

Personality styles have been studied since biblical times. The ancient Greek Hypocrites identified four distinct personalities.
Others have identified many more and have concluded that everyone has several personality styles.
I have learned that you can do a lot with Hypocrites’ four styles: directors, compliants, influencers, and steadies. These styles are similar to a modern system called [...]

[Read more →]

One of the saddest events I witness in professional firms is the exodus of good people with experience. Yet this is just the group of people firms want to keep.
The policy of “up or out” – you make partner or you leave – strips firms of great experience.
And it can cheat staffers who are not [...]

[Read more →]

One of the crises many professional firms face today is a scarcity of loyal, talented, and experienced people.
What if, when you were age 24, one of the partners of your firm, whom you respected, invited you for a cup of coffee.
Then after some initial chitchat, the partner said to you, “I’d like to help you [...]

[Read more →]

In many legal and accounting firms, CE, CLE, or CPE selling is a frequently neglected marketing tool. Continuing education (CE) is viewed as a burden rather than a beneficial sales tool.
Many professionals view their CE requirement with disdain. Some even cram their hours into the last month of the year and try to do as [...]

[Read more →]

Great advances have occurred in the professional training programs available today. Firms want a bigger payback from their investment in training.
Accountants and attorneys are looking for courses that are satisfying, challenging, and rewarding.
They want practical, exciting ideas for gaining efficiency and increasing their value to clients and prospects.
How to make training in technical areas work [...]

[Read more →]

You know the old story about the youngster who asked how to be successful. The successful professional said you need experience.
And how do you get experience? You try and fail. The error of the past is the success of the future.
Encouraging Effort
How can you encourage your partners and professionals to fail more in marketing so [...]

[Read more →]

Has business life for your clients become more complex? How about competitive? Regulated?
Are tax and legal issues more difficult? If your answer to any of these questions is in the affirmative, you believe as I do: “The demand for high-level professional services is growing, not declining.”
This phenomenon puts great pressure on the service professional who [...]

[Read more →]

Building a brand can be a powerful force in your practice if your firm truly operates as one firm.
Most firms operate as a collection of practitioners sharing overhead. Operating together as one firm enables you to create synergy when communicating with clients and prospects.
Synergy from One Firm
How can you tell if you are operating as [...]

[Read more →]

Successful leaders have a vision for their business. Whether you are CEO of your firm or a practice leader, you will be more successful when you lead with vision.
The “Vision Thing”
What is a vision? A vision is reality in the future. A vision shows where you want to go and what things will be like [...]

[Read more →]

Becoming an insider and selling to owners, board members, and top management takes a unique combination of attitude and aptitude.
Attitude
To operate successfully in the boardroom, you need the self-confidence to feel on equal footing with the top officers.
Such an attitude also presumes that you can understand the issues facing the top officers.
It means that you [...]

[Read more →]

The first time you hold an advance, you can spend all the time on developing a mission and vision.
Once your vision and the process becomes established, you will spend more of your time on how to achieve specific goals.
Prioritize and Organize
With a solid mission in place, an executive team can select the action steps that [...]

[Read more →]

The value ladder is a way of looking at the value clients receive from our services. Services at the bottom of the ladder are commodities.
Commodities are bought and sold by the pound, at the lowest possible price. You will have many competitors at the bottom of the ladder. As you begin to move up this [...]

[Read more →]

One of the best ways for you to become an insider with your clients is for you to help their top management focus on business strategy.
Trends in leadership and management come and go, but the need for an executive team to get away, visualize, strategize, prioritize, organize, and energize is universal.
You can be the catalyst [...]

[Read more →]

Want to build the most profitable relationship with your client? Try focusing on their profits first.
When you focus on achieving client profitability, you create business relationships that are synergetic, whereby the whole is greater than the sum of its separate parts.
A true partnership creates an equation where one-plus-one equals more than two. So, you have [...]

[Read more →]

Professionals who are involved in attest services cannot afford the appearance of also being an insider with their clients.
It is mandatory that accountants who are involved in attest work never allow their independence to be compromised.
You must abide by the code of ethics of your profession, as well as state and federal rules regarding independence.
The [...]

[Read more →]

If you’ve been looking for ways to encourage staff members to ask for referrals, they might appreciate a few pointers from the clients and professionals they would be approaching.
Information direct from the “horse’s mouth” will always have more impact than what you might tell them.
When you’ve established a solid relationship with another professional firm in [...]

[Read more →]

Once you’ve prioritized your referral contacts, the next step is to make an effort to build the relationships with low-priority contacts and to directly encourage referrals with your most likely prospects.
Refining Your Follow-up System
One accountant specifically budgeted the follow-up for each type of referral source. His “C” sources received his quarterly newsletter.
The accountant sent his [...]

[Read more →]

Some referral relationships will develop quickly once you’ve made contact with someone who refers to providers in your area regularly.
Other relationships will take years to develop fully. After you’ve make contact with a potential referral source, you need a system to follow up and build the relationship.
One of the first things you want to find [...]

[Read more →]

The most profitable marketing activity in which you can engage is building referrals. And the best way to develop referrals is getting to know all the other professionals – the bankers, bonding agents, insurance brokers, accountants, lawyers, and so on – whom your present clients utilize.
These other professionals have a natural inclination to help their [...]

[Read more →]

Do you have anyone in your circle of relationships, business or professional, who would say great things about you? Perhaps even say them to a potential prospect?
If you do, congratulations – consider them a treasured source, real gems with which to work. If not, why not?
How to Spell Referral
The earliest recorded use of the word [...]

[Read more →]

You know that referrals are the best way to get new clients. To get the best referrals, you need more than naturally occurring word of mouth. You need to have a program to actively encourage referrals in multiple ways.
You’d think that clients would give you referrals because they like you or your service. Nevertheless, it [...]

[Read more →]

Attorneys and CPAs are pricy to more information about their clients’ business affairs than any other professionals. You have the powerful potential to add real value to your client relationships.
One key area in which you can add value is in helping your clients visualize their business futures.
You are uniquely qualified to help clients with business [...]

[Read more →]

The summary close is especially useful when you are offering a new service to one of your existing clients. (Sales to existing clients are the most profitable.)
When you approach the end of your presentation, your client is faced with the task of organizing all the pieces of information into one clear and comprehensive picture.
The summary [...]

[Read more →]

If you are like most attorneys, consultants, and accountants, many of your clients utilize only a few of your services.
Too often, a client engages another professional to perform services that you could provide.
Cross-selling is when you sell a new service to an existing client. Cycle selling does this in a more complete and systematic way [...]

[Read more →]

Recently, I was sitting with a client in a “chain” restaurant. Our waitress was well mannered, knowledgeable, and polite.
We enjoyed our salad, a fantastic steak, and a glass of wine. We were all quite satisfied.
At the end of the meal, as our waitress cleared away the empty plates, she asked, “Any room for dessert?” While [...]

[Read more →]

Pricing is one of the four Ps of marketing and is one that few professionals use. Accounting and law firm marketing has improved over the past 20 years in three of the Ps of marketing (place, product, and promotion). But pricing is still being done using cost-accounting techniques.
Limits of Hourly Billing
Most clients hate hourly billing [...]

[Read more →]

A key marketing technique used by some top firms is the client business review (CBR). The CBR is used only on the firm’s “top 25” accounts, defined by the total size of the annual fees, referral potential, or other criteria.
The CBR takes a business consulting approach to understand and evaluate the systems of your clients.
The [...]

[Read more →]

On a plane from Orlando to New York, I sat beside a meeting planner for PricewaterhouseCoopers. She told me a story that bears repeating.
The meting planner had asked the catering department at Disney World to prepare an event for the PwC partners.
Disney’s caterer priced the affair at $50,000. But the meeting planner’s budget was $35,000. [...]

[Read more →]

The client satisfaction survey is one of the most misused marketing tools employed today. Most surveys fail to obtain reliable information. Even worse, many surveys obtain misleading information.
The single most important reason to perform a survey is to determine client intentions. What your clients say doesn’t always equal intentions.
A few years ago, in a focus [...]

[Read more →]

When a new CEO, COO, CIO, or CFO joins your client, your relationship may be at high risk.
Smart professionals never take a client for granted, but they are particularly sensitive when there is a change in top management.
In many cases, the new chief will not know you and probably will have some level of loyalty [...]

[Read more →]

In the last chapter, you were reminded that the way people inside the firm treat each other greatly impacts how the employees of the organization treat clients. Both internal and external service initiative must be coordinated.
Implementation of client service opportunities must begin with the partners. Norman Vincent Peale once remarked, “Nothing is more confusing than [...]

[Read more →]

Service consistency is a goal most midsized professional firms strive toward. It provides control over your customer service. It is also a great reason to contact your clients.
The journey to firm-wide consistency is difficult because of the lack of communication with existing clients about the quality of the current service being delivered.
None of us wants [...]

[Read more →]

Clients are more loyal to professionals who are proactive about providing service than ones who just react.
Our five-star client service training is patterned after the service you receive at a five-star resort.
The five-star client service system helps your firm reduce staff turnover, improve internal communication, raise the level of trust inside your firm, and ultimately [...]

[Read more →]

Outstanding client service begins with the people you work with every day – your internal clients.
An internal client is an employee of your firm. For example, when a tax preparer compiles the return, he or she is the internal client of the partner who provides insight and guidance.
And vice versa, as the partner reviews and [...]

[Read more →]

Receiving solid referrals from delighted clients is the best way to build your business. Your closing ratio will be very high with a referral, particularly if your referral source is a trusted friend of the prospect. The next strongest marketing tool is to utilize testimonials from great clients.
A third-party endorsement is one of the most [...]

[Read more →]

After you have invested time in the proposal process and have lost, it is crucial to learn why.
This gives you something in return for your efforts. If you can meet with the key decision makers to ask questions, you most likely will be able to gather a strong sense of what really occurred.
If you cannot [...]

[Read more →]

When selling to key decision influencers, you will help the buyers to minimize risk when you can support your proposal with solid evidence for each of your claims.
Comparing Your Services
For example, when your prospect is mentally comparing his present service provider with your service, you may make a complete comparison of the two.
List the advantages [...]

[Read more →]

At the moment of making a decision to hire you, many would-be clients balk. At the last minute, the decision process focuses on risk. “What are we risking to make this change,” the CEO asks. Prospects fear change.
The perceived risk of changing is often worse than staying with the known problems with their incumbent professional [...]

[Read more →]

Have you ever taken a puppy home “just for the night” to see how the kids like it? You now own it, don’t you? After your family has spent a few hours with the puppy, you are hooked. The same is true with various products and services.
The “puppy dog close” works on the principle that [...]

[Read more →]

A written document provides the financial and qualitative information necessary to make an informed engagement decision.
While in most instances the written document is a small portion of the buying decision, it can be the deciding factor.
What Is a Winning Proposal?
A well-written proposal will first review the information the top decision influencers have shared with you [...]

[Read more →]

You may have invested months or years developing a relationship built on trust with a prospect.
You do not want to destroy the trust you have built by having your prospect feel like you are strong-arming her.
On the other hand, many prospects will appreciate a nudge from you to begin working together. Executive decision influencers, in [...]

[Read more →]

The position power of your firm’s managing partner (or CEO) is one of the most underutilized resources of a professional firm sales team.
Bringing your CEO into a major sales call can create a winning edge in establishing a sincere, high-level relationship.
Clients and prospects immediately feel more comfortable and important when the CEO of his or [...]

[Read more →]

With decision makers and influencers, you will be better off letting them do most of the talking.
You want to let them think they are in control, while you (like the puppeteer) hold the strings.
The average person can think at about 600 words per minute (WPM) while he can only speak at about 125 WPM.
So while [...]

[Read more →]

One of the most exciting plays in football is the “strip away.” A quarterback throws a perfect pass into the arms of his wide receiver, just to have the ball taken away – stripped away – by the free safety. The team that wins is usually the one that takes the ball away.
Stripping clients away [...]

[Read more →]

Do you often give discounts? If so, you may be losing more than just money. Successful selling creates a win-win situation: high profits for you and top value for your clients and prospects.
If you don’t defend your pricing, your clients and prospects may develop doubts about your value.
Pricing is an emotional as well as logical [...]

[Read more →]

Professionals suggest that the sale does not begin until the prospect raises an objection. Objections may be real and logical, or purely psychological.
Psychological Reasons for Objections
Much sales resistance is largely psychological:
• Dislike of making a decision
• Reluctance to give up something familiar
• Difficulty of changing habits or procedures
• Unpleasant associations with a particular company or sales representative
• Resistance to domination [...]

[Read more →]

An objection is anything the prospect says or does that presents an obstacle to the smooth completion of the sale.
Objections are a normal and natural part of almost every conversation, not just in sales situations. People just seem to enjoy objecting, no matter what the subject of the conversation might be.
Having seen deception, cover-ups, and [...]

[Read more →]

Clients want professionals who recognize all their needs and wants. Firms that adopt a clear marketing strategy when they add each new service are those that succeed while others languish.
The number one strategy of a successful marketing effort is to use bundling to add new services onto old ones.
Bundling is simply the process of offering [...]

[Read more →]

When demonstrating your firm’s capabilities, it is important to feel and demonstrate the passion you feel about delivering services.
For example, in a survey performed by Huthwaite a few years ago, clients of accounting firms indicated that while the candor and competence of their professional was high, less than 35% thought their accountant really cared about [...]

[Read more →]

When demonstrating your capabilities, it is crucial to illustrate the value of your services compared with your potential competitors. Illustrating value will create less price resistance when the time comes to hire you.
Prospects want a superior service, one that comes with added benefits such as strong technology and staff training.
They want assurance that their delivery [...]

[Read more →]