8
Insights
Sales and Marketing Processes

Introduction
High quality sales processes in Professional Services firms exhibit the following:
- Belief
- Clear focus
- Client value
- Relationships
- High energy
- Quality thinking
- Communications
- Big ideas
- Collaboration
- Accountability
Belief
- There is no such thing as a tough market - our market is challenged by a need to 'create it'
- Let's wipe that thought from our minds
- If you are good enough, active enough, thoughtful enough and focussed enough, you will find plenty of work in any market - the key is to find ways to be active
Clear focus
- Vertical markets - sectors, clients
- Horizontal markets - functional practices, clients
- 70% of practice success comes from being very clear on where you are going to build an outstanding practice
- Focus where there are "deep pools of demand" on a sustainable basis at a client level - year in and year out
- Find 5 clients where you can generate 3-4 jobs per client per annum - every year
Client value
- Really understand the strategy of the client and the industry forces
- Dozens of opportunities flow from this
- Think about what we can do that can help with these
- Work at becoming strategy advisors on the client's major that we are relevant to help with
- Figure out what you are going to be famous for in the market - and go after it
Relationships
- There is a golder rule in Professional Services firms
Strength of relationship = 1
- You will sell next to nothing to buyers you don't know
Strength of relationship = 5
- You will get a share of wallet of more than 80% from these people
- A key to building sustainable practice success is to build strong relationships with the key buyers in those 5 clients with "deep pools of demand"
- There are a number of ways of doing this in a cost-effective and time-efficient way
- There is a clear relationship building plan
High energy in the market
40-50 hours per week working with the market
- I set a target for myself to conntect with 10 clients a week outside of current assignments
- A funny thing happens when you talk to clients about their most important business issues - you spot opportunities and you sell work - need to create conversations
- The more clients you talk to, the more work you sell
- Doing business with ourselves after hours - firm meetings need to be banned between 9 to 6
Quality thinking
- In tough markets, creating demand is a by-product of deep knowledge around sectors and clients
- Everybody needs to be a thought leader in at least one thing
- We have got to abolish the idea in our heads that we are in the "responding to events" business
Communicating to the market
- Talk to seminars of industry leaders
- Hold discussions in the office with industry leaders on important leadership topics
Big ideas
- Every top-performing Professional Services firm thinks big
- We have a unique set of skills and experience which, when combined together, can help companies solve some of their most pressing issues
- Lets have 10 "big ideas" bubbling across the firm at any one time that involves all of us - we need to create cross-practice ideas to 'galvanise'
Collaboration
- Big ideas come from teamwork - and can only be delivered usually with teamwork
Very good management
- A healthy pipeline contains a range of opportunities at different stages of development
A well-managed pipeline across everybody in the firm delivers consistent performance
- Volatility is always a sign of poor pipeline management
- Let's get rid of the thought in some of our minds that volatility is "normal".
- It is NOT normal in high-quality Professional Services firms - it is not written in the sands and is simply an outcome of poor management
- A well-managed pipeline contains a large number of opportunities that have sufficient volume to counterbalance the many "murphy" events that happen in our business
- It is a statistical fact
Accountability
- You are only truly accountable if ALL of the following conditions are in place:
- You have accepted a goal and are genuinely responsible for achieving it - e.g. Revenue target - revenue is an outcome target; also need process targets that generate the revenues (most of the above are process targets)
You have a plain to achieve it
- What sectors/functions
- Clients with deep pools of demand
- Buyers whom you need to build string relationships with
- Prospection plan
- Get your EA to make the meeting - it is much more efficient
- Fill your diary - no blank spaces
- You know what a healthy pipeline looks like - so that you can defeat volatility
There is a volume of opportunities at different stages:
- Opportunities - these can be ideas that you have heard about from connecting with players in the market
- Qualified opportunities - these are ideas that you have discussed with the client, they have acknowledged that they have a need, you are still working up a solution - and you have not yet put in a proposal
- Proposals
- Sold work
- You have set an individual target for each of these stages that works for your practice
You monitor your performance weekly
- You know what your monthly budget is
- Every week - at least once a week - be clear what your gap is for the month, and search your pipeline for opportunities to close it
- Prepare an action plan to close it
- Then act on what you need to do straight away
The basics of management are: plan - do - monitor - adjust plan - do - monitor
- And so on forever
- If any of the above conditions are not in place - you are not acocuntable
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MontaRosa/index.php/who-we-are/our-team/collaborators/montarosa
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Elizabeth MacGregor/index.php/who-we-are/our-team/core-team/elizabeth-macgregor
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Ian Dardis/index.php/who-we-are/our-team/core-team/ian-dardis
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Jill Johnson/index.php/who-we-are/our-team/core-team/jill-johnson
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Sasha Jurac/index.php/who-we-are/our-team/core-team/sasha-jurac
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Caroline Mirams/index.php/who-we-are/our-team/core-team/caroline-mirams
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John Colvin/index.php/who-we-are/our-team/core-team/john-colvin
What We Do
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If you are interested in collaborating with us on a research project, please contact us.
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