How To Acquire Clients by Alan Weiss

How to
How to
Powerful Techniques
for the Successful Practitioner
ALAN WEISS, Ph.D.
Author, The Ultimate Consultant

For my very first client once I opened my doors: GTE. They called the first morning while I was still
figuring out what I was supposed to be doing, and I had made $2,500 before lunch. "You know," I told
my wife, "I should have done this a long time ago." Oh, if it were always so easy!
To L.T. Weiss, always a hero.
Other Works by ALAN WEISS
Books
The Ultimate Consultant Series:

Value-Based Fees: How to Charge-and Get-What You're Worth (2002)
How to Establish a Unique Brand in the Consulting Profession (2001)
The Ultimate Consultant (2001)
How to Sell New Business and Expand Existing Business in Professional Service Firms (2001)
Getting Started in Consulting (2000)
The Unofficial Guide to Power Management (2000)
How to Market, Establish a Brand, and Sell Professional Services (2000)
Good Enough Isn't Enough (1999)
How to Write a Proposal That's Accepted Every Time (1999)
Money Talks (1998)
Million Dollar Consulting (1992; rev ed. 1998, 2002)
Our Emperors Have No Clothes (1995)
Best Laid Plans (1991)
Managing for Peak Performance (1990)
The Innovation Formula (with Mike Robert, 1988)

Booklets
How to Maximize Fees
Raising the Bar
Leadership Every Day
Doing Well by Doing Right
Rejoicing in Diversity
Audiocassettes
Peak Performance
The Consultant's Treasury
The Odd Couple®

Videos
Stories I Could Never Tell: Alan Weiss Live and Uncensored
Alan Weiss on Marketing
Alan Weiss on Product Development

Newsletters
Balancing Act: Blending Life, Work, and Relationships (electronic)
The Consultant's Craft
What's Working in Consulting (editor)

About the Author
Ian Weiss began his own consulting firm, Summit Consulting Group, Inc.,
out of his home in 1985 after being fired by a boss with whom he sha:red a mutual
antipathy. Today, he still works out of his home, having traveled to fiftyone countries
and forty-nine states, published fifteen books and over four hundred articles, and
consulted with some of the great organizations in the world, developing a seven-figure
practice in the process.
His clients have included Merck, Hewlett-Packard, Federal Reserve Bank, State Street Corp., Fleet
Bank, Coldwell Banker, Merrill Lynch, American Press Institute, Chase, Mercedes-Benz, GE,
American Institute of Architects, Arthur Andersen, and over two hundred similar organizations. He
delivers fifty keynote speeches a year and is one of the stars of the lecture circuit. He appears
frequently in the media to discuss issues pertaining to productivity and performance and has been
featured in teleconferences, video conferences, and Internet conferences.
His Ph.D. is in organizational psychology, and he has served as a visiting faculty member at Case
Western Reserve, St. John's, and half a dozen other major universities. He currently holds an
appointment as adjunct professor at the graduate school of business at the University of Rhode Island,
where he teaches a highly popular course on advanced consulting skills. His books have been
translated into German, Italian, and Chinese.
The New York Post has called him "one of the most highly regarded independent consultants in the
country," and Success Magazine, in an editorial devoted to his work, cited him as "a worldwide expert
in executive education."
Dr. Weiss resides with his wife of thirty-three years, Maria, in East Greenwich, RI.
Contents
Introduction xiii
Acknowledgments xv
CHAPTER Identifying Targets of Opportunity 1
You Seldom Awake in the Morning with People Waving Money in Your Face
Three Conditions Essential to Successful Selling 2
Generalizing and Specializing: The View from Contrarian Land 7
Customized Assaults: When There Is a Single Target Too Appealing to Resist 12
Strategies for Isolating and Hitting New Targets of Opportunity 14
From My Time in the Trenches, 17
CHAPTER How to Prepare for Success in Acquiring New Business 19
The Allies Didn't Simply Decide to Take a Trip Across the English Channel
One Morning
The Frontal Attack 20
The Flanking Maneuver 25
Infiltration 27
When the Buyer Comes to You (Build It, and They Will Come) 32
From My Time in the Trenches 34
CHAPTER How to Build Relationships with Economic Buyers 35
Most Consultants Don't Stop "Selling" Long Enough to Really Make a Sale
Behavioral Predispositions: Funny Things That Buyers Do 36
Controlling the Discussion (Killing Me Softly with His Song ...) 43
Emotional Targeting 48
Drawing a Line in the Sand for Unacceptable Behaviors 50

C H A P T E R - Rebutting Objections Once and for All 53
If You Hear a New Objection, Then You Haven't Been Listening in the Past
The Four Major Areas of Objections 55
Rebutting Arguments in the Four Basic Areas 57
Visualizing the Future 65
Sample Objections and Rebuttals 66
C H APT E R - - Sixteen Great Acquisition Sources 71
Why Go Around the Block to Get Next Door?
The First Four 73
The Second Four 78
The Third Four 83
The Fourth Four 86
C H A P T E R -- Winning Friends and Influencing People 91
How to Build Support from Those Who Loathe Your Arrival
Providing Value Early and for Free 92
Building Momentum Among.Key Advisors 95
Dealing with Committees 97
Overcoming "Threat" Factors 101
C H APT E R _ Gaining Market Share from Others 109
Stealing Is Legal in the Sales Business
Harvesting "Low Hanging Fruit" 111
Creating High Visibility 114

Waiting for Someone Else's Bad News 117
More Techniques to Trespass on Others'
Property 120
C H APT E R - Guaranteeing the Ultimate Business: Repeat Business 127
How to Think of the Fourth Sale First
What Is the Fourth Sale? 128
The Three Keys to Cementing Relationships Rather Than Selling Business 131
Developing Trust Through Pushback 133
The Present-Value Discount Principle in Action 138
C H A P T E R - A Dozen New Sources of Clients 145
The World Is Changing and So Are Your Prospects
1. Global Alliances 147
2. Remote Learning 147
3. Entrepreneurs 149
4. Universities and Higher Education 150
5. The Professions: Medical, Legal, Accounting 151
6. Mature High-Tech 152
7. The Retired, the Recreating, the Hobbyist 153
8. Behavior Modification 155
9. Life Balance 156
10. Sales Skills 157
11. Cultural Accommodation 159
12. Knowledge Assimilation/ Management Application 160

C H A P T E R - _ - The Process of Selective Acquisition 163
How to Reject and Abandon Business in Order to Grow
The Ten Very Good Reasons for Rejecting Prospective Business 164
The Five Very Good Reasons for Pulling the Plug on Existing Business 168
Managing New Business Potential and Profit 171
The Mercedes-Benz Syndrome 175
From My Time in the Trenches: Chapter 10 179
From My Time in the Trenches: The Book 180
Index 183
Introduction
by write a book on business acquisition for highly successful

consultants (the primary audience of The Ultimate Consultant Series)? Aren't these the
very people who have been acquiring business quite well, thank you very much?
What I've found is that successful consultants fall victim to "the success trap." After a while they
enter a state of "unconscious competency" in which business flows in, but for reasons that are long
forgotten (and from marketing plans long left stagnant due to contemporary success). The success trap
is, in reality, a plateau that is rather insidious. The consultant believes that the journey is still great,
and even easier than ever, but that's because the climb is no longer "up" but rather merely horizontal.
And, sooner or later, the laws of entropy obtain and the plateau erodes into a decline.
I've written this particular book in The Ultimate Consultant Series to help refresh, revitalize, and
reawaken successful consultants to the need to continually climb after more and better business. (And
if you're a newer consultant who's decided to read this book to "jump start" sales, good for you and
welcome aboard!) When I say "better business" I also mean that higher quality that should accrue to
successful people who have paid the dues and taken the risks: higher fees for less labor-intensive
work; passive income; alliances that drive your business; and selective and appealing instances and
locales that combine personal goals with business improvement.
To diversify the offering and guarantee that my "model" isn't the only one presented, I've included
four additional elements in every chapter, three of which are contributed by other successful
practitioners: "Best Practices" shares highly successful techniques; "The One That Got Away" offers
insights gained from failure and, I think, generated a fair degree of commiseration; "The Twilight
Zone" demonstrates the unlikely and unimaginable in client acquisition; and my own offering, "Who
Could Make This Up?," provides some of the ironies and peculiarities of the wonderful but odd
profession we're all a part of.
Read, enjoy, and head up the mountain for better and better sales. It's a great journey. I'll see you up
there.
Alan Weiss, Ph.D.
East Greenwich, RI
March 2002
Acknowledgements
y appreciation to Ben Tregoe, who allowed me to make my errors on

his nickel and learn my craft on his genius.
CHAPTER
Identifying Targets
of Opportunity
You Seldom Awake in the Morning with People Waving Money in Your Face
here comes a time in every consultant's career when there is a need to

identify and pursue new business and then wrestle it to the ground. Often, that occurs
soon after the consultant has hung out a shingle and :printed stationery. But,
surprisingly, it often occurs only after several years when a highly successful
consultant by repute, contacts, and original momentum-has exhausted that fuel.
In fact, one of the primary reasons for the plateaus and even declines that haunt once-successful
practices is that the consultant has never learned to acquire business, because it's always presented
itself at the door. I've met people seeking to enter my mentor program, for example, with several years
of success and mid-six-figure personal income, whose "marketing materials" are either non-existent or
outright embarrassing. They've simply never had the need to sell.
Until next month's mortgage payment begins to loom. By then, it's somewhat late to hit the street.
Selling is a noble profession. It began at the time that technology enabled previously subsistence
farmers-virtually everyone alive-to produce more than they could consume. At that moment they had
a product to barter with those who weren't such good farmers but had other talents, such as tool repair,
music, or weaving. With the advent of currency, items could be sold for a commonly recognized
instrument, which itself could be bartered in the future.
In this profession, we are bartering our talent to improve the client's condition. Thus, we'd better
learn who the people are who have the shekels that will enable us to barter with the bank at a later
time.
THREE CONDITIONS ESSENTIAL
TO SUCCESSFUL SELLING
We don't sell in a vacuum. Indeed, we sell in a cross-current of dynamics that strongly influence who
will buy and under what conditions. "The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong,"
observed writer and wit Damon Runyon, "but that's the way to bet." So how do we control, direct, and
cajole those forces which, in turn, drive sales?
The easiest sales take place in an atmosphere of need. The toughest sales occur when the buyer doesn't
perceive a need. Consequently, it's better to try to sell people something they perceive will help them,
not you.
The highest quality and highest velocity sales I've seen occur at the confluence of three dynamics,
as shown in Figure 1.1.
Market Need. This is the existing presence of desire for your services, or the creation of that desire
through your marketing endeavors.' It means that some buyer wants to achieve a condition which can,
one hopes, be filled by your wares. People enter a McDonald's with the intent of buying food, not to
browse. They pull into a gas station to fill the tank, not to bicker about price. (Increasingly, you can
pull into a gas station and buy bread and coffee, which is a reflection of catering to additional need
through an existing method of distribution.)
In consulting, there should ideally be a need for help in the flavors you offer. When major
organizations have strategic needs, many automatically can McKinsey, just as purchasing managers
with word processing needs called IBM twenty years ago.
Walt Disney created his own market by inventing the theme park, which no one had been seeking or
even thinking about prior to that. In consulting, need is created all the time, as organizations are
informed, injected, and overwhelmed with issues, which include diversity, shareholder value,
globalization, retaining talent in low unemployment economies, workplace aggression, substance
abuse, computer hacking, and so on.
Not many companies were aware of the need for ergonomically sound work stations until several
lawsuits created an acute need. Now there are legions of consultants working on design and usage of
everything from chairs to keyboards.
Figure 1.1. Convergence of Need, Competency, and Passion
Note that there may be plenty of need out there, but that your competencies might not match up
with them.
There's this wonderful thing about competence. It's not given to you in the manner that brown eyes or
allergies are. You can constantly develop competencies, provided that you haven't lost the talent by
relying on past successes for future business.
Consultant Competency. I can't fill the need to create more ergonomically sound workplaces because I
don't have the skills and am not at all interested in acquiring them. Similarly, I can't meet the needs of
clients who have balance sheet issues or technology problems. But I can improve my clients' condition
in the areas of performance and leadership, for example, not because I was born with those innate
skills, but because I gained them experientially and academically.'
Some of us are naturally good listeners or questioners. Some consulting methodology is simple to
learn-focus group facilitation comes to mind. But while some people may be "natural" executive
coaches, other have to learn the skills more methodically and gain mastery more systematically.
I advise new consultants to begin with what they're already good at, but to constantly learn new
skills and acquire new competencies. But what about highly successful consultants who seek to gain
new levels? They may have a somewhat tougher job in "unlearning" some of the skills that brought
them to where they are in order to move on to the more sophisticated (or timely) skills needed in the
future. For example, personality profiling ebbs and flows (although I wish it would permanently ebb),
but 360° feedback seems to be a competency that fills more consistent needs. "Diversity training" will
eventually run its course, but selling in a globally connected marketplace will be required for another
decade.
When is the last time you brought new skills to your prospects, or to your existing clients? If you're
hiring people, are you acquiring new skills or simply replicating those you already have? Is that a wise
investment?
The One That Got Away
I've lost three major deals in the past six months, and all for the same reason. I should write on the
blackboard five hundred times: "I will not quote a fee for any project to anyone other than the
economic buyer." (And then only after establishing some sort of relationship.)
-David Hamacher, President, Communicon Consulting Group, Inc.
Passion. By this stage, you should know that you don't grow by finding something that may make a lot
of money and trying to love it. Rather, you find something you love and throw yourself into it. George
Merck, one of the founders and leaders of the highly respected pharmaceutical company, observed,
"Do good and good will follow." He meant that if your intent is to help your customer, and you
become adept at doing that and truly love doing that, you'll never fail to make a profit. Growing at an
annual compound rate of over 20 percent for most of its recent history, Merck the company has proved
Merck the prophet to be correct.
In Figure 1.2 we see three "typical" consulting trajectories.
Burnout. This is the newcomer to the business who is wildly passionate about the profession and his or
her ability to help others. However, because this person quickly runs out of contacts, can't create new
need, and doesn't really have unique and/or effective competencies, there is a relatively rapid decline.
The "burnout" rate for such people is very high and very abrupt, since they're running on blind
passion. They have ignored need and competence. These are often the people with a single "message"
or methodology, who feel that mere intensity alone can create need in others. It can't.
Figure 1.2. Three Trajectories of Consultants' Passion

Trapped. This is the profile of the more methodical consultants, who build a practice and become
quite successful. Their passion climbs steadily until, subliminally and unperceived at the time, their
ardor cools. Some retire early, others think of some way to try to sell their practice. Most continue to
"go through the motions," but don't understand why the work isn't as much fun and the business isn't
growing as it once did. I often refer to this as "the success trap." Consultants here are going through
the motions, but are no longer enraptured by what they do, because they can do it in their sleep. They
have, consciously or unconsciously, stopped developing their abilities and ceased acquiring new
competencies.'
Passion means that you are excited about what you do. You rejoice in the highs; you don't wallow in
the lows. Passion is about being energized, being "psyched," being ready to go full-throttle every time.
If that doesn't sound familiar, then you may well be in "the success trap."
Renewing. This is the constantly renewing consultant. This individual grows, takes some breathing
room while success is absorbed and business is solidified, but then becomes passionate again about
new clients, new markets, new skills, and new environments. The ultimate consultant is one who is
constantly self-renewing, periodically re-energized, and continually thrilled about the nature of the
work.
Your initial targets of opportunity to acquire new clients-no matter what the stage of your career-
will be found at the confluence of market need, competence to meet that need, and passion for that
competence. The bad news is that too few veteran consultants step back to admire that view. The good
news is that all three dynamics, and hence the keys to new business acquisition, are within our own
influence.
GENERALIZING AND SPECIALIZING: THE VIEW FROM CONTRARIAN
LAND
There has been a rubric in our business about the need to "specialize or die," which sounds to me an
awful lot like New Hampshire's license plate motto.4
One can make a case for specializing early in one's career, when focus, a more limited skill set, the
need for a quick "brand" in the marketplace, and other competitive factors mitigate against attempting
to throw too wide a net into the ocean. But I don't think that's where ultimate consultants belong. In
fact, I can make a case that generalization is where you thrive, while specialization allows you merely
to survive.
The acquisition of new business is greatly enhanced when the number of potential clients (the
breadth of the marketplace need you can meet with your competencies) is maximized. For example,
the two "walls" that provide boundaries to my practice were those cited above: I don't do financial or
technological work. But anything-and I mean anything--in the realm of individual and organizational
performance between those walls is fair game for me. I have engaged in a strategy of trying to create
the broadest possible range of prospects. I'd rather deselect those who aren't right for me than have the
prospect deselect me on the basis of too narrow a specialty.'
1;1 *1 d j
Back in my computer technology days, I wrote an article on contingency planning and posted it on our
website. The article explained every single thing you would need to do to prepare a working
contingency plan that would keep you in business in the event of a lengthy computer system
shutdown. (Literally anyone with half a brain could read the article and create his or her own plan.)
In addition to the article, we created a database system that could be used to gather and store all the
information needed to make the plan work. Both the article and the database system were given away
for free from our website.
I didn't track how many times the article was read, but it was reprinted about thirty times in
newspapers, magazines, and newsletters around the world, and the database was downloaded by 6,300
different businesses during an eighteen-month period.
On the surface you'd think I was nuts for giving away something so popular. However, I wasn't in the
business of creating and selling software systems. I was in the business of managing projects. By
giving away the article and database for free, I created the credibility I needed to book our calendar
with contingency planning projects. And the really interesting part is the extremely short sales process
that resulted. You see, since people who contacted me had already read the article, they knew exactly
what they were getting if they hired me. So the only thing left to discuss was price and availability (I
was closing $80,000 engagements in fifteenminute phone conversations).
Now that I've switched to sales and marketing consulting as my career, I've extended this to include a
free one-hour workshop each month. I call it the Honest Selling Breakfast Club and almost all of the
business I've gotten this past year has come as a result of giving people free access to this information.
If you give it, they will pay you for it.
-Gill E. Wagner, President, Honest Selling
I called on the senior vice president for human resources at a huge media company headquartered in
New York. He told me that his staff had significant needs and that they needed to be transformed into
powerful internal consultants.
He had several of his staff in the room and played to the grandstand. He explained that he was going to
make major inroads in changing the organizations and the thinking of management. He wanted "world
class" and the "best of the best." During all this pontification, I noticed some furtive looks from his
staff and what seemed like ulster boredom from his administrative assistant, who had set the meeting
up for us.
At his insistence, I sent him a proposal by FedEx based on the objectives and metrics he provided
during our session. When I hadn't heard anything in three days, I called him and persevered until I got
him on the phone. He told me my proposal was so out of the ballpark, so ridiculous, that it had
actually upset his stomach. The proposal, to help with his inroads and change, was a mere $27,000.
(I've never met a human resource executive who could spend freely from his or her own budget, so I
kept this modest in order to break into the organization.) He told me that he would "go in another
direction."
I sent down, via FedEx, a pack of Pepto-BismolTM tablets so that his stomach could recover. Of
course, for maximum exposure, I sent them with my note to his administrative assistant.
-AW
When you have come as far in your career as the reader of this book presumably has, there should
be a tropism at work forcing more of a generalist view, despite the specialties that may have been
responsible for getting you where you are. Those influences include both the obvious and the subtle.
Factors Supporting Moves Toward Generalist Positions
A veteran consultant's experiential base has become significant, and the nature and breadth of
assignments will have inevitably created the basis for appealing to wider needs with increasing
competencies.
One's name and/or "brand" has developed to the point that credibility is attached to your repute,
not solely earned through future projects. Buyers will trust your ability to do what you say you
can do.
Relationship skills will have been developed to the point where trust is formed with key buyers
early rather than late. The veteran has heard all the objections there are to hear and is prepared to
deal with them smoothly (or shame on the consultant).
One probably has acquired additional resources-subcontractors, employees, alliance partners-that

provide additional competencies and abilities at the disposal of the consultant.
The nature of client concerns, the economy, the environment, and social conditions have
continued to change and evolve, so that the consultant, while not abandoning original skills, has
at least had to modify and develop them to stay abreast of need over the long term.
There's simply more challenge and fun in trying new things and learning new skills, and the
successful consultant has more confidence and resilien cy (toleration of failure) than a less
experienced person. I've heard a great many consultants, about to try something new, say,
"What's the worst that can happen? There is no boss to fire me!"
Specialization is a weak cop-out for the new consultant and is a cardinal sin for the successful
consultant. It's simply crazy to learn more and more about less and less, especially when new
technologies, larger competitors, or a fickle clientele (remember outdoor experiences and left
brain/right brain thinking?) can pull the narrow rug out from under the specialist. Generalists tend to
have wall-to-wall carpeting.
At any stage in one's career, whether neophyte or veteran, struggler or impresario, there is a
constant need to refresh the practice with new business. The dynamics you can quickly and effectively
manipulate are the needs of the market, your competencies to meet them, and your passion to
undertake the initiatives. If that's the "arrow," then the size of the target is determined by how much of
a generalist you decide-emphasis on the phrase you decide-to become.
If your target is tiny, represented by a highly specialized skill aimed at a narrow range of prospects,
then your aim has to be precise and you have to hit the target before other marksmen both the
competing specialists and the generalists who also embrace that need-hit it before you do. However, if
your target is much wider and more general, not only do the demands on your accuracy decline, but
you'll also find targets of opportunity abounding, many of which have few if any competitors shooting
at the same mark.
There should be a natural movement toward a more generalist position as your career progresses
and thrives. Don't dampen it; encourage it. Your ability to attract new business and new clients will be
directly proportional to your ability to position yourself as most appealing to most people. In other
words, you don't want to be the equivalent of William Tell.
CUSTOMIZED ASSAULTS: WHEN THERE IS
A SINGLE TARGET TOO APPEALING TO RESIST
The stereotypical "target of opportunity" is an organization the needs of which represent a particular
match for your competencies and passion. We see this with executives-Gordon Bethune was the
perfect leader to turn around Continental Airlines because he refocused on performance and not the
marketplace fads-and the same holds true for consultants.
There is never a good excuse to "cold call," no matter how tempting a client, because that's not how
buyers tend to buy. However, there are excellent ways to turn a "cold" call into a tepid or even warm
call, if you take the time to plan an attack on the highest priority targets.
Pursuing a target "cold" is difficult for the best of us, no matter how strong our brand or deep our
experience. But when the "call of the prospect" is overwhelming, and you don't have a particular "in"
or introduction to a buyer, there are some criteria to use to determine whether a customized "assault"
on this target makes economic sense.
Ten Criteria to Test "Cold Call" Viability
1. Do you have strong experience in the target's industry?
2. Do you have strong experience with the type of issues the target is grappling with?
3. Can you cite a third party the client respects who can validate your work?
4. Can you visit the target economically (target is in your area, or you can easily be in his or her
area, since multiple visits will probably be necessary)?
5. Can you reach and influence people who can help pave the way, for example, trade association
executives, vendors, customers, and so forth?
6. Can you arrange to speak in front of key managers from that company at some common,
external event?
7. Can you publish something in the trade press or a specialized publication which key managers
are likely to read or be familiar with?
8. Is there a function you can attend that will enable you to meet managers from the target in an
informal and casual setting?
9. Can you use the Internet to find some detailed ini ormation that will help you tailor an
approach specifically for your target?
10. Do you have the courage and perseverance to pursue this target, even in the face of multiple
rejections?
If you can muster at least five affirmatives to my list, then you have a decent probability of at least
reaching a significant buyer and moving toward a proposal. If you can honestly generate six to eight
"yeses," then this should be a high priority target for you. (If you can answer positively to nine or all
ten questions, then this is a better prospect than many where you already know the buyer!)
For newer consultants, where most people make the case that lack of a client base and lack of a
"name" make cold calling the default strategy, there is more of a need to target than ever. Most newer
people waste their time on scattered, generic, and blanket marketing approaches. (And I can make a
case that newer consultants should invest more energy in drawing people to them than in trying to beat
doors down.)
For successful consultants with strong track records, creating these targets of opportunity make
more sense. There is an experiential base to build on, a certain "brand" recognition to parlay, and the
sheer bravado necessary that develops after both a gazillion rejections and hundreds or thousands of
acceptances along the path to success.
One of the factors impeding people from "ultimate consulting" is that they tend to ride their
successes and gradually eschew-often subconsciously-the risk taking and uncertainties that they once
aggressively entertained. When you are solely accepting business based on the path of least resistance
(name recognition, word of mouth, client referral, and so on) you will, inevitably, wind up in a rut that
may result in my "success trap." The time to experiment, accept prudent risk, and "test the envelope"
is when you're successful and dealing from a position of strength.
If you are doing very well and never failing, then you are not sufficiently trying to broaden your
scope, or failing and not realizing it, or lying. The time to take risks is when you're successful.
Otherwise, the power of success is muted and it becomes mundane. When you're successful, you can
afford more risk-going after totally new customers and markets-because you're gambling with "house
money."
For the successful consultant, creating these specific "targets of opportunity" might not be the way
to make a living day in and day out, but the technique is very useful in bringing new and diverse
clients into the fold on a regular basis. Even the best of clients eventually disappear, and we all need
the life blood. Over a twelve-year period, I must have completed thirty-five or forty projects for
Merck around the world, worth perhaps nearly $2,000,000 in income for me. Then it all simply
stopped. Key projects were successfully finished, important buyers retired, top leadership changed,
and a combination of normal events locked me out.
Fortunately, I had also used that decade to build a solid business in a variety of industries,
frequently using Merck as part of my credibility, and using wonderful people at Merck as references.
If I had allowed myself to become a "one trick pony," you wouldn't be reading this book right now!
STRATEGIES FOR ISOLATING AND HITTING
NEW TARGETS OF OPPORTUNITY
Using the guidelines above, here is a brief example of how you might leverage each factor (though
unreasonable, perhaps, and unnecessary, I wanted to make sure we covered each one) for a
hypothetical approach to the New York Times.
1. Do you have strong experience in the target's industry?
You have experience working with the Hartford Courant, which is your sole newspaper client
over the years. However, your original buyer is still there and willing to give you a testimonial.'
2. Do you have strong experience with the type of issues the target is grappling with?
You've read that the Times is suffering from a dearth of new talent, since their pay scale on the
editorial side is low and the competition for talent from a variety of media is intense. Simply
working for the Times isn't a sufficient inducement any more. You have worked on a similar
problem with Hewlett-Packard, wherein the HP name was no longer adequate to harvest the
creme de la creme of graduates. Although vastly different organizations, the basic issue is
identical.
3. Can you cite a third party the client respects who can validate your work?
You know an associate director at the American Press Institute, to which the Times belongs,
who was in college with you.
4. Can you visit them economically (they are in your area, or you can easily be in their area, since
multiple visits will probably be necessary)?
You have clients in New York and are there on business at least twice a month in any case.
Adding even a day to the trip is a minor expense.
5. Can you reach and influence people who can help pave the way, for example, trade association
executives, vendors, customers, and so forth?
You did a favor for the business editor of the Boston Globe, which is owned by the Times,
when he needed an interview quickly on a breaking business news story and found your name on
the Internet. He might be willing to reciprocate by providing some names and even an
introduction.
6. Can you arrange to speak in front of key managers from that company at some common,
external event?
The American Association of Newspaper Publishers conducts meetings around the country
every quarter. You can pursue their executive director to find out what it would take to get on the
agenda, perhaps using the Courant and Globe contacts as an introduction.
If you build an intelligent plan and are willing to persevere, eventually you will reach a key buyer. If
you simply throw yourself repeatedly against the side of their headquarters, you will eventually kill
yourself.
7. Can you publish something in the trade press or a specialized publication that key managers
are likely to read or be familiar with?
The Inland Press Association, although in another part of the country, has a house organ open
to freelancers. You can query the publisher to investigate submitting a piece on attracting talent
in highly competitive environments, citing your HP experiences but adapting them for the
newspaper industry.
8. Is there a function you can attend that will enable you to meet managers from the target in an
informal and casual setting?
There will be a symposium on "Media and the Electoral Process" held at John Jay College,
which is open to the public. There is a cocktail hour before and a question and answer session
after the panel discussion.
9. Can you use the Internet to find some detailed information that will help you tailor an
approach specifically for your target?
You've pursued employment opportunities through the Times' website, and then through
traditional means, and have found key errors in the approach to new hires that you can document
and improve readily.
10. Do you have the courage and perseverance to pursue this target, even in the face of multiple
rejections?
You want the Times as a client, you have a thriving business, you've gained a great deal of
ammunition through the above exercise, and you have nothing to lose.
Before you claim that I've been somewhat overzealous in my optimism about the assault on the
Times, consider this: Anyone who has been in this business for a few years and enjoying success can
develop the kind of resources, initiative, and approaches that I've suggested. The problem isn't one of
availability; it's one of volition.
The Twilight Zone
I was competing for an out-of-town consulting assignment, had been interviewed locally by the
potential client, and had submitted a proposal. The client called and told me that he had narrowed his
choice down to one other consultant and me. He asked me to tell him what I would charge to make a
one-day visit to his offices, speak to a few people, and prepare a brief (1- or 2-page) analysis of the
situation as I saw it.
My response was to specify an amount that I would charge, but that I would waive it if I was given the
consulting assignment. He said that he would get back to me.
When he did, he told me that he would pay me the amount I requested regardless of his ultimate
decision. I was given the assignment and am still consulting for this client ten years later.
-Don Steig, CMC, Practical Computer Solutions

FROM MY TIME IN THE TRENCHES
The juncture of market need, professional competency, and personal passion is where brilliant careers
are forged and perpetuated. It's vital to understand and embrace the fact that needs can be created,
competencies acquired, and passions expanded.
In other words, this dynamic is not a fait accompli, but rather a set of factors you can manage and
exploit. One of the royal roads to business acquisition is in finding that confluence for yourself and
then constantly expanding it to admit more and more new business territory.
The creation of new targets of opportunity should be low volume, focused, and highly intense-a rifle
shot, not a shotgun. Ironically, the fewer totally new targets you choose to pursue, the higher the
likelihood that your focus and intensity will pay off. Less is more.
The generalist will be in a far better position to determine which new business is appropriate and
what conditions are acceptable, because the range and scope of potential buyers is so much greater
than that of the specialist. The latter has more pressure to accept business under any conditions and is
constantly in danger of a specialty that obsolesces or is superceded by a huge competitor. In terms of
the trajectory of one's consulting career, the movement should be from specialist to generalist, not the
other way around. (And the more quickly you can escape the specialist trap, the better.)
Customized, targeted assaults on particularly high potential prospects are entirely appropriate for
veteran consultants, and the simple use of a "targeting checklist" can greatly enhance the odds of
success, not by creating new opportunity but by simply reorganizing and redeploying the assets that
the consultant has already generated and has in place.
New business acquisition is like fresh air. You can never be content with what's simply in your
lungs, and the fresh air of a few moments ago is carbon dioxide now. Stop holding your breath.
CHAPTER
How to Prepare for
Success in Acquiring
New Business
The Allies Didn't Simply Decide to Take a Trip Across the English Channel One
Morning
hen I first opened my own business in 1983, prior to my current

Summit Consulting Group, Inc.meaning I had stationery printed and incorporated as
"AJW Associates"-I arose one morning, showered and shaved, and went into my den to
sit near my business phone. I was still there at lunch time, having read the local
newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, Time magazine, and several other periodicals that
had been gathering dust in a corner. (How I got on the list of Today's Handyman is still
a mystery.)
My wife put up with this for a week and told me that I'd better think of another way to attract
business, or get myself another real job. After another week of mulling over that, and running out of
all possible reading material, I did pursue a real job, and my current company wasn't born until 1985.
Sometimes it's better to be lucky than good, and by that time, having served as CEO of a small
consulting firm in the interim, I began to know what I didn't know.
I was such a naif at the outset of AJW Associates (I only let the incorporation lapse a few years ago
because I was so emotionally attached to it) that, when my attorney asked me for three names for the
business for incorporation, I gave him my wife's, daughter's, and son's, assuming he needed board
members and thankful that I had three other people in the immediate family. My attorney was a very
patient man, but I know he was betting that I'd never make it past the first six months. He turned out to
be overly optimistic.
I've since learned a lot about the various approaches to acquiring business. I'm going to focus on the
best sales techniques here, as opposed to marketing efforts, since I've covered marketing in significant
depth elsewhere and because this book is for the development of sales skills in consulting.' In the final
section of this chapter, however, we will deal with the results of successful marketing: What to do
when prospects approach you. For now, though, let's look at how to approach them.
You cannot sell to anyone who doesn't trust you. And no one will trust you who doesn't see you. This
is not rocket science. This is selling science 101.
THE FRONTAL ATTACK
The best method to acquire business is through the front door and into a buyer's face. Selling
consultative services is a relationship business, and, consequently, none of the following works well at
all:
Dealing with recommenders, gatekeepers, purchasing agents, subordinates to the buyer, and so on
Selling "features and benefits" of your approach, which will get you quickly relegated to the
appropriate subordinate in charge of sales, human resources, or widget repair
Emphasizing your methodology or approach, which is of incredible interest to incredibly few

people other than yourself
Talking instead of listening
Definition
Economic Buyer: That person who can write a check without anyone else's approval (that is, who has
his or her own budget and discretion) for the value that you are providing. I often call this person the
"true buyer."
Veteran consultants have often allowed the "full frontal sales muscle" to atrophy because they've
been so successful with word of mouth, a hot book, a huge client who pays all the bills, and other
factors. Sometimes those salutary conditions last a career. Usually, they don't.
In a frontal attack, it's vital to have three conditions in place:
1. You know the name of the economic buyer.
2. You have the ability or opportunity to meet that buyer.
3. You have the confidence to interact as a peer.

1. You Know the Name of the Economic Buyer
Economic buyers are not discernable by rank or serial number. They are distinguished by having
budget and discretion to spend it on the likes of us. My most important buyer at Merck had the title
"manager of international development" and, at Hewlett-Packard, "director of knowledge
management." While I've also sold to presidents and every other high-level executive, I've also
acquired very lucrative contracts from people whose titles belie their actual clout.
One sale that sticks out is an attempt by a sales rep who was working for me to use the "impending
event" technique to close a major sale. She was eight-and-a-half months pregnant at the time. She told
the customer, "This is the last sales call I'm going to make before I go on maternity leave, so can I
please have the order today?"
She got the order.
-Herb Fox, MultiTrack Sales Consulting
Find the economic buyer, by name and not title, by asking these types of questions of yourself or of
knowledgeable people within the target organization.
Ten Questions to Help Identify Economic Buyers
1. Who is responsible for that operation's success?
2. Who establishes and submits the budget for that operation?
3. Who will be held accountable for success or failure?
4. Who has contracted with consultants and hired them previously?
5. To whom do others defer about tough decisions?
6. Who is the court of last resort on allocating budget or transferring budgets?
7. Who has discrete, self-contained projects reliant on no other department?
8. Who has been given budget specifically to support other areas' needs?
9. Who can veto any initiative in this area?
10. Who is setting the priorities in this operation?
Definition
Relationship: A comfort level with an economic buyer wherein each of you respects the other, listens
to the other, and feels comfortable disagreeing and "pushing back" in areas of disagreement. There is
mutual trust and the belief that you are peers, both considering whether to work collaboratively on a
project; there is not a perceived "buyer" and "seller," or "superior" and "subordinate."
2. You Have the Ability to Meet the Buyer
Once you know who the buyer is, you have to be able to meet him or her. That means that the person is
accessible (not in Katmandu), willing to meet (no endless committees and gatekeepers), and not
distracted (no ten-minute hurried interviews between "more important" matters).
One of the great benefits of being successful in this business is that you have money to invest in
your business. I've always been willing to get on an airplane at my own expense (or at the sacrifice of
omnipresent frequent flyer miles) to see a true buyer who represents major potential business for me.
In fact, when consultants ask me if they should invest in such business acquisition pursuits, I always
tell them to apply the same criteria:
Will you meet the economic buyer?
Does that buyer agree to provide you with at least one hour of uninterrupted time?
Does the buyer agree to the fact that, ideally, you would like to exchange information and share
views that will lead to your submitting a proposal?
Is it understood that any consulting work requested-for example, interviewing managers,

providing feedback on observations, assessing business protocols, suggesting better techniques,
and so on--will be subject to a fee?2
Never make a sales call-even if it's across the street-unless you're going to meet with the economic
buyer, identify the economic buyer, or meet with someone who can help you get to the economic
buyer. If you have any other intent, you're wasting your time.
3. You Have the Confidence to Interact as a Peer
This is the most difficult aspect, and it is violated by veterans as much as it is by neophytes, but for
different reasons. New consultants often feel that they don't have sufficient experience and depth and
that they "don't belong" in the same room. They see themselves, often subconsciously, as "impostors"
who are lucky to be there and who will soon be discovered and tossed. (Which, of course, becomes a
self-fulfilling prophesy.)
Veterans suffer from a different disease. They tend to see their success as based on their
approaches, and they've tended to become rather one-dimensional. That is, they can talk (endlessly)
about their expertise, but can't talk as fluently (or listen empathically) to the buyer's needs.
The confidence to interact as a peer means that the consultant must be a peer. That includes a
wealth of business knowledge, a breadth of general knowledge, a command of the language, a sense of
humor, and very highly refined listening skills. (Hard as I've tried, I find I just can't learn anything
about someone else when I'm talking.) The greatest relationship pitfall of successful consultants is
that they've allowed themselves to become narrow people. Ironically, but understandably, the most
successful consultants in selling their services are the ones who are the most well-rounded and
complete people, able to "mesh" with a wide variety of buyers in very little "face time."
As I write this, I'm working with an advertising organization that is not achieving the desired results
with its external sales force. When I investigated, I found that the entire national sales organization
was achieving fewer than two calls a week with prospects, and I estimated that less than half of those
calls were with real economic buyers. Many readers have encountered similar circumstances (and
made a small fortune using such common sense to help the client).
The same paradigm applies to us. If we are not seeing buyers, we are not going to expand our
businesses. The easiest, quickest, and least expensive way to do that is to find out who they are,
arrange for a meeting, and have the confidence to quickly build a trusting relationship. Otherwise,
we're not consultants, but merely the shoeless cobbler's children.
Someone once asked me "Who are your prospective customers?" I responded, "Just about everyone
until . . ." "Until what?" "Until I determine whether they are customers or not. That should be my
decision, not theirs!"
THE FLANKING MANEUVER
There are times when the economic buyer is just not going to see you. None of the steps above might
work, or you might be uncertain (or have made an error) about the identity of the economic buyer.
It's time for a flanking maneuver.
A flanking move is one that moves you closer to the economic buyer in subtle ways, through a side
door instead of the front door. This isn't devious and isn't unethical. It's simply a set of smart
techniques that will enable you to meet someone whom you really can help if given the opportunity.
Here are some examples of this more indirect approach.

Ten Techniques to Grease the Skids Directly to the Economic Buyer
1. Use a third-party reference to introduce you.
2. Send a book or an article that addresses the buyer's current needs.
3. Send some insights about the industry, the competition, and/or the customers.
4. Meet informally at a trade association or a civic or social event.
5. Speak at a conference attended by the buyer.
6. Publish an article in a publication read by the buyer.
7. Obtain an interview in the buyer's local newspaper.
8. Get the buyer's email address (almost always available from the switchboard) and send a brief,
provocative message requesting a phone call or meeting.
9. If distant, inform the buyer you'll "be in town" on certain days. Always provide options. The
farther from your home base, the more likely the buyer will agree to meet with you.
10. Shop the buyer's business, develop some insights to improve the operation and/or end major
problems, then provide these to the buyer and suggest a more detailed discussion.
Think of a flanking maneuver as the ability to appear on the buyer's "radar screen." Sometimes,
multiple appearances are required ("Didn't we meet before?" or "Haven't I read something of yours?"
or "Didn't you send me a book?"). Sometimes, a single highly effective appearance is enough ("A good
friend of mine mentioned you to me. I'm glad we've met at this convention.").
Definition
Feasibility Buyer: This is a person who controls access to an economic buyer and who is "tasked" with
evaluating prospective consultants. In other words, the feasibility buyer can say "no" but can't say
"yes." Ultimate consultants do not spend much time with feasibility buyers. Even experienced
consultants get their priorities wrong. They tend to spend too much time on perfecting their "pitch"
and not enough time finding out who controls the checkbook. It's very easy to build solid relationships
with the wrong people.
Flanking maneuvers work best when they get you permanently and repeatedly onto the economic
buyer's radar screen. They work worst when you're maneuvering to get the attention of the wrong
people.
Committees are virtually never decision makers, no matter what the members claim. (Yes, I know
you can recall one or two exceptions, but the fact that you can proves my point about how rare that is.)
As experienced consultants, we also all know by now that the following job titles are seldom, if ever,
economic buyers:
Training director
Human resource manager
Sales trainer
Purchasing manager
Assistant general counsel
Audit manager
Internal consultant
If we are going to spend time trying to arrange the right steps and sequencesan often elaborate
choreography-that lead us to the buyer, then we have to make absolutely sure that no one trips us up
along the way. The most powerful approach is to deal with these people and others like them to gain
information and to gain access to the true buyer. The worst approach is to become trapped in their
indecisive webs, but never go beyond them.
The problem, of course, is that feasibility and lower level people are relatively easy to see, and
eager for relationships. They are quite happy to have lunch, spend time on the phone, exchange emails,
and engage in the most obtuse details of your methodology and philosophy. But you're better off with
a mediocre relationship with a real economic buyer than with a superb relationship with a feasibility
buyer.
Flanking maneuvers should be a standard part of your repertoire, because this is what is
accomplished by solid marketing. The more you speak, publish, network, hold breakfasts, lead
professional associations, engage in pro bono work, create products, write newsletters, and so forth,
the more radar screens you're going to appear on. Almost any referral is a flanking attack, for
example.
INFILTRATION
There are times (too many of them) when both frontal assault and flanking maneuvers fail. You are
locked out of the castle, or so it seems.
These are times when infiltration may work. Infiltration occurs when you use subtle and non-
obvious means to meet the buyer. The Trojan Horse evokes subterfuge and trickery, perhaps, but it did
get the job done.
Here are some of the means of infiltration-being invited into the keep virtually unnoticed.
Ten Techniques to Infiltrate Any Organization
1. Become a Customer. If you're really serious about learning the inside workings of a high potential
banking prospect, invest some money in the place. If the target is a brokerage, move some investments
over there. It didn't hurt me at all with Mercedes when it turned out I was driving a top-of-the-line
model and, consequently, was on referral terms with one of their most successful dealership owners.
Spend some money, become known to local managers, do something to assist the store. Try to pick an
operation that has appeal to you in any case. I didn't mind driving the Mercedes at all, but I would
have had a hard time taking up scuba diving. One day, flying first class on Delta, I met their number
two ranking officer, sitting across the aisle, testing out customer reaction.
I'm constantly surprised at how stupid I was just two weeks ago. There are many ways to a buyer's
heart. Remember, you're pursuing the quarry because you're able to be of help. You're doing the buyer
a favor.
2. Perform Pro Bono Work. Find out what causes or charities your target supports, and throw yourself
into them. In the worst case you'll become known as a supporter, and in the best case you'll find
yourself working elbow-to-elbow with the prospect's key officers. Choose something you believe in
and you'll be helping the cause, the prospect, and yourself. I made a sale to a police department when I
served in a very visible board position alongside the department's chief.
3. Create a "Study" or "White Paper." Invest some time and money in becoming an "instant authority"
by sponsoring or actually conducting a study in that industry. If you want to penetrate an insurance
prospect, create a research report on the propensity of consumers to buy from traditional agents versus
over the Internet. If you're after the beverage industry, conduct an investigation into the popularity of
"sports drinks" versus traditional beverages. These can be anecdotal and not scientific. The key is to
create an item and aura of interest to your prospective buyers.
4. Engage in Civic Activities. You are, after all, a "catch" for the local zoning, planning, waterfront,
environmental, port, and school boards. Volunteer your expertise. Serve alongside some potential
clients or recommenders. Get your name in the paper as an advocate of some position.
5. Write About Your Prospect. If you're writing an article, "white paper," column, or book, mention
your target in complimentary language. Cite them as a fine example of teamwork, or innovation, or
globalization, or diversity. Send copies of your published praise to your intended buyer-who might
well have already heard of your kindness through the public relations department and/or clipping
services. You might just be invited to address the board or at least tour the operation.
6. Become a Professor. This is not as far-fetched as it sounds. I've served as visiting professor at Case
Western Reserve (for seven years), the University of Illinois, the Graduate School of Business at the
University of Georgia, St. John's, and the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Business
(where I hold an adjunct professor's appointment for teaching one evening a week).' The professorial
duties will enable you to use your target as a class example, project, or research source. (I used Marine
Midland Bank, Merck, and Hewlett-Packard in my Ph.D. dissertation research.)
BEST PRACTICES
Sometimes, executives are starry-eyed over the latest buzz words or consulting products, and you have
to deal with this effectively. In the mid-90s, I was talking to a senior executive about a potential
strategy development assignment. He was obviously into reengineering, which had reached its peak
and was actually in decline then. "I'm talking to another major consulting firm about reengineering,"
he told me, very taken with their comprehensive and step-by-step approach.
"I see," I said softly, adding quietly and a bit sadly, "We used to do reengineering." I purposely didn't
say another word. There was silence. "What?" the client stammered. "What do you mean you 'used to
do it.' Why did you stop? What happened?"
He was flustered. This unleashed a torrent of questions and emotions, and I redirected the discussion
towards the fact that the client's company faced a growth challenge, which reengineering wasn't going
to fix. I got the project, needless to say, and he quickly got rid of the other firm with all the fancy
reengineering charts.
-Andrew Sobel, Institute for Business Renewal
7. Write an Unabashed Letter of Praise. Find something your prospect has done well-whether
personally, for high quality, or universally, for saving the rain forests-and send your compliments.
This also works in praising an employee. (If you want to get an executive's private address, don't tell
the assistant that you have a complaint, just mention that you want to send a letter of congratulations
and you'll quickly have the person's private email, car phone, and secret decoder ring.)
Put yourself in the buyer's shoes. What would induce you to want to find out more about someone?
Are they citing you, referencing your company, providing alternatives for the position you're in, being
provocative about the environment? What constitutes your "Trojan Horse"?
8. Befriend an Employee. Employees understand their employers. Get to know the bank teller or the
supermarket cashier. Spend some time chatting with the retail branch manager. Chat up the ticket
agent at the airport that serves as your home base. I once landed an Internet specialty company when
an employee at a speech I was making told me their weakness wasn't technology but sales. I wrote to
the CEO and enclosed some sales tips for high-tech businesses. He invited me out and we were
immediately simpatico.
9. Watch Your Serendipity. Every day we receive offers, inducements, and appeals that we consign to
the wastebasket or simply ignore. But within themand the few seconds required to consider hidden
opportunity-can he fortunes. A request to submit a free article to a new diversity newsletter resulted in
my being published over a dozen times by a thankful, struggling editor. As the publication grew in
stature, my largest client realized that I was doing work in diversity and commissioned a new project
in that area. I then used that with prospects who had such needs, now able to cite my large client for
credibility.
10. Meet the Buyer Socially. If you're really serious about a major prospect, then join a country club,
attend a charitable event, become a member of a trade association, or do whatever it takes to meet that
buyer on comfortable, social grounds. It is neither legend nor accident that many deals have been
consummated on golf courses. I barely talk to people socially, yet I've closed two deals on an airplane,
one with the vice president of marketing of a specialty manufacturer, and one with the president of
North American Operations of a major auto manufacturer. Those were accidental meetings. But if you
can deliberately arrange to "accidentally" meet these people, you'll be in a strong position. I want to
emphasize two things: First, we're talking about: major buyers who can make your future rosy;
second, we're talking about your ability to truly help these people meet their own personal and
professional goals.
[My biggest mistake was] giving away the solution in the sales call to a prospect in the first five
minutes instead of giving them sufficient proof of the value I would bring in terms of previous
experiences I had had in solving similar problems.
I had to learn that my speed in coming up with a solution was not as important as my ability to
develop a trusting bond. They got free advice and I got the door.
-Andrew J. Birol, Business Development Expert and President, PACER Associates,

Inc.
Frontal attacks, flanking maneuvers, and infiltration-all excellent tactics to reach and convince
buyers of your merits. But there is one more dynamic, which seems relatively simple but which
consultants at all levels of their careers often mishandle.
When buyers come to you, it is an unparalleled opportunity to maximize the sale. This is not
unethical, not immoral, not illegal. This being the case, why would you refrain from doing that?
WHEN THE BUYER COMES TO YOU
(BUILD IT, AND THEY WILL COME)
Buyers will sometimes come to you, occasionally out of accident or curiosity, but more often as a
result of successful marketing efforts and word of mouth. I want to spend a bit of time on this before
we close this chapter.
When clients come to you, it is not a time to rejoice, slap yourself on the back, and cater to the
buyer's desires. It is, rather, a time to realize that the buying dynamic is now substantially in your
favor and you are in a position to maximize any potential sale. The rules have changed. You are now
the home team. You own the equipment, the field, and the crowd. Don't sacrifice the home field
advantage.
When a buyer comes to you, the thrust has reversed from "I want to convince you how I can help
you" to "Let me provide you with the various options with which I can help you." You have no need to
prove credibility, and you have no imperative to cater to the buyer's demands.
A buyer approaching you-no matter what the impetus-is saying, "I've heard good things, I'm willing
to believe you can help me, and I'd like your expertise in determining how you can help me." This is a
time for boldness. On most occasions, consultants who have been approached leave money on the
table because they are so overcome by being sought out that they-against all common sense-become
even more malleable and compromising at precisely that point when they can become firmer and more
prescriptive. Go figure.
When a true buyer approaches you, for any reason, here are some guidelines to keep in mind in
order to maximize the sale and, accordingly, most help the buyer.
Five Techniques to Maximize the Sale when the Buyer Comes Knocking
1. Don't Engage in as Much Diagnosis, and Be Bold in Becoming More Prescriptive. When a key
buyer at Merck approached me and I told him that we could jointly examine the situation, he told me,
"Alan, I've come to you because I've heard that you can frame this quickly and suggest a resolution. If
I wanted to be part of a committee, I could have done that without you." I only needed to hear that
once, and it's now burned into my synapses.
2. Always Provide Options. The buyer has already expressed interest, and your options move the buyer
from "Should I really do this" to "How should I really do this?" That's a subtle but huge psychological
leap that enables you to become the de facto choice with just the question of how to use you to be
resolved.
3. Find Out What the Budget Is. It's actually quite natural to ask someone approaching you, "Have you
allocated an investment for this project?" This will immediately enable you to either inform the
prospect that you can't do the project justice for that meager sum, or that you can provide several
options (see Step 2) within that budget.
4. Provide One Option Above the Budget. If Steps 2 and 3 work out, then provide two or three options
within the budget and one above the budget. If the high end denotes sufficient value, the buyer might
just find additional money. Buyers hate to increase fees, but they absolutely loathe to lose value. Once
you know the budget and can provide options, use one to test the envelope.
No one likes to be rejected, including buyers. The mere hint that you might not be willing to undertake
the project of someone who sought you out will tend to make him or her a lot more flexible and
accommodating.
5. Be Prepared to "Walk Away." Nothing has the potential to solidify and guarantee a sale like your
expressed willingness to walk away from it. Don't be bashful about saying, "Under the conditions
you've outlined, I can't take this on" or "Ethically, I can't undertake this because you seem to have
conflicting objectives." When the buyer comes to you, he or she is not prepared to be rejected.
(Imagine an auto salesperson saying, "You're not ready for this car, and I can't in good conscience sell
it to you.") Your being willing to "walk the higher ground" will influence the client to be more
reasonable and to put any discussion of fees on the back burner.
When buyers come to you, as they increasingly should as your "brand" and success grow, don't treat
them the same as those buyers whom you are beating the bushes to encounter. Psychologically, the
threat of rejection is no longer your concern; it's theirs.
I once told a buyer, quite innocently, that I wasn't sure I could undertake his project, knowing that
my calendar was quite full. Before I could offer that explanation, he said, "If it's more money, that's
no problem. You can name your fee." I managed to fit him in.
New business usually must be stalked. The frontal attack is quickest, most economical, and most
efficient. When that's impossible, a longer flanking attack may be justified.
When flanking maneuvers don't work or are unavailable, you can still infiltrate an organization in
more subtle ways. The combination of these three approach elements should lead you to a buyer at
least 75 percent of the time if you're serious, creative, and perseverant. In fact, they will work far
better than cold calling, direct mail, and other generic methods.
There are also times when clients come to you, and you must be prepared to exploit the opportunity.
There is no sense in leaving money on the table, so take firm and somewhat aloof positions. That is,
don't cave in to buyer demands. Instead, cite your own ideal scenarios. There are few ways that ensure
a sale as much as a clear signal that you will walk away from one.
Finally, always bear in mind that these machinations are necessary for you to truly help the client.
If you ardently believe that you can help people, and you merely have to find ways to enable them to
allow you to do that, you'll be successful more often than not.
The first sale is always to yourself.

C H IA P T E R
How to Build
Relationships with
Economic Buyers
Most Consultants Don't Stop "Selling" Long Enough to Really Make a Sale
hen I began my own practice, I wasn't intimidated by the larger

consulting firms because I realized that "selling" consulting services was not like
selling computers (where people want the best price) or fast food (where people want
the quickest service). It was more like selling brain surgery, where people don't care
about the price or the wait.
The patient wants the best brain surgeon in the galaxy, because the quality of the service has life-
and-death implications.
The more personal the issue, the more emotion-tied the initiative, the more that relationship matters
more than money. In twenty-six years of consulting work and travel to fifty-one countries and
fortynine states, I've never seen anyone wash their rental car. There is no emotional attachment. But
I've seen people treat their own cars like family members (and sometimes, far better).
Ironically, successful consultants, who have brands, impressive track records, lengthy client lists
and references, and all kinds of other assets that accrue to those who have made it, don't bother to
emphasize relationship building in the acquisition of new clients. It's as if the skills have atrophied.
At this stage of my career, I find that the partners in McKinsey or Andersen are not the threat to my
livelihood, since they're virtually never significant enough principals to impress a buyer. I have much
more competition from people like me-owners of boutique firms who are the principals and who do
know how to create strong and rapid buyer relationships.
I would suspect that the same holds true for many of you, so the lessons that follow may be the key
to the continued flow of lifeblood through your practice.
BEHAVIORAL PREDISPOSITIONS:
FUNNY THINGS THAT BUYERS DO
The way to build relationships with buyers is to adjust to their behavioral preferences. We've all made
the mistake of trying to make small talk with someone who doesn't want to, or refusing to do so with
someone who does. It's one thing to refuse to adjust in a social setting, but it's another to be so
stubborn when you want the other person's money.
I've found that all of us have what I call a "comfort zone." This is our most salutary state of being in
a given environment. Our comfort zones might vary from one setting-business-to another-home,
social, civic, and so on. We've all heard the refrain, "You know, you're not at the office now" or "You
must be mistaking me for a client," at one time or another.
Relationship building goes more quickly when you take your time. It's better to find out what the
buyer's preferences are rather than assume or, even worse, simply use your own by default. Allow the
other person to lead.
The best representation of comfort zones and adjustments that I've found was in the work pioneered
by Dr. David Merrill and developed and published by Robert and Dorothy Grover Bolton.'
On the line below, place yourself in terms of your normal level of assertiveness in your professional
dealings. On the low end, you would tend to be less confrontational, carefully think through decisions,
exert less pressure, and allow others to take the initiative. On the higher end, you would tend to exert
more pressure, confront readily, be more risk-oriented, and make quick decisions.
Now, on the vertical line below, place yourself in terms of how emotionally controlled you are, which
we'll call "responsiveness." At the top, low end, you would tend to limit gestures, come across as
somewhat serious, focus on facts, and be less interested in small talk. On the higher end, you would
use dramatic gestures, be highly outgoing and socially initiating, focus on and embrace feelings, and
be less concerned about time.
These two points will intersect in one of four quadrants or grids, shown below. About 25 percent of
the general population falls into each quadrant. There are no value judgments made-none are
inherently good or bad, strong or weak. Identify the quadrant in which your two points converge.
Use behaviors to understand how others might act and respond, not to justify why they're wrong or
why you shouldn't listen. If you can invest time in anticipating how buyers will act, you actually
shorten the sales cycle considerably.
Here are four quick descriptions of the behavioral types we find in each quadrant (Figure 3.1). I
want to emphasize that these shouldn't be "labels" used to explain away behavior ("What do you
expect from a woman?" or "How else would someone his age act?"). Rather, these are useful guides to
understand your own comfort zone and that of your prospective buyer, so that you can make the
adjustments that create common comfort.2
Figure 3.1. Social Styles and Behaviors

Quadrant 1: "Driver" Behaviors
This individual tends to be highly task-oriented. He or she is oriented toward getting things done fast
and is much more results-driven than people-driven. This person will probably want to get down to
business rapidly and will handle confrontation directly and authoritatively. Reliance in tough
situations will be on confidence, presence, and power (formal or personal).
An assignment to build a project execution prototype was "sold" to the economic buyer. We were
really having a meeting with his VPs to "bless" the project. The fly in the ointment came when we had
not educated the organization on criteria to choose the best project manager, and they chose one of the
worst. First of all, those types of things should have been cleared before any proposal-and weren't. We
had incomplete client conceptual agreement. Second of all, should we have kept our mouths shut and
"re-worked" the thinking post-sale? I still have some ambivalence about that-we could have been fired
before starting or the project would never have worked. Either way, it was gone.
-Janice Scanlon, President, Accelerate Your Success

Quadrant 2: "Expressive" Behaviors
These people are highly verbal and will easily share emotions. They are natural leaders, formally or
informally, and seek the front row and the limelight. They will become aggressive when challenged
and despise losing face. They tend to be less comfortable as individual contributors, and much prefer
to work with and through others.
Quadrant 3: "Amiable" Behaviors
These individuals are also highly people-oriented, but are more focused on acceptance than on
leadership. They tend to avoid confrontation (love relationships but are non-assertive) and will try not
to jeopardize relationships at any cost. They therefore would rather provide a qualified or nebulous
answer than give an outright "no" and may be hard to move quickly to a decision.
If the buyer shares your own comfort zone, you don't necessarily have an advantage. Two expressives
can be very gregarious, but if they engage in competition for the limelight then that comfort zone
becomes very uncomfortable.
Quadrant 4: "Analytic" Behaviors
Analytically oriented people work from a position of respect for their expertise, since that tends to
draw people to them and they, themselves, are not outgoing. They will rely heavily on facts and data
and tend to eschew all emotionalism in decision making. They prefer facts and documentation to
influence and friendships. Analytic buyers will always have clear criteria for their decisions.
To compare these behaviors in a simple reference:
The key to these "comfort zones" is flexibility. Your ability to identify, adapt, and reflect the other
party's preferences is critical during early relationship building. Since so many of us have succeeded
through the application of very strong and repeated behaviors, we tend to sublimate our own
flexibility and push through our preferences at any cost. That might work in soccer or chess, but it
doesn't work well in sales.
Some quick examples:
If you're dealing with a driver, don't force small talk on him or her. But if you're with an
expressive, be prepared for lengthy digressions.
Provide an analytic with facts, cross-references, indexes, and comparisons, but give a driver a
simple "executive summary" sheet.
Don't drive an amiable toward a decision until all assurances and guarantees are in place.
Amiables love references, referrals, and hearing from colleagues in similar situations.
Drivers make decisions, so be prepared for one. They are likely to say, "Okay, let's do it. How
much?" Many consultants lose sales after the driver has forced them to demonstrate how they'll
go forward.
Don't compete with expressives. Give them all the credit, and then some. The check will still be
in your name.
Don't become exasperated with analytics. If they need more data, get it. Arguing that they don't
need it is like telling your dog he's already had lunch and should no longer be hungry. Dogs can.
eat non-stop, which is how analytics can consume information.
Listen carefully to expressives and amiables, but be prepared to voice your own views to drivers
and analytics. The former two will often say, "What can you do for me?" while the latter two will
say, "What can I do for you?" The former want to see what's in it for them; the latter want to
assess whether or not to spend any more time.
The toughest matches are the diagonal opposites. Make a careful effort if you're trying to form one of
these relationships. These opposites share virtually no common ground behaviorally.
We'll return to these comfort zones when we discuss basic resistance areas in the next chapter. But
for now, consider what your preferred style is, how you'll quickly determine where your buyer is, and
how you'll make the connection. It's not rocket science.
It's business acquisition.
While working for Hewlett-Packard, I was asked to bid on a major piece of work in competition with
the old firm of Ernst & Young. We were the only two being considered.
My competitor and I both showed up at a meeting with six HP managers who controlled the budget.
The project was oriented toward helping "reskill" people so that employees could easily move into
jobs in the new organizations that had been formed in the company due to more sophisticated
technology. HP has always prized its people, and the "HP Way" is a real and pragmatic philosophy in
the company of how to deal with people supportively.
Since Ernst & Young had done the reengineering aspect of the new organizations, I thought that they
had a lock on the additional project, until their partner, who was making the first presentation, said,
"We handle people the same way we do processes, with templates. If you'll take a look at these, you'll
see that we've classified everyone by category and should be able to make rapid decisions about their
futures."
I knew immediately that I had the job if I didn't screw up when my turn came. I managed not to.
You have to know your buyer's style, emotional involvement, and beliefs. If you don't, you're just
shooting blank bullets into a dark room where there is no target.
-AW
Veteran consultants often "play it by ear," meaning that they enter a discussion with a buyer in an
exploratory manner, ready to bob and weave or thrust and parry as the conversation develops. That
might be effective in boxing or fencing, but since consultative selling is not a contact sport, I'm
dubious about the efficacy of those techniques.
All of us have had great successes and great failures in relationship building, but those reading this
book have probably had more of the former than the latter. However, I'd maintain that the ratio still
isn't high enough, and one of the reasons is that we don't take the time to articulate our own processes.
We're good, but we don't know why.
Make no mistake, it's better to know why you're good than that you're good. The second allows you to
slap your own back. The first allows you to deposit money in the bank.
Here are the red flags that indicate you've lost control of the discussion with a potential buyer. Any
one of them spells trouble, but three or more probably mean that the immediate situation is
unrecoverable.
Ten Indicators That You've Lost Control of the Discussion
1. You are talking about fees prior to establishing the buyer's objectives.
2. You are doing more than 25 percent of the talking.
3. The buyer is asking questions to satisfy himself about your credibility.
4. The buyer allows for (or has planned) interruptions by an assistant, phone, or other means.
5. You are seated across a desk and the buyer's posture and demeanor would be no different if you
were a subordinate.
6. The buyer informs you that he or she has less time than anticipated or that the "new" plan is
that you'll spend most of the allotted time with a subordinate.
7. You are constantly defending, instead of explaining, approaches and positions.
8. The buyer tells you that it's "premature" to discuss his or her objectives or needs.
9. Your questions are answered succinctly with no supporting detail, and the buyer never offers
any elaboration or independent opinion.
10. There is no resolution or agreement as to next steps.
Consultants lose control of discussions because they don't follow a sequential plan. Since they have
no map, they don't know when they're off course. Even in a maze, after all, there is a starting point and
an exit point.
Use whatever blueprint suits you, but I have a suggestion for successful people, who should have
the confidence, background, and presence to engage in a rather aggressive approach. I call this
"accelerating the conversation," and it's intended to move relationships more quickly to either (a) a
point where conceptual agreement can be reached and a proposal submitted or (b) a point where you
know that it's folly to pursue things any further.
The Blueprint for Controlling a Discussion
1. Set "MinlMax" Objectives for Your Meeting. This means that you determine the maximum and
minimum outcomes that you desire from an initial (or subsequent) meeting. (I actually had a
consultant in one of my workshops tell me that "I expect a proposal every time, every meeting." I
asked if he associated that ridiculous position at all with the fact that his business was struggling.)
A minimum objective might be to reach agreement on some basic needs, frame some general
approaches, and formulate more specific questions for a more detailed discussion within a week. A
maximum objective might be to set some basic objectives and measures of success, and meet again to
discuss variations, options, and the value to the client organization.
If you don't know what to expect from the meeting, then how can you tell whether or not you've
been successful?
2. Consider Your "Presence." At this stage of the game, if you're showing up with a huge briefcase,
slides, a laptop computer, and other accoutrements of a traveling road show, you're lost somewhere in
the Fifties. This isn't how executives visit each other.
Use a brief portfolio or just a pad to take notes. Have you ever seen an executive with a beeper or a
phone in a holster on a belt? I never have, and I'd never be seen in public that way. Those are
electronic versions of pocket protectors, and the guys with the pocket protectors were keeping the
machines running but never in charge of buying new ones. If you have luggage, leave it in the car or at
the receptionist's desk.
3. Establish the Objectives with the Buyer. One of the best opening lines after "hello" (and whatever
initial relationship building you might have to do with expressives and amiables) is: "I know your
time is valuable and I'm sure you have some objectives for this meeting. I'd like to propose that we
begin by sharing what each of us expects to accomplish and then allot our time together accordingly."
It's very powerful to share objective early, so that you:
Immediately establish a peer-level relationship (we're both busy)
Create expectations about time use and priorities
Flush out any incorrect expectations from your prospect
Begin controlling and influencing the discussion subtly but firmly
You take or lose control of a discussion from the moment you walk in the door. Your appearance,
demeanor, and language will quickly tell the buyer whether or not you're a peer or someone to be
delegated to a subordinate down the hall.
4. Listen. You should speak no more than 25 percent of the time. As a general rule, the earlier you are
in the relationship, the less you should speak. You learn when you listen. Here are my four favorite
listening techniques:
Provocative Questioning. Never ask binary ("yes" or "no" response) questions. Ask reactive
questions. Instead of, "Is the downturn in the economy affecting your business yet?" ask "What
steps have you taken to insulate yourself from economic uncertainties?" Don't ask, "What is your
retention rate?" but rather "What's different today about retaining your top talent compared to
five years ago?"
Turnaround Questioning. Never become defensive. It's common for buyers to ask pointed
questions such as, "What do you think you can do for us that we haven't already done?" or "Boil it
all away-what will your fees be?" The best way to handle these blunt questions is by deflecting
them: "I don't know whether I can do anything at all! Will you tell me what you have done, what
you'd like to accomplish above that, and then we can compare notes?" Or for fees, "I have no idea
what investment would be required, and it would be unfair to you for me to guess. But if you're
willing to share your objectives, set some metrics, and establish the impact of the results, I can
get you a proposal very quickly, which will provide all of your options and the commensurate
ROI."
Reflective Listening. Never "step on" the buyer's narrative. Veteran consultants are especially
anxious to share all of their experiences in dealing with the prospect's problems. Instead, simply
say, "Is that right?" or "Really?" or "I see" every minute or two. By staying "active" in the
discussion to a small degree, you encourage the prospect to continue talking so that you can
continue learning. You'll also avoid inadvertent "one-upmanship," which we all hate when it's
done to us. ("You think that's a problem? Let me tell you what I faced at the Acme
Corporation....")
The Echo Technique. This is merely the habit of repeating the final word a person says. For
example, after the sentence, "We've had an interesting time trying to find talent," reply, "Talent?"
You'll find that the other person will always respond to a single word of inquiry and expand on
his or her thoughts. The echo technique sounds silly, but good listeners use it all the time to
prompt others to provide information. (Listen to any really good trial lawyer.)
5. Make Notes. Your ability to quickly frame and summarize the discussion periodically will ensure
that you are both on track and will also provide a subtle control of the direction of the interchange.
This also shows how much you value the buyer's points and provides a reference for follow-up letters,
proposals, and so forth. I've added value to many proposals by going back to my original notes from
early meetings and adding the buyer's own words and expectations.
1:1 13A i Lit i
The most effective sales techniques I use are educating the client, listening to the client, and the truth.
I use the client meeting as an opportunity to educate the client in those areas in which the client may
not have current and/or accurate information. By providing the information, the response I usually get
is favorable. I fill in the gaps in the client's knowledge, even if I don't get the contract at that time. The
client knows I am reliable and I keep up-to-date with the latest information. This shows the client that
I am more interested in doing a good job rather than just getting the "sale."
Most clients I deal with want to tell a story. I listen without interrupting. This gives the client the
feeling that he or she is being heard and begins a more personal development. I then use this prologue
to ask questions concerning the project and personnel involved. It's almost like being a detective. I
have a picture but now I need more facts. The client usually appreciates the dialogue and I can begin
to separate the facts from the perceptions and the "politics."
I have found truth to be the most powerful ally. There is no way around the truth. Either I know
something or I don't; either I can do something or I can't. Maybe I'm old-fashioned (I'm 55 years of
age), but this is the way I have always worked. I learned this lesson while working for a great former
boss early in my career and it has always been a tenet of my consulting practice.
--Leonard Steinberg, CMC
View a discussion as though the two of you were driving together in a car, but you have volunteered to
steer. Your passenger can adjust the seat, temperature, radio, and other factors, but you're determining
where to go and when to stop. It's tough to jump out of a moving car.
You should be the one pointing out that "We only have about fifteen more minutes, so perhaps we
should make plans for our next discussion," rather than the buyer saying, "Oh, sorry, I have to rush off
to my next meeting." Your citing the time allows the buyer to either decide to extend it or to agree to
your suggestion of another discussion.'
Always, Always End with Some Action Plan You Suggest. My favored alternative is to provide the
buyer with options (a choice of "yeses"). For example, "This was an excellent session, and we both
seemed to get quite a lot out of it. I'd like to pursue just a few more points and then we should both be
in a position to determine how to go forward. Would you like to set up another date now, or should we
do it by phone? I'm available on three separate days next week, and you can choose the best time for
you."
If your maximum objectives were met, then tell the buyer that you'll be sending a proposal. If lesser
objectives were met, then suggest some options that will take you to the next objective and,
ultimately, to a proposal. Never allow a prospect to say, "I'll give you a call." It's better to be assertive
to the point of aggressive at this juncture, rather than not have your phone calls returned after a more
polite departure.
Once you've determined the comfort zone of your buyer, control the discussion through movement
to his or her comfort zone, careful listening, and a pre-established blueprint for setting the course.
EMOTIONAL TARGETING
Logic makes people think, but emotion makes them act. Consultants, with our methodologies, models,
matrices, approaches, technology, and graphs, simply tend to over-intellectualize everything.
No one really buys a car because of the features in the brochure. They buy it, no matter what their
economic strata, because they look or feel good in it. Only the analytical style, discussed above, might
make a choice strictly on objective comparisons, but even there the choice of two or more equally
sound alternatives will devolve to a visceral decision.
The Twilight Zone
Sitting at dinner with the head of purchasing for a very large label manufacturer and one of my own
technical specialists, the conversation took its usual course covering part personal and part business.
The specialist and I were forced to do most of the talking, as the head of purchasing was not much of a
conversationalist, volunteered little or nothing, and was quite terse in his responses to our questions.
To make things even more uncomfortable, this dinner was to be the moment of truth. After six weeks
of product testing, we were about to find out if we were going to get the order. Finally, dessert and
coffee arrived and we still had no idea whether or not we had the order.
Not being able to wait any longer, I finally asked how many drums of material he would be needing
per month and when he would like delivery to begin. The three of us sat there in silence for over
fifteen minutes. It was the longest fifteen minutes of my life, as no one spoke a word. All you could
hear was some swallowing, chewing, and my sphincter closing up.
At the end of what seemed to be an eternity, the head of purchasing finally spoke: "Twenty. In thirty
days."
-Jim Altfeld, President, Altfeld, Inc.
If you want to reach an emotional nexus with a buyer, find out "why" something is important, and find
out why it's personally important.
How many times have you heard that there are unlimited funds, or people being shifted around, or
all other priorities dropped because a particular initiative is "the boss's baby" or "the general manager
has staked his reputation on it" or "she said we would accomplish this or die in the attempt"?
During the relationship-building process, determine why certain objectives are important. If you
can make those connections, then you'll know what to emphasize in terms of your contributions and
results, and the bond should be strengthened.
Ten Questions to Elicit Emotional Priorities
1. Why is this project so important to you, personally?

2. Why is it that you were chosen to lead this (or have chosen to lead this)?
3. How will this reflect on your department?
4. What will be your customers' reaction?
5. Who in the company is evaluating your progress and success with this?
6. What is the extent to which this influences your repute?
7. Does this have a direct career impact for you?
8. If this is successful, what's next in store for you?
9. How does the success of this improve your life?
10. On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is this to you and your position?
The reason that relationship building is so critical is that buyers (or anyone else, for that matter)
will not trust you enough to disclose emotional needs until there is a high degree of comfort.
Relationship building can begin on an intellectual basis, but should progress to emotional disclosure.
One of the best ways to get there rapidly is through self-disclosure. I've often stated to people with
whom I'm developing a relationship that I loathe the downsizing trend, and that companies tend to
lose too much talent through blind cost reduction formulas. Is that somewhat dangerous or risky? Not
if I've read the other party accurately, and it will tend to prompt similar disclosures from the buyer,
for example, "And we've had a talent retention problem here that keeps me up at night."
If you're thinking that it's more difficult to gain emotional disclosure from a driver or an analytic,
you're right and you've been listening. However, there is absolutely no excuse for not absolutely
gaining it from an amiable and an expressive, and at least trying it with the others. Remember, these
are comfort zones, not intractable, fenced boundaries. People can cross over, especially if you
establish the precedent.
DRAWING A LINE IN THE SAND
FOR UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIORS
Some behaviors are dysfunctional and are rooted in personality disorder. There's no sense trying to
build a relationship, since it won't be going anywhere anyway.
These are the behaviors that are an invitation to pack your bags, fold your tent, vacate the premises,
and turn out the lights:
Rudeness. When people keep you waiting repeatedly, without apology, when they take non-
critical calls and accept interruptions during your meeting and when they insult your opinions or
position, just say "Ciao."
Backstabbing. I've had prospects say, "My key objective is to sink that no good son of a bitch
Miller over in sales. If we can set him up, you're worth your weight in gold." I'm a consultant, not
a hit man.
There is one thing worse than no business: bad business. You will regret it every waking hour, and it
will sap your energy and undermine your morale. No amount of money is worth the pain of dealing
with a moron.
Conflicting and/or Unreasonable Objectives. "I want to °Lmprove morale while we downsize" is
my all-time personal favorite. I told the buyer that the fee would be $5 million. The glazed look
on his face is still a fond memory.
Poor Chemistry. Don't laugh, but some people were simply not made to collaborate with each
other. For example, passive-aggressive behavior will bring out the worst in most partners. Many
supercilious and trivial people will bring the other party down to their level. If it doesn't feel
good, don't do it. Easy for me to say? Every veteran reading this book can probably cite several
instances of "I wish I had never agreed to do work with him."
In finding the emotional target of the buyer, make sure that your own emotions are positive,
supported, and aligned. If they are, you're well on your way to building a great relationship.
Relationship building is critical to gaining conceptual agreement with prospective buyers about
objectives, measures of success, and the value of those objectives to the client organization. Without a
relationship, there will be insufficient trust to gain a true disclosure of that information.
Adapting to others' comfort zones is the best way to accelerate relationship building. Flexibility in
movement is the key, despite our own comfort zones. Various zones have various influencers,
avoidance behaviors, and motivators.
As you gain comfort stylistically, strive to control the discussion. Create a blueprint or road map for
the meetings, and subtly but firmly guide the direction, always as a peer of the buyer, and never as a
supplicant, "salesperson," or subordinate. Uncover emotional targets, which prompt people to act more
quickly and with more commitment, disclosing some of your own emotional factors if it will serve to
generate similar revelations from the buyer.
Draw a line beyond which behaviors are unacceptable, no matter what the project or how large the
potential. Walk away from troubling business, since it will always undermine you in the long run.
Positive and mutually supportive business potential is in abundance, so don't settle for less.
CHAPTER
Rebutting Objections Once and for All
If You Hear a New Objection, Then You Haven't Been Listening in the Past
f a consultant has been actively seeking new business for a year, he or she should
have heard about 95 percent of all objections, reservations, demurrals, and skepticism
that will be heard for the rest of one's career. The other 5 percent will come as the
consultant moves to higher level. buyers after reaching success.
For the ultimate consultant, however, that 5 percent has come and gone. I haven't heard a "new"
objection in the past ten years.' I hear them expressed by different people, in different environments,
under different conditions, but once you parse, conjugate, and dissect them, they're the same old
reasons.
One of the reasons that veteran consultants leave too much money on the table is that they've
become successful despite "blind spots"-types of objections that they've never been able to rebut or
turn around and that they've accepted as dead ends. They have convinced themselves, often
subconsciously, that certain "magic words" represent defeat and have conditioned themselves to cut
their losses. In time of great success and abundance, this deficit can be tolerated, of course. But even
forgetting tougher times, when every piece of potential business is vital, what about the fact that one
could be making 50 percent or even 100 percent more money by simply eliminating the "blind spots"
and snatching victory from the jaws of these formerly inevitable defeats?
What three objections do you, chronically, have the most trouble rebutting (or which three simply
cause you to throw up your hands and head for the exit)? Make a note of them on the lines below.
We have all had our own "blind spots," and without some help (which is often hard to find when one
is highly successful), they continue throughout our careers, unabated and unreduced. Here are a few
examples of the phrases and words that subliminally prepare even the best of consultants for defeat.
Are the ones you wrote among them, or in addition to them?
"I have no money, but try us again next year."
"The culture here does not accept external consultants."
#,. "We've tried that in the past and were burned terribly."
"We already have consulting relationships and we're quite pleased."
"We would only use a large, 'name' firm."
"The people you would have to convince are all over the world."
"We're in the middle of two key initiatives, and the timing is awful."
"We have no needs; we're in the middle of unparalleled results."
"Using a consultant is the equivalent of admitting my own incompetence. It's political suicide."
"We require someone with a staff of at least thirty people."
"We require someone who is within one hour of our home office."
We don't hear objections we've never heard before. We hear objections we've never been able to rebut
before. Those are two very different problems.
THE FOUR MAJOR AREAS OF OBJECTIONS
My experience in sales has been that you can categorize every single objection into one of four areas:
No Trust. In this case, the buyer is simply not comfortable with you. The buyer does not choose to
disclose needs, and isn't even comfortable listening to you. The lack of trust may be professional, in
that the buyer does not believe there is the competence to resolve the issues, or personal, in that the
buyer doesn't like the "chemistry" (or lack thereof) and does not look forward to working with you as a
partner.
No Need. The buyer does not feel any reason to use your services. He or she may trust you implicitly,
but is not convinced that there are issues to be addressed, or that the issues are the ones you are
seeking to address. If buyers don't feel an emotional need, they are unlikely to proceed.
No Hurry. There is no reason to move rapidly. All sense of urgency is missing. The situation is either
low priority or is stable. This condition includes "necessary evils" that the company has lived with and
tolerated without fatal consequences (not unlike the "blind spots" for consultants noted above!).
No Money. Consultants feel that this is the most common and catholic problem, but it really is the
rarest. Everyone has money, and lack of budget is usually an excuse (which buyers realize is the most
convincing to otherwise perseverant consultants). This one is often used to prevent conversations and
potential relationships from getting under way.
Let's categorize each of the sample objections cited above (NT = no trust; NN = no need; NH = no
hurry; NM = no money):
"I have no money, but try us again next year."-NM (But I just want you to go away for now.)
"The culture here does not accept external consultants."-NT (And I don't believe you can
overcome that.)
"We've tried that in the past and were burned terribly."-NT (And I don't believe you can
overcome that.)
"We already have consulting relationships and we're quite pleased."-NN (And you don't offer
anything of additional value.)
"We would only use a large, 'name' firm."-NT (You're not impressive.)
"The people you would have to convince are all over the world."-NH (And it's not worth bringing
them together or even asking them about it.)
"We're in the middle of two key initiatives, and the timing is awful."-NH, NN (And the issue
you're raising is minor in comparison.)
"We have no needs, we're in the middle of unparalleled results."-NN (And I don't see what
benefits you offer.)
"Using a consultant is the equivalent of admitting my own incompetence. It's political suicide."-
NT (And I'm not risking my life with you.)
"We require someone with a staff of at least thirty people."-NT (You're too small to do this job.)
"We require someone who is within one hour of our home office."-NT (You're too far away to do
this job.)
To arrive at the real objection, you nevertheless have to deal with the superficial objections first.
Fortunately, this is fairly easy to do. Unfortunately, many consultants don't bother trying.
Go back to your three toughest objections to rebut. How would you classify them? As a rule,
consultants who can't deal with any of these four areas simply fail early; those who can't deal with
three will fail slightly later; those who can't deal with two can eke out a living; and those who can't
deal with one often become relatively successful, but never achieve their full potential and often leave
money on the table. The ultimate consultant has learned how to effectively resolve all four areas of
resistance.
Iludi
One of the best techniques for closing a presentation or a general sales call is to ask, "Of all the things
we discussed in relation to Product/Service X and your company/situation, Ms. Client, what makes the
most sense/resonates the most?" Be prepared for some silence as the client reflects on the meeting.
What happens next is very interesting.
The client usually says, "I like X and Y." That tells you whether your main points were communicated
or not. If there are two clients present, after the first one speaks, slowly prompt the other to share his
views. Usually, he will agree or emphasize other features or benefits that appealed to him. They may
even disagree on which points are best-which is fine, since they are essentially selling themselves on
your proposals. If they are positive, it is then very easy to say, "Great. Sounds like you see the value
here. These would be the next steps."
If there are any negatives, then you are there to address them and, again, move to the next appropriate
step. In any case, what the client says are benefits and value are more important than what you say are
benefits and value and this is a very easy, low-risk, low-pressure way to move forward in the business
relationship.
-Anne Miller, author, 365 Sales Tips for Winning Business, President, Chiron
Associates
REBUTTING ARGUMENTS
IN THE FOUR BASIC AREAS
When you hear an objection or even sense resistance, the first thing to do is to categorize it into one of
the four basic areas (Figure 4.1). The reason is this: If a buyer feels no need, then no amount of trust
building on your part can change that. If a buyer feels no trust, then creating a higher sense of urgency
won't help (or will simply send the buyer more rapidly into the arms of another consultant whom he
does trust). This is why the stereotypical image of salespeople hopelessly reciting features and
benefits is such an accurate picture of real sales futility.
Any social style may have any major objection. But they do tend to be correlated around comfort
zones (or lack thereof). Consequently, identifying a buyer's style should also forewarn you about
likely objections.
Note that the four areas correspond somewhat to our social styles of buyers. The correlation isn't
100 percent, but we're often going to find the following:
Drivers must be convinced of need quickly: "How will this help me meet my goals?" Expressives
must trust you, because the relationship is so important. Amiables prefer guarantees and assurances to
speed, and the cardinal sin is impetuosity and rashness. Analytics want to see returns on investment
and are readily convinced that existing plans have been carefully arrived at and should not be changed.
Figure 4.1 Objections as Correlated with Social Style

Here are some diagnostics to help with each area. You might want to focus on the one or two that
have presented the most difficulty for you, but you might also find that your more "comfortable" areas
can also accept some increased ammunition.
No Need
Indicators
Buyer does not disclose information
You're constantly asked "But why should we do this?"
Buyer wants to know the ROI
Buyer cites his or her own pressing time demands
Buyer asks, "Why this approach?" and "How will you help us?"
Insanity is usually defined as "doing the exact same thing over and over while expecting different
results." If buyers aren't responding to your rebuttals, then the rebuttals are the problem, not the buyer.
Consultant Actions
Make a case for how the buyer and organization will improve, not for why you're good. The latter
deflects the conversation to you, and you can never be good enough, especially for a driver.
Rather, show how the buyer's needs (and particularly use of time and use of power) will be
enhanced. Be very concise.
Focus on the buyer's stated goals, not your methodology. If the buyer is reluctant to disclose, use
provocative questioning.
Cite examples of client organizations and results (the more familiar to the buyer, the better) to
give a sense of what other respected parties have deemed important, and find out how the buyer
responds.
State: "To make the best use of your time, there are just four things I'd like to know. Then you
can ask me anything you like and I'll be in the best position to answer you substantively." Then
ask your four most important questions in that setting ("What is the fundamental issue you wish
you could solve tomorrow?").
Indicators That You've Succeeded
The buyer says, "I haven't looked at it that way before. Go on."
The buyer begins to disclose details of his or her issues
The buyer offers to extend your time together or set up another meeting
The buyer asks you for ideas on how you would proceed
The buyer exhibits a sense of humor (this is a great sign from a driver)
From losing some business, I've learned the power of personal relationship and data. The mix is very
important for closing a sale.
When I can be face to face with a client and reflect that I really hear and understand the issues and
needs, then provide data about myself, the power of the solution I am suggesting, and good references
that are meaningful to the client, I can feel very certain of closing a sale.
When I haven't closed it, usually one of these aspects has been missing.
-Andrea C. Zintz, Ph.D., Andrea Zintz and Associates, LLC

No Trust
Indicators
The buyer keeps asking about your credentials and background
Questions are deflected and you're continually asked about yourself (as opposed to your
professional analysis of the buyer's situation)
The buyer "name drops" and tacitly indicates that he or she has partnered with very prestigious
people in the past
You are told about superficial issues (retention down in a tough labor market), but not underlying
issues (the reduction in benefits due to cost cutting has directly affected retention)
There are other people invited to the meeting who readily, and E assertively, question you and
your ability to be of help
Consultant Actions
Never attempt to rush to business; answer questions completely and, whenever possible, with
examples and anecdotes
Ask a lot of questions of the buyer about background, how she wound up in that position, where
he's from, and so on
If there are others present, include them in the conversation, while maintaining your primary
focus on the buyer
Find points of commonality, no matter how seemingly trivial-vacation spots, schools, work
history, acquaintances, hobbies-whatever it takes to demonstrate that you are more similar to the
buyer than dissimilar2
Listen, listen, listen. Let the buyer talk. Ask questions that encourage the buyer to talk.
Expressives actually become more comfortable with strangers when they are encouraged to talk
about themselves.
Buyers can get quite comfortable with someone who merely listens well. I've been called a "great
conversationalist" when all I've done is asked a few well-timed questions and otherwise kept my
mouth shut.
You're asked to go for coffee, have lunch, or engage in some similar "social" activity
The buyer initiates the move from background and comfort to business and projects
The buyer admits to gaffes and mistakes he or she has made in the past
The buyer confides an organizational weakness, often predicated with, "This is confidential,
but..."
The buyer extends your time together or sets up another meeting on the spot
Probably many consultants have experienced this. Our work is business planning and strategy
development for aircraft industry manufacturers and suppliers.
A major supplier that provides material to all the aircraft manufacturers called us to talk about future
demand for commercial aircraft. I discussed how we could assist them, but at the end of the day, our
conclusions would not be very different than the information they receive for free from Boeing,
Airbus (and, then, McDonnell Douglas). I suggested they just use what they were getting and not incur
the expense of a specialized evaluation.
Two days later, they called back to say that our honesty and directness convinced them that we could
help them sort through their issues with the material they were receiving. This relationship led to
repeat engagements over five years.
All because I told the client they didn't need a consultant!
-Gerald W. Bernstein, Managing Director, Stanford Transportation Group

No Hurry
Indicators
The buyer asks for assurances, guarantees, and references
The buyer seeks to involve more people, form a task force, assemble a committee
Minute details are discussed at length, and meetings run longer and longer
Decisions that you thought had already been made are revisited, and vacillation occurs frequently
The buyer talks in terms of "pilots," tests, and "beta" groups

Consultant Actions
Provide references and testimonials from people who have implemented the same project or
similar methodology
Provide "fail safe" options so that there are alternatives in place to handle setbacks
Establish both preventive and contingent actions to safeguard the plan (for example, project
planning is preventive, delaying one of the steps is contingent if something goes wrong anyway)
Demonstrate that the current situation is actually declining, not stable, and it will be harder and
harder to recover the longer the buyer waits to implement
Offer to provide a briefing as a prophylactic move with the buyer's boss
Guarantee the quality of your work (not the results, which is impossible and unethical)
The "timing" will never be perfect. What you have to prove to a buyer is that the timing can get a hell
of a lot worse very quickly.
The buyer moves forward against a joint and methodical plan; prior decisions are not revisited
The buyer agrees that risk is minimized
Your meetings are increasingly one-on-one, without others present to comment or gain consensus
The buyer agrees that a test would just waste time or consume resources unnecessarily
The buyer readily agrees to be the chief sponsor and to lend his or her name to the project (as
opposed to naming a project manager)
No Money
Indicators
The buyer says that this initiative isn't budgeted, and he or she doesn't know where the funds will
come from
Strict ROI calculations are demanded
There is an attempt to peg your fee to the actual return or savings
The buyer stipulates that anecdotal measures aren't sufficient
The buyer tells you, "We've never spent money on this type of project" (or on outside
consultants)
Consultant Actions
Provide details of cost savings from similar projects at other organizations
Focus on value, not fee; sell the buyer on the ultimate worth, and deflect all discussions about fee
Stress investment, not cost
Point out the preventive investment in equipment and machinery that the organization makes
every day
Offer a money-back guarantee on the quality of your work
Offer options (various value "packages") so that the buyer can please himself as to ROI
Provide cross-indexed, tabulated documentation with footnotes and references

The buyer indicates a favorable/ acceptable return ratio
The buyer asks that you "sharpen your pencil" and come back with your best possible offer
The buyer wants to get into further levels of detail
The buyer creates charts, diagrams, flow charts, mind maps, and similar aids to the discussion
The buyer suggests details for implementation and wants to pursue the references
The good news is that there are really only four basic areas of objection. The bad news is that, if you
don't know how to handle one or two, you're going to be doomed to mediocrity, no matter how
successful you've been to date.
The four basic resistance areas are immutable. They've existed since an ancient stone salesman
approached a Pharaoh for the next pyramid construc tion contract. They correlate closely, although not
perfectly, with the social styles of buyers. Remember that there is NO objection that we haven't heard
before. If we prepare, are sensitive to the indicators, and respond to that particular style and objection,
we are highly likely to move the relationship and sale forward at sprint speed.
VISUALIZING THE FUTURE
I'm going to offer here a technique that I've never written about in any of my books and seldom speak
about in my workshops. It may seem "new age" or, as Ron Zemke, a terrific writer, has termed, the
"woo-woo" effect. But it works, and it serves to rebut objections with the force of a Pete Sampras
return of a second serve.
In any meeting I've ever entered, I try to visualize what might transpire. As we all progress in this
profession, our experience base enlarges and our ability to anticipate becomes rather comprehensive. I
can't remember the last time something occurred in a sales call or client meeting of any type that
surprised me.3
When you approach a meeting with a prospect, visualize what he or she might say (if you know the
person's style already, you can narrow this down considerably). Then develop responses to the
objections that seem extemporaneous, but which are really "rehearsed."
Here are the specific techniques that you can emp:.oy when you visualize the future:
Prepare Alternatives. State, "That's a good point, and there are three things to consider...." This
demonstrates tremendous command of the issue and will focus the buyer on which of the
considerations are most important.
Prepare Comparisons. State, "That's exactly what happened during my work at Boeing, and here's
what we did about it." This demonstrates that you're experienced in the prospect's concern and
that you can readily deal with it.
Prepare Counterarguments. State, "That is a drawback, but it's minor when you consider these
four significant advantages." This demonstrates that you've done the risk analysis, and that it's
manageable.
Prepare Collaboration. State, "Yes, that is a significant challenge, and I think that you and I
personally have to spend some time resolving it." This highlights the partnership and
demonstrates that your combined talents are needed for success.
Prepare Analysis. State, "That is always an important consideration, and I've prepared some
documents for you to review that should alleviate that concern." This demonstrates your foresight
and preparedness.
The greater your experience base, the easier it is to use the past to predict the future. Ultimate
consultants should reach a point where every conversation is mostly predictable, and most responses
become natural and seem extemporaneous, despite the fact they've been "rehearsed" a few minutes
prior.
By visualizing the future, you'll be able to anticipate and co-opt prospect objections. It's almost
unforgivable to be "blindsided" by an objection for which you are unprepared and have not visualized.
At one client, I so often said, "Well, there are five things we can do here," that the president actually
announced to his staff, "I just love it when he does that! Why can't all of you do that?!"
SAMPLE OBJECTIONS AND REBUTTALS
I've included here a compendium of objections I've heard and rebuttals I've used over the years. They
are meant to serve several purposes. First, you might just read some reactions that you wish you had
thought of before. Second, you might find that your current responses are as good as or better than
mine, which at least tells you you're on the right track. Finally, you might want to use these as practice
with your staff, subcontractors, alliance partners, and so on.
A colleague and I had collaborated on a project for Texaco. We were working all over the country, but
periodically had to vi5.it headquarters in White Plains, New York, where our buyer was an expressive
who was "off the chart."
The three of us were taking a walk on the jogging path that ran around the sumptuous grounds,
because the buyer loved to be seen shepherding the consultants around. Suddenly, around a turn,
appeared an executive vice president of great repute and power.
The buyer excused himself and went off to chat with the vice president for several minutes while my
colleague and I cooled our heels watching the ducks paddle around a pond. When the buyer returned,
he said, "The vice president told me that the project was going beautifully, and no one could have
pulled this off the way that I have."
After we parted company, my colleague observed as we headed for our cars, "A typical expressive-
when he can't get applause outright, he applauds himself!"
-AW
Objection I've never heard of you before.
Rebuttal I hear that all the time. I'm a "well kept secret." In fact, my firm is a boutique firm that
takes on select clients. It doesn't surprise me that we're not a "household name" because that isn't
our strategy.
Objection We think we need a large firm. You're a one-person show.
Rebuttal What you need is careful and meticulous attention, and I'm ideally prepared to provide
it. You'll always be dealing with the principal, we don't have a huge infrastructure that demands
inflated fees, I'm virtually immediately responsive, and I can tightly customize approaches just
for you. How many larger firms can offer you those advantages?
Objection I think there's a lot of potential, but the timing isn't right.
Rebuttal One thing I can guarantee: The timing will never be right. The real question is will the
timing improve or decline? Let me make a case that you would have been better off acting six
months ago, and six months from now you'll wish you had acted six months prior.
Never, ever get defensive. Instead, become adept at saying, "That's a good point, and one I've faced
before. Let me explain what's happened at other clients." If you can't use your past experience to
promote future success, what good is it?
Objection We're having a great year. We're on a roll. There's nothing to "fix."
Rebuttal That's why we should talk. My best clients "raise the bar" during periods of strength.
None of us improves by correcting weakness. We improve by building on strengths. You're in
that wonderful position where you can afford the investment and the prudent risk to attempt new
heights. I'm in a position to help you do that. Don't you think we should at least explore that kind
of exponential growth opportunity?
Objection There is resistance to external consultants here. In fact, it's strongly countercultural. I
don't know if I want to risk swimming against that tide.
Rebuttal I don't blame you. But we're not close to that determination. Let's talk about your key
issues and what might be done about them. Then you'll be able to judge whether it's worth the
energy to take that swim. For now, we're only exploring hypothetically.
Objection We have no money. It's that simple.
Rebuttal Isn't that a Xerox machine over there? How many of those does the organization own?
Maybe a hundred? What is the maintenance contract on those? Maybe $75,000? Are you really
saying that preventive maintenance on machinery is justified, but investment in people and
performance isn't? How much are you spending on "failure work," which we could eliminate with
an intelligent approach? v= you're willing to talk in terms of ROI, I can help you make money.
Accept objections as a sign of interest. Prospects who are totally uninterested wouldn't waste their
breath. They are a normal-even necessary-aspect of the sales process. It's your decision whether to see
them as hurdles to be negotiated or as mountains that thwart your progress.
There are four major areas of resistance: no trust, no need, no hurry, no money. We too readily
accept the fourth, whereas it's actually the least valid and seldom the actual impediment. If you
establish trust and need, "no hurry" and "no money" tend to fade away. Learn the predispositions of
your buyers and you'll know what kinds of objections to anticipate and rebuttals to prepare.
Visualize your conversations, using your experience to create the likely alternative paths the
discussion might take. Introduce what seem like "extemporaneous" observations, which are, in reality,
rehearsed responses to the predicted path. After a while, these will become quite natural and
"codified," because there is very little new under the sun. If you continue to hear objections that you
haven't heard before, you just haven't been listening.
Provide reinforcement for buyers according to the predispositions: power for drivers, recognition
for expressives, guarantees for amiables, and detail for analytics. If you follow the natural course of
your buyer's preferences, combined with the likely direction of the conversation, you'll accelerate the
relationship and the acquisition of new business.
CHAPTER
Sixteen Great
Acquisition Sources
Why Go Around the Block to Get Next Door?
e all tend to stick with the person who brought us to the dance.
That's why so many people become specialists with no real intent to do so. We solicit
clients along the paths of least resistance. If we land a couple of car dealers and can use
their referrals and our experiences to acquire more, we suddenly become auto
distribution experts and consciously or unconsciously focus our marketing efforts in
that area. Before we know it, we're locked out of other areas because we're seen as
"someone else's specialist" or we've lost the knack for breaking down new doors.
Early in my career I accidentally acquired several pharmaceutical firms as clients and was heading
down that slope when, with equal serendipity, I obtained several newspapers as clients. When I sat
down one day and analyzed just how different those two industries are in almost every dimension, yet
how similar my advice was because my processes are cross-industrial, I realized that I shouldn't stop
there. Yet the advice I was getting at the time from "experts" was that I should choose which area to
specialize in and abandon the other!
The same principle applies to the sources of our new business. If we've tended to rely on publishing
to draw prospects, and it's been successful for us, then the best we do is to seek out new publishing
vehicles. If networking has been the key, then we network with a wider focus. If alliances have
brought in business, we look for more and larger partnerships.
However, there's nothing wrong with examining new sources of business acquisition. In fact, there
are two terrific reasons to do so:
1. You can continue your current "comfortable" paths, since the two approaches are not mutually
exclusive.
2. At a successful time in your career, you're better equipped than ever to be credible instantly in
new acquisition areas. In other words, these are new routes you tend to "mature into."
Some of the suggestions below will be the current path for some readers. But I doubt there is a
single reader who is habitually traveling all sixteen, nor is there a need to do so. The opportunity being
offered here is to choose two or three that you haven't tried and to open up an entirely new source of
business acquisition in addition to your current methods.
Being successful doesn't mean that you stop experimenting with new approaches. It means that you
now have the ability and resources to take more of a leap and to experiment with greater gusto. Like
Microsoft or Boeing, you can withstand some setbacks.
Here are the highest potential acquisition avenues I see for successful consultants:
1. Partnering with professional colleagues
2. Harvesting low-hanging fruit
3. Using the Internet in reverse
4. Becoming the "middle man"
5. Publishing "unpromotional" articles
6. Serving the cause for free
7. Taking global vacations
8. Writing on the op-ed page
9. Franchising the talent
10. Pursuing your clients' vendors
11. Developing a memorable brand phrase
12. Selling to your suppliers
13. Infiltrating trade associations
14. Obtaining a profound endorsement
15. Writing The Book
16. Getting a referral every time

THE FIRST FOUR
1. Partnering with Professional Colleagues
I found my attorney through my real estate broker. I found my accountant through my attorney. I
found subcontractors through my accountant.
Do key professional colleagues really know what you do, and are they able to endorse you? My
relationship banker introduced me to executives within her institution who ultimately hired me for
almost $200,000 worth of work. Since she approved my credit line and had to know my business
intimately, she was in a perfect position to recommend me with confidence to others, inside or outside
the bank.
This occurs too often by accident more than by design. On the local level, at this point in our
careers, we all deal with attorneys (and maybe several for trademark, estate planning, litigation, and
so on), doctors, accountants, realtors, architects, designers, and bankers. On a wider level, we deal
with publishers, editors, brokers, coaches, and association leadership. Have you ever referred someone
to your doctor or accountant? Have you expected something in return? Of course you have, and you
haven't. You thought you were doing both parties a favor by connecting need with talent.
People should be doing the same for you. The trouble is that you know what your doctor does, but
he or she might not have more than a foggy idea of what you do (people to this day look at me
quizzically and mumble, "Consultant??").
Action Step: Choose a dozen professional colleagues who provide you with a service and make sure
that you informally but clearly educate them about what you do, how you do it, and how to reach you
(for example, leave your web address or a copy of your book). Just two referrals a year from these
sources can add hundreds of thousands of dollars to your business.
2. Harvesting Low-Hanging Fruit
We're all familiar with the organizations that inform us that "We don't hire consultants." (In the prior
chapter, we dealt with rebuttals to that song.) However, we don't pay attention to the converse: There
are organizations that love consultants and can't get through a day without them.
Why aren't you getting paid by some of them?
There is a belief that an organization doing business and maintaining a relationship with a
consultant is hard to crack by a rival, because the current resource has solid support and history. That's
often true. But I'm talking about organizations that use multiple consultants at once. These prospects
aren't hooked into a single resource; they are hooked into the very idea of utilizing outside help.
You have enough resistance to overcome. Why not go where you know there is one less barrier, one
lower hurdle, one more door ajar?
Sometimes, the very best companies are heavy users of consultants because they know that they
need constant fresh air.' I had found at one point, for example, that Merck, Hewlett-Packard, and
Times-Mirror Group were significant users of consultants, while Bank of America, Hasbro, and large
law firms were not. I pursued, through my normal marketing devices, those organizations who
required one less sale: They didn't need to be converted to the use of my kind of help.
So, even though Hasbro is in my backyard, and HP is across the country, I went after the easier sale.
Those who already believe in the efficacy and costeffectiveness of outside consultants represent lower
hanging fruit, requiring less marketing effort.
Action Step: Take an hour or so with your feet up on the desk and simply think about the organizations
that tend to use your competitors in large degree and who fit well into your marketing comfort zone.
Make a plan to pursue them. This is like a battleship training the main turrets in a slightly different
direction. The ammunition remains the same.
3. Using the Internet in Reverse
People use the Internet to sell and to advertise. You've probably received today, alone, a dozen or
more pieces of spam urging you to invest your money, buy irresistible addresses, or lose weight before
the end of the day. You've also probably visited your share of websites this week that are nothing more
than electronic billboards telling you how great their authors are and sharing with you the kinds of
features and benefits that drive you to shut down your browser and sell your computer.
I use the Internet with a "reversed flow." I provide value. For free. My website has almost one
hundred free, indexed articles for people to access and download. I provide a free electronic newsletter
on life balance (which has grown in three years from forty original names to more than four thousand
all over the world). I send out leads and techniques to people on several different lists I maintain.
I bought my first set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica when I was very young and had no money. Yet
the salesman offered a "free Renoir reproduction" for just listening. He offered value to get to the next
step, a discussion. I regretted the expense but gained from the insight.
You get people's attention by offering something, not asking for something. Don't show them your
vacation slides. Offer to look at theirs. You can't sell anything if you can't get in the door.
Use the wonderful reach of the Internet to offer value, in whatever form makes sense for you. Don't
maintain an ad site or promote yourself relentlessly in everything you send out. If you offer people
value-ideas, tips, techniques, freebies, articles, newsletters, and so forth-they will mention your name,
inquire about your work, and buy your services.
Action Step: Review your website and electronic offerings today (or have someone else do it
objectively) and determine how much value versus how much self-promotion you're supporting. Then
change the percentage to 80/20. You'll find that you have to "give" to "get," but that it's painless.
4. Becoming the "Middle Man"
Sometimes acting as the connection between two parties can be quite lucrative. But I'm not talking
about the traditional "broker," who is really unnecessary, yet wants a piece of the action for putting
you together with a prospect. These are merely dating services and add very little value.
No, I'm talking about being the process or the link that connects people. For example, I maintain a
subcontractor list, called the Summit Resource Catalog. There is a modest fee ($50) to join, but it's
one-time and people can stay on the list forever. The list is sent for free to firms interested in hiring
subcontractors, and they can browse the list by specialty, geography, fee level, and so on.
I get nothing from this transaction and serve only as the connection. Due diligence is up to both
parties. The entry fee pays for the administration and mailings. However, as the central source, people
at both ends are attracted to me. They have to visit my website, where they are introduced to more
value, as well as to products and opportunities to learn about my work. The list has a "word-of-mouth"
attraction, so I receive inquiries about it daily.
By serving as a disinterested third party, you become the road that travelers must take to get from
one point to another. People are drawn to you as a vital connection, and your own services and talent
become peripheral benefits. As a success in your field, you have gained the credibility and means to
serve in such a capacity.
Action Step: Make a list of the kinds of people you can uniquely put together, be they readers and
publishers, managers and coaches, or veterans and neophytes. Establish a cost-effective mechanism
for doing that. Don't take an active roleyou should simply be doing other people a good deed. Your
turn will come.
ki TT.i it11W.VA'tij
While working on a proposal for a healthcare institution that I had done some work for in the past, I
discovered I had taken for granted the relationship that I had built. The proposal was for a new
information system for one of the departments. I had done some work for some of the executives of
the hospital for a number of years. The wo-k was always in excellent standing with the board
members.
Because of this I was, you can say, "overly confident" that I was going to get the next bid that I put in.
I thought my relationship was good enough to carry me to the end and I wouldn't need to put on a big
sales presentation on how good I was for this project.
Needless to say, I was wrong. My competition came in and took the bid from right under me. They put
on an outstanding presentation and had very good subject-matter experts to back them up. I did a fair
presentation without much effort. BIG MISTAKE.
I came in second for the bid. I lost that one and learned a very big lesson. Yes, you can do good work
and yes, you can prove yourself, and yes, forming relationships with your client is crucial to success.
But DO NOT take the relationship for granted. Always go out of your way to show your stuff and
prove that you're the right person for the job. By showing enthusiasm for each bid, you continue to
show your professionalism and expertise in the consulting field. You'll be taken seriously and
continue on the road to success.
-John Micallef, CBT Consulting Inc.

THE SECOND FOUR
5. Publishing "Unpromotional" Articles
Consulting to Management is a quarterly journal distributed to consultants all over the world. A year
or so ago, it ran an article I wrote on mentoring, which featured the details and working of my own
mentoring program. Since the program is oriented toward consultants, this was a piece of publicity
that I gladly would have paid for. (A sidebar to the story described how to enter my program,
including all contact information and requirements.)
If you offer enough value to the reader and the editor, it's amazing just how much subtle promotion
will slip through the editorial cracks. I've had articles and interviews published that embarrassed even
my wife in their praise.
Not enough people publish, and of those who do, too many are blatantly self-promotional. The key
to business acquisition is to provide a valuable, factual, and objective piece that, oh, by the way, uses
your personal history, examples, and accomplishments. Even better are interviews in which you are
not even the author, but the subject of a third party's legitimate interest. (I am not talking about those
dreadful "infomercials" or the fake interviews that are actually scripted and are as transparent as an
open window.)
Have you ever purchased a book because of its review and your respect for the reviewing source?
Have you ever done something on the recommendation of a trusted friend or advisor? At this stage of
your career, you're in the perfect position to offer sage advice and dispassionate help. In so doing,
people will flock to you for more of it.
Action Step: Make it a goal to publish and to be interviewed once every quarter as an expert who is
cited for accomplishments and experiences (or can cite his or her own) that will attract new business.
Gurus are simply people who have had the opportunity to learn from their successes and failures.
6. Serving the Cause for Free
I serve on local boards for the contribution I can make and for my belief in the organization and/or the
people who have asked me to help. However, there is no conflict I know of between doing good work
and accepting business that might flow from it.
While serving on the board of a shelter for battered women, I happily took the lead in areas of my
competency, including board governance, strategy, ethical issues, and so on. One day a fellow board
member, who was also a local police chief, asked me if I could impart some of the same competencies
to his senior officers as part of their national accreditation requirements. "Don't even ask," he said,
smiling, "we have a grant that will pay for it."
I've found from my legitimate and well-intentioned volunteer work on boards that I've gained
clients, accelerated word of mouth, and received unexpected media publicity. I've chosen to do this at
the local level, even though my historic thrust has not been among local businesses. You may decide
to do things on a more national level (an excellent entry point is board membership in professional
and trade associations at the national level). When I served as president of a local board for
professional speakers, I found that I gained almost $250,000 over the next two years directly
attributable to that visibility.
Action Step: As you network, make it known that you're entertaining offers to serve on boards. Choose
those that offer a cause you be"deve in, are well-established, and have a need for your contribution. Do
good, and good will follow (supposedly uttered by George Merck, one of the founders of the great
pharmaceutical giant).
7. Taking Global Vacations
I don't believe that you compartmentalize your life. Our personal and professional lives add up to one
life, with continuing overlap. Why fight that? Embrace it.
You can afford the best of vacations at this point in your career. When you schedule that trip to
Hong Kong or Berlin or Buenos Aires, write ahead to the local management groups, associations,
branches of your U.S. clients, and personal contacts. Let them know that you'll "be in the
neighborhood" and offer to extend your stay if you can be of any assistance.
Who Could Make This Up?
I was talking to the CEO of a client with whom I had done business for five years. We were good
friends.
He mentioned casually to me, "Do you know anyone who is a good keynote speaker?" Being one
myself, but somewhat skeptical, I asked why he wanted to know.
"Oh," he said, "I've been the program chair of the American Council of Life Insurance for some time,
and I'm looking for someone to address 250 CEOs at our annual meeting."
After I convinced him that I was the perfect candidate, I went out and hit myself over the head for
never, ever having told him about my speaking and never having asked him about referrals within the
industry. I immediately began to comb through the rest of my clients to determine where else I had
been so deficient.
How many of your clients are seeking expertise elsewhere because they are unaware that you possess
it?
-AW
When you're traveling a long way, you have credentials, and you have some local contacts, you have
to deliberately not want to do business locally in order to avoid it. The farther you go, the easier it
gets. Of course, you "gotta wanna."
There is an inverse proportion to distance and desire: The farther you are traveling, the more you
will be accommodated. If you're going to be in Tokyo for a few days of vacation, then why not add
two days of meetings, presentations, or speeches? It's never burdensome, the local hosts will show you
and your partner sights you wouldn't have otherwise seen, and you'll develop significant business
potential.
I was asked to keynote a consulting conference in Australia. I asked only for a single first-class
ticket (these groups are always strapped for cash). They agreed readily. I took my wife on a free ticket
and set up the meetings, speeches, and contacts well in advance around my speech. The result was six
figures in business and a wonderful trip.
Action Step: Take one vacation a year internationally fiat can tie in with some local contacts,
speeches, book signings, meetings, and so forth. Plan four to six months in advance for maximum
impact. At the very worst, you'll have a great vacation.
8. Writing on the Op-Ed Page
When you've got the "traction" of success going for you, you're able to appear in places that were
closed to you as a beginner or unknown. One such place is the "op-ed" page of newspapers.
Opposite the editorial page is where opinions are expressed by those whom the newspaper wants to
expose to its readers :For purposes of interest, provocation, diversity, and other reasons. By offering
commentary for this page, you establish yourself as an authority, broadcast your credentials, gain a
reprint for your press kit, and allow other media sources to contact you.
When you write on a sensitive business issue--downsizing, retention, ethics-you will gain the
attention of the educated, informed, and potential buyers who tend to read those columns. You'll be
invited to speak to their teams, to write for their publications, to discuss the issues with them. A
newspaper's mere publishing of your piece-even though not necessarily endorsing it-is a tremendous
statement of credibility and authority.
You can also judge by the response or lack of response to your piece what the current level of
interest is on your topic. I use this to "calibrate" my approaches. If my best provocation can't generate
substantial response, then I'm tackling an issue that's important only to me and that's not a business
acquisition issue.
Action Step: Submit an article for consideration on the op-ed page at least every other month. Don't
feel limited to your hometown newspaper. When these are successful, it's not unusual to be asked to
write a column.
The Twilight Zone
In the early Eighties, I was a senior management consultant in the consulting division of a Big 5 (then
10) accounting firm. We received a strong lead from an audit partner in another city, who had a large
food and grocery retailing client in need of an operations analysis.
I made the call with the local partner, and all seemed to be going well, until we met the owners. They
were three partners who, after surviving the concentration camps in WW II, vowed they would never
be reliant on anyone ever again. They felt I had all the qualifications they were looking for except one:
I was not of the Jewish faith. They insisted that the engagement be managed by a Jew, or they would
not proceed.
The audit partner met with me outside and asked if I had any problem with their request. I said no
problem at all, since I could only imagine the horrors they had to endure. I said, "Find a Jewish
partner, and let's get on with it!"
That's where the problem began. Believe it or not, we could not find a Jewish consulting partner on the
entire East Coast, or an audit partner with time available (it was tax season) to fill in as a substitute.
Eventually, they found a twenty-two-year-old staff "B" auditor, recently out of college, as the only
available "manager."
We took him back with us to the client, hoping they would not consider this an insult to their request.
They interviewed this bright, understanding young man and gave us the immediate go-ahead. I
reported to him for the next two months, and although he had no idea what it was I was doing (he was
a tax student), he made all my recommendations personally to the client.
The engagement was an outstanding success!
-Tom Casey, CMC, Business Consulting Service

THE THIRD FOUR
9. Franchising the Talent
Some of the work we've all done quite successfully has been routinized to the point where we do it in
"unconscious competency." The bad news is that we're no longer as conscientious or innovative at
delivering, but the good news is that the work is probably eligible to be "franchised" to others.
Here are some "deliverables" that are candidates to be franchised to other consultants, creating an
entirely new business source for you:
Tests and diagnostic instruments you've created
Systematized approaches to team building, strategy, and so on
Workshops oriented around proprietary materials
Manuals, templates, checklists, and review systems
11 Train-the-trainer programs
1: Remote coaching and counseling systems
Valuation, assessment, and risk management procedures
Some business acquisition sources can be established through the creation of new distribution
channels, using material and approaches that no longer rely on your personal talent or delivery.
Franchising is especially desirable in areas where there can be little competition, for example, in
other parts of the world, granting either local rights for a country or exclusive rights for an entire
region. It's also highly efficient in those parts of your practice that are causing you too much labor
investment, too much boredom, and/or too little profit. In effect, you create a new business source by
creating a "middle man" who will probably deliver better than you have been delivering.
Action Step: List those aspects of your practice that you find are lock-step repeatable and that don't
require your talent to sell or deliver. Then decide whether you want to franchise completely, or only
on a "non-compete" basis. At this stage in your career, your "brand" can make franchising highly
valuable.
10. Pursuing Your Clients' Vendors
The auto industry is famous for demanding that its suppliers adhere to the same strict quality criteria
that they do (which doesn't always make sense, but still carries tremendous pressure). For example,
Ford may require its brake lining vendor to implement a quality package similar to one used within
the Ford system.
Suggest to your existing clients, including brand new ones, that you're more than willing to contact
all key suppliers to introduce them to the type of project you're implementing within your client's
system. Be prepared to demonstrate the tremendous synergy of sharing, for example, identical
planning systems, leadership approaches, scheduling procedures, and other joint efforts.
When a major buyer tells a smaller supplier that they ought to meet with you and consider your help
so as to be congruent with the buyer's, you're going to get a very careful hearing. Moreover, don't
forget that suppliers have their own vendors. You can work right down this supply chain until you
reach a point of diminishing returns.
Most of us talk about the "customer's customer," but we don't follow our own advice. And
remember that any one client might have dozens of major suppliers, so the leveraging effect is
tremendous.
Action Step: Make a list of every active client over the past two years, and ask every buyer within
each one for a list of those suppliers who might profit from your work. You should also make this a
part of the discussion with every new client, every time.
11. Developing a Memorable Brand Phrase
One of my favorite brand names is The Telephone Doctor TM, which is a firm founded and run by
Nancy Friedman. I like it because it's so easy to say, "Get me The Telephone Doctor" or "Have you
tried The Telephone Doctor?"2
If you want prospective buyers to call you on their own volition, then give them something to call you.
One of the best sources of all for new business acquisition-and very timely for successful
consultants-is to establish the "pull" of a successful brand and memorable brand name. A large part of
McKinsey's success for a long time was due to the "Get me McKinsey" factor, almost irrespective of
the nature of their work. Purchasing managers couldn't get fired for buying from IBM, and executives
couldn't get dumped by the boa:rd for using McKinsey for their strategy work.
What kind of "hook" are you creating-based on your work, experience, and success-to enable people
to quickly identify and call you?
A few years ago someone called me "the rock star of consulting." I was quite pleased. "Did I give
you a new name?" she asked. "Well, that and a new source of income," I told her.
Action Step: Find a consultant, naming expert, coach, or trusted advisor, and establish two or three
"brands" if you don't yet have them. Incorporate them into your website, print materials, speeches,
networking, and so forth. If you're not sure of your brand strength, ask your best clients.
12. Selling to Your Suppliers
We all buy supplies, office equipment, design services, airline tickets, and a myriad of other things we
take for granted in the running of our practices. But how often do we examine those often long-term
relationships in terms of potential business?
You don't want to sell to your local print shop, but can the proprietor introduce you to the
executives of Kinko's? If you're a good customer at Staples, can the manager recommend you to
someone as a speaker for the annual management meeting? Your travel agent may have made some
very nice commissions from your business over the years, and may be a part of one of the giant
chains.
You've probably developed some excellent relationships with local vendors (whom I always
advocate you pay first and quickly), and your business has been counted on in their own forecasts. You
don't want to sell to them, but why not simply ask a small favor and get at least a name (and probably
an endorsement) at the corporate level? The local Northwest Insurance broker, with a twenty-person
staff, was able to place me as a keynote speaker at a major conference where I was seated next to the
CEO.
Are you networking and seeking referrals among your own suppliers?
Action Step: Determine whom you've done the most business with, consistently, at the local level. Go
to each of your contacts in these suppliers and ask for the appropriate party at the corporate level who
would be interested in your work, and request an introduction. You'll find that you'll get one or more
names at least 80 percent of the time.
1:1 *t d j
Personal networking by far is the most effective for me. As an internal employee-one who hired
consultants-I always trusted relationships first. If a consultant came through a good friend or someone
very credible to me, I returned the call.
As an independent consultant myself, I have found that my business has grown rapidly through my
network of relationships-generating bountiful referrals in many directions. An example: I was
employed by one large company for twenty years. As people with whom I have relationships leave this
company and go to other companies, they've taken me with them. It's been a huge source of expanded
opportunity for me.
-Andrea C. Zintz, Ph.D., Andrea Zintz and Associates, LLC

THE FOURTH FOUR
13. Infiltrating Trade Associations
Trade associations provide tremendous visibility and contacts. Many allow membership to anyone
interested (in other words, you don't have to be an active professional in the industry) and others
provide "associate" memberships. Then there are the consulting, speaking, facilitation, coaching, and
related professional associations, as well.
In any trade association, you can acquire prospects by engaging in the these types of activities:
Become an officer
Head a highly visible committee (for example, programming or membership)
ti Speak at the conventions
Exhibit at the conventions
Network at meetings
Take an ad in the directory
Provide pro bono consulting help
Recruit new members
Sponsor key events
Write for the association publications
Work to earn a professional designation or honor
Utter to mentor colleagues
There is an inherent credibility in serving in a formal capacity in professional organizations. Usually,

the volunteer help is so weak that it's easy to stand out in a crowd. There is virtually never a
competitive slate of board candidates, for example, so it's easy to serve with distinction.
Trade and professional organizations provide visibility to buyers, recommenders, and colleagues in
the field who may refer you to business they can't handle. At this stage of your career, it's also an
opportunity to "pay back."
Action Step: Join one or two professional associations with high potential and work to become very
active (rather than join a dozen and remain inactive). Aside from all of the above, these can also be
sources for lifelong learning in a profession that is otherwise quite lonely at times.
14. Obtaining a Profound Endorsement
When President Ronald Reagan mentioned that he was reading a terrific book called The Hunt for Red
October, he didn't simply create a bestseller, he created a Tom Clancy industry. That was a profound
endorsement!
We don't necessarily need an endorsement from a national figure or a celebrity. But we can do
wonders when someone well-known in a particular field cites us favorably. We tend to do this
normally, in our references and testimonials. When I tell a financial institution that I've worked with
The Federal Reserve Bank, or an auto dealer that I've consulted with Mercedes-Benz, the conversation
takes a decidedly upbeat turn.
Look for those few, key individuals who are well-known among your prospect universe and seek out
ways to gain their endorsement or at least mention. It may be as simple as obtaining an introduction,
or as difficult as finding some way to work together. Nevertheless, one positive word from a highly
respected figure can short-cut your marketing process and generate new business immediately.
Action Step: Identify two markets or industries (or even geographies) that would constitute a new
source of business acquisition, and determine who the most influential authorities are in those areas.
Then generate a plan to gain their endorsement. Use the "six degrees of separation" approach: If you
network assiduously, you are bound to find someone who knows someone who knows someone.
No one is "unmeetable." If you persist and network diligently, you will eventually turn up a
connection and perhaps an introduction. If you don't ask, however, you'll never meet anyone.
This one seems obvious, but too few consultants pursue it because they think it's a field best left to the
academics or that writing a book is akin to root canal work.
I know of no greater single credibility source than a commercially pub lished book. At this stage of
your career, there is really little excuse for not writing one. Simply follow this procedure:
A. Ask yourself whom you want to impress (which buyers).
B. Ask yourself what their greatest need is (their "trigger").
C. Ask yourself which of your competencies and experiences best meet the needs (your leverage).
D. Create a theme and ten chapter headings.
E. Write one chapter and two paragraphs about all other chapters.
F. Create a brief market analysis, comparing your proposed book to those already written on
similar subjects.
G. Explain your uniqueness, credentials, marketing clout, and other supporting elements.
H. Get thee to an acquisitions editor or literary agent.

If you write only one page a day, you'll have a book in about nine months. If you follow the
proposal outline above, you'll have something to show an editor or agent in thirty days. What's
stopping you?
I have gained millions of dollars in consulting business from my books, far dwarfing the royalties
and advances. The very words you're reading are going to earn me still more.
Action Step: Plan steps "A" to "H" above on your calendar, and get moving. Business books don't have
to be scientifically tight, nor read like The Grapes of Wrath. They just have to use your experience and
ideas to help people.
16. Getting a Referral Every Time
When I was young and newly married, an insurance agent named Hal Mapes sold me a small policy.
He'd visit me once a quarter, and every time asked me for three names he could call. He literally
wouldn't leave my house without those three names.
I figure that Hal probably had two hundred customers, so he was getting about 2,400 leads a year
(twelve a year from each of us). If his close rate was even 5 percent, that represented 120 new policies
at an average commission of at east $5,000 in the first year, or $600,000 annually, not counting other
sources of business or a higher close rate.
Consultants are notoriously poor-at every stage of their careers-in obtaining referrals. The fact is,
the more quality referrals received, even with a low close rate, the more likely that your business will
grow exponentially. And when can you best expect the highest quality referrals? When you're
successful and have solid relationships, that's when.
Action Step: Every single day, ask every client and prospect for three names of people who could
benefit from your work. Do not take "no" for an answer. If you do this religiously, you will improve
your business acquisition at virtually no cost.
Even as successful veterans, we can find a multitude of ways to increase our business acquisition
sources. I've explored only a few of my favorites here. But, as a check list, how many of these are you
engaged in at the moment?
1. Partnering with professional colleagues
2. Harvesting low-hanging fruit
3. Using the Internet in reverse
4. Becoming the "middle man"
5. Publishing "unpromotional" articles
6. Serving the cause for free
7. Taking global vacations
8. Writing on the op-ed page
9. Franchising the talent
10. Pursuing your clients' vendors
11. Developing a memorable brand phrase
12. Selling to your suppliers
13. Infiltrating trade associations
14. Obtaining a profound endorsement
16. Getting a referral every time

CHAPTER
Winning Friends and
Influencing People
How to Build Support firom Those Who Loathe Your Arrival
hen I was much younger, [ used to hate the sales process, mainly
because I saw it as basically adversarial. I thought that I had to convince someone to do
something he or she didn't want to do, rather than provide help to someone who needs
it. In every single transaction with a prospect, some sale is going to be made. The only
question is whether you will convince the prospect that you can help him or her, or the
prospect will convince you that you cannot.
It's that simple.
I significantly boosted my product sales and other passive income (which keeps me off airplanes
and out of hotels) when I philosophically repositioned those products and services as remote help for
my clients. We're reluctant to "peddle a book," for example, because we feel like encyclopedia
salespeople. But I'm not reluctant at all to provide highly cost-efficient methods to continue the
learning and improvement that my consulting and speaking has begun.
So the first step is philosophical: Do you see the "sales" process as adversarial, requiring the
conquest of an opposing position? Or do you see it as supportive and helping, assisting the prospect in
improving his or her condition?
The second step is to understand that there are only three ways to change human behavior-your
prospect's behavior-and two of them do not work:
Power. When you attempt to threaten someone, you might achieve brief movement, but you won't
gain commitment. The sales techniques that attempt to scare people into acting ("You can't afford
not to do this!") simply entrench people who are resistant to change.
Normative Pressure. This is peer pressure ("Don't be left out of this trend!"), which causes mass
stampedes but little long-term enthusiasm. These tactics simply implore people to do what the
competition has done (which is why so many lemming-like quality programs have failed).
Rational Self-Interest. Appeals to rational self-interest are the only tactics that ensure motivation,
not merely movement. In this case the client understands just how important your help is in
improving his condition. This is why sales can't be adversarial, but only mutually supportive.
If you revel in adversarial relationships, go into wrestling or the law. The buyer and the consultant are
not on different sides. They should both want to improve the lot of the former.
PROVIDING VALUE EARLY AND FOR FREE
One of the great myths of the consulting profession is that we should not give anything away for free.
After all, if we gave it away, then what would the client pay for?
The fact is that the best way to sell your ability to help is, well, to help! The philosophy that you
want to create is, "If I'm getting this much help for free from this person, how much better off would I
be if I actually hired him?" You obviously can't provide in-depth solutions or recommendations, but
that's because you don't know enough yet and shouldn't be pretentious. But you can provide
observations, experiences from elsewhere (which is why, supposedly, you're there to begin with),
questions, and ideas, which gives the prospect two impressions:
1. There are some alternatives available that perhaps his or her own organization (or other
consultants) haven't considered.
2. You are one smart person.
"Free" help with a prospect is the equivalent of your "loss leader"-you're luring the prospect into the
store so that the more expensive merchandise can be purchased.
When a prospect says, "We never looked at it that way before," or "That's a novel approach for us,"
or "I wouldn't mind giving that a try here," you know that the only thing left for you is not to blow it.
And bear in mind that this relationship building and value creation is prior to anyone talking about
fees.
Who Could Ma" This Up?
A colleague named Jack asked me for help. He had the opportunity to address the top twenty-four
people of Michelin North America, and he desperately wanted the presentation to lead to business. He
had prepared the following form for each member of the group to sign:
You are about to hear the ideas of Jack on productivity and performance. By
signing this, you agree that these proprietary approaches may not be used unless
lack is engaged by Michelin for a project.
"What do you think?" he asked me.
"Well," I said, "why not just cut to the chase, stand up after you're introduced, and say, 'Good morning,
I'm Jack, and I don't trust any single one of you.'?'
-AW
I'm convinced that providing value very early in the relationship cements the relationship and,
ironically, leads to higher fees and larger initial projects. This approach is somewhat counterintuitive,
and it's inherently uncomfortable for experienced consultants, who are often much more accustomed
to being called in based on word of mouth and to devoting a great deal of time to reaffirming how
good they are and how sound their approaches are.
The sooner we begin providing value to a prospect, the sooner that the conversation focuses on their
benefit, their improvement, and the value they derive. That means that costs, fees, and other
discomfort become subordinate to their well-being.
The Ultimate Consultant should meet a new prospect with the philosophy and expressed attitude of
finding the fastest and most effective method of helping that prospect. The basic assumption should be
that you've obviously been asked to be there because you can be of help, and the only real issue is to
determine how that should be manifest.
So don't try to "sell" anyone, whether at an initial meeting or at follow-up sessions. Instead provide
value. And fight the conventional wisdom that you should carefully prepare to address specific content
and issues in the prospect's industry or organization. Your basic value is that you can bring
approaches, experiences, and wisdom for a variety of organizations and, one hopes, an assortment of
industries. Don't undercut your own advantage by appearing as simply another potential employee!
When Mercedes-Benz told me I knew nothing of the auto industry, I told them that that was exactly
the point: They had automotive experts falling out of the rafters and lying in the halls, but they had no
one like me who could share with them how Merck, Hewlett-Packard, and Chase were dealing with
analogous issues.
As veteran, successful consultants, we can make such arguments and comparisons. To refuse or fail
to do so is simply negligent-and inexcusably undermines your abilities to win friends and influence
buyers.
BUILDING MOMENTUM AMONG KEY ADVISORS
The sales process is seldom scripted or perfect, so your route to and dealings with the buyer will often
be littered with advisors, assistants, subordinates, gatekeepers, and assorted hangers-on. There are
times, alas, when some of these people have to be taken seriously.
Many buyers do rely on advice and counsel from others, and your appeal to and relationships with
them may decide the deal, especially when there is competition for the project. In my experience,
there are three kinds of people surrounding the decision maker:
Close Counselors. These are usually either direct reports or long-time, trusted friends to whom
the buyer turns for what he or she considers to be unadulterated and objective feedback. They
seldom generate the alternative (you), but they often critique and comment on it. Close
counselors may be peers, people in other departments, and even non-company acquaintances.
Vetoes. Vetoes are people whose affirmation isn't necessarily needed, but who can effectively
deep-six an initiative through the threat of non-support. These are usually informal leaders or
entrenched subordinates with loyal followings. Vetoes can include union leaders, high-producing
salespeople, a tough financial officer who may poke around the project, and so on. These are
people who can't force a "yes" but can generate a "no."
The king is usually surrounded by a court. Sometimes you can simply walk the red carpet and engage
the king, and sometimes you must charm the lords and ladies in waiting.
Stumbling Blocks. These are the folks whom you keep tripping over as you try to walk to and
from the buyer. They are sometimes required (secretaries, assistants) and sometimes superfluous
(staff people, displaced poor performers), but almost always in the way. The major challenge
with stumbling blocks is, well, not to stumble over them.
Here are some questions you can quickly use to determine with whom you are interacting. They are
as relevant on a first meeting as on follow-up calls, and they will greatly help with the management of
your sales time. (Close Counselor = CC; Veto = V; Stumbling Block = SB)
Ten Questions to Determine Advisors' Roles
1. Does the buyer personally invite these people to meetings? (CC)
2. Does the buyer cite the people in terms of their suggestions and concerns? (CC)
3. Does the buyer ask you to debrief with these people and consider their suggestions? (CC)
4. Does the buyer encourage other people to contact you independently, and do they do so? (CC)
5. Does the buyer ask your counsel and solicit strategy on how to "bring certain people on
board"? (V)
6. Does the buyer say things like, "We'll have to reposition this if it's going to be digested"? (V)
7. Does the buyer cite people in association with other projects that have been derailed or
otherwise undermined? (V)
8. Does the buyer take pleasure in "putting something over" on someone or in forcing a change
that "has been resisted over there for too long"? (V)
9. Does the buyer never mention the person's name or acknowledge his or her role? (SB)
10. Does the buyer act contemptuously or say, "Leave them to me"? (SB)
By performing this quick "triage" (and you should be able to identify anyone by your second or
third interaction) you'll be able to focus your efforts and energy in influencing the people surrounding
the buyer:
Stumbling Blocks. Ignore them. Don't be impolite, particularly with those assistants and aides
whom you might see regularly, but don't spend a lot of time massaging the relationship.' If you
are rude or impolite, you're indeed going to trip over them. Treat them well, but move toward the
objective.
Vetoes. Never approach vetoes without a strategy, and preferably one put together with the buyer
and the close counselors. You need a cultural, historical, and contextual reference base to truly
understand the potential animosity of these people. And don't forget that usually one strong "no"
is all that's needed-there is seldom a second chance. So go slow, and understand that the buyer
wants to romance, circumvent, or blow up these people as much as you do.
One of the greatest inefficiencies in the sales process is caused by according equal time and respect to
everyone we meet. Even after the buyer, there are degrees of importance. A duke is always more
important than the dog warden.
Close Counselors. Romance them, but don't mistake them for the buyer. (They cannot say "yes"
and cannot sign the check.) Ask the buyer-and this is key-about the extent to which he or she
desires these people, by name, to be involved (for example, copying them on email, expecting
them at meetings, providing them with copies of the proposal, and so forth). Work with the buyer
to understand the need for and degree of their involvement. And always copy the buyer and
inform the buyer about your dealings with the close counselors. More than one sale has been lest
when the consultant has forfeited the relationship with the buyer to focus on the counselors.
Understand with whom you are dealing and adjust your responses accordingly. This is not harsh, not
unethical, not abusive. It is smart selling. The friend you want to win is the buyer, and the people you
want to influence are those who can help you win that important friend.
DEALING WITH COMMITTEES
Committees are such a ubiquitous fact of life that I think we need to spend some dedicated time on
them. We've all heard "The committee will be evaluating the various options" and "The committee
will be making the recommendation" and "The committee has delayed the decision."
Here's some honest scoop on committees:
Committees are never decision-making bodies for consulting services, no matter what you're told
or led to believe. Committees are recommending bodies. They have no discrete budgets. They are
often composed of people who are potential "vetoes," simply to ensure they've had a "voice" in
the choice of resources.
We had been working with the Bell Telephone Companies back when they were still affiliated with
AT&T (prior to the 1984 decree). Through those contacts we became aware of a need for an
information retrieval system that could be satisfied by a scaled-down version of a directory assistance
system that we were already selling to Michigan Bell and NYNEX.
The application was to be used by C&P telephone initially, and we used our relationship with C&P to
formulate our offering. As luck would have it, AT&T saw the applicability of this type of system
across all of the Bell companies and entered into the picture just prior to the issuance of the RFP and
took responsibility for the entire procurement process. We had what we believed to be contacts within
AT&T and briefed them on our capabilities before the RFP came out-after which no additional direct
contact was permitted until the proposals were submitted.
Part of the evaluation process required all bidders to conduct live trials of their systems at one of the
Bell companies. We tested ours at C&P, and it was a resounding success that met all of the
requirements of the specification and proved its return on investment for the user. In addition, we
learned that our bid price was 16 percent lower than the next-nearest competitor.
Wow! All we had to do was wait for the order to come in.
About two weeks before the previously announced due date for a formal selection, we received some
additional questions from AT&T as to how we could expand the system to embrace some other
capabilities. Our design was geared to running a specific application as a means of getting the
performance demonstrated in the trial and keeping the cost low. However, we did find a way of
addressing the requested enhancement, but it did complicate the application. We briefed this response
to the AT&T people and they seemed satisfied, but we did not have as good a relationship with them
as with the C&P folks.
After another two weeks, the inevitable news came that the contract had been awarded to a competitor
in Colorado. It turns out that they were a three-person company who were former employee of AT&T.
Their solution was to add this application to a mainframe system that they had worked on when
previously employed by AT&T, and the genesis of the original RFP requirement lost its identity and
became embedded in an unrecognizable program running who knows what other applications.
In retrospect, there were several lessons learned. Perhaps the biggest was that we just didn't know the
economic buyer nearly as well when the requirement responsibility was taken over by AT&T. Clearly,
the importance of this application was not seen the same way by AT&T as it was by the Operator
Services people at each of the Bell companies. We also underestimated the competition and
disregarded the ultimate winner as an also-ran because of their size and prior experience.
-Joe Boschi, President, Buckhorn Consulting Group
Committees are effective in inverse proportion to their size. A committee of over ten people
tends to be dysfunctional and has the consciousness of a jellyfish-they float with the tide and
winds and compete with plankton. A committee of fewer than six people tends to act with some
direction and has the consciousness of a trained seal-it can perform certain activities if duly fed
and housed.
If you are "stuck" in a committee, it's because you have entered into a collusion with that body. When
you step in gum, it will eventually wear itself off your shoe, but it might take miles and days. You're
better off scraping off the gum on a curb or buying a new pair of shoes.
There is always a power source on a committee. All members are not created equal. There is what
you might call a "committee influencer." This is the person, by dint of formal or informal
position or merely loudest voice, who will most bend, cajole, and imprint those around the table.
Committees contain infighting. Do not take sides or attempt to align yourself with the presumed
power block. You can't possibly understand the backstage maneuvering taking place. Do not
allow yourself to be used by one side against the other.
Committees comprise individuals. There is no law or ethical imperative that says you cannot
establish relationships with key members individually to educate yourself (and them) better.
Committees are boring. Sometimes the most powerful and influential members will not attend
the meetings. If you must deal with a committee, insist on receiving the names and contact points
for all members, and ingratiate yourself to those whom you do not meet at the sessions.
The larger the committee, the more loose lips. Ask the members in general or individually how
the decision will really be made, who the economic buyer actually is, and what will constitute the
best chances of success. Someone, somewhere, at some point, will spill the beans.
You can take a shortcut with most committees by proving that you're a "sole source"' supplier. By
that I mean that you provide some unique approach, service, expertise, and/or experience that no
one else they talk to can possibly match. The easiest and surest route to "sole source": If you have
a commercially published book related by topic to the project under discussion, you are virtually
automatically a sole source (no one else has written that book).
Appeal to the committee on a different basis than your competitors will. Don't be the twelfth
person through the door with a PowerPointTM presentation or slick brochures or templates. I
once closed a sale in a competitive process by showing up with precisely nothing and asking a
series of pointed questions of the evaluators. Every person in that room remembered my different
approach to the session.
Finally, avoid committees by circumventing, evading, and charging through them. At best they
slow up the buying process and, at worst, serve only as "deselection" points. Find the true buyer
and proceed to that person. Tell the buyer that you deal as a partner with the decision maker, and
that you don't work through committees because, in your experience, that isn't how collaborative
relationships are explored and built. You may just get the work. Of course, you may also get
thrown out, but you're probably just getting the bad news a lot quicker and with less frustration.
I don't believe that committees are a part of the natural process of acquiring business. Whether you
decide to deal with them or not will be enabling or disabling behavior. It's really a philosophic choice.
When you tell the buyer that you don't deal with committees, but rather only with decision makers,
also stress that in your past projects you've always advised clients to abandon committees in favor of
more direct leadership. Explain to the buyer that committees are no more skilled at selecting
consultants to work in parl:nership with him or her than they would be to select the buyer's car or legal
advisor. It must be a personal decision on both your parts.
OVERCOMING "THREAT" FACTORS
There are various true land mines and snipers that can imperil your journey toward winning friends
and influencing people. They are worse in some organizations than others, but it's rare not to
encounter any at all. "Threat" factors are those organizational, cultural, and environmental realities
that advertently or inadvertently serve to prevent you from reaching and establishing a relationship
with the economic buyer.
Committees are structural roadblocks, and have been discussed above. But here are some of the
additional obvious and non-obvious threat factors that may derail your efforts to pull into the station:
Unions. There are many situations in which unions have a visceral hatred of consultants, with the
understandable reason that every prior consultant has recommended a reduction in the work force as
the panacea. Sometimes, in terrible labor/management climates, the union will simply oppose
anything management seeks to do, especially if it involves spending money. This is a very serious
potential obstacle.
Action: First, don't let the union issue overwhelm the relationship building. Establish trust with the
buyer and elicit the major issues to be improved, irrespective of the union. Then discuss potential
approaches. Finally, when you have conceptual agreement with the buyer on the objectives and the
methodologies that might make sense, create a strategy for embracing the union (for example, co-opt
key formal and informal leaders) or avoiding trouble (for example, begin in non-union areas of the
operation).
Fatal: Never begin by focusing on the union issue, nor treat it as the issue. That will immediately cast
you as both a management shill (from the union perspective) and helpless (from management's
perspective).
Human Resources. If HR departments were stronger and more aggressive, there would be much less
work for consultants. But that's not a condition that will arise any time within our lifetimes. Some HR
departments will welcome you with open arms and say, "Thank goodness that you're here. Now that
they're paying you a fortune, they'll finally believe what we've been telling them for free for years!"
More often, however, HR will be threatened and attempt to undermine the project beginning because
of fears that blame will alight on their desks.
A few times, when I was unable to make direct contact with a prospect, I sent a gift with my sales
letter. I tied the letter to the gift. To be specific, once I sent a large cheese and opened the letter with
"Be a big cheese." Another time I sent a set of nested baskets, with a message in each basket.
The final basket had chocolates in it, and my closing message said that our services could lead to
"sweet success." In both cases, when I followed up with a phone call, I got through.
-Maria Thomson, Managing Principal, Thomson Management Solutions, Inc.
Action: Never allow yourself to be delegated to the humzn resources function to "get background" or
"get a feel for our people." Stress that you're happy to collaborate with them as appropriate on the
implementation, but that the strategy and tactics must be designed and agreed on by the buyer and
you. In fact, it's never risky to point out that the reason things have progressed to where they are might
be because of the HR department, and you'd rather remain independent for both objectivity and
credibility purposes until you can learn more about the situation.
Fatal: If you allow a project to become an "HR project,"' you will immediately lose credibility with
the greater organization, lose the close partnership needed with the economic buyer, and lose your
ability to function independently and, perhaps, critically of HR.
Your job is not to make people love you. Your job is to improve your client's condition. You confuse
those two objectives only at your own peril. Only the buyer can rehire you. The employees cannot.
Prevailing Politics. Every organization is political. The question is whether or not the politics are
dysfunctional and whether or not they threaten the project. You will know this early when you hear
things such as, "Sales will not support this because they think that operations takes too much of the
budget" or "R&D is a problem because the VP hates our VP." Don't take on assignments that are what
I call "grudge projects": There is no real client condition to be improved, but rather an act of
vengeance, or put-down, or retribution to be enacted.
Action: Always remain centered on observable behavior and objective fact. Don't go along with "We'll
have to fool R&D on this," but instead state "I'll have to talk to the R&D vice president myself to
understand his position." Focus on the organizational performance to be improved and not on one
party benefiting at the expense of another party. Explain to your buyer that you are most effective for
him or her by taking the sincere role of objective third party and not being seen as someone's shill.
Fatal: Allowing yourself to immediately be seen as a "wedge" or "weapon" being employed to elevate
one person or department at the expense of another. This will immediately close doors and shut down
cooperation. Never, ever simply accept a buyer's version of another's motives or description of his or
her behavior. Take it under advisement, but check it out yourself.
Fishing Expeditions. Some organizations will invite you in with great fanfare and camaraderie only to
try to learn what you would do, how you would do it, and how much it would cost. While I do believe
in giving value away for free and early in the sales process, I also believe it should be done to whet the
buyer's appetite, not to complete the plans for the project before money has changed hands! I call
these "fishing expeditions" because they are a method that some individuals employ to find out what
they don't know at the consultant's expense.
Action: Limit your early discussions to the buyer, not to large groups. Emphasize that you're
providing some tentative ideas, but that a more detailed analysis of the situation is required. Impress
on the buyer the uniqueness that you bring in experience, approaches, and talents, so that it's apparent
that other parties could not simply take your ideas and run with them. Provide macro and strategic
approaches, not micro and tactical ones.
Fatal: Providing a proposal so detailed and technical that explicit steps and methodologies are
outlined that do not require your specific skill and expertise to implement. These overly detailed
documents-utterly unnecessary in order to close a sale with an economic buyer-are often used either as
a template for internal resources or as a guide to other external consultants who submit lower fees.
The key focus must be on WHAT is to be accomplished rather than HOW you will do it. The client is
the expert on health care, or automobiles, or photography. You are the expert on consulting. You
shouldn't tell the client how to build brake linings, and the client shouldn't tell you how to sample the
employee population. Keep your precise tactical plans to yourself.
Dwindling Funds. Sometimes when you're called in for remedial work, or because of a "surprise"
development, there will be insufficient funds to do the job well. The client might tell you that "More
will be forthcoming" or that "We'll need to spread this over two fiscal years" or that "If we make a
strong enough first impression the president will have to allocate more funds." Don't believe it for a
minute. This is where consultants become entrapped in the La Brea Tar Pits of organizational
evolution. Only the bones eventually emerge.
Action: Establish your fee for your various options in your proposal, and demand at least a 50 percent
deposit. Demand the other 50 percent in a reasonable amount of time (forty-five or sixty days), but do
not wait until the project is over. This is not the contingency fee business, where the lawyers must
pray for the class action suit to reward their clients handsomely so that they can take 40 percent of it.
A client's inability or unwillingness to pay at the beginning does not indicate prudence, it indicates an
inability and/or unwillingness to pay at any time whatsoever. If you're truly worth it in terms of the
value you deliver (the improved condition), then this should never be an issue.
Fatal: Accepting work with a promise for later payment, and then accepting the client's word that "If
we do just a little more we can free up the dollars we need." Try telling that to your bank at mortgage
payment time. If the client doesn't provide a sizeable deposit, don't start work. If the client fails to
meet a payment deadline during the project, stop work. It's really that simple.
BEST PRACTICES
I was a representative for a large silicone manufacturing company. For this one particular prospect
representing a $50K+ annual sales order, I handdelivered several product samples many times over a
three-month period, as well as product data, literature, and MSDS sheets. During three visits to the
prospect's facility, I'd noticed some of my samples remained unopened.
When I asked him about it, he would only say, "We are still evaluating." Finally, after calling him to
set up the appointment, he told me he had come to a decision. He was going with my competition.
With nothing to lose, I resorted to my "kick over the table" strategy. In a sense, I was holding a pair of
deuces while my competition apparently had a full house, leaving me no other alternative but to kick
over the table.
I began berating the prospect, accusing him of leading me on for three months and not giving our
products a fair and honest shot. That I did everything he had asked of me and more. That in spite of
my efforts, I bet I could walk into his plant right now and find my samples never tried and still
unopened. I could see him turning red in the face with anger and stating something to the effect that I
had a lot of nerve. I told him I felt he had more nerve than I did for not being fair with either me or the
products. That unless he did give us a fair shot, he'd be stuck with the competition's product with no
offset or backup should they ever have a production problem with their material, which in turn could
cause him to shut down his own production line.
He caved. He agreed to test our products fairly, and in the end, the competition and I split the $50K in
annual sales.
-Jim Altfeld, President, Altfeld, Inc.
Scope Creep. This is the classic consulting problem, but it is caused at the outset, not during a project.
It is a function of the business acquisition process. The client leaves things so open-ended, and
dangles such inviting money, that the consultant doesn't take pains to specify the exact outcomes and
precise improvement desired. Consequently, with this "blank check," the buyer continues to demand
more and more help in more and more areas until the project becomes vastly unprofitable, despite the
original fees.
Action: Focus on specific objectives, measures, and improvement (value) during the relationship-
building stage. Gain conceptual agreement on these parameters; then specify them all in your written
proposal. Do not accept "Let's just begin and we'll work out the details as we go along " As attractive
as that sounds, it's deadly.
Fatal: Accepting an assignment without clear objectives and, therefore, parameters for your work. If
someone simply wants access to your "smarts," use a retainer arrangement instead.'
Money that looks too easy at the outset usually is. Flaky deals tend to get flakier and tight deals tend
to remain tight. This is all established before anyone signs off on a proposal.
Consulting services have to be marketed and sold. This is a marketing business, make no mistake
about it. The key, however, to generating early and strong relationships is in providing value, not
withholding ideas out of fear of theft. The higher level the buyer, the safer this is.
There are usually key advisors as well as non-key players around the buyer. Learn to discriminate
among those who can help, those who can hurt, and those who don't matter, and apportion your time
and energy accordingly. Try not to deal with committees at all but, if you must, use some tactics to
gain yourself the maximum leverage and influence with the members.
Every new business environment and culture contains inherent threats to your immediate
acquisition of business and/or longer-term successful delivery of that business. Learn to identify them
early in order to take effective preventive action. If you don't, the contingent action is usually painful
and always a diminution of your profits.
The only critical person to influence is the economic buyer. In the end, if you identify that person
and develop a strong relationship, you'll have the leverage and partnership needed to overcome almost
any threat.
CHAPTER
Gaining Market Share
from Others
Stealing Is Legal in the Sales Business
onsulting services, as far as I know, are not client consumables that are
required every day like coffee, copy paper, and memo pads. There is a "closed market"
for consulting in that a given client usually needs only one strategy consultancy, one
sales improvement process, and one technology integration plan.
In fact, since it's relatively easy to extend and enlarge work within a client once a consultant has
successfully implemented a project, and since that extension may well be to diverse areas of client
need and consultant expertise, one can make the point that there is limited "market share" available in
our business. Especially in plateaued or declining economies, the amount of potential consulting work
is finite, so the ability to grow a business is often dependent on taking business that previously
belonged to others.
To a great degree, this is counterintuitive. I've long preached, for instance, that there's a
"discounting principle" involved, which states that a successful consultant maintaining a solid
relationship with an economic buyer is extraordinarily difficult to displace because a newcomer to the
scene can't possibly seek to replicate the relationship, the value it represents, and the shared successes
from a standing start. In fact, the established consultant can charge higher fees than the consultant
seeking to penetrate the client account and still hold a huge advantage.
In view of that tremendous strength, which accrues from carefully nurtured relationships, how does
one improve one's business by enlarging his or her market share at the inevitable expense of others?
Make no mistake about this point: The reason that so many successful consultants find themselves
plateaued and caught in the "success trap" is that they have never engaged in a strategy or mastered
the skills to enlarge their market share by gaining client business from others.
Unless you are growing, you are on the road to decline. All plateaus eventually erode. Unless you are
taking market share from others, you are not growing significantly.
Figure 7.1. The Success Traps Resulting from Lack of Market Share Growth
Decline inevitably results from lack of growth due to the following interplay of factors:
Revenues cease growing because one's existing market is saturated
One's existing market evaporates due to retirement of buyers, technological usurpation,

relocation of facilities, and new competition
One's life style continues to improve and grow, but at a rate faster than revenue growth
Infrastructure and business expenses grow faster than revenues, particularly if one's strategy has
been to build staff
As one concentrates marketing efforts in highly successful areas, potential buyers outside of
those areas are ignored and one's reputation and brand become better and better known in fewer
and fewer areas
Ultimate Consultants build on strength and momentum and seek new markets as their past
successes enable them to make such investments. Let's take a look at how that's done.
HARVESTING "LOW HANGING FRUIT"
Low hanging fruit refers to those attractive items easiest to reach. The phrase has been around for a
long time, but the power of the metaphor as a marketing tool struck me most powerfully while
working with one of my high-tech clients in 2001 (see Who Could Make This Up? on page 115).
An important note: New consultants can use this :particular principle to great advantage, since they
have no current market share and need to steal someone else's. If you are hiring inexperienced staff, or
if you are new to the profession and have the good sense to read this "advanced" book, this one section
should be an even more essential aspect of your market strategy.
There are actually advantages in attempting to steal a rival's market share. There are normally quite
a few resistance factors or "hurdles" that must be negotiated in order to convert a buyer who has not
used consultants before. But in pursuing buyers who are already using other consultants, you have the
advantage of having many of those resistance factors already overcome by the incumbent consulting
firm.
Pursuing buyers who are already inclined to use consulting services and, even better, are accustomed
to paying significant fees for them is an entirely rational and intelligent strategy.
"Low hanging fruit," therefore, constitutes prospective organizations that have the following
characteristics:
Frequent Use of Consultants. There are many organizations that make no bones about utilizing
consulting help. You can learn about them by networking at trade association meetings, reading
industry publications such as Consultants News and C2M (Consulting to Management), and by
reading The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Inc., Forbes, Fortune, Fortune Small Business, and
similar sources. Most consulting firms will list their clients somewhere in their literature or on their
websites.
Use of a Variety of Consulting Firms. Even better are those firms that are not "married" to a single
consulting firm. By talking to employees in HewlettPackard, for example, you'll find that the firm
historically has used "big five" firms, large specialty firms, solo practitioners, moonlighting college
professors, small training companies, and guest speakers.
Willingness to Pay High Fees in Return for High Value. Many firms fulfilling the first two
characteristics will also be pecuniary-they will pay only by the hour and only miserly (almost always
the case in technology consulting). Instead, you need those firms, no matter what your intended
market, that have known that paying high fees to derive high return simply represents intelligent
investment.
Clearly Identifiable Buyers and Buying Points. To continue to "short cut" the process, truly low
hanging fruit will be identifiable by a clear purchase point. In a smaller business it may be the owner
or CEO, in a larger organization the vice president of sales or general manager of retail services. You
must be able to spot the buyer-through networking, newspaper articles, industry sources, or insider
tips-and not waste time working your way through the gatekeepers (who will be even more disinclined
to help if there is already an established consulting presence favored by their superiors).
An Acceptance of Need. In more traditional business acquisition, we often have to establish a need
first (marketing) and then convince the buyer that we have the answer to that need (selling). In the
pursuit of low hanging fruit, we want to focus on those prospects who admit to the need (although we
may still be able to enlarge it after establishing a relationship). Highest prospects with these traits are
those stipulating that they need to cut costs, improve sales, increase public image, digest an
acquisition, reverse a misfortune, and so on.
I was asked to work with the internal (telemarketing) sales force of a hightech firm selling Internet
advertising. This was a simple business during the roaring Nineties market, but became very tough-
and extraordinarily competitive-once high tech plunged a couple of years ago.
The salespeople were struggling. The old line "brick and mortar" firms didn't believe in web
advertising (another very high hurdle to be overcome), and the Internet firms were either saturated or
disappearing.
As a consultant, I'm skilled in looking for distinctions. And I found an outstanding one: A salesman
named Paul Serino was selling like a crazy person. In fact, he had earned over a third of a million
dollars sitting in the same area where everyone else was struggling to make $50,000. Being no fool, I
asked him just what the heck he was doing.
"Low hanging fruit," he said, as if that explained it all. With prompting, he told me that it was silly to
try to convince people to advertise on the Internet when there were so many people already convinced.
He simply investigated who was advertising and where (easy enough to do by watching ads on the
computer screen) and told those buyers that his company had better positioning and higher quality at
competitive rates. He didn't try to sell on price, but sold against the existing need.
There was enough low hanging fruit to earn Paul's company several million dollars and him a nice
living. Why strain to reach higher if the business is all around your head?
-AW
Why take the risks of climbing up a tree when there is high quality fruit within reach at ground level?
You don't need a ladder, don't need a partner, won't take a fall, and won't bruise the fruit. Are you
looking up in anticipation rather than looking around in awareness?
Take a morning to determine what prospects fulfill all of my five characteristics, then devise a plan
to reach them. The extent to which you travel from your current markets is a function of your own
boldness and energy. I've worked for industries including automotive, banking, pharmaceutical,
insurance, specialty chemical, real estate, newspapers, recreation, consulting, travel, and over two
dozen others. Why haven't you?
CREATING HIGH VISIBILITY
If you want to steal business, you're going to need "instant credibility" You will not have the
opportunity to build and nurture a relationship over a long term and hope for credibility growth
through osmosis. You're going to need "presence." This is where a brand and/or personal name
recognition are vital.'
While you are successful you can't stop your marketing. While you are successful you will have the
greatest momentum and impact associated with your marketing. If you want to steal business, you
need to gain visibility in areas other than the ones representing your current success.
Here are some techniques to gain high visibility in areas that you would like to penetrate at the
expense of those already there:
Publish Outside Your Field
I've reached out to the executive recruiting profession and published an article on why that group is
charging at rates far below the value being delivered. I have a monthly column on an Internet site for
high-tech people. I've published about value propositions in the franchise industry. The greatest
downside is a rejection or two, which is negligible. The upside is the name recognition gained by new
prospective buyers. When the time comes for you to pursue them actively, you can point to a body of
work in their field and, perhaps, they might even know of you by repute. The "golden" road to rapidly
gaining market share: a commercially published, well-reviewed book.
Speak Outside Your Field
There are thousands of meetings every week requiring speakers. There are few routes as rapid and
direct to gain credibility in a new market as intelligently addressing a room full of potential buyers.
You can always-always-take elements of your existing strengths and apply them to a new marketplace.
I found that I was a huge hit at the American Grain and Feedlot Association and the National Fisheries
Institute simply by helping them tc understand their own lack of consumer awareness rather than
attempting to help them raise cattle or harvest fish better, which they already know better than anyone.
You are the "fresh air" that many industries need, too long accustomed to listening to the same old
content experts.
Start building recognition and visibility in new areas tomorrow. If you had begun a year ago, you'd
probably have a larger market share right now than you do. Every day you delay, you also freeze your
current market share.
Forge an Alliance That Is Synergistic
You're not going to forge an alliance with someone already doing well in that market for the purpose
of him or her losing market share so that you can gain it! However, you can find others who stand to
mutually gain by a foray into new territory. For example, if you wish to penetrate the recreation
market, you may find a seminar provider who has never worked in chat market but finds it equally
attractive. The seminar firm can simply take its existing marketing savvy, you can simply take your
existing expertise, and both of you can pursue workshops that will generate revenue for them and both
revenue and recognition in the industry for you. This is a win/win/win proposition that can be very
effective in penetrating new markets.
Business Card Engagement: (1) Exchanging business cards at the beginning of the interaction allows
the consultant/sales professional the power in remembering the other person's name by way of a
simple glance at the card. Most people-immediately after shaking hands in the greeting stage of
meeting someone for the first time-almost instantly forget that person's name.
(2) As you talk with the prospect and focus on the needs analysis of that person, you can use the
reverse side of your own business card, label it with the date, and write personal and specific solutions
to the prospect's needs. While the prospect is almost surely going to discard all collateral materials
given to them by a consultant, the business card now becomes a customized brochure and is seen as
more personal and valuable and will be kept by the prospect or customer!
(3) After the meeting, take the person's business card and place reminder notes on the reverse and add
some personal notes if necessary to help you to remember this new person after the fact.
(4) By actively using business cards this way, you can also measure how many interactions you are
having. A growth-oriented consultant should be going through at least five hundred business cards a
month!
-Jeffrey L. Magee, Ph.D., CMC, Founder/CEO, JEFF MAGEE INTERNATIONAL,

Inc.
The Ultimate Consultant has the following advantages, which accrue to those who have been
uniquely successful:
Strong name recognition in certain fields
Publishing and/or interview history
Speaker and/or panelist experience
Strong references and testimonials
Media contacts
Comfort in sales situations and in dealing with economic buyers
Strong image and collateral materials

Financial resources to invest in additional marketing
Support people, subcontractors, reliable sources for help
The time to "steal" clients is when you don't need to. That means that ideally you should be building
toward that end well in advance. Visibility is best gained through a body of work over a prolonged
period. Thus, the "steal" is gradual and relentless, not a sudden storm of the castle that is easily
repelled.
At least 20 percent of the marketing efforts of a successful consultant should be geared toward
markets he or she wants to penetrate in another year, business he or she wants to "steal" in the mid-
term future, and recognition he or she wants to gain later in one's career. And that figure may well be
too low to sustain truly dramatic growth.
Thus far we've discussed the proactive and assertive techniques of pursuing "low hanging fruit" and
deliberately generating higher visibility in high potential new areas in order to gain market share at
someone else's expense. However, there is another quite favorable phenomenon that you can't
engender. That occurs when the existing, entrenched consultant blows it.
WAITING FOR SOMEONE ELSE'S BAD NEWS
All of us have failed. If we hadn't, we wouldn't be as successful as we are today. I wasn't a philosophy
major, but it seems to me logical to deduce:
You are an excellent consultant
All excellent consultants fail at times
Highly desirable and smart prospects will use excellent consultants
At some point, some of those excellent consultants will fail
Smart clients will then seek out other excellent consultants
You are an excellent consultant
Okay, it's not exactly Hegelian, but I think it's a sound point. Even entrenched consultants will get
tossed at some point. If you still think that's farfetched, here are the reasons in my experience of
getting tossed myself:
1. The project failed because I took on more than was reasonable to accomplish and oversold the
expectations to the buyer.
2. The project failed because I made a major error in assumptions, analysis, or implementation.
3. The buyer changed.
4. Disgruntled subordinates sabotaged the results or undermined the perceptions of my progress.
5. The economy changed and caused a downturn in the client's industry.
6. The competition scooped the client with new technology or approaches.
7. More important priorities dwarfed the original importance of the project.
8. I delivered honest but damning news and the buyer preferred to shoot the messenger (this one
revisits me periodically).
9. 1 was not sufficiently attached to the acknowledged results of the project.
10. An industry "fad" (such as reengineering) brainwashed the client into pursuing a route I was
not able to provide or chose not to provide.
Every day, consultants get tossed out of work. In the vast majority of cases, that means work for some
other consultant. The client does not go "cold turkey." Outside help is as addictive as controlled
substances, but legal in most states.
This approach is a variation of "low hanging fruit," in that the prospect believes in consulting
services and has hired consultants, preferably at high fees. The key here is what I call the "value
campaign." Since timing is everything (you need to appear as an alternative when the client is seeking
such an alternative), and you can't possibly predict when that time will precisely occur, you need to be
"omnipresent."
Target those dozen or so high profile and potentially lucrative clients whom you would love to do
business with but who are utilizing others in areas in which you would compete.' Then create your
"value campaign" so that you are known as a resource should the client decide he or she is in need of
one.
Value campaign features can include:
A Newsletter by Electronic or Hard Copy. But unlike a traditional marketing newsletter, this should be
tightly focused on the targets you've identified. Hence, the need for a relatively few such targets. You
might even customize the newsletter for each particular target, using precise examples, names, facts,
and so on. The reader will not know this is a "narrowcast" but will assume that your newsletter speaks
to the industry or subject area, yet is particularly pertinent for him or her.
Trade Association Leadership or Visibility. Become active in the prospect's major trade association
and manage to serve on a comni.ttee or represent an initiative, which provides a reasonable excuse for
a conversation, exchange of views, periodic contact, and so forth. Choose your visibility selectively,
focusing on that high potential prospect as the key target.
Request the Use of the Target Organization in a Flattering Article or Interview. Find something about
that prospect's organization than will fit with an article you're doing on a relevant topic. For example,
they may have a higher retention rate than the industry average due to an innovative benefits program.
Note that the article does not have to be (and perhaps should not be) in the area in which you want to
penetrate.
Use the "Six Degrees of Separation" Approach.' Network to find a direct access to the key buyer and
secure an introduction or referral. Your objective is not to uproot the existing consulting resource,
since this approach assumes that the incumbent will be doing fine until the failure point. The objective
is rather to be known to the buyer and within recall when that failure point occurs.
The "value campaign" differs from traditional marketing in that:
The focus is on a very few, high potential targets that currently utilize consulting services in your
areas of expertise
The tactics are highly focused and even personalized to the particular profiles of that
organization and that buyer
The emphasis is on a "brand awareness" so that you are within easy memory if the need to replace
existing resources is suddenly required
You are striving for recognition and a "soft sell" and not an immediate relationship and specific
intervention
Because a "value campaign" has to be quite specific, choose your targets very selectively, but then be
relentless in creating a favorable and "omnipresent" recognition factor.
The value of a rigorous and disciplined campaign against the possibility of the other guy failing is
that the relationship building will be accelerated. Clients seeking replacements usually don't have the
residual talents to compensate for the loss of the consultant, their culture accommodates outside
intervention, and the buyer has probably come to rely on it. (Many buyers say their only "honest"
feedback comes from external consultants.) Hence, the buyer is in somewhat of a hurry to replace the
lost resource. If you've been successfully "hovering" in the background, the buyer might not have to
look very far.
MORE TECHNIQUES TO TRESPASS
ON OTHERS' PROPERTY
Effective consulting is about effective marketing, relationship building, and collaboration with an
economic buyer. The consulting skills are the least of it, since they are in far more abundant supply
than are "rainmaking skills." (If you don't believe that, just try to subcontract for delivery help and for
business acquisition help. The former is so plentiful that the competition drives the fees down, the
latter so rare as to be extremely difficult to acquire, and then at a considerable investment.)
The Twilight Zone
The most unusual sales situation. One of my very successful clients asked me to coach his daughter, a
hippie, to handle the advertising for his company. She was on drugs and not particularly interested in
business or in working for her father. I did the best I could, but I can't say that I achieved the level of
success I would have liked!
-Brooks Fenno, CMC, SALESMARK
Consequently, you must be willing and able to take business away from others. Most of us think
that such rivalry occurs in the original sales process, but in fact it should occur even more frequently
after buying decisions have been made. If you turn away from every prospect who is already using
consultants, and if you believe that this is a "closed market" (a finite number of buyers) at all, then
you're condemning yourself to a poor growth pattern because there are always going to be others who
got there first.
But if you see anyone using consulting services as a legitimate prospect, then you're going to
sharply increase your growth curve, since someone else getting there first can only improve your own
chances. Burger King builds outlets across the street from McDonald's because they know that people
are showing up there to buy hamburgers. Competition opens and expands markets; it doesn't narrow
them.
When I hear that a firm has hired a rival, I don't say, "Drat, they beat me to it." I say, "Hmmm, how
can I make the best of that?" Too many of us take ourselves out of the running by giving up far too
early.
Here are a variety of techniques to use to trespass effectively on others' territory. Don't be pristine
about this, because the best of them are trying to do it to you (so by turning these around, you also
strengthen your own position within your clients). Some may appeal and some may not, so view them
as a cafeteria of approaches.
Find a Different Buyer
Large organizations have a plethora of economic buyers, not always discernable by job title (a
"director of knowledge management" may have budget and inclination to spend, while a "vice
president of human resources" may have neither). Pursue a different division or department. Often, an
intercompany rivalry will actually prompt a buyer to do something differently (hire you) for the same
need from a "competitor" (who hired "them"). It's better to be a dueling consultant than not to have
any part of the business at all.
Approach from a Different Direction
I've happily done executive retreats, keynote speeches, and even workshops in order to gain credibility
and relationships in an organization where a competitor is doing what I really want to do, for example,
strategy work or organizational redesign-one of the most effective assignments to "trespass" rapidly to
executive coaching. This gains the trust and the ear of key decision makers. There are two keys in this
"directional" technique:
1. You must have the diversity of consulting skills and related competencies (for example,
speaking or facilitating) that allow for peripheral assignments.
2. You must "softly" but firmly reveal that you also work in the areas you're attacking, so that
you're not typecast as a coach or facilitator who cannot do the real work you're targeting.
Parachute In
The overwhelming number of consultants form relationships at too low a level, and thereby constrain
their own reach. For example, if a consultant can do workshops and strategy work but enters a
company doing workshops, the executives will generally regard him or her as a trainer and a human
resources specialist, and not credible at the strategic level. But if one enters at the latter level, it's
relatively easy to go "down the ladder" to do workshops and retain executive credibility.
If the competition is at mid-levels-and particularly if they're confined to the HR department-make

an unabashed pitch at executive levels. You won't even be considered competition with those already
in place if you position yourself correctly. It's tough to prevent trespassers who ignore the huge fence
and the danger signs and simply drop from the skies.
Leverage Through a Sponsor
I've spoken periodically of the power of trade associations, and the reason is that such groups really
only have three functions: (1) lobby the government; (2) educate the public about the products or
services of the industry; and (3) educate the members to perform better and to improve their
businesses. It's this last category that is the toughest for them, and the one that we best address.
When a trade association sponsors you as a key resource, the members will tend to listen, no matter
whom they are currently using. That's why speaking at major trade association events, with the
implied or overt imprimatur of the association executives (and even if for free), is such a strong
marketing technique and a good way to sneak in the back door behind your competition.
However, here's an even better method, which I've been using for some time: Take on the trade
association itself as a client. This gives them real substance with which to endorse you, provides you
with an invaluable reference and testimonial, and exposes you to the board and various committees
composed of-you guessed it-high level member executives. If you do a great job here, you can unseat
virtually any existing competition, no matter how entrenched or how large.
No one is so good or so entrenched that he or she can't be ousted. In fact, the longer a consulting firm
is in place in a client, the more vulnerable it becomes unless it has taken steps to ensure its diversity
of approach and multiplicity of buyers.
Belie the Fad
This one is only for the bold, but it's one of my favorites. This technique consists of burrowing in and
blowing up the competition.
I will tell prospects that what they're doing is faddish and unproven. I never bad-mouth or speak
negatively of the competition, but I will take strong and adverse positions on buzz words, academic
nonsense, and stupid fads. In the course of this confrontation, I've taken on ridiculous stuff, including
left brain/right brain thinking, fire walking, outdoor experiences, stewardship, servant leadership,
reengineering, downsizing, TQM, shareholder value, future search, leaderless meetings, open book
management, diversity training, and a raft of other stuff that I have truly believed belongs in comic
books and not in corporate books.
Now, I don't ask that you agree with me on the examples, but I'm giving you a demonstration of
how outspoken and forthright I tend to be. I tell prospects that these approaches are untested, ill-
advised, sometimes unethical, and always more to the benefit of the seller than the buyer. I have facts
and examples to back me up-this is not just one man's opinion. In those cases where the buyer needs a
jolt of fresh air (and/or is mildly uncomfortable with what's been going on but has not chosen to stop
the bandwagon), I make a quick inroad. In those cases when the buyer has a much different view from
mine, well, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I didn't have the business anyway.
I recall many years ago making a "sales call" with a young consultant with whom I had rehearsed
thoroughly on all the reasons this client should select us for this assignment-and do so now. Well,
halfway through our presentation it was clear that we had this one in the bag. It was ours. And then
what happened? My young consultant colleague simply couldn't resist. He had to make all the
arguments we'd rehearsed. And then what do you supposed happened next?
Yep. The client began to get cold feet. Lots of second thoughts. Ever want to kill a colleague? The
moral: It's okay to not shoot all your bullets!
-Bill Taylor, The Taylor Company
My last technique isn't for everyone, but it's been very effective for me. By showing the moxie it
takes to confront a popular fact on the prospect's own turf, you also show the honesty and boldness
that you'll provide as a consultant on assignment. For the buyers who honor that, fees are never
important. And, fortunately or unfortunately, in twenty-six years in the business, the "woo woo"
nonsense and the bizarre fads have remained embarrassingly in full view.
If you don't have some favorite targets of approbation that you can easily and validly condemn with a
prospect, then you just haven't been looking around very carefully. Take a stand. After all, you're
pursuing business that someone else now owns. What, can you lose?
There is nothing wrong, unhealthy, unethical, immoral, or impure about trying to take a client from
someone else so long as you believe you will provide more value and that you are respectful and
honest toward the competition. Pursuing "low hanging fruit" is an ideal way to do this, since several of
the normal resistance factors have already been overcome by someone else's hard work.
Stealing clients requires high visibility in general. But in the case of "waiting for someone else's
bad news," you need targeted visibility, so that a "value campaign" can create an omnipresence. You
can never be sure of being present at that exact time when the old relationship sours and the client
needs someone new, but you can arrange to be within easy recall if you've bothered to provide
demonstrable value and repute to your target. This can be managed with relatively few targets at any
one time.
In some instances you want to create your own source of "bad news" by actively trespassing, which
is not prohibited by law in consulting and seldom involves junk yard dogs or shotgun-wielding
guards.You can breach fences, parachute in, or tunnel in. It can be a fine business practice, though a
bold one, to take strong and adverse views about approaches (not people) that you believe to be, and
can demonstrate to be, false, underperforming, or ephemeral.
Someone is trying to steal your clients. Use these techniques to form countermoves, but by all
means consider others' clients as legitimate sources for your own marketing efforts.
CHAPTER
How to Think of the Fourth Sale First
any in my career one of my colleagues at an international training firm was a

fellow named Mike Robert who became my co-author on the first book I (or he) ever
published.' He was a very successful salesman and sales manager. When people asked
him how to emulate his success, his stock answer was "think of the fourth sale first."
I've been running my own practice for seventeen years and, if you averaged my business origin:
over that time, you'd find that over 80 percent of my revenues are generated from previous clients, and
that over 90 percent of my business originates with buyers who have known me in one way or another.
In fact, I can trace the preponderance of my major accounts-single contracts of $50,000 and up-to less
than a dozen sources.
That's right, like an anthropological exercise, the "roots" of my business come from just a relatively
few sources. And that's even more dramatic when you consider that, in the early years of my practice,
that network was far slimmer than it is today. To put it another way: That's a number in excess of $20
million generated by just a handful of people.
What does this mean for successful consultants? It means these four things:
1. Prior business is a gold mine that often isn't sufficiently exploited.
2. Prior buyers, not organizations, are the keys to future business acquisition.
3. The effort expended in business acquisition should decline as business acquisition grows.
4. Any truly new business from new sources should be treated as long-term business and not as a
short-term project.
WHAT IS THE FOURTH SALE?
The "fourth sale" is a metaphor for thinking ahead. It means that grabbing business, completing it, and
moving on, as if you're some kind of highway paving machine, doesn't create a very smooth road to
future business with that client. If you set up the initial relationship as a partnership or collaboration
that will form and reform itself as the buyer's conditions dictate, and not as a single interlude due to a
unique issue, you are making many potential sales instead of one immediate sale.
Buyers think they are meeting with consultants for relief on a single issue. Consultants must recognize
that such a meeting holds the potential for a permanent relationship that transcends business
environments. What makes the difference for the direction of that relationship? You do.
Here is the genesis of a "fourth sale":
I receive quite a few inquiries which lead to business due to the fact that I successfully completed
a major project with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the largest of the Federal Reserve
banks and a very prestigious client.
The Federal Reserve buyers became clients on a reference from one of the banks it supervises and
from an executive at that bank whom they trust.
That buyer at that bank has been a client.
Prior to being a client at that bank, he was a client in running his own organization, where I
assisted him with strategy and funding.
Prior to that, he was a buyer at another major bank in New York.
I met him at that original bank on a reference from someone I knew there after I had sent a letter
and set of articles which, at the time (1985) cost 56 cents. We established a relationship, mutual
trust, :mutual respect, and reciprocity of interests that transcended any single environment. This
was not a social friendship, but a business relationship.
Let me pause here. From that 56 cents and initial meeting, this individual has become responsible
for over half a million dollars of business, including other organizations to which he has referred me.
At the very origins of this particular "tree" is the person who recommended me to this buyer. He was
an employee of the bank who went on to GE and provided me with business there. At that level, the
resultant branches probably account for three-quarters of a million dollars. (I had met that person
while working early in my career-with Mike Robert-at the training firm and had remained in touch
and informed him when I had gone out on my own.)
I can provide a handful of examples like this one i:hat have accounted for 90 percent of all my
business. I must admit, I do not look back at these strands and interconnections and say, "Wow, was I
fortunate!" Instead, I say, "Have I done everything I can to prolong and extend these connections?"
Quite a few of them have petered out or reached dead ends. While this is inevitable, I constantly
wonder if it were my fault in not sufficiently prompting, energizing, and nurturing these relationships.
In 1972 I conducted a training program that a human resources professional from Merck attended.
We stayed in contact for eleven years while I worked in that account. In 1985, during the initial
monl:hs of my solo practice, he tracked me down and suggested a project at Merck that I could bid on.
Over the next twelve years his contacts and their contacts at Merck generated about 1.5 million
dollars, and the interest in my work at Merck-for five years during that period "America's Most
Admired Company" in the annual Fortune pollresulted in millions of dollars in additional work. My
original friend has since retired, although he once secured an assignment for me at another company
from retirement through a friend who worked there. His effects on my career are with me every day.
Ultimate consultants do not make sales or close on a project. They create and nurture trusting
relationships which result in perpetual business connections.
Figure 8.1 shows the proper progression of effort to revenues. Irrespective of the economy, of your
markets, of the competition, of technology, and of virtually all other external factors, you should be
driving more revenues at less effort IF you have been "working on the fourth sale first." If you're a
newer consultant, you must adapt and implement this philosophy immediately. If you're a successful
veteran, you must ensure that you're exploiting these early contacts. If you're an unsuccessful veteran,
you've been ignoring this relationship and working far harder than you should be.
Figure 8.1. The Maturing Relationship Between Sales Effort and Revenues
THE THREE KEYS TO CEMENTING
RELATIONSHIPS RATHER THAN
SELLING BUSINESS
So how do we do this relentlessly and effectively? Most buyers are concerned about what's hurting
them at the moment or about a singular opportunity that is making them salivate. They need results,
not a friend. They're seeking relief, not more business for you.
My friend Mike Robert went on to establish his own international training and consulting firm. I
decided to simply run my own practice and support the life style that was attractive to my family and
me. I told Mike, with whom I've maintained a friendship, that he was always a better salesman than I
was. "No," he said, "you're as good as I am, but while I sell programs and projects, you sell yourself.
And no one can sell you the way that you do."
"Selling myself" really has meant establishing tight, trusting, and enduring relationships with
people who can help me, and whom I can help, on a regular basis. As I've looked back and
deconstructed the process, I believe the three secrets to this success are
1. Do not move rapidly toward a sale. Take the time to build a relationship first.
2. Do not content yourself with what the buyer wants. Search for the real need.
3. Do not consider the organization as your client. The buyer is your client, now and forever.
1. Do Not Move Rapidly Toward a Sale. Take the Time to Build a Relationship First. We do far too
much work studying the organization, conducting needs analysis, and learning about the prospective
company. We spend too little time understanding the buyer, raising emotional needs, and learning
what would constitute personal success. If you truly believe that the goal is not a piece of business for
next month but rather a flow of income for years, then answer these questions before you move on:
What will create trust between the buyer and me?
What emotional needs does the buyer express?
How can we work together, as a team?
BEST PRACTICES
Presentations and speeches at conferences or seminars are my most effective marketing technique. If
you are knowledgeable about your subject and present well, your audience (potential clients) will
naturally see your expertise, and then through conversation you will form the relationship. From that
point on it is an easy sale.
Also, chairing a "CEO roundtable" at an appropriate group allows potential clients to get to know you
over the course of a few months, see your style, gain trust in you, and then when they have a business
challenge, you are a known quantity and foremost in their minds.
This, too, is an easy sale.
-Drumm McNaughton, The McNaughton Group, Inc.
Logic makes people think, emotion makes them act. A buyer may intellectually believe that you're
good at what you do, and he or she may react to an inquiry positively because of that. But when a
buyer feels that you're an invaluable asset, that person will proactively reach out to recommend you to
others.
2. Do Not Content Yourself with What the Buyer Wants. Search for the Real Need. The buyer will
tend to know immediately what he or she presumes is wanted. These are often commodities, such as
sales training, coaching, communications skills, and so on. However, once a relationship is formed,
some probing will generally turn up the real needs: improve retention of existing clients, end the turf
warfare between departments, create a more positive growth curve, and so forth. Try to answer these
questions before moving on:
Why is the buyer expressing this particular "want" or alternative?
What is the root cause of the symptoms being described?
How do we raise the standard and not merely fix the problem?
3. Do Not Consider the Organization as Your Client. The Buyer Is Your Client, Now and Forever. This
is the hardest for many consultants. "I work for Black & Decker" is sexier than "I work for Harry
Jones." But in truth, organizations don't hire us, people do. And Black & Decker isn't going to refer
you to more clients and generate more business. Harry Jones is going to do that, if his needs have been
explored and met. Your objective is to find the right synergy in assisting both Harry Jones and his
organization. Try to answer these questions before moving on:
How can this project be implemented to reflect credit on the buyer?
How can I create an ongoing collaboration and dialogue with the buyer despite having to work
with subordinates on the implementation?
At what point can I begin to develop this relationship beyond the needs of this particular project?
Every single buyer knows what he or she wants before you walk in the door. Few of them truly
understand what they need. The difference between what they think they want and what they truly
need is your value added to that relationship and to that project. The project will end. The relationship
shouldn't if you've provided enough value added.
Thinking of the fourth sale first is counterintuitive. It means resisting the immediate sale and
subordinating the organizational environment for the moment. The key is to focus on the buyer as
someone with whom you want to develop a long-term relationship. It's like focusing on your swing in
golf and not on hitting the ball. You have to exercise patience and restraint. This is a philosophy and a
value system. The techniques themselves are not difficult, but the volition is.
A referral is a very quick means to get business. Ironically, it results from a slow and steady gait at
the outset, which might have been years prior.
DEVELOPING TRUST THROUGH PUSHBACK
The critical path to trust and long-term relationships is not in agreement and harmony. It is in
disagreement and creative tension.
I call this tactic "pushback," by which I mean the healthy resistance to a buyer's position. Buyers are
surrounded by "yes people," whose future, retirement plans, and stress levels are often dictated by
their own perceptions of the need to please their boss. The higher you ascend in an organization, the
truer this is. While a first-line supervisor has a very real grasp of the world, since he or she is also
dealing with customers all day long, a middle manager has a somewhat distorted view, half-shaded by
subordinates' versions of reality. By the time you reach the executive suites, there is often a complete
disconnect, with committees, reports, task forces, and other information avenues so jaded and filtered
that the vice presidents are like the general staff in 18th Century England, waiting for carrier pigeons
to bring delayed news of the battles on the Continent. By the time the birds land, conditions have
already changed.
Buyers don't need more sycophants or obsequiousness. They need candor. Challenging a buyer's
position and beliefs also serves as a strong "fourth sale litmus test": If the buyer doesn't respond well
to your pushback, the chances of a longer term relationship are remote. In that case, you may choose
to take the money and run, or simply run.
Here are some areas in which to consider pushback, and techniques to employ in so doing.
Basic Premises
This one is my favorite. The buyer is often likely to travel far and wide on a set of beliefs that have no
validation to support them. When a buyer says, "People are less loyal today, so we need an incentive
system that is leveraged toward the longer term to force them to stay," I'll typically respond, "I
disagree with your basic premise. There are no studies supporting the position that employees are any
less loyal inherently, but there are studies that show that organizations have forfeited that loyalty.
Perhaps we can re-establish it here without increasing the incentive system at all."
You'll often find that a buyer has spent a long time thinking about an issue and has strong views on
cause and effect, but the amount of time spent pondering it does not equal a quality conclusion. In
other words, a lot of time thinking about the wrong factors leads you nowhere.
Listen carefully to your buyer's foundations for his or her argument. Push back on any that are
questionable, unproved, weak, or vulnerable. Help the buyer to see, from the outset, that his or her best
interests are going to be served by your role in helping to validate or invalidate basic beliefs about the
situation. The probability is very strong that no one else is attempting that role.
Pushback is the technique of demonstrating to the buyer that his or her best interests are served by a
partner who is respectful and honest enough to disagree, thereby helping to avoid potential disaster
later on.
Immediate Options
Buyers, particularly highly assertive buyers, will have their pet and favored treatments, solutions, and
courses of action all dressed up and ready to parade. The problem, of course, is that they are
prematurely limiting their own success.
My preference is to explain to any buyer that there are always plenty of options and rarely only one
solution. The key is the "risk/reward ratio." In other words, how much reward at how much risk? No
plan or project is riskfree. But we can work together to mitigate the risks if we understand them in
relation to the potential rewards. Rolling out a pilot is lower risk, but the ultimate impact is also far
less than a full-scale launch. Hiring people quickly to fill vacancies provides a quick fix, but the risk
of lower quality and mistakes with key accounts must be weighed.
Figure 8.2 shows an example of a formalized risk/reward template that can focus a buyer on his or
her best interests and on how the two of you can work together to exploit the rewards while mitigating
the risks.
The True Change Agent
I've been told bluntly, "Well, you're the change agent. What will you do to help us fix this?" To which
I've replied, "You're the change agent, not me. We'd better clarify who's doing what to whom."
Many clients don't know how to use consultants, even though they may have hired them before
(which is why re-education is always constructive and helpful for both of you). Organizational
improvement is the client's responsibility, and the buyer will be evaluated for the results. The
consultant is a resource and catalyst, perhaps, but is, by definition, someone without authority.
Selling is not just about new business; it's about influencing others through their emotional "triggers."
I "sold" Kaiser Permanente on authorizing payment for a machine my daughter Margo needed for her
cystic fibrosis. I went in with lots of proof statements to a group of analysts, accountants, actuaries,
and customer service managers. I realized they were all mothers and started talking about four-year-
olds and how tough they were to figure out and understand.
The mothers warmed up to me, and the meeting went well. By personalizing the issue, I won them
over and stood out from many other parents who come into those meetings with both guns blazing.
-Andrew J. Birol, PACER Associates, Inc.

Figure 8.2. The Risk/Reward Ratio
If I can successfully reorient a buyer to understand a better paradigm for our potential work
together, the resultant fee is not going to be an issue. It will also create the criteria for an excellent,
long-term relationship based on the correct rules of engagement: Consultants advise; managers act.
Relationships are based on trust; trust is based on mutual respect; respect is based on both parties'
ability and willingness to constructively disagree, with the intent of creating a better future. Ask
managers which subordinates they respect the most, and it won't be their best friends or the "yes
people." It will be those who consistently support a clear value system.
Here are some excellent "pushback" lines that can quickly test whether the buyer is looking for a
peer and partner, or simply wants "another pair of hands and no disagreements":
"We can't go any further exploring this project until we gain resolution on these key issues."
"In my experience, I can't let you do this without explaining the risks. If we can't have that
discussion, we probably shouldn't proceed."
"Those objectives are in direct conflict, and one of them is going to have to go."
"What is that assumption based on? Who told you' 'Have you validated it with your customers or
employees?"
"You're describing symptoms and effects. We shoLdd examine the causes if we're really going to
resolve the issue."
"Why fix this at all? Shouldn't we be trying to raise the standard rather than conform to the old
one?"
"Isn't that goal arbitrary? Why settle for 10 percent? Why not try to maximize the growth?
Maybe 25 percent is actually achievable if we don't limit expectations."
"If you stopped doing this altogether, would the customer notice at all? If you implement this
new initiative, would the customer notice at all?"
"What criteria did you use to set the priority here? Are we sure it's not simply a matter of the
'squeakiest wheel' instead of the most pressing business need?"
"Let me play devil's advocate...."
I was introduced to the CEO of State Street Bank, who was told I was being considered as the
consultant to assist with an organization-wide initiative. He was in a huge, well-appointed office and
commanded one of the most profitable financial institutions around, with an excellent personal track
record.
"We've had an average of 22 percent annual compound growth annually for my entire watch, five
years," he said calmly. "Why would we need a consultant?"
I thought for a few seconds, then looked him in the eye and said, "How do you know it shouldn't be 34
percent?"
I got the job.
-AW
THE PRESENT-VALUE DISCOUNT PRINCIPLE
I N ACTION
I needed a fancy title to gain your attention for a simple concept: Loyalty formed by trust is hard to
displace. In fact, you can view this section as the antidote to Chapter 7, on the assumption that there
are people out there employing some sophisticated techniques to try to capture your best customers at
your expense.
You can't hang on to any client forever. But you can extend most relationships through multiple
engagements. This is why specialization is anathema to ensuring long-term, high quality repeat
business from any one client.
Your buyer is going to be exposed to your competition. There will be some organizational
resistance to your continued participation, emanating from those whom you've threatened (often by
your mere presence). Budgets will change.
Nevertheless, the buyer literally can't "buy" the type of relationship the two of you have formed
over the course of your projects together. This can't be instantly replaced, and that trust, reliance, and
sometimes dependence is not immediately transferable. Consequently, even a competitor offering a
substantially lower fee isn't going to be a sound return on investment because the value proposition
will perforce be less, since that competitor caul t match your history with the buyer.
Therefore, that history must be carefully created and maintained. If you believe for a moment that
repeat business-relatively unaffected by fees-is dependent on your relationship with your buyer, then
you can agree that the relationship requires as much strategy and forethought as does the project. (If
you don't agree with that, then you're reading the wrong book and the wrong author.) The problem that
undermines enduring repeat business, then, is that the relationship is ignored in favor of the project,
since the consultant incorrectly assumes that a completed, successful project is all that's needed to
support the relationship (or, worse, is not even thinking in terms of the fourth sale).
I can make a strong case that, if you're interested in improving business acquisition with a
minimum of cost, then your existing clients are your major source. And if they are your major source,
then these are the steps that you can't afford to ignore. Most consultants have up and down years,
impossible forecasting scenarios, and a lot of work to bring in revenue, because they don't gain
sufficient renewal business. If you take nothing else from this book, consider the following tactics.
Ten Steps to Ensure Long-Term, High-Fee Renewal Business
1. Never sacrifice or abandon the buyer. No matter to whom you are delegated, referred, or
aligned, assertively make plans with your buyer for periodic personal interaction. Don't pat
yourself on the back after the contract is signed and relax with lower level implementers. If
you're not seeing the buyer in person at least twice a month, then you're not developing the trust
and loyalty you'll need.
2. Bring the buyer good news. Many consultants bring the buyer their problems. Problems are
much better digested when they are a small ration of good news that's more frequent. Share
successes and small victories. Inform the buyer of your progress constructively.
3. Assign the buyer accountabilities. My proposals all have a section specifying "joint
accountabilities." Ensure that the buyer is a partner and an integral part of the project. Otherwise,
you're just another hired hand reporting to the buyer.
4. Suggest and recommend actions in non-project areas. I once spotted clear examples of a hostile
work environment while working on an unrelated issue. I informed the buyer and emphasized his
exposure, then offered to work with human resources on a resolution "while I was on-site
anyway." If you ought to provide value prior to securing a sale, you should also provide value
prior to securing repeat sales.
Scope creep occurs when a buyer asks you for help outside of the objectives of your project. But value
contribution occurs when you volunteer help in view of your observations and experience. The former
should be avoided, but the latter should be maximized.
5. Demonstrate that you have wide-ranging capabilities. Talk about other projects, other clients,
other methodologies. Don't be stereotyped as a facilitator, strategist, or coach if you can possibly
help it. Assuming you've developed the skills by this stage of your career to be diverse, expose
those skills to the buyer. Specialists have a very tough time gaining renewal business because the
narrower the specialty, the less likely there are more opportunities to apply it within a single
client.
6. Be flexible. The client might need you for a weekend, or want to talk on a Sunday night, or ask
that you work with an employee whom you consider to be a lost cause. Show the client that you
can be counted on, especially when the deadlines are short or conditions abruptly change.
Occasionally, you might have to miss an airplane in order to catch more business. There are other
airplanes.
7. Reach out laterally to more buyers. This not only protects you in the event your buyer leaves,
but it creates a "mass loyalty," which is even harder for competition to overcome. I've been in
organizations in which all departments had to go through my strategy approach, or attend my
communications workshop, or have the division head coached by me. It became a rite of passage.
This is the exact and positive opposite of the organizational "immune system" rejecting you.
8. Implement approaches using your proprietary materials, copyright, intellectual property, buzz
words, and so on. Make the projects "uniquely" you. The more generic your approach, the more
others can smoothly move in to replace you. The more customized and client-specific your
approach, the more you become irreplaceable. Develop some joint copyrights with the client and
become enmeshed in the systemic processes you work with.
9. The time to "sell" your next project is while you're still there on the current project. As you
advise and observe, listen for buying signs such as, "We really do need to look into that." Offer to
submit a proposal so that the buyer will have something to utilize "whenever you're ready to
move on this." Don't assume that you must complete the current project before pristinely bidding
on a new one. That's why constant meetings and reporting are much more important and effective
than waiting until a magic "completion" date.
There is nothing unethical or immoral about pursuing additional projects while working on a current
one if you take the position that you are able to improve your client's condition in so doing. In fact,
there are no doubt economies of scale that imbue to your working on several projects at once. This
isn't about resources; it's about trust.
The "king" who appears to be the decision maker and may, in fact, be the decision maker, can be
rendered useless if the "dukes" don't go along after the sale.
I once sold a $300,000 project to a large bank. The vice chairman of the company and a couple of his
colleagues in the office of the chairman decided that the project I'd proposed was the right project.
They gave agreement, signed the deal, and communicated it to their people.
About three weeks into the project, several of their regional managers decided that the project was too
threatening to them and, to make a long story short, brought the project to a halt and had us fired. It
was over within twenty-four hours. They had "nodded" their agreement to the vice chairman before the
engagement started and pulled out their knives after he turned his head. He said, "I'm really sorry to
have to tell you this, but it's over."
The lessons were: (1) It ain't really sold until the people who have to change or implement the solution
are sold and (2) Never do work that the client should be doing in terms of aligning people internally
and holding them accountable. If the "big guy" is really committed to the result, and you've sold the
path to the result, you can lay out the path, but you can't MAKE them walk down it.
-Nick Miller, Clarity Advantage Corporation
10. If you are between projects, stay in touch. "Well, you know how to reach me if you need me"
is probably a candidate for the Marketing Hall of Shame. Out of sight, out of mind. Your
successful project's "glow" will have an alarmingly brief life span. Try to continue to talk to the
buyer monthly on any constructive pretext: follow-up, new ideas, breakfast or lunch, news from
your other clients, objective sounding board-anything it takes to keep you in front of your
decision maker and to maintain the trust that you've built.
Thinking of the fourth sale first is a philosophy that must be applied to every lead that comes down
the pike. There will be clients with whom a single project makes sense. There will be others who
produce conditions making repeat business improbable or impossible.
However, the crime occurs when the consultant is the party responsible for no fourth sale (or even a
second sale!). If, from early in one's career, the effort had been made to aggressively turn every single
new client into a long-term customer, any reader of this book would have generated well into six
figures or more of additional income. If you're new to the game, don't make this mistake. If you're a
veteran, mine the rich lode that you've already created by blasting your way into the place to begin
with.
Our long-term success thrives on renewal business. This occurs in two primary ways:
1. Additional business from client organizations.
2. Additional business from prior buyers who have moved to new organizations.
Thinking of the "fourth sale first" simply means viewing any prospect with the intent of creating an
enduring relationship and not a quick sale. In fact, forsaking the quick sale and using the patience
required to build a relationship can be a far more productive business strategy for virtually anyone.
Relationships are based on trust, which in turn is based on candor. We have to "push back" if buyers
are to view us as credible peers and not as subordinates, hired hands, or contractors. Healthy and
constructive challenges early in the relationship building process will serve both to weed out non-
attractive buyers and to solidify the trust of mature and confident buyers.
Note that none of this is based on or involves fees. In fact, fees become academic when strong
relationships exist.
It's one thing to lose business to the competition, but it's another entirely to give it away. With
apologies to Dylan Thomas, don't go gently into that good night.
It is extremely difficult and often impossible for a competitor to replace an incumbent consultant
who has developed a legacy of trust and reliance. By instituting certain techniques, such as proprietary
materials and value-added additional recommendations, it's feasible to create a "norm" of using your
help in every department of the client company.
Think in terms of acquiring business, not necessarily clients. That's because you already have the
clients, so why make life more difficult?
A Dozen New Sources
of Clients
The World Is Changing and So Are Your Prospects
s I write this, my prior fiscal year was my finest ever. Yet it was a year
prior to which I had decided to cut back, further decrease my travel, and accept lower
revenues at a time in my career when I could clearly afford to do so.
Shows what I know.
The fact is, during my "ascendant" years, when my brand as "the million dollar consultant" began to
take shape, I was deriving 75 percent of my income from traditional consulting with traditional firms:
Merck, Marine Midland Bank, Times Mirror, Calgon, Mercedes-Benz, and others like them. The other
25 percent derived from workshops with firms such as GE, GTE, IBM, Fleet Bank, Texaco, the New
York Times, and their counterparts. I thought that was my world. I occasionally worked overseas at
the direction of U.S.-based multinationals.
Today, more successful than ever, about 25 percent of my income originates with traditional
consulting with traditional firms. About 40 percent is generated by innovative consulting assignments:
Consulting with other consulting firms, such as Andersen, Cambridge-Pharma, and Peat Marwick;
consulting with major high-tech organizations, such as Hewlett-Packard; and consulting with
entrepreneurial start-ups, such as Burst! Multimedia, an Internet advertising operation.' And about 35
percent-a full third of my practice-comes from sources that did not exist for me ten years ago: product
sales, mentoring, coaching, publishing, and joint ventures. And, for the first time, I'm being hired by
foreign-based organizations without a major U.S. presence, such as Solving, International.
I'm constantly surprised by how stupid I was two weeks ago.
I've been open to change and experimentation. Success, which most of the readers of this book
enjoy, enables you to take prudent risk and explore new territory. Ironically, in searching for ways to
increase my comfort and decrease the unattractive aspects of the profession (travel, unpleasant clients,
economic fluctuation), I've stumbled on even more profitable methods to sustain my business. This
has often been wonderful serendipity, but the harder I work the luckier I get.
Some sources of revenue are eternal; some are ephemeral, and disappear. But what about those which
are just beginning to demonstrate their potential? Do you know what and where they are?
But what would happen if we tried to predict the most lucrative potential business acquisition
sources waiting around the bend? I'm no futurist (who really is?) and don't claim to be a
prognosticator. But my track record is better than most, so herein-my gift to you-are my suggestions
for areas you should plumb now to derive new and important sources of business over the next decade.
If they're well-known to you and you're already well-established, then you may proceed to Chapter 10
with my blessing.
1. GLOBAL ALLIANCES
We are often besieged with "offers to collaborate" from unknown parties in strange places who would
like to see all of our materials and proprietary approaches as a condition of being considered for their
"amazing opportunity" in Upper Bizarristan! I'm not talking about these con artists. I am referring to a
particularly happy confluence of events that makes us valuable overseas.
American management expertise is highly regarded-probably more so than ever before. Most of the
world is speaking English into the abject horror of the French) and the U.S. dollar is so powerful and
omnipresent that most of the currency is actually in circulation outside of the U.S. and several
countries have officially adopted it as their standard.
Established American consultants should examine reaching out to consulting firms in major
international locations that can use their marketing, delivery, and technological expertise in high
potential local markets. These alliances can take the form of consulting to the consulting firm and/or
participating as a resource in their own acquisition and delivery of business.
While this opportunity exists to some extent in the reverse-non-U.S. consultants offering help here-
it is basically an export phenomenon and may grow prodigiously.
Action: Extend your brand internationally, consider publishing and/or appearing as a speaker
internationally, and locate those firms that can profit from your expertise and approaches.
Example: I was recently asked to keynote an important Asia/Pacific conference based on my

publishing and repute. I immediately began to establish contacts in Australia and New Zealand to
explore the potential of a joint venture during my visit.
2. REMOTE LEARNING
The nascent attempts to create online learning have been laughably inept. The content, presentation,
speed of download, lack of interaction, and other factors have undermined the effort. However, the
thirst for lifelong, remote learning that drives such attempts is real and growing. One of the innovators
in this area, the University of Phoenix, has been growing dramatically.
Many of my colleagues have begun coaching exclusively by phone and email. My own mentor
program is predominantly conducted by phone, email, and fax. What aspects of your current (or easily
developed) technology and methodology can be adapted for distance learning?
My belief is that "real time" consulting will be more urgent than ever: The executive who is facing
a sudden crisis, the sales manager staring at a key contract, the call center director encountering a
technology glitch. This is highly valuable assistance, because it is aimed at crucial opportunities,
problems, and issues the value of which is immediately apparent. Yet the odds of the consultant, even
on retainer, being present when they occur are very long.
Urgency and immediate need can short-cut the relationship building process, especially for veteran
consultants with a strong brand. Moreover, you don't need conceptual agreement when the client's
office is on fire.
Are there ways you can make yourself and your help available-whether to existing clients or to non-
clients who can readily find you-on a "real time" basis? Why can't you launch a service that doesn't
require that you be on an airplane but does pay well because of the clear value added?
Action: Examine what you do for its applicability on a distance basis. Reconfigure it to maximize
distance user-friendliness.
Example: Why not a twenty-four-hour "on call" responsiveness using pager technology for a fee of
$50,000 a month, but assisting the client in averting calamity and exploiting fast-breaking
opportunity? Is a guarantee to call back within an hour at that rate of pay better or worse than logging
200,000 air miles annually for small projects?
BEST PRACTICES
Use the fifteen-minute rule. That is, leaving if you are kept waiting longer than that when meeting
with a prospect. The upside is great (if they call you back, your meeting will be much better), but the
downside is the most important. If they were not really serious, you got away without "spilling your
candy in the lobby."
-Andrew J. Birol, PACER Associates, Inc.

3. ENTREPRENEURS
The downsizing of the Eighties and Nineties, coupled with the technological apogee and perigee of the
late Nineties through current times, have created a new brand of entrepreneurs. These are people who
refuse to place their fates in others' hands, will not risk someone else firing them, and who truly
believe in taking prudent risk in return for dramatic reward. (Sound familiar?)
A decade ago, venture capital was used solely for :research and development (Let's get ahead of the
competition) and marketing (Let's tell people what we've got). Today, venture capital is also allocated
to management support, in that the hard lessons of high turnover, poor selection dec:_sions, lack of
training, and related human resource issues have been understood. Brilliant technology and a receptive
market won't overcome poor sales, lousy customer service, and low productivity.
There is a market segment for consultants consisting of these entrepreneurs, who are not as narrow
and specialized as their prototypes. They have often built decent-sized operations and realize that the
founders and builders are not the people to run them (or to run them unassisted). The entrepreneur has
matured and constitutes a business segment for consultants no less than corporate executives or trade
associations.
Action: You are an entrepreneur and should instantly relate to such buyers. Join groups and network
with these prospects. Reorient your value proposition to appeal to the strong-willed, successful, self-
made person.
Example: Many universities and business groups (such as The Executive Technique, The Business
Roundtable) conduct formalized programs to embrace entrepreneurs. You should be referenced as a
business resource, just as a highly respected internist or attorney is referenced for his or her particular
professional expertise. A $100,000 fee from an entrepreneur carries the same purchasing power as a
$100,000 fee from General Motors, but comes with fewer strings and less filtering.
Entrepreneurs don't care about your small size, your background, or your having been fired earlier in
life. They care about what you can do for them and their prized business tomorrow. You can do a lot,
because you've created that same kind of business.
4. UNIVERSITIES AND HIGHER EDUCATION
Universities have had a problem for quite some time with excess delivery capability. They have
tenured professors, classrooms, research, and other resources that aren't fully employed and are
increasing under competitive pressure from new sources (remote learning, corporate "universities,"
and so on). They have countered with extension programs, consulting offerings, teleconferencing, and
other devices to wedge themselves into the general market. Case Western Reserve University is just
one example of a very aggressive entity in this area, offering a comprehensive range of management
training for member companies.
The problem, of course, is that the intellectual and delivery resources that most universities solely
"own" are, well, professors. And they are not exactly attuned to the real world, pragmatic, and rapidly
changing needs of modern corporate life. (Academics: Please send your letters to JosseyBass/Pfeiffer,
not to me.) Let's face it, if you lose a deal to a moonlighting college professor you're in the wrong line
of work, even if the professor offers to do it for free.
Reach out to local universities first, offering both to consult with them on their business
development plans and to serve as a resource that they can uniquely bring to their intended prospects.
One seasoned consultant can offset a lot of academic pie in the sky. And you can let your partner do
all the marketing.
Action: Select the local institutions of higher learning most likely to be amenable, and find the dean or
director responsible for executive and corporate outreach. You might also want to pursue those
schools nationally that already have a reputation for doing this well.
Example: Case Western Reserve markets the programs, pays the consultant to address its groups, and
then allows the consultant to pursue and own whatever business may ensue from those contacts.
5. THE PROFESSIONS:
MEDICAL, LEGAL, ACCOUNTING
Whatever I'm about to suggest here can also be applied to realtors, architects, and others. But I want to
focus on the "major" professions curiously allied to our own.
I'm increasingly being asked by legal firms to address them and work with them on the issues of
value-based fees and business acquisition. I've helped a colleague to specialize in the valuation, sale,
and transfer of medical practices. Accounting firms that have not gone into consulting themselves are
increasingly squeezed by their hourly, primitive billing practices.
These are professions, in my view, that are just beginning to creep out from under their own
specialist tarps. They are seeing the light of increased business and the need for marketing and more
intelligent pricing. Their past people policies (make partner or leave) would have been envied by
Captain Bligh. All of that is changing because of younger partners taking over, changing business
conditions, and competitive pressures.
Specialized professional practices know as little about everything else as they know a great deal about
their specialty. You can't teach a law firm the law, but you can teach them virtually everything else
about how to run a business.
I don't think it requires much to "slide" your promotion and marketing into these areas. They are
virtually untouched, and the last thing they need is still more legal, medical, and financial advice.
Action: Embrace these professions in your collateral materials and website. Speak at their trade
associations. Ask your own doctor, dentist, lawyer, and accountant to sponsor or recommend you.
Example: There are law firms with over five hundred attorneys, medical practices that are
incorporated and embrace many specialties, and accountancies that are multi-national. These are no
different from major corporate accounts except for their content.
6. MATURE HIGH-TECH
We're entering the wonderful world of "post-shakeout." The high-tech firms that remain have been
sufficiently aged, matured, and weathered. They now need to stabilize and run themselves well. (Even
Amazon.com will eventually run out of growth room and will have to demonstrate a profit.)
You needn't be a technology expert-in fact, you shouldn't be-to provide the kind of stabilization and
managed growth advice that these firms desperately need. This is why I've always stressed "process
consulting," in that the content isn't very important in terms of the correct management decisions and
orientation.
This, too, is a virtually untapped area, although there is so much precedent. Hewlett-Packard has
long been a leading user of consultants, and it represents an early version of a matured high-tech
company. Motorola, Texas Instruments, and, of course, IBM are no different. The Apples and Dells
are perhaps in their young adulthood, beginning to truly appreciate the value of external help. There
are, however, a plethora of adolescent firms that are fodder right now for enterprising consultants.
It's time to stop treating "high-tech" as a specialty area for programmers, coders, and Internet
wizards. View them as an increased part of your market.
Action: These firms are all over the place. Begin to prospect for the mid-sized to larger firm that has
survived the turmoil and is rife for professional help. In these firms the economic buyer is almost
always at the CEO level and nowhere below that.
Example: Many of these firms are run by people who are refugees from the "old economy" and aren't
"technocrats" at all. They are probably the best prospects because they'll appreciate the value of sound
management practices.
There are going to be more people who are affluent, educated, officially retired, and in search of
meaning and fulfillment than ever before in our history. That demographic cries out for you to find a
way to address it.
7. THE RETIRED, THE RECREATING,
THE HOBBYIST
We have a more affluent, more educated, younger retired cohort in our population than ever before.
Geriatric medicine, overlooked as a backwater specialty twenty years or so ago, is now an important
branch of the science. There are leisure cruises, elder care, assisted living, and other nice marketing
initiatives aimed at the demographic of fifty-five and older. The American Association of Retired
People is the best funded, most powerful lobby in America.
And now the Baby Boomers are entering that age bracket, which will swell like a flood-stage river
enveloping the surrounding plains.
The Twilight Zone
The most unusual situation I've encountered was where I was set up with the economic buyer by an
internal qualifier. Five minutes into my presentation, the buyer said, "Stop. You're hired. That
example of work you just showed me is exactly the expertise I'm looking for." (That situation took me
to the Netherlands and my first real international consulting/training gig.)
Another example: I was hired as a subcontractor by a company that was also a subcontractor to the
firm that was ultimately hired by the actual buyer. I went into the first engagement stone cold without
knowing anything about the buyer or their situation, and in less than two hours I had their legal
department rewriting their client contracts and had expanded their prospect approach from one service
to four services. You never know until you ask!
-David Hamacher, President, Communicon Consulting Group, Inc.
While the individual market may not be your priority (though for some of you it may be or should
be), these people belong to increasingly large and powerful organizations. What were once minor
hobbyist and recreation groups now have tens of thousands of members and require administration,
promotion, governance, staff development, and a myriad of other organizational consulting needs.
Budgets are often in the millions of dollars, and the competition for this group-which is benefiting
from the IRA legislation of the Eighties and does not have to save money for home, children, or
retirement-is intense among interests ranging from sports equipment and vacations to dietary care and
volunteer work.
It is also a group seeking continued lifelong learning, meaning that individual product sales for self-
fulfillment, second careers, special causes, and so on can be highly lucrative.
Action: Consider shifting your focus or additionally embracing the associations, groups, and causes
that the growing age fifty-five plus population focuses on. This demographic has more discretionary
buying power than any other group, including teenagers.
Example: Groups such as the American Philatelic Society, which appeal mainly to an older populace,
must consider expanding offerings, moving to new locations, creating new member services,
educating board members responsible for large budgets, and so forth. This is process consulting
simply refocused on a different potential client.
The Baby Boomer influence will be felt through the entire first quarter or more of the 21st Century, as
a new, powerfu , and wealthy retired population continues to grow and to make demands on the
society, economy, and technology.
8. BEHAVIOR MODIFICATION
My projection is that the pop psychology approaches of the Nineties, from walking on hot coals to
rappelling down mountains, will give way to a more pragmatic and widespread interest in legitimate
and long-term behavioral change. Just as massive public education efforts dramatically reduced
smoking in most countries, there will be increasing practical and valid approaches needed for weight
control, civility (for example, countering road rage), personal relationships (decreasing the current
high divorce rates), raising children in a complex time, substance abuse control, improving career
choices, and so on.
These are areas that will primarily be pursued on an individual level, meaning that interactions such
as workshops, corporate sponsorships, seminars, products, coaching, Internet access, and other
individualized techniques will be highly appropriate. Unlike today's "feel good for the moment"
environment, in which a motivational speech's sweetness also has a sugar donut's nutritional value, the
need will be for legitimate, credentialed sources to provide help in truly affecting individual habits,
traits, and behaviors.
Action: Examine the degree to which your organizational change work is really based on individual
change and how that can be marketed and delivered to that new audience. Alliances and sponsorships
may be very effective for these purposes.
Example: You may develop a booklet or manual on controlling hostility which is distributed for you
through an association to its membership. Or you may provide web-based coaching on how to control
anger to individuals who either pay for it themselves or are reimbursed by their organizations.
9. LIFE BALANCE
I began a life balance newsletter2 called Balancing Act: Blending Life, Work, and Relationships with
forty names in 1999. Today, it has over five thousand subscribers. Although the newsletter is free, its
presence generates tremendous word-of-mouth promotion for my consulting, speaking, and product
sales.
Most of our consulting expertise is applicable to individual and social circumstances, from building
relationships and influencing others to solving problems and setting priorities. Once we blur the
work/personal line, we're able to deal holistically with people's total lives, making all aspects of them
that much more productive and rewarding.
Corporations such as Hewlett-Packard and Levi Strauss have been in the forefront of helping
employees in all aspects of their work and lives, and others will continue to follow suit as a relatively
inexpensive alternative to building loyalty and enhancing performance. My belief is that a consultant
who can both advise an organization on its needs and advise its employees on their needs is an
extraordinary asset, able to transcend those environments.
Action: Include in your offerings to clients options to provide non-work-related assistance during the
course of your projects. You may choose to do this yourself if you have the competencies, or
subcontract such work.
Example: If your expertise is organizational change, why not offer workshops to employees and their
partners on how to plan for and react to personal change? If you deal with finance for non-financial
managers, why not offer an analogous process for budgeting and investment as an option for
employees?
Life balance issues are not a fad and are growing. Yet the corporation may be the entity that pays for
their resolution. This may be a shift you can make immediately in current clients, as well as an option
you include for all future clients.
10. SALES SKILLS
This is a perennial need if there ever was one. In more than twenty-seven years of consulting, the need
to influence a buyer has been uninterrupted, as it has been since subsistence farming ended and the
first farmer with more than his own family could eat was persuaded to part with excess crops in return
for a new tool or tutoring for a child.
Among the areas most in need of sales skills in the next decade:
Telemarketing
Relationship and consultative sales
Professional practice sales (medical, law, financial, real estate, architecture)
Global sales that are cross-cultural
Value-based sales (as opposed to commodities)
Luxuries rather than necessities
Services more than products
Fund raising and grants
Action: If you're in the sales skills arena, broaden those processes you currently use to include other
areas. They are much more similar than dissimilar. If you're not in that market, consider your existing
process strengths and how they relate to sales, for example, negotiating, conflict resolution,
communications, and so forth.
Example: Call centers are big business, and growing. Why can't "order takers" and service
representatives become skilled in "upselling" and providing additional products and services? The
investment is already made, and further sales are largely profit.
This was a lead in one of the largest providers of credit cards in the United States, which recently had
been charged by the federal government with interest rate and consumer fraud. They called seeking a
customer satisfaction program in a hurry. We were to be part of a "Pillsbury Bake-Off®" with three
other firms, two of which were industry powerhouses and one a local firm with no brand recognition.
During the presentation, we "sold in" to the senior VP and the president as the decision makers. There
were a couple of mid-level manager/coordinators in the room, one of whom was taking copious notes
and not saying much (nor did we ask much). After several days of nail biting, what ifs, and dwindling
hopes, my partner heard from the project manager. We did not get the business. Here are the morals of
the story.
1. Never, ever, accept title as a given for who will be the final decision maker. Never dismiss lower
level titles. Sell in to every person at the table, with the value-added information that works for them.
This requires questioning, listening, and responding to each person's concerns.
The project manager was not in fact the client contact at all (and was also blindsided in the process).
The mid-level supervisor who was furiously writing notes as we confidently sold in to "the big boys"
was actually given responsibility for the project. The VP left it up to her to decide which firm to use,
and although he "didn't agree with her," felt he "had to support her." We clearly had not addressed her
concerns, and since this was to be a custom designed project, client coordination would be extremely
important. Being an inexperienced project manager, the extent of coordination made her very
apprehensive.
2. Don't make assumptions as to the viability of the competition, and
3. Don't assume that the prospect always wants, or cares about, your ideal world solution. The two
industry powerhouses lost out as well. A very small local firm, proposing the use of canned videos,
won the contract. They offered a quick and easy fix with less stress for the mid-level project manager.
It turns out that the bank really didn't care about customer satisfaction and developing a
comprehensive solution. A contract to wave in front of the judge to show compliance fit the bill
nicely.
-Barbara Poole, President, Poole Resources, Inc.

11. CULTURAL ACCOMMODATION
Our society is changing dramatically. In 2001, more women than men entered law school, which will
have a profound influence on power and politics in ten to twenty years. The Hispanic population is the
fastest growing minority. This will influence buying trends and employment. Disabled and physically
challenged people continue to enter the labor pool and hold responsible positions, thanks to both
changing attitudes and appropriate legislation.
The customer base and the employee base should mirror each other. And the advent of global sales
for even small operations :Further complicates the process. The "diversity industry" of the late
Nineties has proven itself to be after a dollar more than after organizational change. (How can anyone
be a "diversity consultant" who is not an organizational development consultant?) The future isn't
about pretending to honor "differences." It is about the pragmatic fact that studies have supported the
power and productivity of heterogeneous work teams over homogeneous work teams.3
Consultants can help organizations that still have leaders who grew up in simpler times and
different demographic realities. This will be a key productivity enhancement area.
Action: Incorporate not just the "people side" into your change initiatives, but the diverse people side
that modern organizations must accommodate if they are to be competitive and effective.
Example: Build your global experiences and your credential in dealing with diverse work forces and
customer bases. Pursue international work as both a welcome aspect of a successful practice and an
important component of your ability to stay current.
The cultural differences that exist among organizational units are analogous to those which exist
among people of differing backgrounds. Experiences, values, nurturing, friends, assimilation, and
other factors are at work. They need to be addressed by consultants, not by diversity specialists.
12. KNOWLEDGE ASSIMILATION/
MANAGEMENT APPLICATION
"Knowledge management" is a buzz word attached to a very real need: The requirement that front-line
people have the information they need to be responsive and competitive at the magical "moment of
truth." In addition, knowledge makes too many stops without any value being attached to it along the
way.
The flood of information besieging the modem organization is like a river at flood crest about to
enmesh the surrounding plain. Too much information that does not have the catalyst for conversion
into knowledge is as unproductive and stifling as too little information. The ability to help companies
gather, analyze, add value to, and-most of all-provide the right information at the right time in the
right amount to the right person is invaluable.
We all deal in information. Too few of us deal in knowledge, and fewer still in wisdom. There is a
world of opportunity awaiting the transfer of useful and practical knowledge to point-of-action
employees and customers.
Action: Organize the basic processes you now use to gather, analyze, and disseminate information for
your clients into a learnable, transferable, high-value proposition. You already have the procedure;
you simply need to position it correctly.
Example: When a firm's automated voice systems take over 90 percent of the incoming inquiries, the
remaining 10 percent doesn't simply go to a reduced staff with the same skills as the old one. These
questions are all exceptions, and will require highly skilled respondents with access to varied
information sources.
There are certainly more than a dozen new and novel sources of future business acquisition. These
are only my candidates to trigger your own think ing. Your business of the future should be more
profitable, less wearying, more exciting, less demanding physically, and constantly evolving. Why?
Because that's what Ultimate Consultants do.
Among my more unusual and unexpected clients have been police departments, women's groups, other
consulting firms, rredical practices, auto dealerships, entrepreneurial start-ups, and trade associations
of animal husbandry, fishing, medical devices, tire retreaders, forging, music stores, yacht brokers,
and other assorted and sundry groups.
The commonality was only that I was wise enough to respond and recognize how to adapt my basic
strengths and generic processes to their situational challenges and specific needs.
My policy is that anyone I can help is a legitimate prospect, and I believe I can help anyone until I'm
proved wrong.
-AW
The twelve new sources of clients for you to consider:
Source #1: Global Alliances
Source #2: Remote Learning
Source #3: Entrepreneurs
Source #4: Universities and Higher Education
Source #5: The Professions: Medical/Legal/Accounting
Source #6: Mature High-Tech
Source #7: The Retired, The Recreating, The Hobbyist
Source #8: Behavior Modification
Source #9: Life Balance
Source #10: Sales Skills
Source #11: Cultural Accommodation
Source #12: Knowledge Assimilation/ Management Application

CHAPTER
The Process of Selective Acquisition
How to Reject and Abandon Business in Order to Grow
any of you will empathize with what I am about to tell you: When I first
began in this profession, I wasn't proud. I would accept any business I could. I worked
on consulting projects for $5,000, delivered speeches for $750, and gladly sold $10
pamphlets and manuals. I was determined to put bread on the table, and I had only
about six months of cash in all the world.
I found to my early happiness that I could stay busy this way, and that elation lasted only as long as
it took for me to "grok"' the fact that it wasn't important: to stay busy-it was important to make a
profit. Taking the time to sell and deliver one consulting project a month worth $35,000 was a lot
better than $5,000 for one a week. And a single $5,000 speech every other month certainly beat one a
week. I'd only have to sell one $120 cassette album to take care of a dozen pamphlet sales.
And, in every case, the profit was superior in the larger sale.
The secret to profitable and effective business acquisition is a strategy not to accept all business and
to be willing to actually walk away from certain business. I call this strategy "selective acquisition."
This business is neither about how much you make nor about how much you deliver. It's only about
what you keep. I know that may sound mercenary, but we can't help others, can't help our family, can't
take risks in our profession unless we ensure a healthy profit. Every single week I receive emails and
calls from people who inquire about working with me as a coach because, after ten or more years as a
consultant, they're still struggling. Anyone who has been in this profession for over a decade and
cannot buy what he desires, support the lifestyle she cherishes, and provide for loved ones in the
manner he or she seeks is failing.
And that failure is not from insufficient business; it's from the wrong kind of business.
THE TEN VERY GOOD REASONS
FOR REJECTING PROSPECTIVE BUSINESS
Most of you reading this book have established brands, gained a repute, and have a trove of
testimonials, successful experiences, and references that will draw prospects to you. But not every
prospect is a good prospect for your practice.
You have as much obligation as the prospective client to determine whether or not the relationship
makes sense for you. You are not a hired hand. You are a potential collaborator. You are entitled to
consider your own interests-assuming you truly understand what they are.
Here are the reasons I've found that comprise a template for determining when potential business
should be turned down2 by the consultant.
1. The Requirements Are Too Labor Intensive
Some clients will demand that you be on site at their beck and call. Some organizations have
numerous, remote sites, which take forever to visit. There are buyers who require unending reports,
summaries, rewrites, and synopses.
The high-value proposition in our profession is to produce dramatic and tangible results that meet
the buyer's objectives (improve the client's condition). The low-value proposition is showing up to be
a part of the team and an implementer.
2. The Fees Are Too Low
Even veteran consultants tend to look for "door openers" and justify lower fees in return for the
dreaded "E" word: Exposure. Accepting low fee work means that you're taking the time away from
marketing against high fee work.
I've personally never seen a client who convinces a consultant to take a low initial fee who then
says, "You're in! Raise your fees dramatically for the balance of our work together!" Rather, they say,
"Okay, let's just keep at our current levels and there shouldn't be a problem, although we'd appreciate a
volume discount as we go on."
3. The Work Can Readily Be Delegated
Taking 100 percent of the incorrect work is dumb when you can take 25 to 76 percent of the work and
not be involved at all. Personally conducting one hundred interviews or twenty-five focus groups
around the country doesn't save you the money of avoiding subcontractors. It costs you the money of
tying up all of your available marketing time.
Be willing to accept less of the pie in return for being able to roam around the bakery. Use
subcontractors and slightly diminish immediate profit in order to maximize higher long-term profit.
4. The Work Doesn't Add to Your Learning and, Hence, Your Value
We are paid to learn, which increases our value, which enables us to charge more, which provides still
greater learning. This is a wonderful cycle to be caught up in.
Unfortunately, we tend to settle into the "success trap" and continue to do what we've always done,
which we could do blindfolded. There is no learning, no growth, and consequently no value
enhancement. Turn down, subcontract, or refer business that doesn't help you to grow in some manner.
5. The Buyer Is Problematic
Strange buyers make for terrible clients, because those behaviors don't change just because a proposal
has been signed. If a buyer is argumentative, dishonest, unethical, perpetually late, misleading, and/or
otherwise unpleasant, don't enter into a collaborative relationship.
Lousy buyers will eat up your time, make unreasonable demands, and fail to honor and respect your
legitimate needs. Therefore, they consume inordinate amounts of time that should be spent elsewhere.
Just ask anyone who's wasted weeks trying to collect money that should have been easily paid at the
outset.
6. There Is Significant Risk
Some projects entail variables you can't influence, people you can't control, and factors you can't
anticipate. High-risk projects will drain your energy as you attempt to preserve your reputation and
promises.
Although I know some consultants who actually specialize in high-risk (near bankruptcy)
turnaround work, any firm that is having trouble paying its bills, or staying out of court, is not a good
candidate for fiscal bliss.
"Negative branding" occurs when you are associated with any kind of fiasco in any way. No one gains
credit by stating, "Well, if it weren't for me, they would have gone under even faster."
7. There May Be an Unsavory Connection with Your Career
Do you really want to work with a firm that downsized 50,000 employees because of poor executive
decisions, or with one that polluted the environment and chooses not to own up to its accountability?
You can become "tarred" in working with shady businesses and questionable practices. I wouldn't
want to have been a consultant advising human resources on policy and procedure during the headline-
grabbing sexual harassment episodes at Astra Pharmaceuticals, for example.
BEST PRACTICES
As a management consultant working mostly in quality, safety, and environmental compliance in the
marine industry, my "sales" involve calling on presidents of shipping companies and offering to assist
in program implementations, repairs, and audits.
My most effective "sales" technique is to tour the ship(s) and conduct an informal audit/inspection. I
bring a camera with me and take pictures of the (sometimes glaring) deficiencies and safety
violations. Subsequently, I informally meet with the president and (using the pictures) describe the
status of the ships. I also describe the plan of action that I would develop and execute to restore the
ships to acceptable standards. Since these people rarely personally tour the ship, it's usually an
eyeopener.
-Eugene A. Razzetti, CMC

8. You Will Be Typecast
If you find yourself taking on the same type of business consistently, there's probably a good reason
for it: You've become known as a communications expert, or a workshop leader, or a facilitator, or a
mergers authority. That's fine if you want to specialize, but specialization does not lead to maximum
profitability.
Your goal should be to stay "light on your feet" so that you can adjust to changes in the economy,
technology, society, and business ethos. Reject business that further and further paints you into a
narrow corner of the profession.
9. There Are No Clear Objectives or Metrics
As a successful and reputable practitioner, some buyers will approach you with a fait accompli, asking
you to help out in a vague area or a nebulous fashion. This often appears to be "found money," since
there was no marketing and there is no arguing over fees.
But if there are no clear goals and no measures of progress, you've been paid to enter the La Brea
Tar Pits and the next sight you see is likely to be a saber-toothed tiger at about five hundred feet
underground. What seems like "easy money" rarely is.
10. You Just Don't Like the Smell, Sound, or Feel of It
Go with your gut. There are people and environments that will give you very bad vibes. Your gut
instinct at this stage of your career is an awfully good bet. If you don't like it, don't do it.
Consultants are sometimes hired to be the scapegoat, the public enemy, and the executive excuse.
There are no objectives involved other than that. No matter how much you're being paid, who needs
such grief, hostility, and stress? That is not the road to becoming the Ultimate Consultant.
Every piece of unpleasant business will affect your ability to manage good business. At this stage of
your career, there's no reason for accepting this as a "necessary evil." Eschew bad business, now and
forever.
Turning down prospective business is relatively simple, although you may have to bite on a bullet
or take a strong drink. But it's child's play compared to ending existing business.
THE FIVE VERY GOOD REASONS FOR
PULLING THE PLUG ON EXISTING BUSINESS
This is the area that drives most consultants to rend their garments-how can you give up business you
took so long to find, worked so hard to close, and whose money clears the bank?! It's not difficult,
because hanging on to too much "stuff" just creates drag, friction, and fatigue.
In addition to the ten reasons above, most of which can be applied to existing business as well, here
are five more reasons to cut the cord, pull the plug, and say "Ciao."
1. Business That Is Barely Profitable
This seems like a no-brainer, but we tend to keep business out of loyalty, inertia, and sloth. This is
stuff that has been around since we originally needed to put bread on the table, and we're reluctant to
abandon the security blanket.
The point, of course, is that we've never raised prices and can no longer reasonably do so. These
have become friendships rather than client relationships, and who raises prices on a friend? Refer this
business to someone else who needs the work and who will, ironically, probably pay it more attention
and do a better job. It doesn't mean you're a bad person.
2. Clients Who Provide No Upside Potential
You want as clients large firms with a surfeit of lateral potential. Or if you work with smaller firms,
then you need a coherent, finite project. If the firm's size, finances, or prospects seem to prohibit
expansion business, then don't take on minor projects after your initial foray.
Don't hang around doing "busy work" or small time stuff. Worse than the image and the small
payment, it's a tremendous time waster. No, it's not better than doing "nothing" if "nothing" can be
construed as sitting around planning about how you're going to penetrate Microsoft or Sony.
3. You're Repeating Yourself
If you're giving workshops to the same people on slightly different subjects (or you find yourself
straining to create new material), you're coaching the same executives on different (barely) issues, or
you're so familiar that the employees simply consider you a part of the management team, it's time to
leave.
These are usually "make work" assignments that the buyer and you conjure up to perpetuate the
relationship. Instead of making work, you should make yourself scarce.
4. Client Conditions Significantly Change
We've all been in the midst of consulting nirvana when our buyer is transferred, the budgets are cut,
the competition steals the thunder, or the basic premises prove invalid. It may be time to cut and run.
I don't mean that you leave the client in the lurch, but I do suggest that you approach the buyer to
point out that the original objectives are no longer relevant or possible to achieve. (You can't increase
sales when six top people are recruited away and take their customers with them.) Work out a
financial settlement, if needed, but don't try to make the goat fly. You will just have an unhappy goat.
S. Your Conditions (Strategies) Significantly Change
Many consultants change their strategy in line with changing times. But they are weighed down by the
mass of the existing client base, which they can't bring themselves to jettison. New strategies (and
include in here new life style goals and personal expectations) require new client configurations.
No matter what you're being paid, you can't spend more time with the family if you retain clients
who demand excessive travel. No matter what the fee, you won't become known as a strategist if your
client base inadvertently builds your brand as that of human resources consultant. No matter how
lucrative the deal, you won't be able to work on business growth if you're locked into the IT
department.
Like the kid trying to cross the "monkey bars" in the playground, you don't make headway by holding
on with two hands to the position you currently occupy. You must, counterintuitively, let go with one
hand if you are to reach out and advance your position.
It's difficult to shed a client-a butterfly's metamorphosis is a day at the beach in comparison. The
latter is genetically engineered and the former scrapes and claws against every tenet we've been raised
to believe. But it's important to do so if you want to acquire dramatic, high-profit, and expansionary
business.
You can't reach out until you let go.

MANAGING NEW BUSINESS POTENTIAL AND PROFIT
"Selective acquisition" also means taking on business on your terms. We compromise far too much in
this profession. No patient, to my knowledge, asks a doctor to negotiate fees.' Lawyers, or at least
good ones, don't accept client fee resistance. Universities, by and large, suggest that you get a loan,
earn a scholarship, or work at a job, but the tuition is the tuition and it must be paid from some source.
We allow ourselves to be intimidated, bullied, cajoled, lured, and otherwise compromised by the
siren song of the buyer dangling a piece of business before our eyes. I don't know about you, but I'm
not a carp and I can't breathe underwater. Take away my oxygen-my profits-and I die.
This situation occurred when I was a less experienced salesperson (still selling outplacement
services). I had an appointment with the HR person at Remington Products. The individual I was
supposed to meet was delayed for about forty-five minutes. While I sat patiently in the lobby, I
watched five salespeople come into the lobby and ask to see the decision maker/buyer for his or her
particular product or service.
Each time the person came out and asked the salesperson to "make your pitch" right there on the spot!
I listened to people try to sell temporary services, copiers, manufacturing parts, and several other
products. None of them managed to get another meeting or make a sale. By this time I was quaking in
my shoes. The HR director with whom I was scheduled to meet finally came out and, much to my
relief, walked me back to his office! Phew!
-Julie Jansen, Julie Jansen LLC
Successful consultants should be in a position to do more than merely pursue business and try to
land it. They should be pursuing business and accepting it on their own terms. What if the buyer has
his or her own terms? You don't understand: The buyer's terms revolve around the output side-the
value of the improvement delivered with your assistance. The terms you seek are on the input side-the
fees to be paid, in what manner, on what dates, and with what margins for you.
The notion of managing new business (If it's old business, it's already too late; if you didn't do it
right the first time, it's money left on the table) and its resultant profitability should be no more alien
to you than managing a project to ensure it finishes on time with the results delivered. Why is it we're
so enamored with client project management and so indifferent to our own fiscal management?
Here are some areas to be vigilant in if you are to acquire the right clients, with the right terms, at
the right times.
Fee Amount. Always offer the client options with increased value propositions and escalating fees.'
It's not the purpose of this book to discuss fee setting per se, but you must be willing to charge a
strong return on investment (ROI) quotient. In other words, if you're providing the client with $5
million of savings on an annualized basis, just 3 percent of the first year savings alone is $150,000. If
you're providing a $1 million executive in a $400 million dollar company with a better team of direct
reports, isn't that worth, say, 5 percent of the annual gross ($200,000) or 10 percent of his salary
($100,000)?
You can wrench your arm out of joint by patting yourself on the back and congratulating the person in
the mirror on the "big hit." You're better off using that arm to guide your hand to sharpen your pencil
and ensure that the "big hit" becomes "big profit" right at the outset.
Payment Intervals. Offer discounts for full payment upon commencement. Short of that, condense the
elapsed time in which payments take place. For example, even though the project may be expected to
last nine months, there is nothing wrong with asking for 50 percent on acceptance and 50 percent in 60
days. What's the worse that can happen? You'll usually compromise on 50 percent on acceptance and
50 percent in 90 days, still better than waiting for nine months.
Accountabilities and "Fail Safe." Specify clearly what your client's (buyer's) responsibilities are, what
yours are, and what you share jointly. For example, include a clear statement in your proposal that
either of you will immediately notify the other of any new development or information gathered that
significantly impacts the scope or progress of the project. The client must tell you if a proposed
divestiture or acquisition, for instance, has arisen that imperils morale, hiring, resource allocation, and
so on. You must tell the client if you learn by chance that three top performers are interviewing with a
competitor.'
Internal Logistical Support and a "Virtual Team." While I don't pose as a prima donna, I do request of
the client that certain provisions be made that would be offered to any visiting professional colleague.
I ask for a private office or cubicle when I'm onsite; for a phone that can accommodate my computer
modem; for "light" secretarial support (scheduling interviews, providing conference rooms, typing up
an agenda); and proper identification for unescorted movement through the facility and between
floors. These modest, approved support mechanisms will save you time and expenses right from the
outset.
Missed Payment Deadlines. If your fee is being paid on a scheduled basis, and/or if expense payments
are due, do not allow long "grace" periods. Often these payments are sitting on someone's desk who is
on vacation or overburdened with "higher priority" work. (I recently found that an overdue check had
never been issued because a temporary secretary had responded to an inquiry from accounts payable
by telling them that I had already been paid, so they cancelled the requisition!) On your invoices, note
that all fees and reimbursements are due on receipt, not at 30 days, net or even less. In that manner, if
you do choose to allow a thirty-day grace period, the clock can start from your invoice date and not
thirty days thereafter. When cash you are due is not in your bank account, you are losing money.
Consider the following additional subtleties to accelerate payments:
Include your federal tax ID number on all invoices and statements so that accounts payable does
not have to take the time to request it
Include a self-addressed, stamped envelope or a FedEx air bill with your account number and
request it be used for the check conveyance
Find a contact in accounts payable who supports your client's department and send bills to that
person by name with a cover note
Send an email version of the bill with hard copy to follow; this sometimes starts the payment
process faster
Keep copies of all receipts submitted for expense reimbursement so that, if the originals are
misplaced, you can quickly supply replacements
The manner in which you manage a client relationship at the outset will establish the tone for the
long-term relationship. Be fair, but be firm. Don't forget, this is a peer-level partnership.
Provide clear explanation of any unusual items on expense reimbursements, for example, if you
travel first class but bill for coach, or if you used limos because taxis were unavailable or
unreliable, so that there is no need for a series of questions and responses about individual items
When appropriate, simply build in expenses and include them in your fee, so that numerous
invoices are unnecessary-6
"Selective acquisition" includes the establishment of policies and understandings that will enable
you to maximally perform your job as well as speed payments and maximize profits.
THE MERCEDES-BENZ SYNDROME
The most fascinating aspect of selective acquisition for rae has been my gradual comprehension of
how much people expect to get what they pay for. This is as applicable in the business realm and in
the selection of consultants as it is anywhere.
When someone purchases an $80,000 Mercedes-Benz, they expect it to be built well, engineered
excellently, and to be a superb performing car. The interesting aspect of this expectation, however, is
that the buyer will actually work hard to realize those expectations. In some models, the Daimler-Benz
engineers dictated that the seat warmers would automatically turn themselves down or off as a safety
feature, irrespective of the fact that the driver might want the seat heated for lengthy amounts of time.
(Other cars permit indefinite warming.) It's annoying to have the seat turn itself to a lower setting on a
cold winter morning after a few minutes of driving, but the owners would generally shrug and
consider it to be a legitimate safety feature.
For years, Mercedes obstinately refused to install cup holders or a telescoping steering wheel.
Again, well-heeled customers in love with the status and cachet of a Mercedes brushed off the
intransigence as a design or safety concession. Mercedes drivers will tend to say, "This is a rough
road," while drivers of lesser cars might comment, "I'm unhappy with the car's suspension."
Here is the most efficacious way for veteran, successful consultants to raise fees. It's complex, and
you might want to turn down a corner of this page for easy future reference: If you want to raise fees,
raise fees. At this point in your career, the world is reversed and value follows fees.
People believe they get what they pay for, and they'll actually contort logic and scramble for
explanations to justify and rationalize that position. If someone saw Sir Laurence Olivier in a bad
performance, they were much more likely to believe the writing, directing, supporting cast, lighting,
or sound systems were to blame-and not the great actor. Can beluga caviar or Lafite Rothschild wine
possibly not taste excellent? You'd better clean your palate, because it can't be the product!
This same incredible human behavior holds true in consulting. Once you are successfully divorced
from the hired hand and implementer roles and you're truly viewed as a valued counselor and advisor
(you're the Rand think tank and not an Ace Hardware Store), your value will actually increase as your
fee increases. That's right: Fees don't follow value, but value follows fees that you ascend to certain
exalted and rarified Ultimate Consultant heights.
In acquiring clients, selective acquisition dictates the following:
1. Fewer clients at higher per client fees are superior to many clients at lower per client fees.
(Even if the gross billings are the same, profitability is much higher in the first instance.)
2. Attracting fewer, more lucrative clients is easier at a point in one's career when brand
recognition, successful experiences, and strong testimonials and endorsements have been created.
3. "Raising fees" means that you can charge a higher percentage of the overall value being
delivered to the client and the client will still believe that the return on investment is excellent.
This is not about fee schedules or time-based billing rates.'
4. This cycle is reinforcing. As you charge higher rates based on your repute and/or brand, you
will become more confident; you will become more in demand; and you will feel upward
pressure to raise fees still further.
Something that has the potential to sneak up and snatch a sale at just about any time is the crossing of
the line between confidence and cockiness. It can happen to anyone and usually happens when
business is going very well.
I remember telling my wife, after a meeting with it prospect, "If I don't get this client or it takes a
while for him to sign on, it's because I rushed the process." I knew I went too fast, from introduction
to proposal.
I went too fast on the first two of the following three steps:
• Ask all the questions (really probe)
• Make them hurt
• Demonstrate my ability to be the solution
Why did I do this? I think it was because I was "or top of the world." Business was very good and
growing. I was having a hard time making my way through the list of referrals on my desk, and my
subconscious assumed this prospect was meeting with me because he was ready to buy.
I feel fortunate that I recognized it immediately. It is now one of my forefront issues before every
meeting. It taught me to put together an (internal) agenda for every meeting. I now know exactly what
information I want to get from each prospect, and I make sure I get it. I know exactly what I want to
say to determine the prospect's true wants and needs.
-John Martinka, President, Business Resource Group, Inc.
The Mercedes-Benz Syndrome creates an upward draft because buyers will believe that you're good
and will, as Mercedes drivers, dismiss or rationalize perceived "flaws." You will engender far greater
benefit of the doubt. Your positions and conjecture will be accepted more readily. Your risks will be
viewed as more prudent. Your methodology will meet less resistance.
To fully exploit the Mercedes-Benz Syndrome so that your business acquisition process can be as
targeted and efficient as possible, consider the following tactics:
Burnish Your Public Image. Your website, materials, press kit, products, and other public, tangible
manifestations of "who you are" have to be absolutely first rate. The case has to be cleaned and
polished. Too many successful consultants allow their websites and collateral materials to become
obsolete and faded.
The client is the one afflicted with the Mercedes-Benz Syndrome, but the consultant is the one who is
the carrier.
Lead with Your Most Powerful Engine. Prominently display and promote your successful
engagements, testimonial letters, and endorsements. Within non-disclosure constraints, publicize your
client list. Wealthy and successful people buy only the best. Well-run and successful companies do the
same. Successful people like to be around similarly successful people. Provide a test drive and
demonstrate what the car is capable of doing.
Create and Sustain the Cachet. Create, nurture, and extend your "brands" to the maximum extent.,'
When CEOs, desperate for strategy help, yell, "Get McKinsey," they aren't concerned about price,
competitive quotes, or the McKinsey methodology. What they want is that brand in the door as soon
as possible. Auto companies create strategic brand advertising. Consultants must create strategic
brand awareness through publishing, speaking, interviews, word-of-mouth, and other "campaign"
alternatives.
If prospective buyers perceive that you are the "Mercedes of the business," then you will have short-
cut the early part of the credibility and relationship building processes and will have obviated the need
for any fee discussions. When someone says, "Get me Alan Weiss," then my value has already been
accepted and my suggestions-even if seemingly bizarre or counterintuitive-will be supported. The
only thing left to decide is just how high my fee should be.
Even during economic downturns, the high-end luxury car market thrives. The top-of-the-line
Mercedes, Ferraris, and Aston Martins will sell out their production runs. Top-of-the-line consultants-
whom I've been calling "Ultimate Consultants"-will similarly thrive, because high-end buyers will
insist on believing that they will get what they pay for.
It's up to us not to let them down.

FROM MY TIME IN THE TRENCHES:
CHAPTER 10
Not all business is good business, and this becomes increasing true as a consultant becomes more
successful. The process of selective acquisition calls for the consultant to deliberately avoid certain
type of business (poor profitability, high risk, low learning, unpleasant buyer) and to target those that
offer maximum growth and profit. This applies also to existing business. If one has to "let go in order
to reach out," then existing business must also be culled if it does not fit into the optimal profile for
the consultant's best interests.
Longevity is not a sufficient reason to maintain a client relationship. Ironically, the probability is
high that you are also not servicing such clients in their best interest either.
Managing new business potential is another selective process wherein we are able to maximize
profit through efficiency and expense reduction, while pursuing long-term client relationships under
conditions best for our own longterm interests as well. Many consultants relax their guard and
sacrifice the power of their initial sale by allowing relationships and working conditions to default to a
non-peer-level relationship. In other words, the Rand Corporation delivers a plumber.
The Mercedes-Benz Syndrome states that buyers expect to get what they pay for. Hence, and in an
almost Alice-in-the-Looking-Glass world, at some stage in our careers value begins to follow fee
rather than the traditional converse. So while high value generated higher fees for us to sustain our
growth, at a certain critical juncture our rising fees justify higher expected value in the eyes of the
buyer. This is a branding or repute phenomenon which occurs in almost every highly successful
career, but which is often missed.
The primary fuel for selective acquisition is the bizarre but true fact that, at a given critical juncture in
one's success trajectory, value will follow fee rather than fee following value. When that occurs,
business acquisition becomes both easier than ever and more lucrative than ever if one understands the
nature and application of the phenomenon.
FROM MY TIME IN THE TRENCHES:
THE BOOK
We create our own targets of opportunity, ideally based on market need that exists or that we create;
on competencies we possess or can develop; and on passions which drive us. The generalist has more
opportunities, per force, than the specialist. However, either can create specialized and customized
"attacks" on high-profile targets of opportunity.
The ideal acquisition posture occurs when prospects approach you, improving the psychology and
dynamic of the sale. But successful consultants, more so than neophytes and average practitioners, are
able to attack, flank, and/or infiltrate a target account, because they have the resources, time, and
experience to do so.
Relationship building is largely about understanding human behavior and seeking to

influence it. Subtleties and nuance are more powerful than brute force, so that gentle techniques
such as controlling a discussion, finding emotional triggers, and empathic listening become
important competencies. However, it is equally important to take a hard stand against
unacceptable behaviors and unappealing prospects.
We've heard every objection under the sun. In a macro sense, they all are about "no hurry," "no
time," "no money," and/or "no trust." All can be readily countered, particularly by using the
knowledge of the common objections to visualize the future and prepare the proper response. The
client's own momentum can be reversed and used in our favor through techniques such as turnaround
questions and direct challenges.
Unlike objections, which can be forecast, there are current and new busi ness acquisition sources we
must constantly monitor and mine in order to ensure as eclectic and comprehensive a prospect
pipeline as possible.
I worked for Calgon (the specialty water treatment company) for five years on an annual six-figure
retainer renewable each year. I helped them when they were owned by Merck, assisted in their sale tc
English China Clay, and helped them as a component of that new owner.
At the conclusion of the fourth year, as was our habit, I sat down with the CEO to determine our goals
for the following year. At the conclusion of the meeting I said, as I had each year before, "Are the
same arrangements acceptable?"
"No," said the CEO, "not this time."
I was aghast, having thought all was well. After all, I wasn't raising the retainer, only asking for the
identical arrangements as each year prior, which I thought were equitable.
"This time," said the CEO, "raise the amount, because we're not paying you what you're worth to us."
The amount was a 3.0 percent increase in my retainer fee.
As far as I can recall, that was the last time I was ever speechless in front of a client.
-AW
The business is about influencing a buyer, and a buyer is someone who can produce a check on his
or her own volition. Committees are never buyers. You can, however, build critical mass and
momentum among key advisors. Providing value early and for free is an intelligent strategy. "You
have to give to get."
Since the marketplace for consulting services is finite, growth will usually take place at someone
else's expense. Even "locked in" relationships can be breeched. Sometimes it's a matter of maintaining
high visibility while waiting for the appropriate opportunity or for someone else's bad news. "Low
hanging fruit," however, is a relatively easy approach to gaining; immediate increased market share
from others.
The more successful you are for the longer time, the easier it is to acquire both the wrong kind of
business and the right kind of business. Why settle for the former when you can select the latter?
The most economical "new" business is repeat business. "Thinking of the fourth sale first" means
considering a client relationship as an organic and longlived process, not as a finite project or "event."
Trust is best developed through intelligent "pushback" rather than mindless acquiescence and
avoidance of problems. The best tactic to fight back against those trying to steal your own market
share is the "discount principle" of making yourself virtually prohibitively expensive to replace by any
other source.
Finally, selective acquisition requires that you reject inappropriate business, cull poor performing
existing business, manage new accounts rigorously from the outset to maximize profit, and understand
that people believe they get what they pay for.
Consequently, at some point that you must be able to discern for yourself, your value will actually
follow your fees as you escalate them. And that is the ultimate position for the Ultimate Consultant.
Index
Table of Contents
Introduction xiii
Acknowledgments xv
CHAPTER Identifying Targets of Opportunity 1
Three Conditions Essential to Successful Selling
Generalizing and Specializing: The View from Contrarian Land
Customized Assaults: When There Is a Single Target Too Appealing to Resist
Strategies for Isolating and Hitting New Targets of Opportunity
From My Time in the Trenches,
How to Prepare for Success in Acquiring New Business
The Frontal Attack
The Flanking Maneuver
Infiltration
When the Buyer Comes to You (Build It, and They Will Come)
How to Build Relationships with Economic Buyers
Behavioral Predispositions: Funny Things That Buyers Do
Controlling the Discussion (Killing Me Softly with His Song ...) 43
Emotional Targeting
Drawing a Line in the Sand for Unacceptable Behaviors
C H A P T E R - Rebutting Objections Once and for All
The Four Major Areas of Objections
Rebutting Arguments in the Four Basic Areas
Visualizing the Future
Sample Objections and Rebuttals
C H APT E R - - Sixteen Great Acquisition Sources
The First Four
The Second Four
The Third Four
The Fourth Four
C H A P T E R -- Winning Friends and Influencing People
Providing Value Early and for Free
Building Momentum Among.Key Advisors
Dealing with Committees
Overcoming "Threat" Factors
C H APT E R _ Gaining Market Share from Others
Harvesting "Low Hanging Fruit"
Creating High Visibility
Waiting for Someone Else's Bad News
More Techniques to Trespass on Others'
Property
C H APT E R - Guaranteeing the Ultimate Business: Repeat Business
What Is the Fourth Sale?
The Three Keys to Cementing Relationships Rather Than Selling Business
Developing Trust Through Pushback
The Present-Value Discount Principle in Action

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What are some techniques discussed for acquiring new business targets?

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How can relationships be built with economic buyers?

How can relationships be built with economic buyers?

How to

ALAN WEISS, Ph.D.

Author, The Ultimate Consultant

To L.T. Weiss, always a hero.

Other Works by ALAN WEISS

The Ultimate Consultant Series:

How to Establish a Unique Brand in the Consulting Profession (2001)

The Ultimate Consultant (2001)

Getting Started in Consulting (2000)

The Unofficial Guide to Power Management (2000)

How to Market, Establish a Brand, and Sell Professional Services (2000)

Good Enough Isn't Enough (1999)

How to Write a Proposal That's Accepted Every Time (1999)

Money Talks (1998)

Million Dollar Consulting (1992; rev ed. 1998, 2002)

Our Emperors Have No Clothes (1995)

Best Laid Plans (1991)

Managing for Peak Performance (1990)

The Innovation Formula (with Mike Robert, 1988)

How to Maximize Fees

Raising the Bar

Leadership Every Day

Doing Well by Doing Right

The Consultant's Treasury

The Odd Couple®

Alan Weiss on Marketing

Alan Weiss on Product Development

Balancing Act: Blending Life, Work, and Relationships (electronic)

The Consultant's Craft

What's Working in Consulting (editor)

CHAPTER Identifying Targets of Opportunity 1

Three Conditions Essential to Successful Selling 2

Generalizing and Specializing: The View from Contrarian Land 7

Customized Assaults: When There Is a Single Target Too Appealing to Resist 12

Strategies for Isolating and Hitting New Targets of Opportunity 14

From My Time in the Trenches, 17

CHAPTER How to Prepare for Success in Acquiring New Business 19

The Frontal Attack 20

The Flanking Maneuver 25

From My Time in the Trenches 34

CHAPTER How to Build Relationships with Economic Buyers 35

Behavioral Predispositions: Funny Things That Buyers Do 36

Controlling the Discussion (Killing Me Softly with His Song ...) 43

Drawing a Line in the Sand for Unacceptable Behaviors 50

From My Time in the Trenches 51

The Four Major Areas of Objections 55

Rebutting Arguments in the Four Basic Areas 57

Visualizing the Future 65

Sample Objections and Rebuttals 66

From My Time in the Trenches 69

C H APT E R - - Sixteen Great Acquisition Sources 71

Why Go Around the Block to Get Next Door?

The First Four 73

The Second Four 78

The Third Four 83