The first thing you need to keep in mind when considering outsourcing your Professional Services sale, is that no one can replace your Top Producing or Lead Consultant. They are required to close business. At the end of the day, they are the product your customers are buying. The one challenge that Consultants and Professional Service folks face that can really twist the sale into knots is the fact that the often need to sell the deal to the buyer and then turn around and put on the delivery and then service the account. This sometimes requires two completely different skill sets and two completely different postures.
We realize it’s cliché, but for Professional Services Firms time literally is money. When outsourcing sales, especially outsourcing sales for professional services or building your own sales machine, your top priority needs to be maximizing the bandwidth of your top producers. What follows, is a little deeper dive into the complexities and challenges, as well as some approaches you can take to address the issue that in many cases for professional service firms, Seller and Deliverer are one in the same.
Seller and Deliverer are the Same Person – One of the largest challenges in scaling sales in a Professional Services Firm is that Seller and Deliverer are often the same person. This creates multiple issues:
- As a seller/deliverer – you are tasked with selling yourself. If you are too much of an expert you can come off arrogant, self-absorbed, and self-serving, and the buyer does not want to work with you on the delivery side. If you are too humble, you are not an expert. Catch 22.
Challenge: The Seller needs to position the Deliverer to be a Trusted Resource.
Solution: You can leverage a sale rep (call them an engagement consultant or account rep) to sell your deliverers exceptional greatness. You need to support your rep with digital content in your deliverer’s voice (educational webcasts, highlights of live speaking events) and video testimonials that support those claims. Supply your inside rep or outsourcing sales rep with success stories that support the results your team can produce.
Benefits: The seller can now generate anticipation and excitement around the first meeting with your Top Producer and sell as hard as they want to without sounding arrogant. The sellers excitement about the Top Producers talent will translate into excitement for the customer.
- As a seller/deliverer – The buyer is buying you (and your team). Once you get the deal done, especially in this economy, the buyer expects more of your time than ever to get the initial project of the ground. Handing deals over to other team members to service is not as easy as it once was. The buyer wants the advantages of direct involvement of the top producer, at the expense of you growing your own business. That crushes your top producers sales bandwidth to generate more business, so the peaks and valleys are more pronounced than ever before.
Challenge: Keep your Top Producers pipe filled when they get sucked into delivery.
Solution: Use a lead sourcing rep equipped with a script that asks open-ended questions around the business pains your solution solves. Essentially, take the initial light discovery your top producers would do and pass that process to a less expensive resource. The questions need to be smart and demonstrate that as an organization, you understand the potential client’s pain. As you are getting started, keep that outsourced lead gen rep targeting companies that are in similar verticals and decision makers that you already have a proven track record making happy. Supply that lead sourcing rep with short case studies and success stories as collateral.
Benefits: Your Top Producer gets rid of about 80% of the time required to generate and initially qualify new business and can save backend delivery time also. When the Top Producer does start to engage, you also have the opportunity very early in the relationship with the client to prove your own internal communication is fluid and the customer will be getting serviced by a team and not just the Top Producer. This sets precedent downstream, so you will deliver the solution for the client without the Top Producer needing to be involved in every step of delivery.
- As a seller, you need to close the deal; and as delivery, you need to bill yourself and your team at 2X to 3X of salary. This can be a tough conversation for the “deliverer” to have.
Challenge: Closing the business and getting top dollar without encroaching on “deliverer” credibility.
Solution: Staff a Senior Sales/Sales Account Rep to manage the logistics of closing of the business selling ROI/Opportunity and presenting the initial offer to give your Top Producer a little distance. Leverage this rep to deal with parts of the “commercial relationship”. There is then a clear division of responsibility.
Benefits: Keep margins up with the following additional benefits: First, the initial cost can be presented by the sales rep. If there is an issue with the cost, the Top Producers knows this before he enters into that conversation. Second, the sales rep can take the first pass at negotiating the price and sell the value of the top producer again, if necessary, to keep your margins up. When the Top Producer comes in for the final negotiations, if you choose to discount, they are the hero and have avoided most of the mildly adversarial parts of the negotiation. Finally, the sales rep can deal with chunks of logistics like Non-Disclosure Agreements and navigating purchasing.
So to summarize, the job to be done in addressing the challenges of Seller and Deliverer as one in the same, is not to remove the Top Producer from the close. It is to remove the Top Producer from the parts of the sales cycle that can be done with a more cost effective resource and to support the Top Producer strategically to maximize your margins. In our next blog in this series, we will tackle the challenge of how Professional Services Sales can educate the customer without taking up a great deal of the top Producers time and energy.
The first thing you need to keep in mind when considering outsourcing Professional Services sale, is that no one can replace your Top Producing or Lead Consultant. They are required to close business. At the end of the day, they are the product your customers are buying. The one challenge that Consultants and Professional Service folks face that can really twist the sale into knots is the fact that the often need to sell the deal to the buyer and then turn around and put on the delivery and then service the account. This sometimes requires two completely different skill sets and two completely different postures.
We realize it’s cliché, but for Professional Services Firms time literally is money. When outsourcing sales, especially outsourcing sales for professional services or building your own sales machine, your top priority needs to be maximizing the bandwidth of your top producers. What follows, is a little deeper dive into the complexities and challenges, as well as some approaches you can take to address the issue that in many cases for professional service firms, Seller and Deliverer are one in the same.
Seller and Deliverer are the Same Person – One of the largest challenges in scaling sales in a Professional Services Firm is that Seller and Deliverer are often the same person. This creates multiple issues:
- As a seller/deliverer – you are tasked with selling yourself. If you are too much of an expert you can come off arrogant, self-absorbed, and self-serving, and the buyer does not want to work with you on the delivery side. If you are too humble, you are not an expert. Catch 22.
Challenge: The Seller needs to position the Deliverer to be a Trusted Resource.
Solution: You can leverage a sale rep (call them an engagement consultant or account rep) to sell your deliverers exceptional greatness. You need to support your rep with digital content in your deliverer’s voice (educational webcasts, highlights of live speaking events) and video testimonials that support those claims. Supply your inside rep or outsourcing sales rep with success stories that support the results your team can produce.
Benefits: The seller can now generate anticipation and excitement around the first meeting with your Top Producer and sell as hard as they want to without sounding arrogant. The sellers excitement about the Top Producers talent will translate into excitement for the customer.
- As a seller/deliverer – The buyer is buying you (and your team). Once you get the deal done, especially in this economy, the buyer expects more of your time than ever to get the initial project of the ground. Handing deals over to other team members to service is not as easy as it once was. The buyer wants the advantages of direct involvement of the top producer, at the expense of you growing your own business. That crushes your top producers sales bandwidth to generate more business, so the peaks and valleys are more pronounced than ever before.
Challenge: Keep your Top Producers pipe filled when they get sucked into delivery.
Solution: Use a lead sourcing rep equipped with a script that asks open-ended questions around the business pains your solution solves. Essentially, take the initial light discovery your top producers would do and pass that process to a less expensive resource. The questions need to be smart and demonstrate that as an organization, you understand the potential client’s pain. As you are getting started, keep that outsourced lead gen rep targeting companies that are in similar verticals and decision makers that you already have a proven track record making happy. Supply that lead sourcing rep with short case studies and success stories as collateral.
Benefits: Your Top Producer gets rid of about 80% of the time required to generate and initially qualify new business and can save backend delivery time also. When the Top Producer does start to engage, you also have the opportunity very early in the relationship with the client to prove your own internal communication is fluid and the customer will be getting serviced by a team and not just the Top Producer. This sets precedent downstream, so you can deliver the solution for the client without the Top Producer needing to be involved in every step of delivery.
- As a seller, you need to close the deal; and as delivery, you need to bill yourself and your team at 2X to 3X of salary. This can be a tough conversation for the “deliverer” to have.
Challenge: Closing the business and getting top dollar without encroaching on “deliverer” credibility.
Solution: Staff a Senior Sales/Sales Account Rep to manage the logistics of closing of the business selling ROI/Opportunity and presenting the initial offer to give your Top Producer a little distance. Leverage this rep to deal with parts of the “commercial relationship”. There is then a clear division of responsibility.
Benefits: Keep margins up with the following additional benefits: First, the initial cost can be presented by the sales rep. If there is an issue with the cost, the Top Producers knows this before he enters into that conversation. Second, the sales rep can take the first pass at negotiating the price and sell the value of the top producer again, if necessary, to keep your margins up. When the Top Producer comes in for the final negotiations, if you choose to discount, they are the hero and have avoided most of the mildly adversarial parts of the negotiation. Finally, the sales rep can deal with chunks of logistics like Non-Disclosure Agreements and navigating purchasing.
So to summarize, the job to be done in addressing the challenges of Seller and Deliverer as one in the same, is not to remove the Top Producer from the close. It is to remove the Top Producer from the parts of the sales cycle that can be done with a more cost effective resource and to support the Top Producer strategically to maximize your margins. In our next blog in this series, we will tackle the challenge of how Professional Services Sales can educate the customer without taking up a great deal of the top Producers time and energy.
