Winning In The Invisible Market: A Guide To Selling Professional Services In Turbulent Times
Unlike your counterparts in the capital goods arena, service providers are not groomed at an early age to sell. Whereas capital goods salespeople move out of sales to join the executive ranks, service professionals become senior executives by taking on more revenue responsibility as their careers mature.At its core, providing a service means helping. You became a service professional because you wanted to use your expertise to help clients achieve their objectives. Although you are well paid, client appreciation is the intrinsic compensation that brings the most career satisfaction. When you are forced to deal with people who don't know or appreciate you, it causes anxiety, uncertainty and even anger.For many business development is a necessary evil that allows you to do what you enjoy most, helping. In these difficult times, you spend most of your time worrying about selling instead of helping clients. You are asking questions like these: ·How am I going to make my numbers this year?  ·How will the market find out about our services?  ·How do I get access to decision-makers?  ·How do I convince prospective clients that ours is the best service?  ·Why aren't they moving on our proposal?  ·Why aren't they returning my phone calls?The objective of this book is to help you sell less, win more and exercise more control over this critical part of your career. My premise is that the more you are aligned with prospective clients, the more likely you are to win their business.The more you know about how and why the service buyer makes the decision to use a certain service or the decision to choose a particular service provider, the more you can align your message and service solution to fit the client’s need, situation and decision-making process. This is more important than ever in these turbulent times.