Four Ways Effective Listening Helps With Business Development in Professional Services

April 17, 2023 by Jim Rogers

Effective listening skills

Effective listening skills are crucial for any consultant looking to provide exceptional service and build a successful practice. When consultants actively listen to their clients, they can better understand their needs and tailor their services to meet those needs. This blog post will explore how effective listening skills help with consultative selling.

1. Build Rapport

Building rapport with the client is the first step in any successful consulting engagement. When a consultant actively listens to their client, they can build rapport by showing genuine interest in what the client says. Active listening includes asking open-ended questions and following up on the client’s responses. By doing so, the consultant can build a relationship with the client, increasing their chances of being hired for future projects.

2. Identify Needs

One of the most critical components of effective listening is identifying the client’s needs. When a consultant listens actively, they can pick up on the client’s pain points and offer solutions to those problems. Understanding the client’s needs can help the consultant position their services as the solution. This can lead to a more targeted consulting engagement and a higher chance of delivering value to the client.

3. Overcome Objections

Every consulting engagement will have complaints from the client, and effective listening skills can help overcome those objections. When a consultant actively listens to the client’s complaints, they can address them directly and offer solutions to alleviate any client’s concerns. The consultant can build trust with the client and increase their chances of delivering successful outcomes.

4. Improve Client Experience

Active listening doesn’t stop after the consulting engagement is completed. When consultants listen to their clients, they can gather feedback and use it to improve their services. Client feedback can also help consultants identify new opportunities for delivering value. By actively listening to their clients, consultants can create a better overall experience and increase client loyalty.

In conclusion, effective listening skills are crucial for any consultant looking to provide exceptional service and build a successful practice. By actively listening to clients, consultants can build rapport, identify needs, overcome objections, and improve the client experience. If you’re a consultant looking to strengthen your skills, focusing on active listening is an excellent place to start.

Building Recognition for Your Authority

December 12, 2022 by Jim Rogers

Picture of woman with speaking to an audience at a conference.

Building your authority through speaking at professional and industry conferences.

In Becoming a Seller-Doer, I introduce the RLOCK model that reflects the five stages of the client lifecycle: Recognition, Lead, Opportunity, Close, and Keep. The R is about building recognition for your professional expertise and your firm’s brand and capabilities.

Building recognition can be done in many ways: blogging, writing articles for professional or trade periodicals, speaking at conferences, or conducting webinars or lunch-and-learns.

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Laura Wernick, AIA of HMFH Architects in Boston, spent the most time talking about how “authority marketing,” as some call it, helped her generate scads of business over the decades. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Laura.

Jim: Tell me about yourself.

Laura Wernick: I’m a graduate of Cornell University. I got my Bachelor of Architecture there and then came to Boston, and I’ve been in the Boston Cambridge area ever since. I’ve been with HMFH Architects for over 25 years. I focus on educational design and how to create the best facilities for teaching and learning, primarily for students in K-12 environments.

Educational design really captured my imagination. We were working with young kids a lot, so everything we did was to stimulate their curiosity and excite them. To be able to design in a very playful and imaginative way – We had some very wondrous and special environments, which were engaging, and I fell in love with that. I also got intrigued by how schools are a piece of the community. They really are community centers.

I got very engaged in the history of school design and if schools have always been that way. There is a fascinating story to school design and how you can use it thematically to look at history, to look at lighting, to look at mechanical systems, and to look at how education has evolved over the years. And that’s my fascination with schools as a building type. It was my entry point into starting to do marketing, even before I knew that’s what I was doing. I turned my interest in school design into research and the research into, early on, some talks at small conferences. And I think for the first conference, I actually paid for my transportation and registration fee because I didn’t even know that that was important to a firm’s marketing.

I think the first place I spoke was at a conference for what, at the time, was called the Council for Education Facility Planners International, CEFPI. It’s since become the Association for Learning Environments, A4LE, but in both manifestations, it focuses on creating great environments for students.

Jim Rogers: Often, people with technical expertise who want to put it out in the world to help others like to go to their professional association to do that. Well, that’s where your competitors, peers, and colleagues are, and if you’re not taking it to where your prospective clients are, then you’re limiting your impact. Is there a talk that stood out for you that paid off or surprised you with the result you got?

Laura Wernick: Well, that first one was quite the learning experience, and I had people asking me questions that I didn’t know the answers to, so I had to learn to sharpen my game. In terms of payoff, I think it helped allow us to spread more nationally. Over time, as I attended these conferences regularly and ultimately became part of the organization’s leadership, I got invited to other places in the country to interview and participate in pursuing schools. So that was one outcome, but I can’t tie it to a single presentation. It was building that over time.

The other thing, as you said, is that there are different architects or competitors at those conferences. The advantage was we could get invited to other places in the country where these teaming partners needed our expertise. I found over time that those peers sometimes became resources for us when we were looking for consultants in a different part of the country.

Tips for Growing Your Professional Network in Person and Using LinkedIn

June 23, 2022 by Jim Rogers

Diverse people at the office party

For many professionals, networking conjures the image of a glad-handing politician, working the room with a two-hand handshake and a plastic smile. Or “eating a lot of rubber chicken,” with reference to banquet fare at your typical business luncheon. For many, networking evokes feelings of dread.

Yet, networking is an important part of the success of any business relationship.

You can develop productive relationships at business association meetings while “working the room.” You can also build relationships by being active on LinkedIn, by asking a client or neighbor for an introduction to someone who could help you, or by calling someone spontaneously to ask for business advice.

Networking often results in leads, making it a soft form of prospecting. Remember that you are networking to grow your network, but that may yield interactions with prospective clients.

When in your career to begin networking . . .

It’s best to start right away, says Judy Nitsch, PE’s retired founder of Nitsch Engineering in Boston, because it can take up to 15 years to build a useful network. She encourages you to begin building your network when you’re in your 20s, “because when you hit 35, you’re going to be a project manager and so will your cohort—they could be an owner, or they could work for a state agency, or they could be a potential teaming partner. You’ll be expected to bring in work, and if potential clients are people in your network, that will be easier.”

Nitsch points out that many of the professional societies and industry organizations, such as ULI, NAIOP, and CREW Network, have young professionals’ groups—a helpful and non-threatening way to start networking. “One year, one of our engineers who was six years out of college was chair of the Boston Society of Civil Engineers Younger Member Committee,” she says.

This young engineer was not only developing her network early, but she also was becoming known to the more senior members who were owners and at public agencies. A byproduct of attending networking events is that you can build skills that support you in other ways. It lets you practice your interpersonal skills, including your effective listening skills. If you’re just starting out, lean into your discomfort and attend at least two events a year; if you’re ready to take the next step, double that number.

You know by now that volunteering is an essential theme of this book. Joe Viscuso, SVP of Pennoni, points out that some firms will offer the opportunity for young professionals to attend events, like a business cocktail social, and no one takes them up on it. At the last minute, a partner may say, “We’ve got two extra seats at our banquet table. Who wants to go?” No one raised their hand. Joe advises, “Cancel your other plans for the evening and raise your hand for that opportunity.”

The Elevator Speech

When networking or being active in the community, it’s important to introduce yourself in an interesting way. Practicing an “elevator speech”—a familiar term describing a time-condensed introduction—is an effective way to hone your skill in introducing yourself. In networking, you’ll need three flavors of this speech: one for the non-professional (e.g., someone at church or a Chamber of Commerce meeting), one for the A/E/C professional (say, at an ASCE conference), and one for LinkedIn.

The Elevator Speech You Use When Talking to a Layperson

Andy Bounds, a communications consultant in the United Kingdom, offers some spot-on advice for composing your quick self-introduction, as paraphrased below:

First impressions drive everything. And how you introduce yourself will be other people’s first impression of you. Do you give enough thought to what this first impression will be?

In response to “what do you do?” what do you say? Most people say their job title: “I’m an accountant.” Now accountants are lovely things—I used to be one. “I’m an accountant” is not a good conversation starter.

Focus on your afters—why people are better off after you’ve done your work. Example: my intro is “I help companies sell more than they thought they could.” It’s intriguing (people are interested) and incomplete (because I haven’t said how I do it).

This means their next question is, “How do you do that?” And then the conversation flows. Much better than the alternative “I’m a consultant.” Which leads people to reply, “Between jobs, are you?”

Identify why people are better off after you’ve done your thing. Incorporate this into a one-sentence summary of your job. This will help people (and you!) see how valuable you are.

The Elevator Speech for A/E/C Professionals

Granted, if you’re in a room full of your peers at an ASCE, ASHE, or AIA event, it would be awkward to introduce yourself using Bounds’ intriguing and incomplete method. Instead, use your standard “I’m a bridge engineer for such and such a firm,” or “I’m an interior designer for an architecture firm that only does P-12 and higher ed design.” You could then add on, “What I’m working on now is getting 300 bridges inspected statewide in a mere 18 months,” or “What I’m working on now is learning to use new ceiling materials to improve classroom acoustics so kids can hear and understand their teachers.”

The third flavor of elevator speech is a written one for your LinkedIn profile summary.

LinkedIn Profile Summary (Your Written Elevator Speech)

LinkedIn continues to grow in importance to your networking efforts, so you’ll need a complete profile replete with an interesting description of yourself. To write a good LinkedIn Profile “About” section to serve as your written elevator speech, complete the following statements:

My clients are [name the industries or types of clients you serve.]
After working with me, they will achieve [name some of your “afters,” e.g., save money.]
I do this by [describe your knowledge and skill disciplines.]
I love what I do because [explain what gets you jazzed to come to work each day.]

Here is an example of a LinkedIn “About” section:

Municipal engineers count on me to help them to deliver a variety of infrastructure construction projects: underground utilities, development, commercial, and transportation. During the planning stage, I helped them obtain grant funding for their projects. There’s almost always money somewhere out there for their projects, and I can help them find it. They can then serve their citizens better by stretching their local tax dollars to the max. I learned how to find grant dollars during my 25 years working for the DOT. It’s a great feeling to take an LPA all the way through the project and get to share in their success.

There are dozens of books on the subject of networking, but here is a good one: How to Work a Room, 25th Anniversary Edition: The Ultimate Guide to Making Lasting Connections–In Person and Online by Susan RoAne.

Want to Ace your Virtual Short-List Interview? Follow These Tips to Keep the Focus on You and Your Message Instead of on the Technology.

February 10, 2021 by Jim Rogers

One year into the pandemic, MS-Teams and Zoom meetings have become the new normal for most of us. What’s more, your clients are now routinely conducting most, if not all, short-list interview presentations remotely.

More so than an in-person interview presentation, video conferencing inherently has many variables that could distract your audience, undermine your confidence, and ultimately compromise your team’s chances for the award. The variables are compounded by the number of presenters you have and how many virtual sites are involved. If you have six presenters presenting from separate locations, that’s 6x more chances something could go wrong.

With proper preparation, you can reduce the chances for such distracting problems and you can deliver a more polished and professional presentation that outclasses your competitors. If you and your team members are equally polished, then your professionalism will be all the more impressive.

In this post, you will learn techniques to make sure your technology comes off without a hitch and creates a more professional perception of you with your client. While you should check in with your “IT guy,” here are some DIY steps you can take, regardless of how much tech support you get.

Technology/Bandwidth at Home

Your office is a safe, fast, reliable place to be for an interview. That said, most of my clients have been in their home offices because of the recent surge. Home is not usually as reliable.

At home, be sure to head off any connectivity issues. First, if you can, connect your computer to your router through an ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi. Your ethernet cable will be more reliable. If your computer is within sight of the router, you may find that your 5G frequency will perform better than 2G. However, if your router is in another room, you may find 2G to be more reliable.

Reboot

If you haven’t rebooted your equipment in a while, take the time to restart your laptop, cable modem and router. Your internet service provider should have instructions on the sequence you should use. Play it safe by doing it the day before, not hours or minutes before showtime — you don’t want to get frantic the day of the presentation if you encounter an issue that takes some time to resolve.

Pause Sync

Contention for bandwidth can yield poor audio and video quality. To ensure that your video conference software isn’t competing for bandwidth, pause any backup synchronization software such as Dropbox, OneDrive, iDrive, or Google Drive. This is especially important if you do not have blazing fast internet. Then, make sure you’re not competing with other members of your household. If it can be helped (hey, lots of us have kids at home doing remote instruction), take care that they’re not downloading or streaming movies or music — or gaming!

Checklist for go time

Ask household members not to stream music and movies or play games online during the call
Close any applications not needed for the presentation
Pause any backup services
Fully charge your headset
Fully charge your laptop, or better yet, plug it in.

Sound

The key here is that your voice should be heard clearly — and it should be the only thing heard. Make sure you are close enough to your microphone. Check for ambient noise in the room, for example, a fan. If you are using two computers, make sure that you only have one microphone open and that you only have one speaker active.

Checklist for go time

Place a do not disturb sign on your door
Turn off the cell phone ringer
Mute email alerts on your computer
Mute Alexa or Siri, or whoever your personal assistant may be
Mute yourself when not speaking, so the client can hear your teammate.

Video

Even though their cameras may be off, your client wants to see your face — and your expressions: camera positioning and lighting drive that. Try to avoid having a window behind you and be sure to have a light in front of you. A selfie ring light is a good choice, but a desk lamp will do. I have a $20 desk lamp in front of me with a low wattage bulb, pointed a bit downward so I’m not blinded by it.

Proportion matters: Don’t center your face on the screen; this leaves a big open space above the top of your head, which is distracting. Vertically, your screen should show from armpit to top of cowboy hat (that’s 3 fingers above-head if you don’t have a cowboy hat!) with your eyes at 2/3 of the way up. Laterally, your face takes up the middle 30% of the screen. Put your laptop on a box or stack of books, if necessary.

Get a Quality Camera

Make sure you are happy with the quality of your camera and microphone. Many laptop cameras are grainy and hate low lighting.

For a high stakes presentation, consider an upgrade to an external HD camera with a better lens and more features, like adjustments for low lighting. I have a Logitech C920 for under $100 that has worked great for hundreds of webinars and video calls over the years. [Note: Many firms have been buying and shipping equipment upgrades directly to interview teams or are reimbursing them after the fact, because they know what is on the line … and it’s a small price to pay.]

A word about virtual backgrounds … because it is friendlier, I recommend using your office (wherever that may be) as a natural work setting if you are able to stage it nicely. Make sure the scenery behind you is professional and reflects your work personality. As I live in Kentucky, I have a bottle of bourbon (unopened, mind you) on the table behind me for a conversation piece. If I had a high-stakes presentation with a client that didn’t know me well, I would consider stowing it out of sight.

Alternatively, a meaningful virtual background would be one that reflects work that you have done or are doing, such as a clear photograph of a client project you’re proud of. Such green screen-type, virtual backdrops are tricky, though — when you move, you break up around the edges of your head and body outline. Parts of you can disappear as you are talking if you’re an animated presenter.

Checklist for go time

Point camera at eye level
Wipe camera lens clean
Check the background for distracting items
Make sure you are front-lit, not backlit
Position yourself close enough to adjust the camera if needed
Turn off the camera when not speaking, so you can feature the speaker (but follow whatever rules your presentation team has agreed on)

Finally

Remember, your work does not speak for itself — your video presentation speaks for it. If your work is worth a client’s attention, aim to deliver it flawlessly. To keep your work from being obscured by any distractions, there is a lot to attend to.

Adopt the mindset of an athlete — respect the importance of pregame preparation by attending to these many variables. And when you’re done, win or lose, you’ll be satisfied knowing that you left it all on the playing field.

Want to See Better Business Development Success in 30 Days? Then Become a Better Listener

February 2, 2021 by Jim Rogers

Business development is about building relationships. Listening builds relationships.

If you’re trying to develop new clients, then listening well is your surest way to build rapport. In mere minutes, it can generate lasting positive feelings that accelerate the relationship-building process. In fact, you will earn their trust quicker, which typically takes a while with new relationships.

When it comes to existing clients, listening more effectively will not only position you better for immediate and long-term opportunities, but it can also lead to the sort of bond that only trusted advisors have with their clients. And those clients can end up sticking with you not just for years, but for decades.

So, ask yourself: Are you a good listener? A good listener:

is in the here and now, avoiding distraction
avoids rushing to judgment
is curious and asks the right questions
does not interrupt, and
makes others feel heard.

Developing a Listening Mindset: Empathy is the Key

Your first key to listening is to set aside your own needs for a few minutes and genuinely seek to understand what the other is trying to convey. This is about mindset. If you go into the conversation thinking about “selling,” then you’re more likely to be waiting for your turn to jump in and be interesting, solve a problem, or prove how smart you are. The “selling” mindset is the saboteur of listening. Business development is built on relationships and listening builds relationships. So listen first, sell second.

If you want to be a better listener, you need to know how good listeners do it. Effective listening is a skill that has three parts: attentive listening, active listening, and most importantly, empathic listening.

First, attentive listening.

Attentiveness is physically showing that you’re listening and are paying attention. We show attentiveness with non-verbal cues such as steady eye contact, head nodding, the occasional uh-huh or hmm, or even through a knowing smile. At a networking event, you aren’t looking over their shoulder to see who else might be in the room. And you’re not looking at your phone for tapas recipes on Pinterest.

Second, active listening.

Active listening makes people feel heard. It means being involved in the conversation by paraphrasing what the speaker has said and asking effective follow up questions. Rather than mimicking or parroting what they said almost verbatim, it’s better to just use your own words to confirm that you have heard them correctly.

Good stock questions that make people feel listened to are:

What do you mean?
Why do you say that?
What happened next?
Can you give me an example?

Finally, empathic listening.

If you want to truly connect with people, empathic listening is the best method. It means playing back the emotion you hear behind what the other person said. An empathic response shows that you hear the emotion behind the words. An active question may make someone feel listened to, but an empathic listener makes someone feel understood.

Empathic listening requires a thoughtful response. If a client’s response to your simple query of “How’s it going?” is a sarcastic, “I’m living the dream, staring at spreadsheets all day again,” an empathic listening response would be: “You’d rather be doing something else.” Or “Sounds like that’s not the most exciting part of your job.”

Empathy Is not Easy but Blocking It Is

For most of us, the empathic response is not our stock response, and it takes some work to learn. In fact, some of our stock responses to the people around us who need empathy result in exactly the opposite: we further alienate them. We fall back on these “empathy blockers” when we seek to distract from a trying situation and force someone to move on from it, whether or not they’re ready to.

If you find yourself having cliché, knee-jerk reactions to the complaints of those around you, you may be blocking empathy. If your response to the above client is a throwaway line like “Yeah, I spend way too much time in front of Excel too,” or “Maybe you should hire an assistant,” or “At least you have a job,” you are not helping them. You are blocking empathy — and the possibility of a deeper connection.

How to Practice and Improve

Ceasing to block empathy is a positive step, however, to build empathic listening skills takes practice and you master it gradually. Start small: instead of using every communication interaction you have with every human you interact with, to get practicing, pick one person from your work life and one from your home life.

By having one person in each environment in mind to practice empathic listening, each time you encounter them will be a trigger for you to stop, listen attentively, and really try to get at their emotion. Try this for a week and when you’re comfortable, pick one more person to focus on for the next week.

Generally, it takes about a month to develop a new habit — if you work at it. In the case of listening, you will quickly notice people responding to you differently, and the value added to your business relationships will last your entire career. And it will show up as new opportunities in the pipeline and more revenue on the books.

Want to Get Better at Listening?

There are many good resources for improving listening skills.

Web Articles

If you are on ToolsHero, go to https://www.toolshero.com/communication-skills/empathic-listening/

Harvard Business Review has a nice summary:

https://hbr.org/2016/07/what-great-listeners-actually-do

Moving from Active Listening to Empathic Listening:

https://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/EmpathicListening.htm

Web Videos

Communication Coach Alex Lyon has a great session on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO1gpzakbik

Therapy in a Nutshell has a good video with strong examples for your personal life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGdgUP8XLwc

Print Books on Listening

The Lost Art of Listening: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships (Michael P. Nichols)
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (Chapter 7: Seek First to Understand)
Working with Emotional Intelligence (Daniel Goleman)

Public Speaking Is Essential for Seller-Doers: Here’s How to Get Better Right Away

January 28, 2021 by Jim Rogers

Warren Buffet, one of the world’s wealthiest men, asserts that public speaking is the single greatest skill to boost your career. Even if you’re not a business tycoon, the advice still rings true: improving public speaking skills is one of the most fundamental ways seller-doers can hone their business development skills.

I define a seller-doer as “a billable professional who takes purposeful action to help generate revenue for their firm.” In professional services, purposeful action may be speaking at conferences, taking part in interview presentations, and conducting lunch and learns.

Competency as a speaker can also help make you more effective when presenting at project or public meetings or even at a professional association chapter meeting.

What Level of Speaker Are You and Where Do You Need to Be?

The public speaking skills you need to develop will depend on your current capability. It will also depend on what speaking opportunities will help you best serve today’s clients and attract tomorrow’s.

Novice speakers are still nervous about speaking to groups. Novice public speakers should aim to overcome their fear of public speaking and learn the fundamentals — keeping their focus while picking up on audience engagement. Novice speakers are generally comfortable with small groups; a good place for them to practice might be an internal meeting where the faces are familiar and the stakes are low.
Intermediate speakers are comfortable with an audience and are consistently effective. Intermediate speakers should aim to be more agile when communicating complex ideas, and to pivot to a new topic if something isn’t working. These speakers are more comfortable with larger audiences; they might be good candidates to host lunch and learns or technical training.
Advanced speakers project confidence and can speak with little preparation on topics they know well. Most AEC roles don’t require expert-level presenters, but advanced speakers looking to step up their game should focus on making their presentations more engaging. These speakers are often the best key presenters for interview presentations.

So where do you fit in and where do you need to land? If you’re going to have a substantive role in short-list interview presentations or be an industry thought leader presenting at several conferences a year, you may aim to become an advanced speaker.

If you’ll primarily be presenting at public meetings, conducting lunch and learns, and occasionally presenting on technical topics at conferences, then intermediate may be a good enough landing point for you. Regardless of where you’re headed, if you’re a novice, it’s time to get started – with purpose – to improve.

Skill-Building Strategies

The best way to become a better speaker is to practice. Books about public speaking are ineffective teachers since they can’t give you the depth of wisdom you’ll gain through experience. Once you’ve learned a few tips, the fastest and most effective way to become a better speaker is to just do it.

With that in mind, our strategies to build your skill and comfort with public speaking are:

Join Toastmasters
Fail Small
Volunteer
Persist!

Join Toastmasters

Toastmasters is a nonprofit organization that helps people become more confident speakers—and with more than 16,600 clubs in 143 countries, it’s likely that there’s a chapter near you. Because the organization is 100 years old, it has carefully crafted and road tested a process for helping people succeed at speaking.

Although many people join Toastmasters to overcome their fear of speaking, others join to become better leaders, more competent speakers, or even to join the ranks of professional speakers.

For a low semi-annual fee, you’ll be able to meet weekly or bi-weekly to practice your speaking skills and do some self-study and speech preparation in your outside time. The structure of the program ensures that people get a chance to practice not only speeches, but also writing, impromptu speaking, storytelling, and more!

You can also get involved in committees and leadership roles to develop marketing, interpersonal, and leadership skills. Whatever role you decide on, Toastmasters’ members are always genuinely nice and deliver feedback in a kind, constructive manner. As a bonus, many it’s fun! It’s easiest to learn in a safe, fun environment, and Toastmasters delivers on this, for speakers of all skill levels.

Fail Small

Seek out low-risk opportunities to speak, whether you’re trying to overcome your fear of speaking or develop from a more solid foundation. The types of preparation that will help you exude confidence are the small, everyday ways you can practice speaking, whether you’re asking a question in a large meeting or hosting a brown bag lunch.

Small steps mean practicing the basics; for example, learning how to speak succinctly instead of rambling. In general, it’s good to aim for thoughtful contributions that make people glad you stood up to speak.

If you’re a bit rusty at public speaking, you’ll inevitably make mistakes, but from those failures will come important growth that will help you succeed when it really matters. You’ll thank yourself later when you’re facing a more high-stakes situation, like an interview presentation for an important client.

Volunteer

Volunteering in leadership roles is a win-win: the community benefits from your service, and you benefit from the opportunities to practice public speaking. Community service and volunteer leadership roles give you valuable training, as they often involve a public speaking component. When you’re called on to use your public speaking skills, you’ll receive informal training that will hone them through experience alone. No matter what your current skill level is, you’ll improve with practice.

Volunteer roles can take many forms, including coaching youth sports, taking part on the board of a nonprofit, or presenting in a public meeting. Whatever organization you volunteer for, make it something you are passionate about.

Persist!

If you tend to look up to principals in your firm who speak with confidence and think, “I could never do what they do,” you might be surprised at how people got where they are today. Many advanced speakers started out as nervous, novice speakers. Practice is the key to improving your public speaking skills—never turn down a chance to speak.

Recommendations for Further Reading:

If you’re a new speaker trying to overcome your fear of public speaking, this HBR article outlines a unique way to use kindness to your advantage: https://hbr.org/2019/09/to-overcome-your-fear-of-public-speaking-stop-thinking-about-yourself

Looking for a few quick tips? inc.com has a list of 20 general tips that help you prepare for a presentation: https://www.inc.com/brent-gleeson/20-tips-for-mastering-art-of-public-speaking.html

For some guidance on a specific type of speaking engagement, Toastmasters has public speaking tips for awards, sales pitches, technical briefings, and more: https://www.toastmasters.org/resources/public-speaking-tips

Finally, listen to some speakers in action with this TED Talks “Before public speaking…” playlist: https://www.ted.com/playlists/226/before_public_speaking

The Best Way to Start Your Proposal

June 3, 2020 by Jim Rogers

The strongest way to begin your cover letter or executive summary is by answering the question “Why now?”

Think about this question from your client’s perspective. Why are they undertaking this project now and not later … or never?

In other words, why is this a higher priority than other endeavors on which they could be spending their money and time?

Examples of answers to the question “Why now?” include these:

Strengthen the community
Streamline processes to save money
Improve public safety
Get (and stay) in compliance
Make work easier
Heal people
Economic development
Create classrooms where kids can learn and grow
Make customers happy
Win new business
Take control of your professional destiny
Be a better leader
Grow market share
Provide affordable housing
Create healthy, safe workplaces.

Clients aren’t ready to listen to you talk about yourself until you’ve demonstrated that you understand something about them and their problem.

In other words, that you “get” them.

Answer the question “Why now?” early in your cover letter, executive summary, or approach section (or all three) and you will be on your way to winning more work.

There’s more about this topic in my book Win More Work: How to Write Winning AEC Proposals.

If you have an important proposal, reach out to me at Jim@SellerDoerAcademy.com. We’re here to help in whatever way we can to help you win.

Best,

Jim

It’s Always a Good Time to Grow Market Share . . . Writing Superior Proposals Can Help

June 1, 2020 by Jim Rogers

Whether your business has been positively or negatively affected by the changing economy, there is still an opportunity to strengthen your firm. That’s because there’s one unalterable truth in business — regardless of whether there’s contraction or expansion in your industry, there’s always an opportunity to grow your market share.

That is, your chance to outsell your competitors never goes away.

In the unfortunate event that your markets shrink, there’s still the chance to take work away from your competitors and emerge in a stronger financial position than they will.

You’ll be able to retain the best talent because they won’t lack for work.

And you’ll cement your relationships with your most profitable clients at the expense of your competitors, which will pay off handsomely down the road.

On the other hand, if you’re fortunate enough to be in an expanding industry, as always, you can grow at a faster rate than your market does as a whole. After all, why be content with your usual share?

So what’s the best way to outsell your competitors?

Right now, uncertainty in some industries means that projects and contracts have been delayed or canceled, therefore it’s important to close on immediate opportunities that have been funded and will proceed. Spend extra time and care on these proposals.

If you’re the front-runner for the project, it’s not the time to assume that the work is yours to lose, but rather it’s time to slam the door shut and remove all doubt that you deserve the work. Ratchet up your proposals a notch.

If you’re neck and neck or within striking distance, it’s time to distinguish your proposals and separate yourself from the pack. Pull out all the stops.

Have Discipline in Your Go/No-Go Process

Be honest about whether you’re in striking distance or if you’re a long shot.

If you’re a long-shot, now may be the time to no-go those opportunities and instead put more care and attention into your higher probability pursuits.

Desperate consultants will pursue everything they’re qualified for in the hopes of hitting the elusive jackpot. Unfortunately, because those rare events do happen from time to time, principals and project managers will point back to them as justification for long-shot pursuits.

I may be wrong, but for your clients in vulnerable industries, unless they perceive you as a lower cost option, your chances of winning a long-shot drops to near zero. Clients in vulnerable sectors will likely consolidate their work around their top go-to consultants. If you’re not in their elite pool, you are probably a long-shot in the short term.

In all cases, your best bet is to write superior, not routine, proposals.

Strategies for Preparing Superior Proposals

In my next series of posts, I’ll share my best tips to help you separate your proposals from those of your competitors, including these:

The most powerful way to begin your proposal
How to put the focus on the client rather than on yourself
Win themes that sell
How to strip your proposals of marketing blather that clutters your best ideas
How to describe your strengths in a way that differentiates you from your competitors
Graphic design choices that make your best ideas shine through
Twenty proposal mistakes that can sink your proposal.

Much of the advice I share is also captured in my book Win More Work: How to Write Winning A/E/C Proposals. Since writing it, I’ve built examples that I’ll be sharing with you that didn’t make it into the book, but the book is the best place to start.

My first article in the series will help you kick off your proposals in a way that makes an immediate positive impact on the decision maker.

If you have a high-stakes proposal in the works and can’t wait for all these tips, email me at Jim@SellerDoerAcademy.com. I may not be able to help, but I usually can. Jim

How to Market Your Firm During the Coronavirus Crisis . . . Without Shame

March 22, 2020 by Jim Rogers

Right now, as you try to find your footing in the time of the Covid19 pandemic, you may consider marketing and sales to be insensitive or distasteful—but it doesn’t have to be.

It’s vital that you shore up your business—now—before your competitors do a better job of it. This is a justifiable time to protect your client relationships and to position yourself in the market without feeling guilt or shame. To actively do so isn’t opportunistic—it’s simply good client service and good business.

On the other hand, hoarding 17,000 bottles of hand sanitizer and trying to gouge consumers is shameful and criminal.

Marketing during a crisis is about maintaining and deepening relationships with clients. Yet that effort requires a delicate touch.

The key to delicate touch is just to:

Show that you care
Share knowledge that helps clients work better, faster, and cheaper during the crisis.

To read specific suggestions for how to market your firm, confidently and without shame, click here for the PDF.

Then click here to send me an email and tell me what you thought of it.

Be well and be safe. Jim

Marketing Professional Services Without Shame During a Crisis (by Jim Rogers) revised