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.

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