Doug Fletcher - How to Win Client Business When You Don't Know Where to Start

It is particularly hard for people to make good decisions when they have trouble translating the choices they face into the experiences they will have.

—Richard H Thaler, University of Chicago, Nobel Laureate in Economics

I was having dinner recently with my good friend John Senaldi, who lives in the Bay Area. As we enjoyed a glass of 12‐year‐old Talisker, it occurred to us that it had been 30 years since we worked together at GE Aerospace in Syracuse, New York. We were in our early 20s at the time.

After catching up on our kids and other small talk, our conversation drifted to our professional lives. John had spent most of his career in medical technology. By any measure, he had a very successful career leading to the CEO position at a tech company he helped turn around and sell.

John had recently transitioned from corporate life to the role of executive coach and strategic advisor. He now leveraged his considerable experience in helping CEOs navigate through difficult business issues.

“How's your new consulting practice going?” I asked.

“Well, I gotta admit, it's been a bit of a transition to the new role as coach and advisor,” John replied. “The hardest part for me is learning how to market my services to prospective clients.”

“Tell me about your successes this past year,” I prompted.

John replied, “It took a while, but I have managed to land two really good clients. I'm helping a couple of CEOs with issues I'm familiar with. I'm having a great time, and I feel like I'm making a difference.”

“Where'd the clients come from?” I asked.

“Well,” John paused, “my first two clients were people I had known for a while…. I worked with them previously. They knew me and felt that I could help them grow their businesses.”

I smiled to myself, knowing John's story well. Many professionals I speak with have similar stories of how they got their first clients. I always make a point of asking rainmakers where their most recent clients came from. No two client stories are identical, but they have some interesting things in common.

If we are to become successful rainmakers, we have to build authentic relationships with those we wish to serve. Our clients have to know us, they have to respect our professional abilities, and they have to trust that we are honest. And, in the absence of this, we have to be strongly recommended by someone the prospective client respects and trusts.

If this is true, what do we have to do as professionals to get to know people, and have others respect and trust us? There's a lot to unpack there. And, we'll get to that soon, but the first step is to learn to think like a client. We have to understand the client's buying decision journey. The five rainmaker skills that we'll learn are built upon the foundation of the client's buying decision journey. In understanding how clients buy, we'll begin to see why these rainmaker skills work.

The above description of how clients buy is the CliffsNotes version. It's true that clients have to know, respect, and trust us, but there is much more to it. Tom McMakin and I spent two years examining the longer version of the client's journey. We covered this in depth in our book How Clients Buy: A Practical Guide to Business Development for Consulting and Professional Services .

In How Clients Buy , we outline the seven elements of the clients buying decision journey. (See Figure 2.1.)

Our framework of the client's decision‐making process comes from our own personal experiences, in addition to interviews with successful rainmakers in a wide range of professions. Following are the highlights of what we learned.

FIGURE 2.1The Seven Elements of the Client's Buying Decision Journey

A prospective client becomes aware of you. This could be someone you worked with years ago, someone you met at a conference, someone who read an article you wrote in a trade journal, or perhaps someone introduced to you at a friend's holiday party. Whatever the case, your existence is known to a prospective client.

Once your existence is known, the prospective client needs to clearly understand what you do, who you serve, and how you are unique. It's not enough to know that you exist. In order for others to hire you or recommend you to others, they need to be able to clearly articulate your area of expertise, who you serve, and what differentiates you from other service providers.

Prospective clients have to be interested in what you do. They have to see that what you do could help them or, alternatively, help others they know. Interest lies at the intersection of your expertise and the problems of the world. Until someone is interested in the work that you do, they are simply friends, colleagues, or acquaintances. Your existence and expertise are filed away, but the client's buying decision journey is far from over.

Respect relates to your professional credibility. A prospective client, or someone who could potentially recommend you, has to believe that you are really good at what you do. Naturally, we wouldn't want to hire someone who wasn't good at what they do, or recommend someone to a friend if we didn't believe they were highly skilled. Prospective clients and colleagues may struggle with this because it's often hard to tell if we are really good at our profession. They look for clues – called credibility markers – to help them gauge our level of professional competence.

Others must believe that you are a trustworthy individual if they would ever consider hiring you or recommending you to a friend. Are you honest? Are you ethical? Are you the kind of person that looks out for others’ interests, or are you self‐serving? Trust is the glue that holds the world together. It's hard for others to see trust in our heart. Our trust is earned over time by doing things that demonstrate our character.

Ability refers to a prospective client having the budget, decision authority, and organizational support to hire you. Without funding, we won't be in a position to help an individual or organization, unless we're doing pro bono work for a worthy cause. Additionally, when our prospective client is a part of an organization, does the person have the decision authority and support from her team? Until our prospective client has the budget, decision authority, and organizational buy‐in, we're a ways away from winning their business.

As with many things in life, timing is everything. This is often the case with winning client business. Until your project or service has risen to the top of their priority list, the client isn't ready to buy. Sometimes patience is the fastest way to get what you want. Being attuned to the client's priorities will help us better understand when it's the right time for us to help others.

Interestingly, we found from our research that these seven elements of the client's buying decision journey are not necessarily linear. They could, in theory, happen in the exact order as we have them outlined. A prospective client could become aware of us, learn what we do, have an interest in our services, grow to respect our professional ability, trust us, have the funds, and be ready to get started. But that is not often the way in which things play out.