5 Questions Every Consultant Must Ask During a Sales Call

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What’s the easiest way for a consultant to completely flop on a sales call? Talking about yourself the whole time. I help consultants efficiently scale their business, and this is one of the most common mistakes I see them make. I know it can be challenging. You may have been taught to perfect your elevator pitch or to speak about some magical proprietary process you developed. Unfortunately, your prospects don’t want to hear your sales pitch or about your unique approach — they want to be understood. And once you prove you understand their challenges, they’ll want to hear about your plan to solve them. That’s it.

You shouldn’t even think of it as a sales call, it’s an enrollment conversation. At the end, you want them to be excited about the potential of partnering with you. You never want to feel like you talked them into doing something they didn’t fully understand, or aren’t completely committed to. 

That dreaded “sales-y” feeling

If you’re not overly “sales-y,” the selling part of your consulting business can be terrifying. Fortunately, you don’t need to be sales-y. You just need to have a genuine desire to help your clients. Beyond that, with the right process in place, you’ll most likely never need to do any cold calling. Instead, you can connect with prospects through referrals or a lead magnet on your website.

A lead magnet is content you provide in exchange for a prospect’s contact information such as a guide or checklist. A good lead magnet solves a real problem and is specific to your intended audience. Mine is an eBook “The 10 Biggest Mistakes Entrepreneurs make on Social Media and What You Should Do Instead”. If you don’t already have something like this in place, you should make a plan to do so. These conversations go much easier when you’ve already proven your value and expertise. 

When chatting with a prospect you should be listening more than you talk, but you’ll need to make sure you’re receiving the right information. These are the five questions you must ask during any enrollment conversation.

1. What’s going on and how is it affecting your business/personal life?

 

You most likely have some information before entering this conversation. You can use that to tee things up, but you’ll still want them to essentially start from scratch. The more information you can get about their specific need, the better you’ll be able to explain how you can help them, assuming that you can. If you can’t help them, this is the time to make that known. Maybe you have a colleague who can, or you have some resources that might help, but the whole “fake it till you make it” approach is a good way to damage your reputation and it’s not right to waste someone’s time and money. Hopefully, you’re still in a position to help them, and you can continue asking probing questions. 

If you’re able to quantify revenue impact, this will make it easier for you to explain your fees later on. You’ll be able to show them a clear ROI from the partnership. If you can help someone make $80,000 and your fee is $10,000, it’s clearly a good investment. However, some challenges aren’t associated with revenue, such as the inability to get a sufficient night’s sleep. In this case, you’ll want to better understand how this problem is affecting their personal life. 

Take notes, and ask them to pause if necessary. It’s not rude, you’re proving that you have a genuine need to understand their challenge. 

2. What have you already tried to address this problem?

Again, you don’t want to start talking about yourself until you have a better understanding of their challenge. Their response will help you in a few ways:

  • You won’t recommend solutions that have already failed for a legitimate reason.
  • You’ll be able to course-correct solutions that could have been successful with the proper guidance.

Beyond that, you’ll get a better insight into how important it is for them to solve for this challenge, and the pain associated with this resolution. This is also your time to show genuine empathy by paraphrasing and hypothesizing.

For example: “It sounds like you’ve been working on this for a while, I imagine it’s been a drain on morale and productivity implementing one solution after another.”

3. What are some approaches or resources you haven’t explored yet?

This can easily be one of the most unselfish questions you ask. Together, you may both determine there’s another internal resource or someone they could hire full-time to solve this challenge. You may be able to assist or reengage if the problem persists after they attempt to solve it on their own. Your goal is to help them resolve their problem, even if they don’t need you to do it. 

Again, this is an unselfish approach, but it will go a long way in boosting your reputation for being trustworthy and solutions-oriented. I’ve consulted myself out of job opportunity during this phase, only to receive a referral from the same prospect months later. 

4. What would need to happen in order for you to feel good about our results? What outcomes are you looking for?

This is a paraphrased version of an approach developed by Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach. Get ready to take notes on their response. They’ll tell you exactly what they want from you, and — inadvertently — exactly what would earn you a referral or testimonial. You’ll also hear more about their vision. Just talking about this vision will make it more tangible for them, and you can position yourself as the person who will help them get there.

Paraphrase this response back to them, reinforce any poignant or mission-critical aspects of what they said. Once this part is complete, you can start talking more about how you can help achieve this vision. Again, only move forward if you’re certain you can help them achieve their goals. 

5. Would you like my help?

This is a simple but powerful question I began using based on the advice by Mike Koenigs, Advisor and CEO of MikeKoenigs.com. 

Always ask this question during the conversation, overtly. This can lead to a no, yes or they’ll ask more probing questions. Don’t say, “Well, I can send you some more information.” Or ”Would you like to think about it and set up another time to call?” Just ask. If they want more information or to think about it, they’ll tell you. 

Of course, you should only ask this question if you actually want to work with the client. You want to be a friend of their future, not just a service provider. 

This can be a challenging question, but you’ll have a more immediate understanding of how things are going and can start planning any necessary next steps. Hopefully, things go well. If not, you’ll be able to better focus on the next opportunity. 

Final thoughts on consulting sales calls

It’s important to remember that the prospect wants this call to go well. They have a problem and believe you may be able to assist. This isn’t a contentious situation, so you should be relaxed. Focus on being who you are, listening to their needs and enjoying the conversation. The best version of yourself is all you need to be, and you can’t do that if you’re trying to be someone you’re not.

Memo to Expert Service Providers: Carve Yourself a Unique Niche

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When you ask an average business audience to name the first person to fly solo, non-stop across the Atlantic, most people know it was Charles Lindbergh. Most can also name Amelia Earhart as the first woman to achieve that feat.

But silence usually prevails when people are asked to name the second or third aviator to do it. The fact that the third person was Earhart reveals an important facet of human psychology, namely that we tend to remember people and things based on their category rather than as part of the broader whole. If you are the first or the best, that tends to stick.

Consultants and professional service providers would do well to heed this lesson at a time when they’re swimming in an ever-expanding pond of similar firms. There are an estimated 700,000 business consulting firms globally, and many of their services are fast becoming commodities.

Whether it’s getting help on an audit or installing Salesforce, customers know they’re going to get similar types of people and services from the industry.

Figure out what makes you special

Rather than keep fishing in these vast waters, expert service providers need to shrink their pond by honing in on what they do best. So you can’t be the best barbecue restaurant in town? Fine. But maybe instead of being the second or third best maybe you can position yourself as the premier dry-rib joint.

Carving out a niche for your practice — whether you are self-employed or running a practice inside a bigger company — takes on even greater importance when you consider how technology has dispersed an industry’s clientele across the globe. It’s harder for these far-flung clients to differentiate between one provider and another. The way to cut through this absence of signal is to be the worldwide expert at one particular thing.

The simplest way to position yourself as a niche expert is to focus on your most successful case studies. Where have you achieved the best results and added the most value to clients?

Build on your successes to create a niche

 

Your practice may have the ability to help any kind of management team, but perhaps, for instance, it’s worked closely with several mining companies and achieved strong improvements to their supply chain. Backed by this record, maybe you should try to build a niche as the world’s only practice that helps mining sector COOs to drive down costs and control their supply chains.

I know one law firm with a regulatory practice that was maybe good enough to make the top 200 firms in the country based on reputation. But it happened to be based in Colorado and California where those states have legalized cannabis and hemp in recent years.

The firm has leveraged that geographical advantage to build a practice around helping cannabis and hemp companies navigate regulations and is now fast on its way to becoming the number-one law firm in the country in that niche.

Create channels to put your expertise on display

After deciding what pond you want to dominate, you can start taking steps to cement your ownership of it. You might publish articles on it or create a regular newsletter highlighting recent trends in order to achieve name recognition among those who matter.

You might seek speaking engagements or fund cocktail parties at relevant events. The aim is to narrowcast, not broadcast. We know that it only takes a small collection of select clients to build a successful practice so focus on the 200-300 executives globally who can make this happen.

Once you’ve dominated a niche, you can extend that success by entering adjacent niches. You’ve done great work with North American mining companies, so maybe an expansion to South American mining firms would work. Or perhaps you could expand into supply-chain solutions for agricultural commodities and hire people accordingly.

Resist the urge to be multi-faceted

None of this is rocket science but there can be hurdles. Perhaps the most common objection heard from providers is not wanting to downplay or give up on all the other wonderful things they can do. This misses the point. It can be fine to do other things, as long as you have a clean, crisp go-to-market strategy in your chosen niche.

Your niche practice should have its own microsite that occupies a relevant URL and features 2 to 3 illustrated case studies explaining how you helped people. If you’re part of a larger family of companies, it’s fine to point that out on the site; just don’t throw everything on this particular website with drop-down menus for each specialty.

If your mining sector expertise, for instance, is displayed alongside your achievements in crypto-currency accounting, it’s going to dilute your credibility as a specialist and erode your target customer’s trust in your ability to get the job done.

Keep things simple and direct and that focus can bring surprising results.

Actualizing Dreams of a Consulting Career

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Consulting is a Dream Come True for many B-School Graduates

Many management graduates and professionals “dream” of getting into consulting jobs during their placement season or afterwards. The allure of the glamorous consulting profession is so intense that many management graduates enter the business schools with the sole intention of being recruited by the consulting firms. What makes this career option such an attractive one and what do consultants perform professionally that they are coveted by industry and the corporates? Moreover, what is it that sets apart consultants from other professionals who can perform similar activities? These are some of the questions that would be addressed in this article.

What do Consultants Do?

To start with, management consultants are professionals who advise the corporates on restructuring, reorganization, rejuvenation, and revitalization of their companies. A simple question as to why cannot the organizations do this themselves by their own employees yields the answer that consultants bring to the table their deep expertise, wide experience, their familiarity with similar companies and industries, and above all, a perspective about how companies should be managed that is invaluable and indeed, worth the money that is paid to them. Mind you, the reason why consultants get paid astronomical sums in salaries and benefits is that their clients likewise do so for their services.

In addition, consultants are often called in when companies are going through a rough patch and their leadership wants an unbiased and objective analysis of the situation along with recommendations to improve their situation. In many cases, the internal resources often have vested interests in pushing for a particular strategy which means that more often than not, there is a need for a third party to evaluate what is wrong with the company. Moreover, many employees who contribute to the feedback that consultants receive as part of their consultations and deliberations within the organizations find it easier to talk to someone from outside of the organization rather than open up to their peers in the organization. Therefore, this is one of the reasons why organizations prefer consultants to advise them when things are going wrong.

Having said that, it must be noted that consultants do not merely perform the role of objective observers. Because they are trained in the best business schools on management theory and practice, they have knowledge of the corporate world that other professionals do not have since the latter work in niches whereas the former straddle a wide spectrum of activities. Apart from this, consultants mature with age when they consult with a wide variety of organizations across industries and sectors and this experience provides them with the insights that they can use when consulting.

Consultants and Investment Bankers

A key point to note about the consulting profession is that they are in direct completion with the investment bankers since both these professionals are essentially aiming for the mind space of the senior leadership in the organizations. Having said that, it must be noted that whereas investment bankers are concerned about financial aspects, consultants encompass a broad swath as they deal with operational, strategic, and organizational aspects. In short, investment bankers suggest the external components and the internal restructuring in financial terms whereas consultants take a broader view in addition to a deeper analysis. However, it must be noted that in recent years, consultants have specialized and branched out in niches according to the sector, the industry, area of management, span of control, and other aspects. This progression from being generalists to specialists within specialists has been mainly due to the increasingly complex internal and external environments in which organizations operate.

The Big Five Firms and How Professionals can Develop Consulting Skills

Finally, consultants such as those from the Big Five Firms, McKinsey, Booze Allen, Boston Consulting Group, Anderson Consulting, Price Waterhouse, and to some extent Deloitte are the pick of the lot among the entire consulting industry. It is no wonder that these firms form the Day Zero and the Day One in the placements seasons in business schools. Before concluding this article, we would like to remind you that while there has been much criticism about consulting and consultants as well as much praise and adulation that they receive, the bottom line for any management graduate or professional is to develop a perspective on how the business world and in general, the world works and evolve as professionals who practice values, follow the industry trends, spot and anticipate future changes, and more importantly evolve as visionaries ought to make a difference to their clients as well as themselves.