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Dateline: 08/17/97
What Clients Want
``Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance
to work hard at work worth doing."
-- President Theodore Roosevelt
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It's really no secret what clients and prospects want: they want solutions and leadership. Your marketing and sales efforts will be more successful when you offer a solution that:
- Is most visible to the most important people
- Has the biggest impact
- Has the fastest impact
- Has a permanent impact
- Has the quickest pay back
- Is easiest to implement
- Minimizes disruption
- Involves the least effort on the client's side
- Makes the client a hero
- Saves time and/or money
Solutions and leadership demonstrate value to a client. These come from a thorough knowledge of the client's objectives, strategies, existing circumstances, competitive position, and personnel. From the client's point of view, here are some ways you can add genuine value to your consulting relationship:
- Jump on new information that becomes available internally. Don't wait for the client to give it to you. Then respond with extra analysis or suggestions.
- Spend time helping them think and strategize.
- Schedule offsite meetings and brainstorm together.
- Be a leader. Help them to see where they need to be five or ten years from now and how to get there.
- Sit in on their meetings.
- Get to know all their key personnel.
- Advise them what competitors are doing and help them benchmark their activities against their competitors'.
- Discuss anything at all that you think they should be doing--they welcome ideas and suggestions.
- Consider placing a manager or associate ``on-site" with the client for a few months to show interest and get to know how the business really works.
- Invest some of your own time ``on spec" in developing preliminary work in new or different areas than you are hired to do.
Another important way to provide the value clients want is to emphasize benefits rather than features. In my book on proposals, there is a discussion of features vs. benefits. A feature is what you have or do. The benefit is what the client (or prospect) will gain as a result of what you have or do. For many professionals, defining the benefits of their service or expertise is difficult. Think of it in this way:
What will he/she Be, Do, Gain or Save as a result of our service?
If you focus on the benefits--what the person will be, do, gain or save as a result of your service--then you will be focused on what the client really wants to know about your work and you will develop loyal clients that are immune to the marketing efforts of other firms.
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Next week's feature: Proof, Not Promises
Look here for more information
Matching benefits: selling what your customers want
We don't buy a service because of what it is, but because of what it can do for us.
Selling the sizzle - not the steak
Good suggestions to help you and your literature focus more on benefits and less on the features.
Exceed Their Expectations
Going the extra mile pays off with clients...as well as with vendors and employees.
How to Know Thy Customers
There are research instruments, and then there are oreo cookies...
What Customers Want (and are willing to pay for)
Conjoint analysis, when used with other research tools, can result in more
targeted promotions, increased customer satisfaction and lower
prospecting costs.
Key Account Management
A thoughtful look from the client's viewpoint by David Maister.
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Copyright 1997 by Kaye Vivian (kvivian@cloud9.net). All rights reserved. Permission to reprint is granted provided this article is not altered and the copyright notice remains attached |
