Prospective clients - get them talking

By Linda Julian

Because few lawyers and other expert professionals have had professional sales training, they frequently mistake telling the prospective client lots about what they can do for effective selling.  Yet, getting meaningful and frank input from prospective client is vital early on, and throughout the process of converting a prospective client to a client.

Only rarely should your goal for first encounter be to give as much information as possible to the prospective client.  
Most often, your goal should be to gain the greatest understanding you can of:

• what that individual or organisation needs
• their business environment and functions
• their objectives
• what might stand in the way of their enlisting your support.

Because it's your prospective client who knows about their business, their needs, and their buying preferences, you need to get them talking about that.

It makes perfect sense for them to tell you all of this before you start selling any specific service or solution.  After all, you don't know what to sell until you know what they need and want to buy !

For a prospective client to spend time and energy telling you about their needs, you'll first need to establish your credibility.  That done, it's time to ask questions, probe out their responses, and get your prospective client to invest in bringing you up to speed with their world and their needs.

Then, you'll be positioned to make a productive contribution with:

• anecdotes illustrating your credentials
• ideas
• preliminary suggestions
• reasons to engage your services.

Your prospective client knows their problem  -  probably much better than you, and definitely in ways you don't.  Your first task is to understand their problem and then show your capabilities and willingness to help.