On September 24th, 2012, Tom Stoyan (Canada’s Sales Coach™) led off our Clarity Series with a presentation on “Getting Clarity on What your client needs from YOU”. After his presentation, Tom sat down with Past President Keith Thirgood to talk about his presentation.

Here’s Tom’s comments on the evening:

No one has told us that the business we’re in is client attraction. How do we get clients into a conversation that ends with them saying “that’s exactly what I want”.

And to do that, I have a tool that I developed years ago called “The Opportunity Audit”. At tool that has one question followed by a series of statements. Any entrepreneur can develop can develop this tool for themselves.

When I spoke this evening, I gave the members three different tools. One of them is the opportunity audit. The second is a comparison chart– clients look at you or I, and they look at somebody else; they don’t typically just look at you or I and just give us money! It’s our job to help them with their buying decisions–that’s part of my definition of selling.

It’s part of our job to protect their [the potential client's] ego. Why? Because they need to experience that were there to help them, that we’re there to work with them. We buy people people, ideas and services in that order.

The second job is to address their concerns. And one way we do that is by continually asking for feedback. I have a 100% responsibility for the quality of communications between me and my clients. I find that when I come from that place I can significantly improve the quality of the communication between us. And clients appreciate that.

One of the decisions that we can help our client with is “Who were they going to hire for a consulting contract?” They interview us, they may interview three other people,  they don’t have the sophistication or the experience, maybe even the wisdom, to determine from the three candidates interviewed who is the best candidate. So you have to ask them “Would it be helpful if you had a chart in order to make an easier decision, to make sure that you’re going with the right candidate? Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s not. But here’s a list of criteria that other people in your position have used to help make that decision”. Come up with 10 or 25 different criteria and then put down what you do for each one.

For example, how many years experience do you have? So let’s say you have 15 years experience, so you put that down on the chart and then beside that create columns for your competitors and leave them blank [for the client to fill in]. So now what you’re doing is giving the client a way of comparing our strengths to other individuals. This is the comparison chart.

One nice thing about the comparison chart is that our potential clients get to know us because the criteria that we list are typically our strengths. And so they get to know about our experiences, our strengths, our characteristics as they go through the chart.

To create the chart, write down all the things that come to mind and then look at the more powerful way to present them. And it may be that the most powerful way will differ from client to client or from industry to industry.

In order to have that conversation that ends with with them saying “that’s exactly what I want” we have to discover their pain, their passion, and priorities as opposed to me saying “let me tell you everything that’s terrific about me.” They don’t care. Most people care about themselves and their own issues.

Something else that I developed is called “The Opportunity Audit”. It allows us to clarify and delineate exactly what the client’s pain, passion and priorities look like. It gives them an opportunity to talk about it. So we asked them one question: so what do you need in order to sell more? And then we have them check off items from the list and so we know the things that are important to that client. Then we ask them to tell us more about each item that they’ve selected.

One of the big advantages of this audit is that it moves the client very quickly from complaining (about their business) to problem identification. After a client checks off and identifies his issues and potential issues that were good at solving we can then go through what I call the “CIA Process”. That stands for “Clarity, Importance, Application”.

The clarity is simply where the client says “Item number four on the list is important to me.” All you have to do is respond “Can you tell me more about that?” I find that works 90% of the time in finding out why the client is having a problem with that item.

After they’ve carried on and vented for 10 seconds (or 20 minutes), the “Importance” kicks in.I now work with the client to find out how important the item is to him. I’ll ask “On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is ‘that’s nice to know’ and 10 is ‘this would make a signficant difference’, how would you rate this problem to your bottom line or your sales or…?”

The Application is a chance for me to ask “If we had met six months ago and decided to do busines then, and you have gotten much better at this by now, how much better would your life be today?” Conversely I could ask “There’s lots of things you can spend your time and money on, if we decided to not do business today, and we met six months from now, would there be any opportunity cost for you to have not gone forward with me today?”

This gives the client a chance to get involved with their own imagination which is one of the most powerful sales tools ever.

I like to say “Treat prospects as friends, and treat clients as a very good friends”.

I help people answer the question “So what you do?” In a way that’s precise, and often more interesting for your target market. I talk about a three-step process. I believe you should start with the statement “I specialize in…” (because our society honors and pays respect to (and pays more for) specialists over generalists). The second step is to give them a name of the target market and the thrid is to mention a benefit or two that you can provide. For example, I specialize in coaching professionals in acquiring and retaining more clients.

I’ve also developed a referral tool that I call “The Referral Prospectus”. It helps you identify people that will refer you to potential clients. Like most of my audits it starts with one simple question: What do you need to feel more comfortable in referring me?” That’s followed by a number of statements that you could check off. I use it on a regular basis. You can use it with anyone that you might think is in a position to provide a referral to you or for you.

My general advice to people? When dealing with clients and prospects the number one thing is to “Be Yourself”– because that’s all we have. We’re only here for a short period of time. Be who you are. People wants to make a real connection.

Number two, get good at what you do. Why? Because I want to refer people to you and I can’t refer you if you’re not good at what you do. And every day get better. The world is changing very quickly. Clients don’t want somebody who says “I was really good at that three years ago but I haven’t done much of that recently”. Know your clients want somebody who is up-to-date, who is up to speed. I suggest that you dedicate (at least) one hour a day to getting better at what you do.

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