Winning the Professional Services Sale: Unconventional Strategies to Reach More Clients, Land Profitable Work, and Maintain Your Sanity
Winning the Professional Services Sale: Unconventional Strategies to Reach More Clients, Land Profitable Work, and Maintain Your Sanity
|
 List Price: $24.95 Sale Price: Too low to display. Availability: unspecified 
|
Product Description
An innovative approach to winning more profitable sales in the growing professional services industry In recent years, professional services providers have had to rethink their sales methods and adapt to profound changes in the way clients buy services. In response, Winning the Professional Services Sale argues for fundamental changes in the seller's mindset and sales strategies. Rather than pressing the sale, salespeople must help clients buy--the way that works best for each client. This new approach gives buyers what they now want in a services seller: a consultative problem solver, change agent, and solution integrator, all rolled into one. Author Michael McLaughlin presents a strategy for winning new business with a holistic approach to each client relationship. Only by fully understanding a sale from every angle, including its impact on the client's business and career, can salespeople thrive in the new era of the service economy.
Michael W. McLaughlin is the coauthor of Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants and a principal with MindShare Consulting LLC, a firm that creates innovative sales and marketing strategies for professional services companies. Before founding MindShare Consulting, he was a partner with Deloitte Consulting.
Details
No features available.
Rating
Having led and sold numerous consulting engagements, I have found Winning the Professional Services Sales an invaluable resource to not only reinforce concepts that I use, but to also introduce ideas and steps that I had not considered. McLaughlin lays out a framework and then provides real life examples from his many experiences on what to do today, not what worked a few years ago, and why. The book is compelling, moves from topic to topic and it is clear that Michael McLaughlin has “been there and done that.” If you sell, deliver or are even thinking of buying professional services, I highly recommend this book and I believe without question, that your next sales pursuit will be stronger than the last.
Rating
Anyone who markets consulting or professional services knows that far too often we start selling before we fully understand the client’s true needs. Part of the reason why we do this is because we fail to follow a plan for building brand new client relationships. Winning The Professional Services Sale walks you through an elegantly simple process for selling services without being overtly “salesy” in the process. Whether you’re new to marketing services or an experienced pro, you’ll find true value in this book.
Rating
After reading this book you’ll walk away with countless ideas you’ll want to put into action. I appreciated that it’s full of practical advice and never shies away from being totally honest about selling professional services. The writing is very clear and concise, making it a pleasure to read (unlike so many business books). Open to any page and you’re guaranteed to find at least one useful insight.
Given the economic circumstances these days, advice like this is more timely than ever. This is a great companion to Mike McLaughlin’s other book, Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants, and proves that he’s among the experts in selling professional services.
Rating
I was a great fan of Michael McLaughlin’s first book, Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants, which he co-wrote with Jay Conrad Levinson, the father of Guerrilla Marketing. Guerrilla Marketing for Consultants helped many of my clients make the most of the middle years of the current decade.
Michael is back with an even better book, Winning the Professional Services Sale, which provides new insights and updated for today’s environment, where relations between buyers and sellers are undergoing radical transformation. As McLaughlin writes, “Buyers are demanding ever more knowledgeable, solution-savvy sellers and real time responses. They want salespeople who are subject matter experts and who know as much about the implications of solution implementation as they do about selling.”
What’s needed to win professional services sales today are “Seven by Seven Sellers.” Michael describes the 7 roles that today’s sellers must be able to perform using the 7 necessary skills described throughout the book and summarized in Chapter 14.
Winning the Professional Services Sale breaths new life and relevance into a crowded field. It stands apart from its competition because of its tight, logical, organization and accessible writing styles.
Examples, lists, pullquotes, and frequent subheads are used to organize the book’s contents and make it easy for readers to apply the book’s recommendations to its principles to their next sales interaction.
Winning the Professional Services Sale is a great book, backed-up by the author’s resource-filled website and blog at http://www.mindshareconsulting.
Michael McLaughlin doesn’t write a new book each year, but when he does come out with a new book, I’ve learned to pay attention. This is a true thinker’s book, and it enjoys the support of top marketing leaders like Seth Godin, Jay Conrad Levinson, Jeffrey Fox, Tom Sant, and Ford Harding all of whom are respected authors of other books in the field.
Rating
I picked this book up to read on a flight home. I have been consulting for over 30 years and quickly found this to be one of the most insightful books written about selling consulting services. I usually skim a book’s introduction, but I read this one twice… it lays out a precise framework that McLaughlin will then build around in the rest of the book. His basic Connect – Collaborate – Commit framework succinctly nails how the nature of professional services sales has changed. He consistently takes conventional wisdom and changes how you think about it. The value of this book is how McLaughlin gets you clearly focused on not only what is important, but how to do each step.
Even if you don’t immediately read the entire book, each “Sanity Check” tip box is worth reading as soon as you get a copy. These are practical, immediately implementable tips that will quickly improve how you interact with your potential clients. Kudos to Michael McLaughlin for a great business book that cuts through the jargon and gives you perspectives that you can actually apply.
P.S. You also have to love anyone who can paraphrase a Ricky Ricardo / Lucille Ball quote and work it into a business book (page 36)!
Rating
If you are a service professional of any type, this is an essential addition to your bookshelf. It is written in a breezy, easy-to-read, at times humorous style that makes absorbing its in-depth, battle-tested content an enjoyable task. Michael McLaughlin, who earned his stripes as a senor partner at Deloitte, gives the reader practical, step-by-step guidance for how to win every sale. His insight into the mind of the client is both penetrating and lighthearted. This book will help you avoid the mistakes that most professionals make on a regular basis (e.g., jumping too quickly to write a proposal, focusing too much on you/your firm, overloading the client with PowerPoint slides, not being memorable, spouting platitudes, not spending sufficient time to really understand the client’s goals and issues, and so on). More importantly, if you follow only 50% of McLaughlin’s guidance, you will increase your proposal win rate.
Rating
To say that “out-of-the-box” thinking is a critical skill for today’s fiercely competitive business world is a truism and in that regard alone Michael McLaughlin’s new book “Winning the Professional Services Sale” will improve your business development process enormously with its “unconventional strategies.” But creative aproaches are not the be-all and end-all of success since often we need to simultaneously include good old-fashioned common sense in our dealings. “Winning” makes that point too, again and again, so that it doesn’t get lost. A combo of both– innovation and mature judgement– spells success. Pick up a copy of this book so that a lot more of that (success!) can quickly come your way.
Rating
A very valuable book and at the front of my line to be the sales book for 2009 IMHO. There is just too much great stuff in this book to summarize for you. The author published with Jay Levinson Guerilla Marketing for Consultants, which I also found very useful. The core (book jacket) is rather than pressing the sale, salespeople must help clients buy-the way that works best for each client. Only by fully understanding a sale from every angle, including its impact on the client’s business and career, can salespeople thrive in the new era of the service economy. He really makes the point that selling is getting harder all the time, and the pro salesman must always search for and learn new things. I really liked hearing his comments on long term clients expecting more from you over time as well as expecting you to be always getting faster at doing it.
Rating
Michael McLaughlin blends hard-hitting reality checks and real-world strategies in this book. His ideas are a credible alternative to outdated cookie-cutter sales programs. This is stuff only learned in the trenches and reflects how buying decisions are really made. A must read for any one selling high-ticket solutions.
Rating
“If there ever was a time when professional services sellers needed new strategies and tools, this is it.” So says Michael McLaughlin in this book. He says that today’s services sellers must be active in the market, offering ideas and solutions that generate client demand, and then they must be able to put together a winning sales strategy to satisfy that demand.
The book provides a detailed analysis of the sequence of events involved in a successful strategy for selling professional services. The sales process is no longer a matter of the seller just presenting its credentials; the seller must now attempt to gain strategic insights into any problem which the client may be facing, and craft a customised solution which provides a demonstrable and measurable advantage to the client.
Most professional services providers have been trained in how to provide their particular professional service; they have not been trained in how to undertake a strategic assessment of a client’s business and come up with ideas that add quantifiable value. Accordingly, selling their services is intimidating for them. This book provides a very helpful step-by-step guide to success in the professional services sales process.