In today’s environment dictated by the current economy, where meeting revenue goals is a constant challenge, every client-facing team member must learn to think of themselves as part of the sales process. The very best place to generate new leads is from current accounts, where cross-sells and upsells are possible. While the majority of consultants are technically oriented and uncomfortable with selling, it is critical that they feel significant responsibility for lead generation and good hand-offs to the sales team. The good news is that PS consultants have a number of advantages over sales in the lead-generation process:

1. If they have done a good job of relationship-building with the client, they have already established a “trusted advisor” relationship that embodies high degrees of credibility and trust.
2. This trust leads to less guardedness and much more openness in dialogue.
3. The ongoing nature of the current project gives the consultant multiple opportunities for interaction and a reason to be asking questions about the client’s business.

In 15 years of conducting hundreds of soft skills training programs for professional services clients around the globe, we’ve found that the core competency of “open inquiry” is the most practical, powerful, and easy-to-master skill that we can teach. It is unnatural to most people, but it is the key to opening the door for deeper dialogue. The key practices for open inquiry are:

1. Ask well-formulated, open-ended questions.
2. Listen intently to your partner’s answers.
3. Feed back your summary understanding of your partner’s perspective.

 Mastering this core skill, however, is not enough to consistently produce well-qualified sales prospects. “Focused inquiry” is the skill set required to drill down through progressive layers to find the “deep deposits” of gold that lie hidden far beneath the surface. Remember, the quality of the data gathered will depend on what questions are asked. The purpose of this article is to offer a simple, scalable framework that empowers the consultant to drill down through the layers of the prospecting dialogue without carrying around a long list of tactical questions.

The framework can be used very directly in an opportunity assessment meeting by a services sales consultant or other PS lead with direct sales responsibility. It also can be used much less directly in informal conversations by consultants with no formal sales responsibility. Either way, it is critical that the client feels in control of the interview. “Interrogating” him with a prepared list of questions will usually put him on the defensive, especially if the conversation is informal. Remember that your goal is to find out what lies hidden well beneath the surface. It often will take more than one conversation to gather all of the data that you need to fully qualify your prospect. Let your guide be the comfort level of the client. Often they will be much more comfortable sharing some of the riskier, deeper, or more political aspects of the situation with you over a series of shorter conversations that deepen your relationship as you go.

The framework is organized under a simple acronym to make it easy to remember in the moment without notes. We call it, “FIND the BEST.”

FIND will carry you past the “fool’s gold” sprinkled along the surface of the mine and down to the deep deposits far below. When I asked the leader of a large PS organization that I was assessing for a training program what his greatest challenge was, he told me: “My people have an absolute gift for turning multi-million dollar engagements into ten thousand-dollar deals.” Unfortunately, he is not alone. Many PS consultants think technically and tactically. They dial into the smallest, most concrete part of the opportunity because it is easier to understand the problem and the solution. This is the “fool’s gold” along the surface. It is critical to develop the discipline to drill deeper into the mine if the full opportunity is to be realized. Begin with exploration in the FIND realm, as outlined below and shown in Figure 1.

 

Figure 1

 

• Facts. These are the straightforward questions that many of us are pretty good at asking. What are the technical problems the client is trying to resolve? When do they need them resolved? What resources do they have at their disposal? What are their limitations? What are their goals for a perfect solution? Who will be involved? What is their budget?
• Interpretations. This is where things start to get really interesting. Interpretations are personal viewpoints that may be conscious or completely unconscious to the speaker. They make up the majority of any perspective being communicated because they are the lens that the speaker sees the world through.

  Limiting beliefs are critical to identify because they often block potential solutions without being valid. They could sound something like: “We can’t go in that direction because…yada, yada, yada,” or “it has to be this way because of x, y, and z.” Learning how to diffuse these beliefs without putting the client on the defensive is one of the most powerful skill sets that a consultant can master.

  Values tell you what’s most important to them. Is speed more important or is quality? Would they give up some quality for a less-expensive solution? How important is it that the end users feel ownership for the solution? Ultimately, understanding their values and how they prioritize them allows you to position a much stronger, customized solution.

  Fears will often drive decision-making, but people will not easily volunteer what they are. Many people are unconscious of their fears or consider them a sign of weakness. The best way to learn about them is to ask: “What are your concerns?” or “where do you see risks?”. This should only be done after a significant amount of trust is established in the relationship. Fears are critical to identify because they allow you to propose a solution that puts those fears to rest. If you can do this, it takes the biggest reasons to reject the solution off of the table before the client‘s fear takes over.

• Needs. The key here is to start with what the client believes they need, but to probe deeper for what they really need. Often, a client has already imagined a particular solution or a set of solution parameters that blocks you from giving them what they really need. In my world, a client may imagine that they need a live, instructor-led “Power of Partnership” training program. However, current corporate travel policies or limited travel budgets prevent them from gathering their people in one location for the training. So the deal is dead.

  Wait, let’s probe deeper. What they really need is an efficient, cost-effective channel to train their people in the core skills of our program that can be conducted without travel. If we can identify this real need, it opens the door to virtual training options that provide the same content through a different delivery system. We may need to move through a different set of fears or limiting beliefs that are tied to virtual training, but this deeper-needs discussion has opened up a whole new “gold deposit” that was out of reach until we drilled down deeper.

• Decisions. One of the biggest mistakes that people make when qualifying a prospect  is lack of information about the decision process. It is critical to understand as early as possible who will influence the decision, who will make the ultimate call, who has the budget to make it happen, what the criteria for the decision are, and what the decision deadlines are. Every piece of this puzzle that is filled in early reduces the risk of chasing bad prospects and increases the potential for the sales team to successfully influence the true decision-makers and the decision process.

  While FIND usually surfaces all of the data required for a well-defined opportunity, drilling deeper in the BEST realm, when possible, opens up bigger future opportunities. BEST seeks to discover the strategic context that is driving operational and tactical initiatives. Usually these conversations take place off-line in relaxed, informal settings where time is not scarce. It’s best to be interested and curious, but not push too hard. The BEST realm is described below and seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2

• Business. What is the mission of their business? What is their brand? Who do they serve? What solutions do they provide to clients? What is their role in the business? What processes and competencies are critical to the success of their organization? What are their risks and challenges?
• Environment. How is their industry doing as a whole? How is the economy affecting their business? What are the market trends in their niche? Who are their competitors? What differentiates them from competitors? Who are their partners? What are their risks and challenges?
• Strategy. What are the businesses biggest goals? What are the key strategic initiatives that are most important to the success of the company? What technology will these strategies require? What systems, capacities, and competencies empower their strategies? What are the biggest obstacles to the success of their key strategies?
• Team. Who has influence over different areas of the company? How do they see their role? What are they like to do business with? What politics are in play?

The goal of BEST is to learn as much as you can about your client’s world. This serves two purposes. The first is to deepen your relationship through shared understanding. The second is to understand their organization at the deepest, broadest level that you can. If you can understand the strategic needs of their company, you can help the sales team position much bigger solutions, much further upstream.

If your people can master the inquiry practices embodied in the FIND framework, you will significantly increase your capacity to develop well-qualified prospects for the sales team. If some of them master the BEST framework, as well, you may discover the mother-lode that everyone has been searching for.

About the Author…
Steve Vislisel is the founder and CEO of S3 Solutions, a premier provider of integrated soft-skills training and development across all customer-facing organizations within tech companies. For more information or to contact Steve directly, visit www.s3solutionsinc.com.