Some professional salespeople recommend that you never say you’re available on the day a prospect suggests for a meeting, even if you are free that day.

Instead, they advise you counter with a date a week or two later than the prospect asked for.

That way, these sales pro explain, your consulting firm doesn’t appear to have excess capacity or seem too desperate for engagements.

Is that the right approach?

Maybe those sales dogs are right for the roofing business. They’re flat-out wrong when it comes to consulting.

Here’s the truth… well, a few Consulting Truths:

Responsiveness wins consulting engagements.

Relationships win consulting engagements.

Being disingenuous ruins relationships.

Ergo, being disingenuous to reduce your consulting firm’s appearance of responsiveness is misguided and a bit silly.

If a prospect says, “Can you meet us on Tuesday the 12th?” and your calendar is open that day, respond, “Amazingly, I can meet on that day. You picked the perfect day.”

Even if your calendar is packed for the next few weeks or few months, find a way to move things around to ensure you can meet with a hot prospect.

By the time the old-school salesperson has his delayed meeting, you’ll have already won the consulting engagement, sent the client a box of chocolate and received your first payment.

The same philosophy applies to your start date with clients. If you can start an engagement right away, then do so. Don’t pretend you’re capacity constrained when you’re not in order to give the impression of being in-demand.

Of course, if you’re capacity constrained and can’t start a new engagement for a few weeks or a few months, then be transparent about that with your prospects. (And do everything you can to open up capacity for an earlier start.)

Has playing hard to get worked well for you and your firm, or have you seen better results from meeting your prospects’ timing requests wherever possible?




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