What Can You Give Away?
Professional services are sourced through relationship building. People will buy your expertise because they like, know and trust you. But how can you advance relationships for new opportunities when you are also performing work?
A legendary salesperson gave me the book “Try Giving Yourself Away” by David Dunn. The pleasure of "giving yourself away” is to do so without expecting thanks or some material reward. For instance, just smiling when passing a stranger may leave a lasting impression on them. The salesperson and author shared more ways that they brought joy to the lives of others by simply thinking of and acting upon ways to serve others.
With tangible products consumers often receive a variety of free things in order to engender trust with the seller. Buying a timeshare, you’re given a free stay. Evaluating software, you get a demo. Shopping at Costco, you taste free samples. It’s easy to sample a product or an experience but how do you test drive and make a lasting impression for an accounting or engineering solution? This is where professional services providers must try giving yourself away, for free, to advance a relationship or opportunity to the next step.
Here are some ideas:
Give away analysis. Revisit lost business. Do you have a contact who used another provider and is unhappy with the results? Offer to conduct a post-mortem analysis. What additional steps or counsel can you offer behind-the-scenes for free to make the matter whole?
Give away warnings. Follow industry news. Did a client’s competitor recently make news for an infraction or opportunity? Leverage that case study and offer your client a free plan to shore up their operations or finances.
Give away financial projections. Can you quantify the long term cost-savings or opportunity cost realized by a client hiring or not hiring you?
Give away your network. Make introductions of your connections to clients and prospects.
Give away research. Does your firm analyze aggregated client holdings? What data do you have access to that a prospect doesn’t? Share relevant insights, trends and statistics when permissible.
Give away the first project. Is there a matter or timeframe in which you can perform work for free that solves a short-term problem? Offering a prospect a loss-leader or “try-before-you-buy” strategy is an easy way to engender trust.
Just because you operate in a billable environment doesn’t mean that you have to always bill a customer for your time. Professional services is about problem-solving, or making someone’s day better. From experience you often have to give away more to engender trust in significantly higher-revenue deals. Try it and see what works for you.
What can you give away?