“What clients want more than anything is to know that we’re more interested in helping them than we are in maintaining our revenue source.”
― Patrick Lencioni,
Getting Naked: A Business Fable about Shedding the Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty
People do business with people they like and trust. And we build trust in many ways. One key approach is learning what’s important to the other person – their selfish interest — and then doing what we can to support them in achieving it. Most of us have been raised to hide our selfish interest, like it is “bad.” My partner, Jennifer Wilson, wrote about this in her blog, We’re All Selfish – Why Hide It? And I want to apply the concepts she raised to our work in business development and deepening client relationships.
Before I do, I want to share our observation that many business developers make the process of selling all about them and their firm. How many years of experience, how many clients, how large the firm’s team is, and many other attributes that do not center on the prospect or client and their organization, needs, and wants. Read your firm’s last proposal and see how often you say “we” and “us” versus “you” and “your.” But when we shift the conversation of selling away from ourselves and onto the prospect or client and THEIR selfish interest, we can change the game.
While we don’t want to admit that we’re selfish, and all people operate from selfish interest. It’s human nature – think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. When we identify and express our selfish interest, instead of manipulating situations to get our desired outcome, we create more authentic relationships and work towards agreed upon goals. If you take the time to learn about your prospect or client’s selfish interest as you develop new business, you will truly and intimately know them and can help them reach their dreams, overcome challenges, and innovate solutions. And, yes, a by-product will be deeper client relationships and increased business development success.
Because we’re taught not to be selfish, we typically don’t appeal to our prospect or clients’ selfish interest in our proposal processes or client meetings. To be maximally effective, we have to identify prospect and client selfish interest and then demonstrate how we can help them achieve it. Let’s explore the four types of selfish interest and how you can appeal to each in the sales process (and ongoing relationships with your clients, too!):
- Making more money, and we certainly don’t want to make less! Your prospects and clients are in business to make more money so they can pay their team members or other stakeholders, invest in innovations, R&D, technology, take home more money themselves and more. So, how can you help them do that? You could help them make more money by minimizing their tax exposure and liability, maximizing tax credits, improving efficiencies, or creating new relationships with vendors who can save them money. If making money is one of your prospect or client’s top goals (which it likely is, so this is low-hanging fruit!), tell them how your products or services, or your firm’s unique approach, will help them make more money.
- Having more time and more control over our time, and we certainly don’t want to have less time or less control over how we spend our time. If you have a prospect or client who is busy (and who doesn’t?) and needs more time to spend on their business or with family or on their next idea, how can you help them do so? You could save them time by providing CFO outsourced services to review and analyze their financials so they identify strategic shifts they can make and also make faster, better decisions. You could save your prospect or client time by providing training for their accounting staff, so they produce cleaner books that don’t require back and forth adjustments and generate a lot of questions.
- Looking good or being held in high esteem by others, and we certainly don’t want to look bad. Some of your prospects or clients care deeply about how they are portrayed and want to be seen in a good light. You can help them do so by providing detailed, accurate financial statements and analysis to their lender. You can help the controller look good to the CEO with proactive data and analysis to plan for upcoming business model changes or investments. You also can help clients avoid looking bad or being out of compliance with TPA services, so they pass their next employee benefits audit.
- Feeling good, secure, confident, or proud with less worry, uncertainty, or fear. Many of your prospects or clients’ missions are to make a difference in this world. You can appeal to that selfish interest to help them feel proud of the work they’re doing by helping them achieve their mission through sustainable practices or increasing donations or conveying a sustainable business model that others will trust. You can also help minimize the worry or fear some have by showing them how they can get their arms around uncertainty in their business cycles, so they can operate confidently with better predictions to anticipate ups and downs, so they can pivot appropriately and quickly. You can help them navigate spongy economies or markets by generating what-if scenarios to make better decisions or shift directions quickly when needed.
When you create trust and intimacy and ask the right questions to facilitate your prospects and clients sharing their true self-interest with you, you can then explicitly demonstrate how you can help them make more money, save time, look good, and/or feel good. Demonstrating how your services will truly benefit your prospect or client, they are more likely to say yes to engaging you. You will set yourself apart from your competition by going to this next level of understanding with your clients and connecting the dots for them to make their selfish interest a reality.
Let us know your thoughts about this idea of appealing to selfish interest and successes you have as you practice it. Be prepared for a windfall of opportunity when you do!
Warmly,
Tamera
