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Hi there,

Here’s a thought-provoking question for you: Can you sell yourself without a solution, brand, and reputation? Imagine for a second that all you have is your expertise.

To make this easier for you I want you to guide you through an exercise now. The goal is to help you explore a different way to sell. Here's the context.

You have a meeting with a prospect. The company is one of your dream clients, and you have reached out to them - not the opposite. You have a successful track record of selling and serving other companies in the same industry or niche.

To agree to meet with you, however, your dream client gave you a list of rules. If you violate any rule from the list, the prospect will end the meeting and refuse to meet you again.

Here are the rules you need to follow:

1. You can't say anything about your consulting business, including its name or any other information that might allow the prospect to recognize it.
2. You can't mention any other companies, including previous or existing clients.
3. You can't mention any of your offerings (services, products, or solutions), including the outcomes and results they generated for clients.
4. You can't make any comment or ask any question about the prospect's personal life as a way to build rapport and intimacy.
5. You can't, under any circumstance, ask questions designed to identify current "pain points" or sources of dissatisfaction.

You have 20-30 minutes for the call, and when that time is over the prospect will decide whether he will schedule another appointment with you or not. The only criteria he'll use to make this decision is how valuable they found the conversation.

Now here are some questions for you:

• How will you open the call? What are you going to talk about?
• What can you ask to gain enough information and evaluate if the prospect is a good fit, and you can effectively help them?

Take some time to think about those.

Some of you may already follow a few of these rules on your first calls. The vast majority of specialized consultants I know, however, find this exercise challenging. The more difficult it is for you, the more likely you are to use a self-oriented and outdated approach to selling.

There are many ways to pass the test and get to the next meeting. Here I'm sharing the answers given by Iannarino, the creator of this thought exercise, but adapted to our consulting world.

How Will You Open The Call?
​You need to start the chat without saying anything about your company or the clients you have helped in the past. This can pose a double challenge for many consultants, since:

1. You might have worked hard to build a respected brand and reputation in your space and leverage them to communicate credibility.
2. You might have good social and communication skills, and be used to relying on rapport-building to connect with prospects.

Here's one way you can start the conversation:

At the end of the briefing, you can mention how these trends could pose risks, both to your prospect and their company. This is a relevant and certainly valuable conversation for your prospect.

There's a big difference between (A) explaining to your prospect why they have - or soon will have - challenges than (B) asking them what their challenges are so you can pitch your solution. Every salesperson does B. Consultants should do the former.

How To Gain Information While Helping The Prospect
​You can't ask about your prospect's current pain points, but that doesn't mean you are not allowed to ask any questions.

An opening question might be:

A good follow-up question might be something like:

You need to ask questions to find out whether the prospect is a good fit or not. There's no other way around it. The problem is most questions don't create a lot of value for your prospect, since they are only asked to share what they already know.

What my example does is stimulate the prospect to explore and learn.

My goal behind sharing with you this exercise was to illustrate one of the most important mantras consultants need to have in mind when sharing: Show, don't tell. It's your job to help prospects understand if and how you can help them.

As Nassim N. Taleb puts it, “Focusing on just words puts us on a dangerous path since we are much better at doing than understanding. Doers win by doing and not by convincing.”

Every week I hear at least one consulting founder or partner complaining about the lack of demand for their services. Yes, some specific industries and niches can suffer from a big external shock. But most of the time, those consultants are fooling themselves.

Your dream clients are not sure what they want, because they don't know what they don't know.

I’ll say it again, just in case you skipped the last line: Finding no signs of existing interest doesn't mean companies will not benefit from your service. More often than not, they just don't know it yet.

Juggling different tasks and priorities, executives don't have enough time, expertise, or budget to take care of it all. They are doing things the best way they can, or know how to. If they were aware and convinced of the need to make changes in their business, they would already be searching for external support.

So rather than waiting for them to raise their hand, you can show them what are the risks and opportunities that you can help them with, but they don't know yet.

How? By offering them relevant information, insights, and ideas. Asking them open-ended questions that stimulate them to think of something they haven’t yet. Not being afraid to take a contrarian approach and challenge generic advice or best practices.

That's how consultants create demand.

We have one specific workshop that teaches consultants how to balance the "being helpful and demonstrating what you do" attitude while avoiding giving away free work, creating scarcity, and sustaining high fees (you can check the upcoming group events here, but if you’re curious about this specific one feel free to drop me a line). The key to doing that lies in designing, offering, and delivering carefully planned demand-generation initiatives (DGIs).

These are services you offer prospects with the goal of creating interest for a small paid project. DGIs are not token gifts - they represent actual value for the prospect. They offer a taste of what it’s like to work with you.

Often a DGI takes the form of a workshop or simple diagnostic, something that offers value to the client by tracing symptoms back to the source of the problem and hinting at possible solutions - without actually solving the prospect’s problem.

A cybersecurity consultant might offer a talk about a new technology or regulation. A financial advisor might offer a small assessment that benchmarks and identifies opportunities to better leverage existing assets. In both cases, the prospect can’t help but wonder, “Can you help me solve this?”

Recently I was talking about DGIs with a partner of a micro boutique. He loved the idea. Near the end of the call, I offered one of our private workshops on our dime if he brought his other two partners and if we could have a call afterward to discuss possible next steps:

• “Hey, is that a DGI?”
• “Yes!” I replied. “Doesn’t it feel great to get one?”
• “It sure does. Sign us up.”

Of course, you need to be highly selective on how and to whom you might offer such packages of value. When starting with DGIs consultants tend to give away the wrong things (those that don’t lead to paid projects) or too much (effectively performing a small project for free).

But I want you to brainstorm some DGI ideas that follow these three guidelines:

• Be easy for you to create and execute: Offering a sample of how working together would look doesn't mean working for free. Your time is valuable, and the more prospects are aware of this the more they will appreciate your give-to-get initiatives. Try to keep them under 60 minutes, 90 minutes maximum. You have other tasks and responsibilities, so minimize individual personalization to make sure you get the best out of your time.
• Be consultative and hold a fiduciary standard: Remember the consultative challenge - the goal is to be as client-oriented as you possibly can. If you ask a butcher what to eat, she’ll recommend meat. If you ask a nutritionist, she’ll give you a range of options. Your goal is to be a nutritionist. You don’t earn trust by selling your services, but by demonstrating to prospects your expertise and how you put their best interests first, no matter if and who they decide to hire support from.
• Lead your prospect to commit to change: The typical buying purchase path of your prospects depends on the specifics of your consulting practice. But very often, the next step after exploring a risk or opportunity is to confirm the issue is a priority and something they’re committed to changing. The main goal of your DGIs is to uncover or create urgency.

You can use this template to do that.

People don't hire consulting services on the first date. But using DGIs to show how you work will put you miles ahead of consultancies who can only speak about themselves. Walk the talk, and trust and new opportunities will follow.

See you in two days,

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