How Consultants Win BIG Clients (With Big Budgets)

“When you sell success to someone and deliver success to problems, your past customers never run out of problems.” – Tom Searcy.

Today, Michael Zipursky brings a guest who will unravel the Secret to Big Sales. In this episode, Tom Searcy, the Founder of Hunt Big Sales, discusses how consultants can hunt and win big clients with big budgets to grow their consulting business. Tom shares that the art and science of pricing his services allow him to charge full fees and have more freedom to navigate the industry. He emphasizes that he does not negotiate on price because the price is the price and will take away his margin. Instead, he negotiates on the scale. Find more value in this conversation with Tom Searcy and Michael Zipursky.

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I am thrilled to have Tom Searcy joining us. Tom, welcome.

I’m glad to be here. It is good to see you again.

We have known each other for many years. It is funny how time flies. I don’t know if it has been a decade or a few years. I have no idea. It has been a while. I was almost going to say that you have known me since the time that I had hair, but that was already in the current state. I’m excited about our conversation.

For those of you who are reading, Tom and I somehow ended up wearing a similar blue shirt. We look like twins, brothers, or something in one form or another. For those of you that aren’t familiar with Tom, although many of you have been in The Consulting Success community for a period of time, you have probably heard me talk about Tom or reference some of his past books or work.

Tom is an author and speaker. He is the Founder of Hunt Big Sales. He is a recognized expert in large account sales. He has helped his clients to land more than $18 billion in new sales with 190 Fortune 500 companies. You have also written for places like Forbes, Inc, CBS MoneyWatch, and a whole bunch of others. I thought where we could start, Tom, is going back to 2005 when you started Hunt Big Sales. Why did you start Hunt Big Sales?

Like a lot of consultants, I was unemployable. I had already worked at a number of companies. I started and ran a number of companies. At that point, I did not want another boss. I was tired of making other people rich. I had found somebody I wanted to make rich, and that was me, but I backed into my consulting. I don’t think I’m unique in this.

I was looking to buy a business or start a business. I wound up with four companies I knew. They had hired me to do consulting. My wife and I are driving down the road. I said to her, “I’m looking at buying a company or starting a company.” She goes, “You got four clients. You are looking to hire a secretary. Honey, I think you have company.” That was the beginning of doing the work that I do now and have done for many years.

I remember many years ago, when my wife, at that time girlfriend, or I didn’t even know if we were engaged, but she said something similar to me in a different context, but it is the wise words of the better half or partner. It shows the value of an external advisor, coach, mentor, or somebody that can look from the outside in. That is the value that consultants provide to their clients. That was obvious to others, but to you at that time, you were in it.

Likewise, for me too, I remember I was running three different businesses with my cousin and Cofounder, Sam, all at one time. My wife said, “Why don’t you focus on making one of them amazing?” I was like, “That is not a bad idea.” You have touched on the next question I had for you, which is how you got your first client or clients. You had four people. For those that are in the earlier stages of joining us, some already are into the development of their business, but for those that are earlier stage might be interested to learn, how did you go about getting those first few clients?

RFPs commoditize you down into a measurement of income. It standardizes what they consider to be problem-solving ability. Click To Tweet

My first few clients were all a part of a CEO forum group. I was the CEO, and they were CEOs. They knew what I did, and I knew what they did. When I had stopped and left the company I had been running, I said, “I’m looking to buy or do consulting.” Their answer is, “I will take you. Until you get that done, why don’t you come in and help me with that?”

I’m a big fan of connecting. Networking makes me a little nervous. If you are going to network or if you are going to connect, connect it to the CEO level. I know that sounds hard to do. CEO groups are where people write checks because they have CEO-level problems. I’m not a fan of RFPs. One of my books is called RFPs Suck!. I’m not a fan of bidding out or paying by the hour. When you talk to a CEO, they pay big money to solve big problems. They are usually the ones who know what those large enterprise-level problems are. That is the key to the kingdom.

Many readers who are our clients and have been in our community will resonate with what you said from the perspective of when clients often ask us or have questions about RFPs, one of the first things that I say to them is, “RFPs can work, but you need to be number one prepared that it can take you at least a year, if not two years, to even get to a place where you have a good shot at winning anything. My first suggestion for you would be to read Tom Searcy’s book, RFPs Suck!.” The moment that I say that to people, they laugh because what a great name for a book.

What would you say to somebody who goes, “Tom, I understand that the CEO and that level is where I need to be?” Maybe they don’t view themselves as a CEO, especially if they are a solo consultant. Any suggestions on your experience on how somebody can get themselves into that position where they are surrounding themselves with more CEOs?

The level of CEOs moves up as you work with a group of CEOs. Maybe it is a small meeting group, and they are trying to develop. If you are running your own consulting firm, you are a CEO like they are. CEOs have a language. They have a set of issues, problems, and concepts. You can learn that if there are only four CEOs in a group and all four of them only have as many employees as you do. You start to talk about that, and you move up in size and scale.

The second thing is the issue is always the problem. What is the top problem that you are solving that is a CEO-level problem? I always like to talk to people, “Problem equals price.” When someone says to me, “How much does it cost?” I always say, “Let’s talk about what it creates. What is the value that it produces? What is the scale of this? How fast do you need to get it fixed?” When we talk about that, all of a sudden, the calculation of what you are doing changes.

I will tell you right now. We will never charge by the hour. If you are charging by the hour, you are the most expensive plumber. No, don’t do it. That is why I hate RFPs. RFPs commoditize you down into a measurement of income. It standardizes what they consider to be problem-solving ability. If you can do that, you can send it out to a bunch of people, and we can bid on it.

I have done government deals and Fortune 500 company deals. Every time they say, “You are going to need to go through purchasing and procurement,” my answer is, “I need to talk to a level up.” They said, “Why?” I said, “CEOs and COOs at that level invent money.” They said, “How do you mean they invent money?” I said, “They don’t have a budget. They have a problem. If you don’t have the problem that money will be invented for, I need to talk to someone else.”

You are hitting on a bunch of things here that I know everyone that is reading is going to want to know more about. I can’t gloss over and go to the next question I intended to ask you. Let’s go a little bit deeper into this. Take me through if you could in more detail. You don’t have to name names, but the situation where you are talking, whether it is a government buyer, a government department, or some large organization. They say to you, “Tom, we want your help.”

 

Somebody higher up in the organization said, “You are the person to speak to in Hunt Big Sales. Let’s connect you with our purchasing department so that we can get you all set up.” Your response is, “No, I love to know what your exact language is.” I’m sure there is pushback. How do you navigate that to get to the place where you end up speaking to a buyer that doesn’t have to wrangle you through purchasing, allows you to charge full fees, and have more freedom and flexibility in how to navigate that?

My statement typically is, “Are you using purchasing to create me as a qualified buyer and approved buyer?” Their answer is yes. That is appropriate. If you are American Express, a large bank, or a military contractor, fill in the blank, you have to get me approved as a particular provider. I say, “That is completely appropriate. Will I be defining the scope, fee, and all the works of outcomes with you, or will I be using procurement?”

If their answer is, “I’m going to do that,” I say, “Will you sponsor the purchase, or will you be handing it over to procurement?” Their answer is, “I’m sponsoring the purchase.” I said, “Walk me through that process quickly. How does that work? You and I have come to an agreement. I put together a scope of work document that has a bulk fee for it. What do you do?” They say, “I review it. I get the rest of my team on board with it, and I send it to procurement.” I said, “I understand that. What do they do with it?” They say, “They go out and get three bids.” I said, “That is okay. I’m out.”

Do you say you are out at that moment?

I say, “I’m out.” They said, “Why are you out?” I said, “I wrote the specs for you to go out and get the marketplace definition for what the issue is. I wrote your RFP. I transferred the intellectual property to you. It is okay if you want to do that, but I will charge you for what I gave you.” I’m a direct person that way, but direct like you and I are talking about now. Anybody that I am talking to at that level gets it. They understand. I said, “Are you going to solve your problem because procurement says you can? Do you have to go to your parents to get a sign-off so that you can go on the field trip?” If you have to go to your parents to get the sign-off for the field trip, you don’t get to go on the field trip.

I’m direct that way because I know how this game goes. They go to procurement, and I get shaped down. They send it out to somebody else. My answer is no. I’m not that big a company. I don’t have six months to wait for you guys to go ahead, sort this out, and put me up against 1 or 2 other companies out there and haggle the price. More than 9 out of 10 times, their answer is, “No, we want you.” I said, “You and I decide on what we are going to do and what it is going to cost and agree to it. I need your signature slipstream through procurement into the first invoice.” Michael, it works.

What do you think has given you the confidence to come in with that level of direct language and not worry? Some people might be concerned that they are going to ruffle feathers or lose that opportunity when you say, “I have transferred this IP. I will charge you.” Some people may be like, “The buyer didn’t even know that you were going to charge them in here. You are saying you are going to charge them.”

You are going strong here, but it works. I can see how you are raising yourself, bringing yourself, or maintaining that peer-to-peer relationship, but I’m wondering where does that come from? Is that because you don’t use to do that? I’m wondering. Was there an experience? Give us a bit of background into what got you to that place where you are confident so others can work to become confident in that way.

Before I was a consultant, I ran four fast-growth companies. It went from 0 to $200 million or $10 million to $100 million. All four of them did that in less than five years each. We are clear about that. That means I failed at a rapid rate. I made as many mistakes as I could, but what we learned early on, and I have stuck to it, is it is not who I sell. It is who I don’t sell. I try and get rid of as many opportunities up front that are going to fail.

Don't sell to people who are going to say no. Click To Tweet

People ask me, “Why is your conversion rate high?” It is easy. I don’t sell to people who are going to say no. All of a sudden, it looks like I got this ridiculous conversion rate. No, I don’t. I have a ridiculous kill rate of getting rid of bad opportunities. One of the things I know about opportunities is if I don’t own upfront the buyer’s ability to say yes, I can leave, and I’m not afraid to leave.

Most people look at their funnel and opportunities. They say to themselves, “I need this much money. This is a great opportunity. If I get my foot in the door, I will get to additional projects.” My answer is, “No, you have a big problem. I have a big solution. If you don’t know your problem is big enough, I haven’t done a good enough job of working through your problem and understanding the negative impact.” It doesn’t matter if it is rewriting an HR book. It doesn’t matter if it is redesigning some of the CRM work. It doesn’t matter if you are working on culture.

You have to define, “Here is your problem. Here is the net impact of your problem. This problem needs to be solved in this period of time. The only reason you set me out to anybody else is you don’t have confidence that I understand and can solve your problem.” This is an issue of confidence. My question is, what things do you need to understand that I need to do a better job of explaining that will give you the confidence that you don’t want to go through another process to find someone who is going to come in second place? I am direct about that because I’m afraid that I’m going to spend time with someone who is going to say, “We should do this later. We should do it smaller. I need to refer this to someone.” No, I’m not interested in that.

Another way to view this might be that you are being direct because it gives you the answer that you are looking for a lot sooner. Rather than delay the potential inevitable of a lot of wasted time, find out that things get more complex, or somebody backs down, you are saying quickly and upfront, “Here is the deal. Which way do you want to go? Do you want to make this work? If you want to make it work, let’s do it. If not, all good,” and you move on to the next.

I can give a quick example. We were talking to a company. They contacted us because it of something they had heard or whatever was good about us. They said, “We are going to be looking at several companies.” I said, “Tell me about the problem.” They gave us a $100 million answer. I said, “What are the other kinds of companies you are looking at?” They were looking at a CRM company, skillset, management company, or somebody to reorganize their sales, and they were looking at us. We said, “You told us you don’t know what your problem is. Our recommendation is when you figure out what your problem is and landing large accounts happens to be your problem, call us back. If you are looking at those four options, you don’t know what your problem is.”

Several months later, they called us back. They say, “We think our problem is we need to land larger accounts.” We now have a conversation that makes sense. Those aren’t bad solutions, Michael. They are just not good solutions for certain problems. That is the other part of confidence. The confidence also comes from, “I know my lane.” If you have these problems, we are the right thing. We can do sales training. We are good at it, and it is part of what we do. We can do a systems interface. It is part of what we do. We do all those things. Number one issue, do you have big sales problems? I can look at the other things later.

The other question that I had for you is you talked about pricing and fee. When a buyer says, “How much is this going to cost?” you want to get to the heart of what is the value of the problem or the impact it can have on the organization. You said, “How fast do you want to solve that?” I’m wondering. Do you internally have a formula that your company uses to figure out the right fee for a given project? How much of that is art? How much is science? Is there an actual mathematical equation? How do you approach coming up with a fee?

I shouldn’t probably be telling you this, but I’m going to tell you anyway. This is the hard part because I like you. I’m going to give you the answer anyway. Issue number one is we say, “What is the problem that you have? What the net impact is as measured over the course of the next three years?” We always talk about money. If you are redoing culture and you got a soft answer, no. You have to turn that answer into money. I have talked to so many companies who say, “It is not that it is a soft answer.” My answer is, “No, get help from people that are part of your show.” In the end, you need to be able to convert it to money.

The second thing is I need to look at the size of the problem. When people talk to us, they look at our fees. Our fees are high. They are not one of the top four consulting firms, but they are high. People say, “Your fees are high.” I said, “I should be the most expensive consultant you have ever hired.” They go, “Why?” I said, “I’m solving the biggest problem you have ever had. The issue is the size of the problem equals the price.”

 

You say, “Tom, go behind the curtain and show me how you do this.” If we have to travel and leave town to go anywhere, it is double whatever our fee is. We would charge you the cost of goods sold and consultant fees. If we are doing it by video, we look at the value of the cost of goods sold. We have one of the consultants that we contract with. We look at them between $500 and $1,000 an hour in cost of goods sold. That is not what they receive. They receive good money.

One of the things that we do for all of our consultants, we sell the deals. It is our brand, and we close them. We say to them, “Here is the client you are going to work with. Here is the work you are going to do.” We have been good at that. We look at the cost of goods sold from our consultant. We look at the cost of the sale. We look at a multiple against that, and we put in a buffer. The buffer is not pure margin. The buffer is that part that says, “You can call me anytime outside of the scope of this contract, and I will be your trusted advisor.”

To everybody I’m talking to now, the interesting thing is that unlimited access has a huge perceived value and yet a very rare use. When I say to you, “I’m on your side. I want to do this,” we do. Different clients call us on different things. Some call us a lot. When I say, “This is the scope. We are going to develop this system inside your organization. We are going to train your people on how to use it. We are going to measure and build all the rest of this stuff. On your biggest deals, we want to be involved,” when that happens, don’t worry. I’ll be here. To answer your question, I look at the cost of goods sold, and I look at my cost of sale, which is significant for anybody who was out there.

Tom, what goes into the cost of goods sold and the cost of sale? What are the components of each of those?

If you are licensing materials or you are paying anybody else, we happen to have our own materials. We build that cost of whoever is going to deliver that cost of the materials themselves if something needs to be done with that or if you have to rent a facility. All of that is a part of the cost of goods sold. The cost of the sale is the commission you have to pay. It is a calculation of time versus conversion rate as far as what it takes to close that. It is a referral partner or channel partner and what they receive. Sometimes it is a double commission. Your salesperson and channel partner gets a commission.

We put ourselves in marketing and advertising. All of the cost of the sale goes into that. There is a G&A. How do you run your office? All this stuff that we know about G&A. Above that, “Why don’t we take home some money?” That is where the margin comes in. I don’t think my breaking out is different than other people’s accounting, except we talk to lots of people who don’t use that accounting.

They throw themselves out there for X amount of hours. Their ability to say, “I’m available to 7 by 24,” throws away the value. When I say, “I’m on your team,” if you are in the middle, in my case, a big sale, an email comes in, and you need to respond to it, call me, send me the email, and we will have the conversation. That decreases their feeling that you are a one-and-done provider.

Let’s say that for a buyer or new client, the value for them is landing $50 million in new business per year for the next three years. It is $150 million in new value, large accounts, or however we want to define that. How would you go about applying? You have your cost of goods, cost of sale, and multiple parts, which is where you are thinking about the value component. What some people struggle with is this idea of, “I’m helping to create $150 million.”

There are different formulas out there where some people say, “You can charge maybe 5 or 10 times the ROI.” In some cases, that might mean that if you are contributing $150 million in value, your fee might be $15 million. To some people, that seems a crazy amount. I had Subir Chowdhury. He talked about landing multimillion-dollar deals and having a lot of confidence around that, but many people don’t have that. What do you think about that? If you were going into a situation where the value for the client is $150 million over three years, how would you think about your fee and the context of that?

We will negotiate on the scale, but we won't negotiate on price. Price is price. All you are doing is taking away the margin. Click To Tweet

I had a strong caution about taking a percentage on ROI or gross revenue. There are two reasons for it. One is I’m not doing the accounting. Someone else is counting the money. The second thing is I don’t know if their organization will implement the things that I bring to them along the way. That has to do with leadership, commitment, and sustained energy.

What we do is put together an overall program. We have a systemic approach to installing our program and system and coaching it along the way, and doing all those kinds of things. Depending upon the size of the organization, the number of people, and the number of groups that we are going to have to do, we install that overall system. Our customers usually come back and say, “Yes, and I need something else. We will negotiate on the scale, but we won’t negotiate on price. Price is price. All you are doing is taking away my margin. All my costs are the same. We don’t haggle.” The point is that you build that out and have confidence in that.

There have been some very generous clients who have given us additional compensation above and beyond because they are grateful for what has happened, but you don’t book on that. You figure out all the rest of it along the way. I love to go ahead and bill on an ROI or percentage revenue and all the rest of those kinds of things. I helped a company close a $2 billion contract and helped them close another $1.5 billion.

I received good compensation for additional programs over the course of the next few years. Because they are a publicly traded company, it was a disproportionate amount of compensation, but it allowed them to push it through their purchasing process. I recognized that the margin differential was to cover that which was not awarded, but it is $2 billion and $1.5 billion. It is $3.5 billion. Should I not be flying a jet? No. I performed what I said I was going to do. I knew that I didn’t have to count their money to get paid. This is me. Other people may be good at that. If they are good at it, send me an email. I like to get better.

A question for you, Tom. What do you see as the main differences or distinctions between that larger account sale? In your mind or inside of your company, what is the definition of a large account? Does it start at six figures? First of all, is a large account from a dollar or currency perspective numerical? What is the distinction between maybe smaller account sales and large account sales?

First, our target filter is companies between $10 million and $250 million in annual revenue. We like to see David beat Goliath. We don’t like to see Goliath stomp on David. That is an issue of choice. We get Fortune 500 companies that we help out every once in a while, but that is not who we talk to. The second thing is these are companies that are looking to change the nature of their average sale from whatever that dollar amount is to deals that are between 2 and 10 times the size of their average sale. They have a $100,000 average sale. They want a $200,000 to $1 million sale.

The third thing is that we are looking for people who want to double their double, double the speed with which they want to double the size of their company. They need to have at least 1 to 2 big sales already on their books. Big sales have a flavor. You better like the way they taste. If you don’t, and we are your first one, it is hard because you have to make changes and adjustments along the way.

When we work with those companies, because we don’t work below $10 million in size, and it is doubled along the way, we are also working with the owner. When you get up to $250 million, you are working with the owner, a high-level manager, or a CEO that was brought in by the board. In that case, we are working on the biggest problems they have. It doesn’t matter if it is culture, HR, or finance.

Anybody who is on this show, I have seen almost every industry that is out there as far as professional services and consulting. Every one of them has a customer base, whatever their amount is, who has that larger problem. We look for people who got big problems. They need to get them finished with or started on and hopefully completed as far as stage one within six months to a year. Installing a system like ours takes a long time, but they need to see early financially beneficial wins within six months, or they lose their flavor for the effort. I understand that.

 

How does that fit you and your company? As a consulting firm owner, do you view it in the same way? For those joining us, running consulting firms, whether they are a solo consultant or small firms, is the opportunity the same for them? Should they also be thinking about larger accounts or bigger consulting engagements? Is that a real challenge for a smaller firm or even a solo consultant they may be staying away from? What are your thoughts on that?

Here is the thing. Why does a $10 million client work with a company like ours? It is because they have a vision of being significantly bigger in a particular window of time. They don’t look at us as a fee. They look at us as an investment. An investment has a clear outcome. I would say to anybody who is on it. If you are a solo provider out there, there are people in your market space who have those sizes of problems. If you are a fractional employee, like a part-time CFO, I would be careful about that. I look at that as dollars per hour. You have three part-time jobs. You are going to run out of capacity quickly because of the hours that you can charge.

In your mind, Tom, what is the difference between selling a $500,000 deal or a seven-figure deal compared to a $50,000 deal in your experience?

A department head asks their vice president whether or not we can spend this money to solve a little problem. Give me your typical person. We will use that. Michael, do you have a typical profile?

One of our clients or the consultants we work with?

One of the folks that are going to read this blog.

They might be the founder of their firm. Maybe they have 3, 4, or 5 team members. Some will be solo consultants. Let’s say they are working with owners of manufacturing companies. They are doing $5 million, $25 million, or $250 million, similar in size to your ideal clients but in manufacturing. Let’s take that as an example.

We had a number of clients that are in that space. Inside of that, what is the problem? I will give you one of them. One of the problems is that this particular organization was on a bi-cycle for a platform of particular machinery. They were stuck in that period of time. They could bid on elements that go into there. They had to break that cycle. They were able to look at the equipment and say, “You have created a piece of equipment. You will be paying back on issues of your warranty at a rate of this.”

All they did was look at the equipment and say, “This is the stuff that is going to break apart, and here is how that is going to go.” They put together an analysis that said, “This is why it is going to break.” They went to the CFO and asked for the opportunity to meet with the head of engineering. They met the head of engineering because you always got to go to the subject matter expert. From that part, that conversation opened up a much larger dialogue about the parts that fail. That is an example.

He or she who has the most information wins. Click To Tweet

It is because it is all intellectual property. They are not making anything. They sell whatever the components are. My point is if you are butts in seats, programming, or whatever, your dollar is per hour. That is okay. You have to find and manage a lot of people. Maybe you are good at that, but is it really the problem? Is that the issue?

What I’m also hearing you say here, to try and summarize for the benefit of everyone, is that to land the larger accounts or the bigger deals, it is about being more investigative. It requires more conversations and looking at what are all the implications. What is at the core of the problem? What is going on? Without that, it is hard to identify the true value of that bigger problem. If you are not doing that, you are focusing on what you see. The value of solving and what you see is going to be smaller and not as large. Therefore, that is going to be that $50,000 deal as opposed to the $500,000 deal.

Game of Thrones was where I might have come up with it, but the information is the coin of the realm in big sales. He or she who has the most information wins. If you show up at a big buyer and say, “I want to introduce myself, find out a little bit about your business, and see what is going on,” you are wasting their time.

They are going to be aggravated because their answer is, “You didn’t come in and understand my industry, my competitors, the technology that is going on, and the marketplace that I’m operating in. I’m now having to educate you.” If you had a magic wand and you could change all that, what would it be? What keeps you up at night? I like to welcome you back to the year 2000. What a wonderful set of questions. Those are awful because it says that I don’t understand your business, problems, or issues.

You should, at the very least, be able to ask relevant questions about, “There are legislations coming through in the next several months. What is your response going to be about that? Technology has shifted. What are you going to do? What do you think AI is going to do with your ability to accelerate your development?” Whatever it is, you have the responsibility to be knowledgeable. When you come in to focus your questions on the customer or the prospect in a way that they say, “I can have a dialogue with this person. They can be valuable to me,” that is the first-meeting attitude.

The word that was sticking with me throughout this, and I talk to clients a lot about, is if you don’t go to that level of research or information gathering and understanding, it shows that you don’t care. Here’s one powerful way to differentiate yourself from all the other emails, LinkedIn messages, and everything else that your ideal clients are receiving right now from people who don’t care because they haven’t taken any time to personalize anything or show they understand you and your situation. By doing that extra work, not only are you able to demonstrate your knowledge, expertise, and understanding of everything that is going on that is relevant to that ideal client, but you show them that you care.

You have invested in them. There is an expression that a friend of mine taught me, and it is, “You get sent to whom you sound like.” If you sound like a director, that is where you will end up. If you sound like a CEO, that is where you will send up. That is what happens because of the scale of the problem. I will plug a book. It is called The Secret to Big Sales. It is using executive language to close bigger sales. Why? Most people don’t feel comfortable. They are intimidated a little bit. The bigger the company they are talking to, they are intimidated about talking to that C-Suite. I don’t think big words are what makes that work better. It is a bigger idea.

I want to ask you a question that is timely for what is going on now in the world as we are doing this. We are hearing this from many different clients and people that are in the community here, which is budget cuts, or they are talking to buyers, and people are hesitating. They are delaying. I’m wondering how you are counseling your clients and what you are doing in your own company now to deal with some of that hesitation or the eagle eye on budgets and what is happening, given the state of the economy and the world now.

Number one, if you are talking to somebody about budgets, you are talking to the wrong level of person. People at the senior level invent money because they’re investing it in solving a problem. Budget cuts are something that is managed at the managerial, HR, and CFO level. Problem-solving is measured at the C-Suite level. Your issue is you have to talk to the highest level person about what is their highest level problem.

 

You are talking to the CEO or owner, but what if there is more hesitation in their minds? Is there anything that you are doing inside of your own company? Are you experiencing any of this as you are talking to prospective buyers? Are there any changes you are making, given some of the hesitations that people are demonstrating now more than before?

We are benefiting from some of the choices that are being made because there hasn’t been an indication of which people need less revenue. We are fast to growth revenue company. That is what we do. This goes back to the issue of the problem. When you lose a whole bunch of people, you are Microsoft, Facebook, or the stuff we see coming through the media right now. They got rid of all those people, but they didn’t get rid of all those problems. As a matter of fact, they lost the resources to get rid of it.

What is interesting about income statements is when you have the personnel, and you wipe that out, it makes an enormous amount of impact. When you back-sell consulting services in to solve problems, what do you look like? You look like a small line refilling in what was a big line. Focus on the problem because people who lost 7,000 people, 10,000 people, or 100 people didn’t lose the problem.

We are going to wrap up here, but there’s one other question I had for you here. Let’s say that you are sitting down with a friend who runs a consulting firm. She wants to start landing larger accounts, bigger deals, bigger sales, and bigger clients. What would you say that she should focus on first to get started?

The first step is to all the people and the companies they have worked with that have had less than a 50% conversion rate. Those are the industry, size of the company, and characteristics. These are the people you don’t talk to. There is always an opportunity in there. You could hit a home run, but right now, let’s go to the people who know that we know in their industries. Let’s say we have that target filter.

The second thing inside of that is what is the message of the senior level person? What is the biggest problem that they have? It is not your product or service. It is their problem. You have to tell your product and services to that problem. The third thing I would say about that is you need to determine how you are going to ladder up.

If I’m going in through the director of HR, I’m moving up through the vice president of HR, and I want to get to the CEO, there is what we call a layer cake. There are three layers of concerns. Each one is a little bit different. You have to be looking at what the problem is for each of those and ladder up to the next level. That typically has to do with the nature of those problems. That is in the book, but it is a core idea that you need to have out there.

The next piece to that is how you are going to source those leads. Knocking on doors and cold calling, people tell me it works. Okay, if you say so. If you got a system that works for you, you should share it with everybody. It is inefficient as a system. You are an expert. Go to places where experts are needed. There are places like LinkedIn. There are places where experts are needed, like podcasts. Michael has been asking me nothing but expert questions.

There are places where you can have podcasts, and you may say, “How do we get advertised? How do you get everything else?” Start out with your current and past customer base. Send the podcast out to them. In less than twelve months, they have another problem. Things that I believe are true are that when you sell success to someone and deliver success to problems, your past customers never run out of problems.

Follow the money. If you sell soft benefits, you will have a hard time in this economy. You need to translate it into a financial number. Click To Tweet

If you are a trusted advisor, you may reach them out a year later and go, “I had an idea. I had something I thought was relatively valuable to you. I wanted to talk to you about that.” People don’t do that as often as they could or they should. It is not about selling a product. It is about finding out where they are in their business and the problem they are dealing with. Those would be the first three things I would say to any consultant out there.

The one quick follow-up I have on that, Tom, is you will wonder what you have found is the best way. Let’s take this friend of yours. She goes, “I don’t know the biggest problem that the CEO has.” How would you counsel her to try and find that out?

Follow the money. Can you define the problem more than a CEO, CFO, CRO, or vice president has that is about money? If you are selling soft benefits, you are going to have a hard time in this economy. You need to translate it into a financial number. I would start off with, “What is the problem? How much money does that problem?”

If you feel to yourself like you don’t have all of that number, spend time with more of the people that are in that industry you know and friends you have developed, and calculate out. I like to throw out that we think this has as much of an impact as this. What is the number you see? 9 times out of 10, they have a bigger number than you do when I’m talking to a prospect.

The conversations part that you mentioned is if you don’t know that and you don’t have access to that information, you need to get out and talk to more people that are in the right places, which can help you to formulate and get clarity around those pieces. Tom, you and I could keep talking for many hours here, but we both got to hop off.

I want to thank you for coming to the show. It is always a pleasure to speak with you. Your new book is not out yet, but it might be out by the time the episode goes live. We will start sharing that around on social and other places with clients. Can you tell us, for everybody reading, what is the name of the book so they can try and find it on Amazon or wherever the book is going to show up?

It is called The Secret to Big Sales. It is using executive language to land big sales. If you want to reach out, we are at HuntBigSales.com. I’m happy to be helpful. We do what we tell everybody else not to do. We bring in some free consulting. You are getting a chance to have conversations as we did with Michael. We like to see David beat Goliath. It is an addiction. If you got stuff and you want to talk about it, reach out, and we will do what we can to help you.

Tom, thanks so much for coming on.

Michael, thanks so much. I enjoyed it. I hope we can talk again soon.

 

Important Links

• Hunt Big Sales
• RFPs Suck!
• Subir Chowdhury – Past Episode

 

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