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Let me ask you a question. Are you missing out on business opportunities because prospective clients either don’t know about all of your services—or don’t fully recognize the value that you could deliver to their businesses?

Would these companies be more likely to buy if they knew how others have benefited from your services? If so, maybe it’s time to tell them.

Better yet, let your current clients do the talking. But, make it easy for them to share their experiences with a wide audience—rather than just telling those they know who are in similar circumstances.

Launch a customer case study program.

Customer case studies showcase successes

A customer case study program showcases the successes that current clients have achieved as a result of engaging your firm. Whereas your service descriptions merely describe what you do and how you do it; your client success stories bring your services to life. Each paints a picture of the situations your clients typically face, the obstacles they need to overcome, and the dramatic impact that using your services has had on their companies’ overall success.

Everyone loves a good story

Effective case studies engage prospective clients by telling a story that captures their attention—because it’s also their story. These narratives begin with a description of your client’s business. Next, they describe the crisis that caused that client to seek out your services.

Then, customer case studies detail exactly how your firm helped the company overcome the obstacles standing in the way of their success. This helps your readers easily visualize how you would help them address their own situations. Finally, the most effective client case studies drive home the value that your firm delivers by translating the technical merits of your services into dollars and cents.

Client case studies shorten the sales cycle

Well-written success stories are invaluable marketing tools at almost every stage of the sales cycle. Deploy them in on your website, as sales collateral in pocket folders, and as featured articles in your monthly newsletter to accelerate your clients’ buying process .

Early on, case studies help prospective buyers recognize their need for your services by describing your client’s dilemma in a way that is painfully familiar to them. Later in the sales cycle, these same case studies create a sense of urgency about buying because everyone wants to “keep up with the Jones”.

Client success stories also help your organization raise awareness of your services. They can elevate your company above the competition by associating your brand with the better known brands of some of your high profile clients.

Customer case studies also attract media attention because they are relatively easy to turn into meaty articles. Reporters especially like the fact that you have already identified sources willing to speak on the record.

Client success stories attract web traffic because they are rich with the keywords that your most promising prospects enter when searching for solutions like yours. Placed in newsletters—or featured in your practice’s blog—client success stories can help keep your practice top of mind with prospective clients.

Finally, client success stories remove obstacles to the sale. They build confidence that your solutions will achieve the promised results. Moreover, by quantifying the value that your clients received, client success stories help decision makers justify an investment in your services.

Client case studies keep on giving

There’s no doubt that client success stories are versatile sales tools. Yet, many of our clients hesitate to launch customer case studies programs because they worry about imposing on their best clients.

To their delight, however, our clients often discover that their clients are happy to discuss their experiences and look forward to being featured in an article that positions them as leaders in their industry.

Many also find that that the interview itself strengthens the relationship. It turns out that just reflecting upon the benefits they derived from working with our clients, reinforces our clients’ clients’ perception of the value they received. As for our clients, they benefit from gaining a deeper understanding of their clients’ requirements and often uncover other opportunities to serve them.

You can never have too many client success stories

Once they realize all the benefits of doing client case studies, many of our clients ask all their clients to collaborate on customer case studies. Their goal is to get at least one success story for every service they provide in each industry they serve—since all their clients continue to believe their needs are unique.

So, here’s another question. Shouldn’t you start leveraging your clients’ satisfaction to cross-sell your business to existing clients and attract new business?

Here’s a response I received last week–after posting a complaint on the offending company’s online feedback form about a misleading product offer.

“Thank you for your e-mail regarding your account. It is always our aim to provide the highest level of customer satisfaction. We are always concerned to learn that any customer is unhappy with the service we provide.

All applications are processed by our Customer Recruitment Department, so you will need to contact them directly [at phone number] with your request.

I must also advise you that if we do not hear from you within eight weeks of the date of this e-mail, we will assume that your complaint is resolved. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.”

The note ended with the writer wishing me his kindest regards.

Branding is the sum of the buyers’ experiences

This communiqué came from a business that regularly spends exorbitant amounts of money on branding their company, extolling the virtues of their products, and encouraging prospective customers to buy. Yet, they had clearly not spent as much effort developing their post-sales strategy.

What did this company do wrong? Rather than addressing my concern, the representative first gave lip service to the importance his company places on providing “the highest levels of customer satisfaction” Then, he suggested that I turn to someone else in his company for help. The buck clearly didn’t stop with him.

This “service” representative also made it clear that the onus was on me to resolve the issue. Finally, adding insult to injury, he apologized for the inconvenience he and his company must surely have been aware they were continuing to cause me.

What do you think my impression was of this company? What was the ultimate cost of this communication to the company? What could this representative have done differently to preserve good will–if not the sale?

When you think about these important questions, the answers are probably obvious to you. Why weren’t they obvious to the company in question?

Return on marketing investments are not always positive

It just didn’t add up. This company had invested in a direct sales force to sell me the product. They had invested significant sums in free gifts to sweeten the offer. Yet, in just one email communication, they had succeeded in reversing all the efforts they had made to get my business. Worse, they may have jeopardized any possibility of doing business with me in the future.

Chances are that many of you have received similar missives from equally well-known companies. How do strategic errors like this happen and what can companies do to prevent them?

Product Development – Giving buyers what they want the way they want it

Two posts back, we discussed the fact that if you want to speed up purchases, you need to know what’s important to customers and give them exactly what they want, the way they want it. This company clearly missed the boat. They got the core product right, but neglected to consider the ancillary services required to deliver it satisfactorily.

Although many companies think of product development as ending at launch, that’s not how buyers see it. Rather, buyers view the product in terms of their entire experience—from pre-sales offers, to purchase, to conformity with their expectations about functionality and ease of use. When their overall experience is positive, they buy again. When it’s not, they may even go so far as returning the product or canceling a service.

Nevertheless everyone makes mistakes. When businesses take steps to rectify the error, many buyers will give them a second chance and consider other products. When, on the other hand, companies are cavalier in their treatment of complaints, dissatisfaction can escalate. In the worst scenarios, buyers refuse to buy any products from the company and significant sums of promotion dollars spent on branding the company also go to waste.

Integrated marketing campaigns begin with integrated product development

What can businesses do to avoid these consequences? Here are some suggestions:

• Re-define “product” success to include the buyers’ ultimate satisfaction 6 to 12 months following the purchase, rather than mere execution of a sale.
• Encourage a culture where everyone in the company is motivated to personally contribute to the advancement of buyers’ satisfaction.
• Involve every internal department in the product development process to increase the chances of anticipating all buyers’ concerns, avoiding missteps, and ensuring seamless delivery.
• Ask them to research what actions their organizations can take to stimulate delight in their own areas of expertise—and what practices they’ll need to avoid.
• Review the ultimate proposed delivery process from the buyers’ perspective. What issues might arise? What can the company due to avoid them altogether? For unavoidable issues, what steps can be taken to resolve them sooner rather than later?
• Test the process with real users before launching and correct as necessary.
• Follow up on all system failures and take corrective action.

One manufacturing concern I worked for convened cross-functional teams weekly to review and determine the root cause of all customer-reported problems. First, however, they classified any shipment that resulted in dissatisfaction—for any reason–as “dead on arrival”.

Marketing Research shortens the sales cycle

At BB Marketing Plus, we work with clients to look at the whole picture, upfront, from the perspective of prospective buyers. To step into our clients’ buyers’ shoes, we do a lot of primary marketing research but we also gather information from internal experts–such as sales people and customer service personnel–who know from experience where potential pitfalls lie. Cross-functional development teams then use this knowledge to guide the entire product development and launch process.

We find that mapping the buying process —and finding out exactly what prospective buyers expect at every stage—greatly increases our clients’ ability to hit the mark with both their product offerings and their marketing messages.

How does your business find out what’s important to prospective buyers so that you can give them what they want—and do it their way?

The staff at Accounting Web wrote a post on Embracing the Internet as a Marketing Tool. When I started to add my two cents, I quickly ran out of room. Luckily, I have my own blog on the very same site, so I decided to interrupt the series on the buying process model to share my comments below:

Here are some additional ideas that our accounting clients use to leverage the Internet when marketing their firms.

Using websites to market professional services

As a strategic marketing consultant, specializing in professional services, I advise my clients to first:

* Think about who they need to reach

* What they want these individuals to say or do as a result of visiting the site

* What web visitors need to see to on the site to motivate them to take the desired action

In short, it’s all about the web visitors, rather than the company featured on the website. Most people that visit professional service websites are there to validate that the firm is expert at solving problems like theirs.

At a minimum, therefore, effective websites describe the business and the staff’s credentials. Some prospective clients also seek assurances that it will be easy to do business with the firm. For this reason, professional service firms with busy, tech-savvy clientele often provide on-line access to client services–as a way of positively distinguishing their firms from the competition.

Success depends on attracting visitors to your website

Putting up a website is like erecting a giant sign behind your office, no one finds it unless you tell them it’s there. You can attract visitors via word of mouth and conventional marketing materials. Nevertheless, the best websites contain content that attracts visitors and compels them to act.

The most effective technique is getting other websites to link to yours. Search engines also give precedence to “keyword-rich” content. Success depends on publishing lots of web pages—each of which mentions words that describe one of your services (e.g. “tax preparation”) many times on the same page.

Then, to get visitors to act, make them an offer they can’t refuse. For example, you may promise to review a document and credit their account when they ultimately engage you for the larger project.

Use outbound internet marketing tools to stay top of mind

Don’t wait for visitors to drop in; invite them to stop by. It’s important to reach out regularly to each of your key audiences if you want to stay top of mind. That’s because while everyone checks their email, few people–outside your own firm–visit your website on a regular basis.

We use the following tools to help our clients reach their clients and prospective clients. We also recommend our clients use these tools to stay in touch with other accountants who can refer business to them, help them serve their clients, or even join their firms as an employee. Important Internet marketing tools include:

o Email marketing

o Publishing articles on others’ sites to generate coveted links back to their sites (authors need to include their URLs as well as their names and qualifications)

o “Linked” in and other online networking services to generate “word of mouth”

o Posts on others’ sites linking back to our clients’ sites

o Blogs (readers can receive new posts automatically as email)

“Repurpose” all your marketing communications on your website for maximum impact

Then, we encourage them to add copies to their website.The nice thing about using the Internet instead of paper is:

* Content permanently resides on your website and therefore continues to market for you long after you published it

* Content is less expensive to distribute, and to revise for that matter.

* Great, inexpensive, tools exist for others to find you–obviating the need for expensive advertising.

Here’s an example of how we add copies of our own marketing communications to our website for maximum impact.

There are many reasons that sales cycles stretch out. As we discussed when we reviewed how businesses buy, most companies delay buying until: 1) they recognize a clear need for a solution, 2) have a sense of urgency, and 3) identify product or service providers that they believe will meet their needs.

At that point, however, most buyers have a heightened awareness of the cost of delay–and are anxious to move forward. When they don’t, it’s a telltale sign that your product or service is missing the mark.

When interested buyers fail to purchase, after learning about how your solution will address their concerns, sales cycles stretch out as they seek a better match. If they find another provider that will give them exactly what they want, they’ll purchase there. Even when prospective buyers later purchase from your company, delays hold up your ability to recognize revenue—and may also run up your sales and marketing expenses as you try to close the deal.

In short, maximizing sales productivity clearly depends on your readiness to give prospective buyers exactly what they want, the way they want it. The question is, “How do you determine what that is?”

Effective marketing research is the fastest route to winning solutions

To design great solutions, you need a thorough understanding of prospective buyers’ most pressing needs and want. To get this information, it’s helpful to conduct primary marketing research by going straight to “the horse”, but not necessarily to the horse’s mouth.

One of the best ways to find out what’s most important to prospective buyers is to observe what sells and what doesn’t. One common mistake, however, is asking prospective buyers what they want. That’s because most of us only think we know what we want. We get it wrong, however, because we fail to take into account all the factors that come into play at the time of purchase.

We’re lousy predictors of our own behavior

Look at your own clientele. If you ask them, many would say they want an accountant who will find tax savings that they would otherwise miss. They might add that for this reason they seek out professionals with experience in their industry with a demonstrated track record of generating savings for others just like them.

Nevertheless when you look at actual buying behavior, many factors come into play—some of which ultimately end up taking precedence over the ones that are top of mind. Examples include availability when clients need to meet a pressing deadline, the ability to accept 90 day payment terms, a pleasant reception when they contact your office, or a plethora of other factors that prospective buyers are not fully aware are important to them until faced with a real situation.

Look to actions, rather than words

In our experience, the best way to find out what prospective buyers want is to look at their past purchasing patterns. That’s because we’re creatures of habit. We tend to do things the way we’ve always done them and maintain the same priorities.

One way to do that is to start with your existing clientele, specifically your best clients since they’re likely to be the best proxy for your most promising prospects. If, on the other hand, you’re losing the most promising prospects to the competition, start there with prospective buyers that chose to buy elsewhere. In either case, it’s important to focus on just your most promising prospects because you can’t be all things to all people.

Get at past purchasing patterns by reviewing your company’s sales history. If you maintain a lead tracking or contact management system, review your notes to determine:

* Which solutions did prospective buyers purchase right away?

* When they delayed why did they delay?

* What questions did they ask?

* What was the single most important reason they purchased?

* What concessions, if any, did you need to make to get their business?

* Under what circumstances were they willing to pay a premium and why?

* What caused them to select you over the competition?

* When they recommend your company, what do they say?

* If they went to a competitor, what was the reason?

* When you lost, what if anything could you have done to get the business?

If you didn’t record answers to these questions, it’s okay to go back and ask. Nevertheless, remember to focus on past purchases. As we discussed above, most people make far better reporters than analysts.

Worried about annoying people? Don’t! Most people are flattered that you’re interested in their insights and happy to share them with you if you are courteous and schedule an appointment in advance. If you’re just starting out, and don’t have any clients, interview your competitors’ clients.

Tip: Build your sales history as you go

At BB Marketing Plus we do a lot of marketing research to help our clients rank development priorities. Here are some tips your company can use to capture what is important to your clientele:

1. Implement a system that helps you map prospective buyers’ behavior including the stages of their buying process and:

* Who was involved at each stage

* What information each individual required

* What follow up questions each individual asked

* The time it took to move to the next stage

* The reason for any delays it took to move from one stage to the next

* Why you won when you won

* Why you lost when you lost

2. Ensure that you keep your system up to date, calling back buyers and prospective buyers to fill in knowledge gaps

3. Ask a lot of questions to get a sense of their entire situation and priorities, rather than just their immediate requirements

* Keep your questions open-ended, rather than making assumptions

* Ask individuals to report on past behavior, rather than to predict the future

4. Follow up regularly to assess satisfaction

* Ask about every aspect of your business interactions

* Find out what you’ve done well and what needs improvement

* Act on what you learn

* Thank people for their insights and communicate what you’ve done as a result.

Our clients find that they can learn a lot from the past. One of the findings that many find surprising is that while price is important, it’s generally not the deciding factor. Another revelation is that their clientele often has different perspectives—than they do–when it comes to defining quality. These are important insights when your goal is to give prospective clients exactly what they want and do it their way.

So you’ve got the attention of your prospective buyers. The good news is that they now know of the existence of your business. The bad news is that they know far less than you think they know about your company. That’s because most of us are so busy, that we only have the capacity to think about our most pressing concerns.

First impressions count, but don’t do the job

When it comes to others, we only form a general impression. At this point, despite the fact that you may have told them much more, prospective buyers are likely to remember only one thing about you at best. It may the first thing you said; it may be something they heard about from someone else; or it may be the thing that resonated most with their top concern the day they encountered your company. Whatever it is, they need to know a lot more before they buy.

The problem is that prospective buyers are still too busy to learn about your company and its services. In fact, one of the greatest obstacles to a sale is getting your marketing messages through to the intended audience. Hopefully, you’ve made enough of an impression, to elevate your company’s marketing communications above the clutter. If so, your next challenge is staying in touch so that you can help prospective buyers move through their buying process. Any missteps and they’re likely to buy from someone else.

Brand building one step at a time

Before they ultimately buy, decision makers will need to:
• Become aware of all the services you offer
• Associate their needs with these services
• Think of your business as the “obvious” choice
• Remember your company when it comes time to buy

The best way to move prospective buyers through these steps is sequentially: one message per communication. Again, they don’t have the capacity to take in more than one detail about your company at a time.

Email marketing may be the answer

One of the best vehicles for your “drip” campaign is a newsletter—conventional or email depending on your audience. Nevertheless, each communication must be directly relevant to their concerns; else it too will remain unopened.

So, in preparing the subject lines and headlines of your missives, return to the four marketing questions we discussed last week. To increase the relevance to readers, and memorability, consider adding a story that illustrates your point and resonates with what you’ve learned about their experiences. Examples of how your accounts have triumphed using your solutions is often the best way to advance your agenda.

A typical email newsletter might describe a service you offer, provide a case study of how one of your accounts benefited from its application, and appear under a headline mentioning both the company that deployed the solution and the impact it had on their business.

Assuming that the featured business is in the same industry—and has the same issues—as your reader, your readers will be anxious to read all about it so that they, too, can achieve success. The following newsletter will follow a similar format but for a different service. One communication at a time, you’ll ensure that prospective buyers:
• Become aware of all the services you offer
• Associate their needs with these services
• Think of your business as the “obvious” choice
• Remember your company when it comes time to buy
For an example of how to implement this strategy, see this article on clinician marketing. As a bonus, you may be able to apply some of the techniques I’ve described to help your physician clients market their practices.

A drip campaign can shorten the sales cycle

So how does a drip campaign shorten the sales cycle? Although your target audience may contain thousands of people, only a few of them are ready at any point in time to buy. Moreover, even if you had the staff, it would be very expensive to follow up with them individually on a regular basis. Done well, your newsletter is likely to reach a small percentage of your audience just as they are ready to buy. If these companies contact you, you’ve generated a qualified lead—and reached someone who is ready to buy right away–without investing in expensive one-to-one prospecting or in manually helping them through their buying process.

Using an email newsletter or conventional print newsletter serves a second purpose. It serves to brand your company as a helpful and authoritative resource. Even if these companies go out to bid, your organization will stand above the crowd. You may even be able to bypass the time-consuming due diligence that companies use to evaluate prospective providers—because they already feel confident in your ability to deliver.

Will prospective buyers turn to you when they’re ready to move forward?

Getting the sale depends on affirmatively answering all three of the following questions:

• Have they heard of your business?
• Do they know that you can address the problem?
• Will they remember you when it comes time to buy?

Brand awareness is not sufficient. Think back to your own experience.

Sure, you’ve lost sales because prospective buyers haven’t heard of your business. But, I’ll bet you’ve also lost business because prospective buyers just didn’t realize that you offered a particular product or service.

For example, three years ago, when I needed my hedges trimmed, it never occurred to me to call the arborist who prunes my trees. That is, not until I asked a neighbor for a reference and she told me she used my arborist.

I was taken aback. Even though I was highly satisfied with his services, it just never occurred to me that he also trimmed hedges. That’s because in my mind he was a “tree specialist”.

And, my mistake was not uncommon. In fact, most people only think of your business as doing the last thing you did for them–unless you take conscious steps to correct that impression. We’ll discuss how in a future post.

We’ve also all lost business because we’re not “top of mind” when the buyer finally develops a sense of urgency. We’ll also discuss how to stay high on prospective buyers’ radar in a future post.

In the meantime, we’ll discuss 4 questions you need to answer before launching a marketing campaign or engaging an advertising or public relations agency.

Who do you need to reach?

Often, it’s not just the decision maker. While he or she may make the final decision, many others often influence the sale. Without first engaging these individuals’ support, it’s often impossible to sway, or sometimes even reach, the decision maker. Prospective audiences for your marketing messages may include industry analysts, trusted advisers and internal staff such as technical evaluators and financial personnel.

How do you get their attention?

As Marshall MacLuhan said the media is the message. That means that the delivery vehicle is often as or more important than the message.

Most people are busy performing urgent tasks and are not receptive to messages about anything else—unless the information comes from a trusted source. Examples include advisers, existing suppliers, trade publications to which they subscribe, or presentations that they attend.

If, on the other hand, the prospective buyer is ready to purchase, he/she may be actively seeking out information. In that case, consider adding paid Internet search and website optimization to the marketing mix. If you’re already a trusted source, you may be able to save money and go direct—via telephone, email or direct mail—with confidence that they’ll open your communication.

How do you capture their interest?

Always speak specifically to the most pressing concern of the target audiences–in their language. General messages are not nearly as effective. So, it’s essential to first identify the target audience—and then what’s keeping them up at night.

As we discussed last week, you may need to prime the pump before speaking about your solution—or even the benefits it offers–if the problems your solution addresses are not particularly pressing. Consider developing intermediary messages that heighten prospective buyers’ awareness of the consequences of not addressing the problems your solution addresses. Follow those with messages that generate a sense of urgency about addressing these problems sooner rather than later. Then, and only then, will prospective buyers be receptive to messages about your solution and the benefits it delivers.

When is the best time to deliver your message?

The best time to deliver messages is when the audiences are most receptive. That however is hard to establish. That’s why marketers often say, “It takes 7 impressions to make an impact.”

In some cases, key events trigger needs for services. For example, everyone needs accounting services when taxes are due. Many require accountants when starting or acquiring a business. Nevertheless, the safest approach is to communicate your marketing messages consistently and frequently since recipients are generally pre-occupied with something else. Just by the law of numbers, if you communicate often you’re more likely to get a hit.

Once you get the answers to these questions, you’re ready to begin promoting your solutions.

Next week, we’ll discuss what to do once you prospective buyers’ attention.

This diagram describes the buying process. I contend that before anyone buys anything, they need to go through these nine steps. This is true for any purchase.

The higher the risk, the longer the sales cycle…

For low risk, inexpensive purchases like a candy bar, buyers whip through all nine steps in a matter of seconds. When it comes to major purchases, the buying process often takes months and sometimes years. For example, think back to the time it took your own business to decide to put up—or even redo—your website…

Let’s walk through the buying process to begin to understand some of the circumstances that cause sales cycles to stretch out, beginning with the first row of the chart (although in practice the second or third row may happen first).

Only those that have a need will purchase

The first box is labeled HAVE NEED. That’s because no one will buy from you unless they need what you have to offer. Nevertheless, most businesses waste resources promoting solutions to unqualified prospects–those that don’t need what they have to offer and therefore will never buy. For example, my small business sometimes gets sales calls from companies that sell products and services that only make sense for much larger companies.

But first they must recognize that the need exists

The next box is labeled RECOGNIZE NEED. How many of you know of companies that would be much better off if they purchased from you—but they’re continuing to do business in the same way they’ve always done? Chances are if they stopped to consider the real costs of inertia, they’d behave differently–but in the meantime sales cycles stretch out.

Take for example, some of the taxpayers that use the post office to submit their taxes. Many are aware that they qualify for free filing and have computers—but they continue to post their returns via US mail.

Although some subset of these individuals has well thought out concerns about filing over the Internet, most have just never stopped to really examine the pros and cons. In fact, they probably would have filed their returns electronically if they had only learned of the option when they were less busy—or realized in advance just how long they would have to wait in line on April 15 to obtain proof that they had mailed their documents in on time. Nevertheless, they didn’t; so the IRS will have to wait at least another year to consummate the sale.

Then, it generally takes a sense of urgency to generate demand

The third box is labeled READY TO BUY. Many buyers not only need a particular solution; they are aware that they should take action. Nevertheless, they delay buying because the urgent takes precedence over the important. In fact, it’s not uncommon for other initiatives to continue to take priority until the need becomes truly pressing.

To sum up, getting the sale depends on finding prospective buyer that need what you have to offer.  Nevertheless, need is a necessary but not sufficient condition.  Prospective buyers must realize what they’re missing by delaying a purchase and develop a sense of urgency about filling the gap.

Next week, we’ll proceed to row two of the buying process chart and discuss three more factors that can cause sales cycles to stretch out.

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Last week, we discussed the importance of reducing the cost of sales—which I defined as the time it takes to prospect for new clients and close new business. This week, I’d like to discuss how to get started.

Step one is recognizing that for the most part, we can’t convince anyone to buy something from us that they don’t want. When it comes to shortening the sales cycle—as with other forms of behavior change, the thing to remember is that it’s all about attraction and motivation—rather than persuasion and pursuit.

Purchasers decide what they want to buy and equally important how they prefer to buy it. All we can do is make it easy for them to buy from us.

The key to success is anticipating prospective buyers’ needs and then making sure you give them exactly what they want, when they want it, how they want it—before they ask. When we neglect to first understand how our clients prefer to buy, we run the risk of failing to make the necessary connection and causing sales cycles to stretch out. Let’s look at a few examples.

Suppose prospective buyers need a written understanding of what you will deliver, and you don’t have it. Sales cycles will stretch out while you prepare the necessary documents. If they require certain payment terms, and you can’t provide them, the sale stalls until you obtain authorization to give them what they want—or worse, you may end up losing the deal. If they depend on their trusted advisors for recommendations and these advisors aren’t familiar with your business, you’ll need to wait while they perform due diligence, or more likely, miss out on the opportunity altogether.

The better you understand prospective clients’ buying behavior, the greater is your ability to anticipate obstacles, and then take action to shorten the sales cycle. In short, upfront marketing research pays. More about that in a later post.

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For many professional service firms, the single largest expense is the cost of sales. That’s because while your firm’s most senior personnel are prospecting for new business—or convincing decision-makers to buy—these highly-compensated professionals are neither available to close other opportunities, or to deliver billable services.

To make matters worse, attracting—and ultimately closing new business–can take anywhere between several months and several years. In fact, sales people, at any organization that sell services, or products, that prospective buyers perceive as a major commitment, find themselves in much the same situation.

Several factors contribute to elongating the sales cycle. Most prospective clients will only buy from those that they know and trust–and winning trust takes time. Many already have satisfactory relationships with others. While some will give new firms a chance, most end up waiting until a major problem develops before they seriously consider switching providers. Even then, sales cycles often stretch out as decision-makers, and every one of the individuals they choose to involve in their buying process, perform due diligence to minimize risk.

The good news is that there are steps you can take to accelerate this process. Next week, we’ll discuss where to start.

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