There is an interesting phenomenon that accrues with success: The more successful you are, the more successful you become. Or as my father used to say from our lower class status watching those better off: “Them that has, gets.”
As your proposals create high rates of acceptance, start to experiment with your approaches. After all, you’re now playing with “house money.” There is no time to try new things (and possibly fail in a good cause) as from a position of strength.
Some examples:
Assess which options are usually selected. If it’s usually Option 2, how can you make your Option 3 more compelling? If it’s usually Option 3, then you may be charging enough for that alternative. If it’s usually Option 1, then you might be putting far too much value in your first option, making the next two seem inappropriately expensive for too little additional value.
- Evaluate how many current and past clients have chosen a retainer option with you. If the number is only three to four per year, perhaps you’re not aggressive enough in presenting the option. Or perhaps you haven’t provided enough additional value for the buyer to want you to be around even after the current project is completed.
- Find out how many clients have chosen to pay the full fee in advance with the discount you’re offering. If very few, then perhaps you haven’t made the alternative sufficiently visible, or the discount is too small. If nearly everyone, perhaps the discount is too large.
- Assess how many of your proposals and the projects they represented led to repeat business and extended work (not retainers, but more projects). Investigate why this didn’t happen even more often. Were you not providing sufficient ideas and incentives to continue with you, or did the buyer see you in too narrow a role, not suited for other things? Were you not meeting new buyers during your time on-site?
Let me dispel a myth at this point: It is entirely possible and, in fact, desirable, to market while you are delivering a project. The old rubric that “you can’t deliver and market at the same time” is an excuse thrown up by people who don’t know how to market!
Case Study: My Surprise at Merck
George was an international development manager at one of my largest clients, Merck, and he was my most significant single buyer, purchasing about $250,000 of consulting work per year through single proposals. He would take the 10 percent discount, and pay me $225,000 in early January, because Merck was on a calendar year as their fiscal year.
I was asking my buyers at the time why they chose the discount so that I could determine if I was at the right rate or not. When I got to George, I received quite a shock.
“Oh, I don’t care about the size of the discount, or the discount at all,” he said, smiling. “I pay your full fee in advance because that way no one can cancel my project.”
Talk about how stupid I was two weeks ago! It was in George’s self-interest to pay me early because the inevitable “tremors” with a large company caused budgets to shift, but you can’t shift a budget that’s already been spent! I immediately added this to my list of reasons to pay me in advance—it’s in your self-interest!
While you’re on-site, you’ll find ample opportunity to meet colleagues of the buyer who are buyers themselves. You’ll also meet lower level people who would gladly introduce you to their boss. There is nothing illegal, immoral, or unethical about meeting these people and investigating whether a relationship is possible.
Your mind-set has to be: I have tremendous value to provide, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t offer it to these other people as long as I’m here.
The worst thing that happens is that nothing happens. But the criminal thing that happens is that you don’t even try. I’m not advocating that you visit the client each day with PowerPoint slides and order forms. But I am urging you to seek out and create relationships with additional buyers, which I call “lateral marketing.”
Quite a few of the people I’ve mentored and helped with proposals have been told by their clients that the proposal they submitted “made all the difference” at selection time. They’ve entrepreneurially suggested that perhaps their clients’ own sales forces would benefit from adapting similar aspects in their own approach to customers. So in many cases, they’ve turned the proposal itself into an item of value for the client with appropriate compensation.
The overall format can be readily adjusted for non monetary purposes that still represent success for you in other areas. The sequence of establishing trusting relationships and identifying objectives, measures, value, and joint accountabilities is useful in gaining influence, persuading others, and creating consensus. The approach is useful on boards, committees, task forces, and so forth. The person applying the approach will usually be seen as at least the informal leader.
Options, of course, are applicable across a wide range of business and personal issues, and help to create compromise, defuse hostility, and move others from “Should I?” to “How should I?” You can provide your kids with alternatives, or your boss, or your significant other, or yourself. You can ask others to provide additional options to gain further inclusion.
The main consideration, perhaps, is to continually examine your fees. As your acceptance rates increase, place upward pressure on your fees (no one else will do this for you). You’re always better off with a few high-priced proposals than a plethora of low-priced ones, even if the eventual total dollars are the same. The client is concerned about value. Provide all the value you can, so that you needn’t be concerned about fee, because the client sees huge ROI.