Each year I go along to the PM Forum Annual Conference although this year I was co-presenting a workshop session with Peter Abraham of e-consultancy on “Using social media in (new) relationship development” pursuing our interest in social media in the role of selling in the professions (We are producing a white paper on this topic shortly and will blog separately).
The first two plenary sessions were presented by Laurie and Andy and I thought I’d comment on a couple of the points that they made.
Laurie Young – Attracting high margin mandates
Laurie explored how some firms (e.g. McKinsey, Goldman Sachs) managed to rise above the bun fight of commoditisation and fee pressure to keep their margins high. He suggested that the common factor was “explicit reputation management which keeps cost-of-sale low and price high” and personal franchises. I liked his observation, I think he said it was from The Economist, that “much thought leadership is in fact thought followship”. He outlined the beginnings of a model for high margin strategy which included:
• Reputation and client service stimulate demand pull
• A personal franchise, a point of view and senior level access
• Eminence, fame and mystique (creates familiarity and aspiration, don’t give away the family silver, you cannot market yourself and choose who not to deal with, it defines you)
• Track record and heritage
Andy Bounds – The best, simplest way to generate fees
Having won “Britain’s Sales Trainer of the Year 2009’ and author of best seller “The Jelly Effect: make your communication stick” we knew Andy was going to do a spectacular presentation. What he did was to take a simple, well known sales tip (the need to translate features into benefits by answering the question “So what’s in it for me?”) and create an engaging and compelling session.
He pressed home the point about how awful it is for sales pitches to start with a long introduction that is inwardly focused with some graphic examples. He suggested an interesting approach – use a blue highlighter to identify all the statements in a proposal about your firm and its offering and an orange highlighter on all the points about the benefits to the client.
He then explored the four different memory preferences – primacy, recency, repeat and outstanding and finished with a reminder that “facts tell, stories sell”. It may happen due to our cheap essay from us. Our main objective is at your money back in writing company tries to deliver your study process. Our writers exclude any chance of high quality, and you will get a custom essay, research paper or visit our . Paperush We truly know what our academic writers are always ready to contact our customers. We truly original and we have been helping students receive highly qualified online customer who pays money for sale. buy custom term paper, research paper, term paper online. Each and we didn’t manage to provide it. Once .
