Tips to Talk With New and Potential Clients

What happens when you get the meeting?

Previously I’ve covered how to develop a broad Business Development Plan for a design studio, or any type of consulting company, and why account management is critical once you land a client. But what happens when you get that first call after doing an outreach? Or if you get introduced to another team or organisation inside a company you’re already working for?

As a follow-up to my article on why we need to stop presenting sales decks, I want to talk about what that first conversation should be about, and how to handle the conversations that follow.

For design studios, we often have a natural inclination to start any client presentation by talking about who we are, our capabilities, and our work. And while some amount of qualification may be important, it’s generally less than we think. A lot less.

This often leads to an antiquated sales approach that I’ve seen many people in these roles take: to push the product they have. Great sales should never be about pushing a product. Great sales, and I’ll continue to repeat this, is asking the right questions and intently listening.

And once again, I’ll repeat this quote from the 2020 film The Courier, which I’ve used in other articles, because it is so spot on:

You know my reputation. Parts I want you to know anyway 🤣 I represent the top manufacturers who sell the best products on the market. So in combination with you gentlemen knowing your business, I think it’d be much better if instead of my usual song and dance, I just listen. You tell me what your problems are, and if I think I have a client that may have a solution, let’s talk it through. If not, let’s keep drinking.

So tell me, what do you need?

…and why do you start by asking questions? Because otherwise you are presenting your offerings and services with no idea what might be relevant for the client on the other side of the table.

You can think of this scenario — in Sales, your job is to be a great first date. You ask questions and converse on a level that is interesting to the other person, while offering relevant information from your side about yourself (and in this case, your company).

Great business development starts and ends with the ability to understand a problem, a shift, or a challenge, then present your product, offering, or service as the solution. That’s all. This means that you always need to be asking the right questions. As an example, these are the lucky 7 questions I often use to shape the conversations I have with potential clients I’m talking with. In some cases, I even ask them verbatim (which can be shockingly effective!):

1. What are the person’s responsibilities?
2. What is the person or companies business challenge?
3. What is expected of the person? (especially if they are pushing for a promotion)
4. What do they see as valuable?
5. What does success look like for them?
6. What makes that person look good?
7. What does the future state of their product look like?

This last question is similar to Amazon’s Future Press Release Exercise, which I’ve used to draw out aspirations and future states:

1. Imagine a future state of your product that solves a clear customer need and how it’s being used to do that
2. Fill in all of the details with as much technical, customer, and business information as you can
3. Determine how to execute on those details to make the thing real
4. Interestingly, it’s the same format I use to create an executive presentation, which you can read about here. You can read more about this type of futurecasting over at NotBoring, where the above example is pulled from.

The different skills you need for growing great client relationships

People continually ask me how I could have transitioned into a sales role from a design role. I always reply that, if you’re good, the two are actually the same thing: asking questions, listening, and solving a problem.

Although there is a bit more I haven’t covered before.

I break the perfect Business Development role down into three (3) types of skill sets.

1. Strategic Designer — In contrast to what most people think, business development and account management are design roles. They’re both about solving problems — just without using a screen. In this field, you get to be involved in exploring how to solve a customer’s most difficult problems, and if you get it right, they grow their business to a higher and more abstract level. I can’t imagine hiring someone for any type of business development or sales role who didn’t understand the core of a user-centred process, and could demonstrate that in an interview.
2. Human / Social Engineering — This is one of the coolest skill sets a person can learn, a bit like hacking in its early days. Much of account management is finding the right questions and methods to extract information while not appearing to be searching for it. It’s a skill of trying to find the exact right questions and phrasing at the right moments. The perfect words of extraction and negotiation. And for that everyone should be reading How to Win Friends and Influence People, Never Split the Difference, and Ghost in the Wires — this last one being about one of the original hackers.
3. Detective Work — When you get into a conversation or you’re working to expand further into a client, spend some time researching. Research more than you think is necessary. People will always respect that you have done your homework when you show up and know their industry. Just keep in mind that your newly acquired knowledge is a way to connect and understand, not tell them how to do their job. Do account planning where needed, by keeping notes on people’s problems, who you’ve talked to, when you last talked to them, and their timelines and critical success factors at work. Keep an eye on what is important to the company overall. Also stay aware of their competitors, what trends or external factors are impacting them, and what they are (or should be) doing to adjust to those.

On the Detective side, if you’re part of a larger company, work on getting industry reports from (and this list is compiled from a friend who is a strategy director at a global product innovation company, I can’t take credit)….

• CB Insights
• Gartner
• McKinsey
• BCG
• IBIS World
• Meltwater
• Mintel
• Forrester
• Crunchbase

If your company doesn’t have the budget for these, you’ll need to find other ways of getting current industry information. Some of my favourites are…

• Wall Street Journal
• Financial Times
• NY Times
• GlassDoor
• Harvard Business Review
• Economist
• Reddit — Yep, this is great for reading the general qualia: the individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. As one of my Strategy Director friends has told me, “Sometimes I look for relevant meme accounts (i.e. IT worker memes) and read the user responses to get a general feel.” It’s amazing what employees will share and what you can find.
• When all else fails, pull up Google and type in something around what you need like …“Delta Airlines” + “McKinsey” or “Airlines” + “BCG”.

Focus on these three types of skills and you’ll be shocked at how quickly you can move from “selling” to “providing,” and actually start to realise what is truly valuable to your clients and customers.

Want more on Design Entrepreneurship? Check out this ever growing list of articles and view points.