Join your fellow independent consultants as Scott Messer of Sales Evolution discusses how independent consultants can overcome the challenges they face in selling their consulting services, on Monday, November 14, at 7:30 am, at Intelligent Office, 1150 First Avenue, Suite 501, King of Prussia, PA 19406.

Please RSVP and let us know you are coming.

Participants in this program will learn strategies for overcoming these common sales challenges:

• Determining if the customer qualifies for you and not the reverse
• Getting out of your own way to close more deals
• Discovering the outcome customers seek, their dream, and selling it back to them.
• Maintaining control of the sales process

About Scott Messer and Sales Evolution

Scott Messer’s career as a business development professional and serial entrepreneur spans over 30 years. Before starting Sales Evolution, Scott held various sales, sales management, and executive positions at Union Carbide, American Chemsol Corporation, Griff Machine Products Company, Ultimate Software Group, Data Flow Information Systems, Compuware Corporation and Growth Dynamics.  He brings to Sales Evolution a blend of leadership, management, and communications skills along with a diverse background of experience from large, established companies to early stage ventures. Scott has an uncanny ability to cut through the static and get to the real issues in any buying situation. His skill and knowledge of Sales are easily transferred to those clients that need to learn a better way to elevate their sales efforts. This is why so many clients turn to him for coaching when confronted with those really tough deals that need to go forward.

As consultants, we ultimately seek to earn “trusted advisor” status with our prospective and existing clients. Clients, however, are overwhelmed with options. There is little barrier to entry into our profession. So, it’s no wonder that many claim expertise and skill in addressing a broad range of business issues. In a crowded market, few consultants can differentiate themselves and their unique promise of value. Discovering and marketing one’s talents remains a challenge for most trying to focus their services on “what they are good at” –their “special sauce”. Few gain a certainty of what really matters most to those organizations that need their “special sauce”.

Typically, consultants have 10-12 seconds to capture the interest of their prospects before communicating their value proposition. Instead, they engage in a conventional elevator speech that rambles on, alienating the listener, offering no understanding of the consultant’s true value. Their pitches sound “Blah, Blah, Blah.” They don’t stand out. The bottom-line is they aren’t getting serious consideration in proportion to their efforts. They fail to showcase their “authentic self”.

This session explores steps consultants can take to reverse this trend, using pragmatic techniques to advance the client development process – that can be implemented rapidly. Participants will learn…

• How to discover your talents
• How to communicate your personal brand succinctly; and
• How to stand-out authentically and advance relationships toward that “trusted advisor” status.

This meeting will be held on December 13, at 7:30 am, at Intelligent Office, 1150 First Avenue, Suite 501, King of Prussia, PA 19406.

SPEAKER BIOGRAPHY

Charles Timmins
Founding Principal/ Chief Innovation Officer
PMA, LLC
CJT@SixFigureCareerMastery.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/charlestimmins

A Certified Personal Branding Career Strategist, Charley helps consulting professionals “stand out authentically” to influence decision makers to offer them consulting opportunities that make significant contributions that really matters.

Charley works with talented consultants to help them discover their authentic self (aka personal brand) in order to find great clients…retaining him to uncover opportunities that are the “right fit” for them within “right fit” organizations working with “right fit” decision makers.

Clients and business colleagues refer to him as the “go-to-guy” that consultants must seek out when their “Plan A” isn’t working. His clients report earning more…working less…and having more fun.

The challenges of looking for meaningful client relationships in today’s hyper-competitive market are formidable. Decades-old business development techniques often fall short. Charley possesses over 23 years experience of working directly with successful solopreneurs, studying their business development habits, learning what works/ what doesn’t and then crafting creative approaches to secure hard-to-find engagements.

His King of Prussia-based firm, PMA, LLC, espouses innovative, “out of the box” techniques to create more effective marketing methods – based upon the consultant’s distinctive brand. As a certified Personal Brand strategist, his clients go to market with tailored “personal marketing” strategies that leverage their uniqueness, so they get “right fit” interviews for “right fit” engagements so they add to their professional preeminence.

In today’s marketplace, most people start their search for products and services on the Internet. Are they finding you or your competition?

We’re going to talk about how to successfully move your business into the online environment. If you’re already online, you’ll get some tips on driving traffic to your site and improving your search engine rankings. Whether you’re looking for direct sales or qualified leads for your consulting business, the Internet can help you achieve your objectives. The unfortunate reality is that most small businesses and independent consultants fail on the Internet. They make a fatal mistake by focusing on making money rather than on building a relationship with their visitors.

Learn how to avoid the pitfalls of building a site that doesn’t attract visitors. Find out how to get your business on the first page of Google results…even if you don’t have any programming skills. No web designer required! We’ll show you how.

Successful Web entrepreneur and instructor, Cindy McGeever has been on line since 2005, with the initial launch of www.top-sales-jobs.com. As a niche job board for sales professionals, Top Sales Jobs provides job seekers with thousands of job opportunities, along with content geared toward sharpening their resume and interview skills. Employers can search an online resume database and find tips on hiring, checking references and similar talent acquisition strategies.

Using smart tools that require virtually no programming knowledge, Cindy has developed extensive hands-on knowledge of search engine optimization and web site monetization strategies. She shares this knowledge in a classroom environment to guide participants through the often confusing maze of online business start-up choices.

Cindy teaches course at Penn State Brandywine on Building a Successful Business Using the Internet.

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Why do sales processes break down? There is one uncomfortable question – that has to be asked – that few salespeople dare.

People make buying decisions not so much on the things they like about your product or service as much as on hidden issues you don’t know about. How many times have you been in a sales situation where you had all the characteristics they said they wanted – i.e., you were local, carried the right kind of products, had required resources, and maybe even came in with the lowest price – but you still didn’t get the deal? If you’re like most sales folks, this has happened more than once, and you don’t have a good idea why.

Even if you’ve done a good job of qualifying the prospect, have identified how they buy, who’s involved, figured out the price, and have done a great demo, the deal isn’t ready to be sealed until you ask…

“Can we spend some time talking about why it doesn’t make sense to move forward with this purchase? What are the things we haven’t talked about that would keep you from moving forward?”

“Wait a minute!” I can hear you say. “You want me to ask why it doesn’t make sense to buy? I thought the idea was to make a sale, not convince them why they shouldn’t buy from me.”

Let’s pause for a moment. When you make a purchase, what goes through your mind before making the final decision? The answer is all the reasons and perceived risk why it doesn’t make sense to buy. It’s human nature. Some of the reasons often include:

• Pre-existing relationships
• No money
• Too expensive
• Haven’t checked out other options
• A contract still in effect
• No authority
• A previous bad experience
• Institutional inertia
• “We need to get three bids or send out an RFP”
• Etc., etc, etc.

Like you, your prospect has to get past their hidden objections or they won’t pull the trigger and buy. By getting them to open up and share what they’ve concealed, you’ll uncover these hidden deal killers and can help them come up with the answers to solve their own objections, or rehearse them to overcome the objections of others in the company involved in the decision making process.

Bottom line: Until you ask that hard, uncomfortable question that uncovers and resolves the unspoken issues in your prospect’s mind, they won’t move forward. Help them come up with answers and close the deal.