Selling Professional Services

Years ago, developing and sustaining a book of business was not as big a problem for accountants, attorneys, financial planners, and other professionals as it is today. Clients were more loyal to the firms they worked with, and unlikely to shop your services, compare rates, or jump ship. Times have changed! And if you don't change along with them...well, you're not going to enjoy yourself or have as much control over your career as you deserve. Believe it or not, you can enjoy the process of expanding your client base.

I’ve written this book because selling your business is quite possibly the biggest financial transaction of your entire life, and you’ve never done it before and will likely never do it again, and you really need to be smart about this. I recently did a quick study on the likelihood that a firm in a particular, narrow vertical would have a successful exit—defined as someone else purchasing, for real money, a majority of your firm’s equity.

As Darwin famously observed, the beaks of each generation of Galapagos Island finches change to accommodate shifting food resources, allowing the birds to survive by adapting their capabilities to the new environment. Today's business people should take note: In the post-crisis economy, traditional career strategies spell professional extinction, but the fluid new "gig economy" offers tremendous potential for anyone willing to adapt.

How Clients Buy is the much-needed guide to selling your services. If you're one of the millions of people whose skills are the "product," you know that you cannot be successful unless you bring in clients. The problem is, you're trained to do your job-not sell it. No matter how great you may be at your actual role, you likely feel a bit lost, hesitant, or "behind" when it comes to courting clients, an unfamiliar territory where you're never quite sure of the line between under- and over-selling. This book comes to the rescue with real, practical advice for selling what you do.

Strategy, tactics, and mental preparedness separate superior salespeople from the average - and with technological advances evening the competition, the selling edge is now more important than ever. Drawing on his own successful sales career and on his extensive experience as a sales consultant and seminar leader, Brian Tracy has developed the most comprehensive and effective approach to selling ever created.

No matter how much repeat business you get from loyal customers, the lifeblood of your business is a constant flow of new accounts. Packed with tested strategies and anecdotes, New Sales. Simplified. offers a proven formula for prospecting, developing, and closing deals. With refreshing honesty and some much-needed humor, sales expert Mike Weinberg examines the critical mistakes made by most salespeople and executives, then provides tips to help you achieve the opposite results.

Are you part of the skilled trades? Whether you’re an HVAC service technician, plumber, electrician, or in any profession that provides essential home services, this book is for you.

Never Say Sell explains how to scale individual engagements into long-term business relationships. Cowritten by Tom McMakin, the coauthor of How Clients Buy and expert in account development, and colleague Jacob Parks, this book provides insights into how key rainmakers at firms like Accenture and IBM drive growth from existing relationships. Never Say Sell is a business development guide for professional service providers like consultants, accountants, and lawyers, whether they are sole proprietors or members of account teams tasked with expanding key accounts.

You're a sales professional. It's what you were meant be. Selling is in your blood. Following up on his phenomenal best-selling audiocassette program, The Psychology of Selling, Brian Tracy's Advanced Selling Techniques is a powerhouse advanced selling program for seasoned sales professionals.

This book is about not just growth, but high-growth, explosive-growth, the kind of growth that weather satellites can see from space. The success of any business-to-business company is directly linked to how effectively they acquire new pipeline. To skyrocket growth, sales development is the answer.

LinkedIn the Sandler Way, the first audiobook release from Sandler Training and LinkedIn, offers powerful, cutting-edge best practices for effective social selling with LinkedIn. Its 25 discussions uncover big ideas for prospecting and selling online - ideas that typically haven't yet become part of a sales team's daily culture. Within just a few days, you can learn, adopt, and model these LinkedIn best practices so that they become consistent behaviors for everyone in your organization who sells for a living.

In recent years, professional services providers have had to rethink their sales methods and adapt to profound changes in the way clients buy services. In response, Winning the Professional Services Sale argues for fundamental changes in the seller's mindset and sales strategies. Rather than pressing the sale, salespeople must help clients buy - the way that works best for each client. This new approach gives buyers what they now want in a services seller: a consultative problem solver, change agent, and solution integrator, all rolled into one.

There's a Customer Born Every Minute reveals the lost wisdom of famous entrepreneur and showman, P. T. Barnum. Barnum was much more than a showman; he was a dedicated businessman and entrepreneur with a razor-sharp mind. In this delightful and absorbing new edition, Joe Vitale reveals the secrets of Barnum's success and shares the 10 key business practices that Barnum developed and lived by.

A concise and structured approach to third-party sales management that blends many of the tools and the rigor of Sandler Training with specific guidance for channel managers.

Sales development is one of the fastest growing careers in the United States. It is fast-paced, often on the leading edge of technology, and people in the role have the possibility of making a ton of money! Unlike accounting, medicine, or law, most salespeople do not study their profession in college. Instead, they are tossed into the fray without much training, context, or support, and are left to sink or swim. This method proves neither efficient or effective for the individual or the company.

Ben Cheever was a senior editor for Reader’s Digest for 11 years and has published three novels. In 1995, however, his latest book proposal had been rejected, so he went looking for work. This is his wry account of the dozen jobs he held as an entry-level employee in the service sector. He gained a new respect for the millions of people who work long hours for low wages. Now that downsizing is a permanent part of the workplace, his observations provide a valuable perspective of how our jobs define who we are.

Relationship Sales at Scale™ is the new selling philosophy for our age. It marries the timeless power of tribe-based trust with digitally enabled scale so you can open doors tastefully and convert prospects consistently, all without spamming anyone. Written by Dan Englander, CEO and founder of Sales Schema, the book’s stories, strategies, and hands-on resources are grounded in thousands of outreach campaigns conducted since 2014 to secure opportunities between clients and hard-to-reach prospects, including the leaders of the largest companies on earth.

These are true stories of winners and losers in the quest for superior service. Who wins? Who loses? It's up to you! Benchmark the best service innovations (Chapter 5: Generating New Ideas). Discover how to keep your customers happy, loyal, and buying more (Chapter 10: Building Up Your Business). Find out who makes the biggest mistakes in service and what you must avoid (Chapter 13: The Infinite Absurdity Awards).

Les Gold has been in business since age 12, when he started selling used golf clubs from his dad’s basement. Now he owns Detroit’s biggest pawnshop, American Jewelry and Loan, and is the star of the hit reality TV show Hardcore Pawn. In this entertaining, honest book, Gold takes you inside some of his weirdest, wacki­est deals and steals. From the monkey his dad once took in to pawn to the deal Gold made for a stripper pole, he has no boundaries for what he considers to be part of his business - and neither should you.