Andy Raynor - Beyond the Brief
Andy Raynor's blog
The most difficult question you will be asked, ever
There was a throwaway line in the blog on 2 May. It was about a client who asked this very question:
“What difference do you make?”
But it isn’t a disposable line at all, it’s the most difficult question for anyone selling anything to anybody.
And it’s the question that most clients would like to ask. But they pogo around the subject and we join in the ritual mating dance by claiming to be partner-led, client-focused, expert professionals giving a personal service blahdy blahdy blah, sounding just like the last suit they saw.
So if you want to be bounced into the real world and win the client, let’s go back to our nuclear question. "What difference do you make?" has been asked of me by potential clients precisely once in thirty years, and that was half a career in. So – you may never be asked it at all.
Count yourself lucky?
I don’t. It was one of the biggest wake-up calls anyone could have. It changed my perspective on what I do, forever. It rewrote any meeting I would ever have with a client or potential client.
Why?
Well, what is the answer? Will you make the difference with a better tax return? An improved audit? A shinier last-will-and-testament? A brighter conveyance? Do you even have to think, at all, to offer these things?
This torpedo question makes you think. It tests your knowledge of the client, their priorities, their lives, the opportunities they have not yet been offered but already deserve. It requires you to be original and memorable (the two most important things that will keep your clients, for value, forever).
It asks you to use everything you have, not just technical expertise, but contacts, ambitions, emotional intelligence and strategy.
So before you are asked anything by your client or potential client, pop the question to yourself. What difference do you make?
Answer that and you will win.
PS - As an aside
while we're on the subject of what we really
should say....I read a stock market statement
last week and there's no wonder that
members of the professions are accused of
being a touch screwed up. We spend lifetimes
afraid of plain speech, or designing the words
to say anything you want in restrospect.
Like horoscopes – make the words so opaque
that the day will fit, whatever. Pity the poor
bloody client/shareholder/taxpayer.....
Tell me what you think at andy@andypraynor.com
And see what's been said before by looking in the archive:
© Andy Raynor 2013