Selling Skills for Professionals: Part 1 Prospecting
Course Description
Copyright Ross Maynard 2021
Course Description
Welcome to Selling Skills for Professionals: Part 1 Prospecting.
If you are an accountant, a lawyer, a consulting engineer, a surveyor, an
actuary, a management consultant, an events organiser, an HR professional or any
other form of professional businessperson, and you need to identify and develop
new clients, then this course is for you
This is part 1 of a two-part course on selling skills for professionals. In Part
1 I cover prospecting, that is identifying potential future clients and making
the initial approach. In Part 2 of Selling Skills for Professionals I cover the
sales process once you have a make contact with a potential client.
Selling Skills for Professionals covers high involvement purchases where the
commitment is a significant one for the purchaser. This covers relatively
expensive business investments, but also purchase agreements which the purchaser
feels will have a significant impact on their business – for example engaging an
accountant or a lawyer, or a management consultant, and so on.
With a high involvement purchase, the client typically will consider a range of
alternatives; will review a variety of information sources; and will evaluate
product and service attributes in detail. This means that there is a relatively
high barrier to surmount to get the potential client’s attention. A solid
approach to prospecting and a well-structured sales process can increase that
conversion rate and enhance your success in securing clients who will remain
with you for the long term. That is the purpose of this course.
I hope you enjoy the course.
Key Learning Points
On completion of the course, delegates will be able to:
* Describe the scope and purpose of sales prospecting for professional services
* Understand the five rules of selling professional services
* Develop a branding statement for themselves and their organisation
* Define the criteria for the clients they wish to target
* Appreciate the importance of client pain points and how to identify them
* Prepare materials for prospecting
* Create a cold calling script for prospecting
* Write a cold email or LinkedIn message to prospects including a strong
subject line
* Understand the sorts of questions they can use to stimulate client engagement
in a discussion
* Move prospects onto the next stage of the selling process
Curriculum
Module 1: First Principles in Selling Professional Services
Lesson 1: The Five Rules of Selling Professional Services
Lesson 2: The Five Rules of Selling Professional Services
Lesson 3: Branding
Module 2: Getting Ready to Prospect
Lesson 4: Identifying Prospects
Lesson 5: Client Pain Points and the Purpose of Prospecting
Lesson 6: Preparing to Prospect
Module 3: Making the Approach
Lesson 7: Seven Seconds to make an Impact
Lesson 8: Crafting the Message: Cold Calling
Lesson 9: Crafting the Message: Cold Email
Lesson 10: Sample Scripts for Cold Email
Lesson 11: Trigger Questions
Lesson 12: Getting Ready to Sell: The Next Stage
Lesson 13: Key Learning Points in Prospecting
Pre-Course Requirements
There are no pre-course requirements
Additional Resources
None
Course Tutor
Your tutor is Ross Maynard. Ross is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of
Management Accountants in the UK and has 30 years’ experience as a process
improvement consultant specialising in business processes and organisation
development. Ross is also a professional author of online training courses.
Ross lives in Scotland with his wife, daughter and Cocker Spaniel