Discovering the Problems of Your Client with Colin Parker
Discovering the Problems of Your Client with Colin Parker
Transcription of Episode
[00:00:00] Ryan Chapman: This is Ryan Chapman, and welcome again to another, a Fix Your Funnel interview series. I'm really excited to have Colin Parker from Lone Star Sales Performance with us today particularly because Colin, you're an expert in doing something that is actually pretty tough, which is selling professional services. I think a lot of people don't realize how big of a challenge it can be because maybe it's all they know, or maybe they're not really familiar with, you know, what the hurdles are and they just kind of deal with whatever they get. But I can tell from a consumer side that, it is difficult for me as a consumer to decide who to use for professional services.
Colin Parker: Yeah. I think that's, that's true, Ryan. I think, I think part of the problem is, is that we're not often as a buyer qualified to judge the end product. So, you know, if you hire an accountant and you're looking to hire an accountant, how do you tell a good accountant from a bad accountant or...
Ryan Chapman: An attorney for that matter, right?
Colin Parker: Or [00:01:00] an attorney and, and so it really becomes tough for the buyer. And so what either happens is if they feel like everything's the same, you get, you get that well, what do you know? What are you going to charge me an hour business? And that's not a great way to pick anybody. Mostly because hourly rate is not a, not a great way to do anything...
Ryan Chapman: Probably tells you more about the confidence of the person than their capability.
Colin Parker: Well, well, exactly. And, and so, you know, part of the, the real challenge in professional services is how do you give your prospects a glimpse of the expertise you have 'cause really they're buying your expertise. They're buying that knowledge that you have. And so it, it really is a struggle for how do you show that? And if you can do a good job of it, it really makes a difference in the amount of the amount of conversion [00:02:00] you get with the prospects. And two, you don't tend to get as much price pressure on, on your services.
Ryan Chapman: Well, and the other thing I'm, cause I'm thinking about it as a consumer of professional services. You know, I kind of am always judging that professional service provider. On an ongoing basis because if they didn't do what you're talking about properly, right? I'm always skeptical, like, did I make the right choice? And so the whole time I'm kind of keeping them under a microscope as opposed to just trusting them and following their lead.
Colin Parker: Well, I, I, I think lots of times when you're going through the process, when you don't have good criteria. So I, when I'm not sure exactly what I should be looking for.
Ryan Chapman: Yeah.
Colin Parker: You're, you're almost looking for little things that you can exclude them. So, you know, they show up.
Ryan Chapman: That's exactly right.
Colin Parker: Yeah. And, and so then the criteria becomes really loose. It's also where you can use automation and other [00:03:00] tools to make sure that nothing falls through the cracks so you don't get eliminated by not following up. When you said you did...
Ryan Chapman: It's like every little thing becomes something. I'm kind of judging him by. They ask for a retainer replenishment. I'm like, well, why? Where is what I want to do is just say, sure, yeah, I know you're doing the best work for me.
Colin Parker: And that's, that's all part of you know, one of the big things I noticed when, when I started my own business was that. It used to be, I had lots of staff and you could get lots of staff to do things for you. And when I went out on my own, it was only me. And so any bright idea I got, I had to deal with it. But you know, if it, if everything or really focused on me remembering to do something, then typically I would, you know, I'd run into problems, I forget to do it or, and so that's [00:04:00] typically how we use automation, is one, to use it as a tool to help you keep track of where everybody is and two, to be providing the right elements at the right time to, to help build that demonstration of expertise.
Ryan Chapman: Well, let's take a step back then, because I think you just touched on something that's really important and a lot of people probably asking if they're in this area of needing to sell by, you know, as a professional service. Which you said "demonstrate their expertise." I mean, it's a real ethereal concept, right? Because I can't, I can't say, Oh, well look, here's this guy's tax return. Or, Hey look, here's the last case I just closed. I mean, I don't know. That's, that's kind of tough to do cause privacy and stuff like that. And then the question is, well, is my case just like there's, or you know, as my Sitek situation the same as theirs. So how do you demonstrate expertise in something that's really difficult to [00:05:00] make it concrete and physical?
Colin Parker: Well, there's actually a lot to it. So one of the, one of the things that, we often do is, if you can really sort of to that client is talk about their situation. So when I, when I can see somebody who talks about here's the struggles people have, here's the problems that they have. And so we focus on that problem that they might be having, might be the problem, why they're coming to the attorney, might be the problem, why they're coming to the bookkeeper, and then give them some guidance or some expertise to let them better understand the situation they have, but also give them better criteria for making a decision. So sometimes it could be, here's a checklist you can use. To better analyze your situation. So sometimes an accountant might use that is go through this [00:06:00] checklist and see if you're, if you've got these issues. And often that checklist might also bring up some other areas that they might not necessarily know they have a problem in but, but now that I sort of understand going, Oh yeah, now I can see that. So one, it's part of that can be showing them. Here's how you should be looking at, here's how you should be framing it. That will often make you stand out rather than saying, Hey, I've got this service. And, and I think more often what we see is professional service people they talk about this service we have, and most clients, you know, don't know what solution they need to begin with. So. You're better off getting them to relate to the problem area or the, the visual triggers in their own business that should be guiding them to reach out to somebody like you.
Ryan Chapman: Okay. So you're [00:07:00] looking at challenges that the consumer would be facing based on your knowledge of the problems that they could potentially have. And you're describing those in such a way that they recognize them. Go, yeah, that's me. That's the problem I have.
Colin Parker: Yes. As soon as, as soon as the consumer goes, this guy really sort of understands me. You, that starts to build that layer of credibility because instead of it being, you know, I would never lead with the service and say, here's the service you need to buy because to be honest, I don't know if you need that service so. You know, sales 101 in the professional service side is really, you've got to diagnose, you've got to do a little triage.
Ryan Chapman: It's very prescriptive.
Colin Parker: Yup. Yeah. And so you've got to figure out where they're at. You know, for the most part, I, you know, I think prospects. We all think we're different but the reality is, you know, to an accountant, my business is pretty much the same as most people they deal with. [00:08:00] It's neither unique, it might have some different aspects to it, but to a professional, he knows what he has to do. And so he's just got to give me some comfort that he understands my situation and, and that, and I should have some comfort that he can do it. He can help me, and he's done it before.
Ryan Chapman: So when you start working with a professional services company to help them design their sales and marketing, kind of the first thing that you're doing then is identifying these questions or, you know, that they may ask in a prescriptive process.
Colin Parker: Yeah. So that, that tends to be, what we look at is what are the big problems that you solve for your client...
Ryan Chapman: That's from the client's perspective, right?
Colin Parker: That's from the client's perspective and...
Ryan Chapman: Because that can be a little bit differently described by the professional services person than the actual client. So you have to kind of [00:09:00] extract that perspective out of them.
Colin Parker: Yeah, exactly, Ryan, because what, what often happens is we get talking, wait, when you live and breathe something you tend to talk in subtleties and nuances and you get sort of removed from the end user. And so while we try, yeah, we try and drag th e, the professional service provider is what are the problems that they would be looking at? And I'll give you a great example from my own sales history. I, I was vice president of sales for a large technology company. And one of the things that we would, we would sell different services, but one of the things we notice is when the engineer's had a problem, they would all stand around one guy's desk.
Ryan Chapman: Interesting.
Colin Parker: They, and they would you, you know, you would have four guys who, you know, were probably, you know, burdened up [00:10:00] salary was 200 bucks an hour and you had three or four of them all standing around having this little powow trying to figure out what was going on. And, and what we would tell clients is that when you see that, that gives you a a visual trigger that, that you've got some, you're missing some clarity in your, your training and your development of your engineers when you get three or four of them standing around a workstation trying to figure out what to do next in the software. You know, when, when we sort of started talking about that and then using things to, to show the engineering managers, what it would look like on their end. They, you know, you could see the slow nod of the head going, Oh yeah, I see that all the time.
Ryan Chapman: That's interesting. You just mentioned visual a couple of times. So there's visual cues that you try [00:11:00] and paint the picture of and the head of the prospect that they're going to recognize around their business, home, whatever the case may be of the client. Is that, is that a core part of your process as well as identifying visual cues or visual stories that you can tell them so they can recognize, Oh, Hey, I've got this problem?
Colin Parker: Well, exactly. And so sometimes, as I said earlier, sometimes the client doesn't know all of the problems they have. Like they might, they might see a, I seem to have this problem, but we also sort of want to educate them so that, you know, they become more aware. So when someone sort of tells you about something, it's a little like when you go, go to buy a car, and I'm looking at, you know, red Mustangs and then everywhere I look, it looks like everybody has a red Mustang.
Ryan Chapman: Yeah. The reticular activator.
Colin Parker: Yep. So once you sort of get them thinking about that all of a sudden and can give them a visual trigger, you can give them something that they can see. So, [00:12:00] you know, a lot of my clients work with attorneys and they help them organize medical records when they're doing, let's say, a personal injury lawsuit. One of the things we talk about is piles of of medical records, so big piles. Even if they come in electronically when you have 10,000 page medical record.
Ryan Chapman: Yeah.
Colin Parker: You paint that picture and then an attorney who, who's got one of those in front of them, and then how do you find the relevant information and 10,000 pages of medical records. All of a sudden they realize that pain, there's an answer to that pain and someone could help them with that. But if you talked about, Oh, we can do record review, it's not the same thing.
Ryan Chapman: Yeah. Interesting. So you, when you start to identify some of these, you know, first, what are those pain points from the perspective of the client, and then what are some visual clues that would help you recognize that you have these pain points. That's good. Those are kind of your [00:13:00] two key centers, like centerpieces for the development of your campaigns or your sales process.
Colin Parker: That that tends to be, that tends to be sort of the, the core foundation to all of the marketing all the things that we do, helping the client to understand those things. And, and you know, we'll use things like, you know, lead magnets. We typically call them help, helpful resources. And those are all things that aren't a marketing piece that says, Hey, buy this service, they're usually based on the, the fact of does it help them with a problem? Because we know if we can, you know, people are more likely to buy from someone who gives them the first, the first useful piece of information.
Ryan Chapman: Yeah.
Colin Parker: To help them better define their situation, you get much better conversion [00:14:00] when you, when you sort of walk through those stages.
Ryan Chapman: Just as opposed to saying, Hey, do business with us, which is like the kind of the natural inclination of people who are acquainted with sales and marketing. So I think that's, I think that's a huge point that you're making here because in some of the past interviews I've done recently, we've talked about how what's the most important work in marketing is the thinking work where it doesn't look like you're doing anything because you know, you're just thinking and talking about some concepts. But I love your framework here for getting that thinking work done in a way that's not super intimidating for your clients because you know your ability to really create a great sales and marketing process for them all hinges upon the ability for them to identify some of these key problems that their prospects are having, so that you can call out to them and then visual cues that will kind of bring to their forefront the fact that, yeah, I've actually really got this problem. Well, am I [00:15:00] vaguely familiar with it? Or maybe there's a new problem I didn't even realize I had that's been staring me in the face the whole time.
Colin Parker: Yeah. And I think the other thing that that often happens is sometimes people will reach out to you and it's early, but they, you know that the problem perhaps isn't bad enough yet to fix. And so...
Ryan Chapman: Well, maybe it's, it doesn't seem bad enough yet because, well, my experience has been that there's this, this kind of, this tickling inside of you. Maybe it's a little discomfort in your gut that says, Hey, you need some help, but, well, they're not sure how bad the problem is.
Colin Parker: Right. I think you're absolutely right. I, I think gut feel I've got something wrong. I should be looking around to deal with it. And that's where sort of giving them the visual, the visual triggers and other things helps them to realize there might be actually more wrong than I thought, or it actually might be a little more [00:16:00] urgent than I thought. And, and so, although people might say, Oh, you know, I'm not looking to do something until, you know, later in the year, you'll often find that if you can provide them with, with some of the tools and, and also some video and some other things to, to help them see what, how the problem actually looks and what also it could entail, they tend to all of a sudden want to move forward faster.
Ryan Chapman: Yeah. It's interesting. I've been thinking recently about, you know, there's a couple of different problems that we solve at Fix Your Funnel. We don't do professional services, we just have the software. But I'm always thinking about the, you know, where are these core problems? And you know, the, one of the stories or illustrations I've been thinking about is if I asked somebody to hand me $100 and then ask them, you know, what percentage of your leads are you, you know, how are you communicating? If they're communicating by email, you know, what's your, your open rate or your read rate or whatever. And [00:17:00] when they tell me that I return, that percentage of their money, because the rest of the money, they're just throwing away, so I might as well take it from him.
Colin Parker: That's very generous of you to give him some back.
Ryan Chapman: Because the reality is that's what a lot of business owners do. You know, they, they, they feel satisfied for some reason in only reaching, you know, 20%, 30% of the leads that they get. Like, you know, people to do webinars. And they'll get, you know, 100 people to register for a webinar and like get 30 people to show up and that's pretty exciting for them because that's unfortunately a high number. Then there'll be someone that's doing extraordinary and they'll get 50 people to show up and they just are so proud of that number. But in reality, what's happened is because of your structure, the way that you're doing things, you're losing half the people who are really interested. So it's, it's fascinating. I know that, you know, from mark and there's different perspectives on that, but...
Colin Parker: Well, I mean, we love webinars as a tool to [00:18:00] demonstrate expertise because if you can get somebody, you know, my, my clients will convert at very high levels, often in their business when they can, when they have visibility, when people see them. I mean, it's a visibility game. And webinars are such a strong tool when, when it comes to demonstrating expertise through, you know, videos, I think they're stronger than videos because you're live and they, they also get to ask questions and they can see how you think, how you operate and so, so I think it gives them a higher level of confidence. But it is interesting the, a lot of my clients, it's funny, it's the small things that often impress clients. And like we mentioned at the start of this conversation was that they're looking early on to exclude you a lot of times. So, you know, maybe, maybe because you [00:19:00] didn't contact us right away or you didn't send a reminder. One of my clients loves your tool because before meetings, he has a little text funnel that he runs and it reminds them that these coming, and you know, one of the things he said was, he said that nobody else does it. They see it so infrequently at times that they're just impressed with that level of professionalism.
Ryan Chapman: Yeah. It really is the little things, isn't it?
Colin Parker: It sure is. And, and so you want to make sure that you cover the little things so that you can get to the big things. Because if you don't, you, you know, lots of times, you know, I think what saddens me the most is when I talk to people who are really smart, could help a lot of [00:20:00] people, but have, have really struggled in selling their services. And lots of times when we look at it, is that for the other parts of their business, they had a process, they had steps, they had things that they follow when writing a report, when evaluating a project. But when it comes to the sales and marketing side, they somehow sort of think, this is a little bit of a, you know, let me have the gift of the gab and that'll be enough. And to be honest, it's, it's really about sales and I learned this early in sales is that you have to have a process. The one thing that happens when it comes on the sales side is that you have to recognize where the client is in your process, not push them through your process. So that's where we like [00:21:00] things like, you know, in Keap is the ability to move people through stages in the sales process because it, it's not linear a lot of times in the sales process, they can move faster or slower and you need that interaction to know what's the next thing that, where's the next stage that you can be sending them to based on the interactions that you've had.
Ryan Chapman: I think that's really, really important because too frequently people want to set up an obstacle course and then push the person through that as opposed to recognizing that the tool is meant to serve the client, not to make them jump through hoops, you know, unless those particular hoops are meant to qualify the person in some way, which often that's not what they're being used for.
Colin Parker: Well, well, exactly. I, I think you know, in the end when it comes to professional services, [00:22:00] really what you're trying to find is you're looking to see, can this person help me with the problem that I have?
Ryan Chapman: Yeah. And like that question So how are you answering that? Is it with all the pieces that we've talked about so far in particular, that really helps drive that home.
Colin Parker: I think. I think it's, it's all the pieces. Like, I wouldn't say that there's sort of one piece, but I, you know, I've always felt like webinars, speaking at conferences, video, lots of those things help and, you know, content helps because content is a way to demonstrate that you've got a deeper understanding of a lot of these things. And, and I'll tell you is like, you know, I hired my accountant because I saw my accountant speak at an event and it was like he was talking to me, [00:23:00] you know, because he talked about the, the issues and, and he, and he gave me a visual trigger, which was, you know, do you ever find yourself sitting at your desk and you've got this stack of receipts sitting on your desk, and I thought, Oh crap. Has he been looking in my office?
Ryan Chapman: Yeah. I think that's, that's the thing is when you can describe the problem better than they can, that puts you in a place where they go, okay, this person gets it. They've obviously thought about my situation, my problem much deeper than I have because they're not only describing everything that I've experienced, but they're describing stuff I still haven't experienced yet. I think that that changes people. So they go, Oh, okay, I've got know this is somebody I want to talk to.
Colin Parker: Yeah. And, and, and that's what, you know, ultimately the, the goal of your marketing is to get that initial meeting. Whether that [00:24:00] initial meeting happens in person, whether it happens over the phone or it's a video meeting like Zoom. That's the goal. The marketing is to drive them ultimately in professional services side to that initial meeting because that initial meeting has a very specific structure to it and that ultimately what you're trying to do is qualify them. You know, can I help them with the issue that they're describing to me? And you know, can they afford it? Do they have budget? Am I talking to the decision maker? Whether their needs wants dominate buying motive? Those are all the things I'm looking for in that initial meeting. It's so, it's not like I'm sending them over to a piece of software that they can buy. All my stuff is really to get a 15 minute initial meeting, and in that 15 minute initial meeting, we can see if there's a fit or not. And usually what happens [00:25:00] is they're, they're doing their qualifying on their end, but you're also qualifying on your end to see if, if it truly is a fit. And I think that's sometimes, you know, when we get to initial meeting, often people don't have a game plan for that, they just sort of get on and wing it and an end is a bad way to do it. But if you, if you sort of have that structure at the end of the meeting, then then what you can do is does this move forward?
Ryan Chapman: Is that something that you, you help your clients with then is to structure that 15 minute meetings so it's effective at, you know, one demonstrating your expertise further, but also evaluating if this prospect is going to be a good match?
Colin Parker: Yeah, it, it, it's a very interesting thing. We, we help people with that and we, we give them a specific sort of roadmap on that. And one of the reasons why is the, the more they feel like you've done this before, you've got a process and a [00:26:00] structure for doing it, the better they feel about the overall meeting and we've, we've looked at some research that out of the initial meeting and we looked at satisfaction and we see much higher satisfaction when somebody follows the roadmap when there are, you know, there's questions. Let me ask you these questions. You actually stated the, for the first part is that we have a process for walking through this. Do you mind if I ask you some questions? Well, you know, and in 30 years of doing this, no one's ever said, no.
Ryan Chapman: Yeah, well, I think everybody says this, and the sense that they want to be understood. I think that's why, you know, in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, one of them is seek first to understand, then to be understood is because it's part of our human nature is that we want somebody to understand this before they prescribe. We want someone to really say, okay, I think I really [00:27:00] understand your situation now that Ip've heard you out. Here's what I would recommend before we would trust them to recommend that. And so I, that's why I think it's so critical for people selling, like you're saying, to have a set process that allows them to adequately understand the situation of the prospect, even if you can...'Cause I think some people w within just a few minutes can kind of almost it's almost like they psychically detect what the issue is with the client because they've done it so often for so long that the signs, almost like Sherlock Holmes, reveal themselves to them, right?
Colin Parker: Yeah. And that's why you're right. That can be a little dangerous because then the client doesn't get that opportunity to discuss things. And often, interesting enough is when you get better at asking questions, is that clients will walk out of that meeting with a even a better understanding of their own [00:28:00] issue because for the first time, they're actually. Talking about it out loud or...
Ryan Chapman: Verbalizing what those things that have just been in their gut for a long time.
Colin Parker: So I, I think that's a, that's, that's a big part of it. And, you know, I, it's funny is when we look at, you know, we go back over some of the recordings and other things, is that the amount of time you actually talk in that prescriptives here's what I think might be the appropriate next step is a very, very small percentage. The most, you know, the majority of it was getting the client to talk about what's going on, how it's showing up in their business and, and, and how it's affecting them. And even they are, you know, are learning in, in that whole experience. And it, it's very different than a lot of professionals, you know, service [00:29:00] providers. That initial meeting often...
Ryan Chapman: I can already tell from some of the things that you've said that you, you have a formula that you're running people through as you set up their, you know, how their first appointment or consultation should go so that you can really prepare that prospect to make a buying decision when the time comes.
Colin Parker: Yeah. I, I think, you know, ultimately what, what you're trying to do is better understand the situation so you can prescribe the right thing, but also to, have everybody on the same page, which you know often I, I've left first meetings when I've been looking to hire somebody and, and wonder what is the next step? I know we had a meeting. I don't necessarily want another meeting. And I think it was HubSpot that had an interesting survey that said that sellers [00:30:00] thought meetings... There was too many meetings and the sales process was too long, but buyers also felt exactly the same way. So when you got both buyers and sellers saying the sales process is too long, usually it tells you that everybody is sort of winging it.
Ryan Chapman: Well, look, at the end of the day, right? If I've got a problem, what I want to do is I want to get it solved in a, in a way that I feel is going to be economically valuable to me, right?
Colin Parker: Yes.
Ryan Chapman: If it's too economically expensive or emotionally or energetic, you know, expensive, relative to the perceived value for me, I'm going to do what most people do when facing a buying decision, which is do nothing. That's like by far, that is the most common outcome of a sales process is people do nothing. And the reason why is because that little scale that's inside of their heart or their head that's weighing [00:31:00] against effort versus value is tilted towards effort being too much. And so they, they ended up doing nothing. So a really good sales presentation, especially for professional services where they can't see the thing, they just feel it has really got a tilt that value, scale real far. So it's very obvious to them to say, this is totally worth it for me to take advantage of now because what it's going to cost in terms of energy, effort, money, time. Is far outweighed by the value I'm going to get once this happens. And I think when a salesperson recognizes that's really their job when it comes to, especially with professional services, is I've just got to demonstrate for them the value of them resolving this problem that they're coming to me to solve and what, how much better their life is going to be out of it. Cause you, you said in that that one thing is how much, what's it going to be worth to them or what's the experience going to be like to them. And I think too frequently, especially with professional services, because [00:32:00] with professional services, you usually have somebody that has some expertise. So they have, first, they have the curse of knowledge, and second, because they studied all this stuff there is, I don't know where it originated from, but there's almost an entitlement that, because I know this stuff, I'm worth this money. And the reality is to the prospect, you've got to connect the dots for them because they don't see it that way. They don't see it as I did this, you know, you did this labor of learning this expertise, therefore you should be entitled to this money. They see now I've got a problem, are you going to solve it in a way that makes sense for me? And then if that problem is solved, is it really going to be valuable to me? And so the, that sales person's job and professional services is not only to, you know, demonstrate that expertise, but then connect the dots on how solving that problem is going to give them the relief that their after. And I think when with the formula that you've, you haven't laid out every part of your formula, but from what you've said, I can pick up that [00:33:00] you lay out for your clients that formula in their, their presentation, in their meeting, that they were really not only extract what it is that's going to drive that buyer to make a decision, but really enhanced the sensation that they're feeling so they can make that decision in the best possible way.
Colin Parker: Well, you know, it's funny you said connect the dots, because that's really the thing that once you've gathered all that information, you have to connect the dots for the prospect. So how does this all tie together? Because I think a lot of times we make the assumption that the client understands. You mentioned the curse of knowledge, which is we think the client understands more than they do, and so...
Ryan Chapman: That's totally true.
Colin Parker: We talk about these features or these things, but we never sort of connect those features to to the benefit [00:34:00] they're going to get from it. What are, what am I going to get? What is this going to look like six months from now, a year from now?
Ryan Chapman: Can not be too explicit about that.
Colin Parker: Yeah. And, and you know, I always tell clients that, and they always look at me and go, well, no, people understand that. I'm like, Nope, they don't.
Ryan Chapman: I am always blown away, you know? And I shouldn't be, but I'm always blown away about how, even with my work, I'm always trying to connect the dots, but I don't, I really think you can't be explicit enough because there's so much else going on in everybody's life. And you know what we do day in and day out is what we eat, breathe, and sleep. And so we as humans. Naturally assume everybody else has the same perspective. And you know, that's not even the people that live in the same house as you have that perspective, much less your prospects and your clients, you know, they've got their own worries, their own concerns that dominate their thoughts. And so it's so critical to [00:35:00] do what you're, you're saying, which is to just connect those dots for them. In my book Would You Like to Go Big, which is all about upsells, I told people that if they weren't getting 20% of their upsells, so if they made an upsell offer, 20% of the time, people ought to be taking it. If they weren't, there were like four different things that could cause that, but one of them was not connecting the dots, benefits to, you know, problems in their life and if you didn't do that, you weren't going to get 20% of upsells happening.
Colin Parker: Well, we always used to with our salespeople... When I ran a sales team and always sold with professional services was you would talk about, you know, you could talk about features, but if you talked about a feature, it always had to connect to a benefit and then a value. What's the value they're going to get out of that?
Ryan Chapman: And because nobody buys anything because they want that thing, it's because they, well, they believe that thing will give them, right?
Colin Parker: Well, exactly like [00:36:00] as, as I've, I always tell people is nobody needs a sales consultant. What they need is more sales. They could care less. About, you know,...
Ryan Chapman: How that happens.
Colin Parker: How that happens. Unless you can sort of give them that map of, of how it's going to happen and, and step them through it. And it's, it's funny is we would, you know, we would drill salespeople on, you know, here's the, here's the step shift you have to go through. And it was funny how they would just stop at sort of naming that, that feature and never get to the benefit or the value for it. And that's where the meat is. Like the feature is just the thing that that gets you to, to the end goal, but it's just a step along the way.
Ryan Chapman: Yeah. Well, I really appreciate this conversation. I mean, I, I hope everybody that gets the chance to listen to this will appreciate all that you've shared. I know that I have, I've been taking notes with a pen so you couldn't really hear [00:37:00] it. But, you know, there's a couple of things that really stood out to me that you know, I'm going to go back to our own marketing and sales process and see how we incorporate this in. Even though we're not selling professional services, it's still true, which are, what visual triggers can I give in my marketing to help people recognize that they have a problem because we solve a real problem. But a lot of people don't recognize it. So what we're visual triggers, so I'm going to work on that myself. And then also, what are the disqualifying things that people are looking at? What are they, where are they judging? Their interaction with our company on to exclude us from the race, so to speak. I felt like that was another really big thing. I mean, there's a ton of them. I didn't get all of the questions written down that are, you know, points that came up. But those were a couple of things. I'm like, you know, those are things I need to act on now. So I really appreciate you taking the time to share all of this with our audience, Colin.
Colin Parker: Oh, I appreciate it Ryan.
Ryan Chapman: What's the best way for someone to get ahold of you?
Colin Parker: Probably the best [00:38:00] way is through my website, which is, lonestarsalesperformance.com.
Ryan Chapman: That's great. Any closing remarks that you would have for somebody that is in the business of selling, you know, their professional services? Any final advice or recommendations you'd make to them to help them get their service back on track?
Colin Parker: Yeah, I think the big thing is just stop talking about yourself and, and, and talk about the problems that your client is facing. If you can get that sort of change makes a huge change in the way you approach everything. And I think lots of times I see clients sort of struggling for, I don't know what to do for marketing and the reality is if they just went back and came up with sort of the three main problems that their clients have that you solve, that would, that would really change the way you talked about your business, the way you sold [00:39:00] your business, the way you market your business. When you can say, I help, attorneys with this problem, all of a sudden, anybody who's an attorney talking to you, all of a sudden you knows that you do a service that helps them with this problem immediately. It's not like a job title. Like I'm a life care planner. That means nothing to nobody unless you're in the industry. But all of a sudden when you talk in that way to an attorney, all of a sudden they know exactly the problem. And if they have that problem, they're more likely to get into a conversation with you.
Ryan Chapman: Oh, that's perfect. I really appreciate that. Again Colin, appreciate you coming on and sharing and demonstrating your expertise on this particular problem, which is a big problem for a lot of folks who have invested heavily in their education, have great skills to be able to serve their market, but are struggling to communicate that with the [00:40:00] marketplace. So really appreciate you sharing these things. And again, if you would like to chat with Colin personally about your business, you can go to lone starsalesperformance.com and get information from Colin about how he can help you with your professional services sales. Well, thanks so much, Colin. I really appreciate it.
Colin Parker: Thank you Ryan.