What do buyers really want from your firm? How do you generate more inquiries from qualified clients? How do you close more new business? What’s the secret of getting more referrals?
Interesting questions, indeed. At last there are some clear answers.
Hinge has just published a new book entitled Inside the Buyer’s Brain: Turning Buyers Into Believers and it’s now available as a free download.
The roots of this new book go back to our work with high growth professional services firms. One of our key findings was that the fastest growing, most profitable firms tend to have a strong focus on a well-defined target market. But how does this benefit them? What sorts of insights are possible?
Start With the Research
To find out we undertook a major study of professional services buyers. But we added a twist that turned out to be one of the most valuable aspects of the study.
We not only looked at professional services buyers, we also studied the sellers who won the business. For the first time this allowed us to gain insight into how the professional services client relationship looks from both sides.
The study also examined the entire relationship life cycle, from identifying the internal need all the way through follow-on business and referrals.
What we found was that there are some major disconnects between buyers and sellers. For example:
- Sellers dramatically overestimate the role of price in professional services sales
- They often misunderstand what buyers are really looking for from a provider
- Sellers miss that buyers look for certain things when selecting a firm but evaluate them on other criteria when they are actually working together
What emerges is a clear picture of how buyers and sellers see the world differently. But it is a gap that can be bridged.
We also included results from a cooperative study with Rain Group. This study looked at over 700 B2B sales and explored what the winners did differently from the firms that came in as runners-up. There are some clear and compelling differences.
About the Book
The book covers a wide range of critical topics including:
- Targeting the right clients
- Making the connection
- Closing the sale
- Building client loyalty
- Expanding the relationship
- Getting referrals
Importantly, it goes on to lay out a step-by-step approach to closing the gap between buyers and sellers.
The key to success lies in aligning your firm’s brand, service offerings and messaging with your target client expectations. Offering the right service to the right target client, using the right messages and marketing strategies makes all the difference in the world.
Download your copy of Inside the Buyer’s Brain here. The PDF version is complementary.
We are anxious to get your feedback and insights.
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