The Four Cs of Service Selling

Looking through the client’s eyes
by Randy Shattuck, The Shattuck Group 

How do service buyers do it? How do they take that journey? How do they go from knowing nothing or very little about a service provider to signing an agreement for thousands, hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars — all within a very short window of time? If a deal is primarily services, where buyers take possession of almost no tangible goods, what propels them to give money in exchange for something they cannot touch or hold? Talk about faith! 

The journey service buyers take is nothing less than heroic. There is tremendous risk in it for them. The outcome is uncertain. To sign an agreement and begin an engagement, there are four distinct psychological stages that service buyers must pass through: 

1. Cognizance.
2. Competence.
3. Confidence.
4. Contract. 

In my last article I outlined the top five business development tactics that more than 350 professional services (PS) executives said they prefer. In this article, I’ll provide insights into the four stages of the service buyer’s journey and show you how to leverage the five preferred tactics to pull ideal clients through each stage. 

 In the cognizance stage,  service buyers become aware of a service provider. Sometimes this occurs during the search stage of the B2B buying cycle. Sometimes this occurs in the course of everyday business. But for service buyers to move to the next stage, they must have some level of awareness of a service provider and some knowledge of what that service provider offers. 

In the competence stage, service buyers begin to understand the competencies of the service provider. They come to understand what a service provider does, how well they do it and whom the service provider supports. If service buyers are not in a buying cycle when they achieve this knowledge, they’ll often make a mental note or bookmark a webpage from the service provider and say to themselves, “If I ever need this type of service, this is a company I’m going to call.” 

At the confidence stage,  service buyers gain confidence that the service provider is quite possibly a good fit for them. They’ve moved beyond mere knowledge of who the service provider is and what it does. They’ve come to believe the service provider’s promises and that it can help them cross the gap from where they are now to where they want to be in the future. 

In the contract stage, service buyers are ready to engage. They want a great contract with all of the terms they’ve discussed and the limitations they’ve negotiated spelled out in black and white. They are cautious, but optimistic. They have budget and want to get started. They deeply desire the results that they believe the service provider will deliver. 

All of us, as service providers, want more and more of the final stage ­– the contract. This is how we grow our businesses. This is why we put so much effort into building service models, marketing our firms and engaging in the business development process. But how do we get there? How do we generate more deal-flow? 

This is where the top five tactics come to play. When we polled more than 350 PS leaders and asked them which business development tactics they prefer, they told us: 

1. Email marketing: 77.9 percent.
2. Thought leadership: 72.1 percent.
3. Public speaking: 66.2 percent.
4. Search-engine marketing: 65.6 percent.
5. Webinars: 58 percent. 

The goal of all of these tactics is to “pull” ideal clients into buying cycles, not push. One of the very best ways to do this is by providing insights and practical strategies about topics that matter to ideal clients. Typically, ideal clients have two types of concerns: 

• Challenges that they want to solve. These are often of a negative nature, where an organization must solve the challenge or face painful consequences.
• Opportunities they want to exploit. These are often of a positive nature, where an organization has an opportunity to grow or take a leadership position that excites stakeholders. 

If you can provide your market with deep insights about how to solve their challenges and exploit their opportunities, you will build good will, create cognizance for your brand and achieve a leadership position. You will become the “go-to” player in your market. 

The top five business development tactics are predicated around this very notion. What if you were to receive an email that: 

• Addressed a topic that you care about deeply — growing your business for instance?
• Invited you to download a complimentary white paper on this topic?
• Told you about a public speaking engagement where a principal in the firm would address the very topic that fascinates you?
• Asked you to register for a complimentary webinar where you could learn about the five most important things you can do to achieve your goals for this topic? 

Would you be inclined to respond to at least one of these offers?  I know I would, and I do all the time. The top five business development tactics are simply stellar at building awareness (cognizance), establishing your credibility (competence), allowing you to demonstrate your expertise (impacting confidence) and pulling ideal clients toward that all-important contract. 

Final thoughts 

If your organization wants to fill a pipeline with prospects who want what you offer and are willing to pay a premium to work with you, you’ll have to devise a coherent strategy to take them on the journey through the four Cs. Pull marketing, using the top five tactics, is the absolute best way to do this. 

Randy Shattuck is a senior marketing executive and founder of The Shattuck Group, a full-service marketing firm that specializes in growing professional services organizations. You can reach him at randy@theshattuckgroup.com.