Your Authority Marketing has done it’s job, and someone has raised their hand. You’ve scheduled an intro call to learn more about their business and assess whether you can help. Congratulations!

Don’t screw it up.

Too many consultants think they can waltz into a prospective client call or intro meeting and just wing it. While it is theoretically possible to get by on sheer charisma and intellect, you don’t want to leave these conversations to chance.

The Perfect Intro Call is a lightly scripted process that you use every single time to make sure you leave a great first impression. When your service offering is relatively low cost, it can immediately lead to a proposal. In the context of longer term sales cycles with more expensive solutions, it almost always leads to a tangible next step.

Here’s what it looks like:

Caveat: Do you know your ICP?

One major note before we get into it. This implies that you have a clearly defined ICP. If you don’t, this process won’t work, because it is deeply informed by the pain points of your clients and your unique point of view. It’s highly unlikely you’ve identified the ideal solution, or are able to speak about it coherently.

So if you don’t have a very clear and targeted definition of who you seek to serve, do not pass GO, do not collect $200. Go back and do that work. You can read about how to start that process here.

Trusted Advisors Don’t Pitch.

It took me far too long to learn this lesson. I thought the goal of these calls was to impress them sufficiently with how great we were. And I thought that meant having a 40 page deck, spending 55 minutes of an hour call talking about ourselves.

Your prospective client doesn’t care about you. They care about themselves. They are sitting with you because they have at least a cursory understanding of who you are and what you do. So ditch the big me-focused “pitch.”

Trusted Advisors don’t pitch. Trusted Advisors engage in a mutual exploration with the client. Their job isn’t to sell, it’s to help the client decide what they should do. You’re consulting, even in the business development process. And you’re previewing what it will be like to work with you.

Outline an agenda.

This is good meeting hygiene in general. You want to start the meeting by proposing a purpose and agenda. Something like this:

My goal with our time today is to learn a little about each other, discuss some actionable ways you might approach <GOAL>, and feel out if there’s a mutual fit to do something together.

I want to be respectful of your time, and we have 30 minutes. So I’d love to do this: I’ve had a chance to go through your site, but would love to hear directly from you about your business and the issues you’re dealing with. I can then share a bit about our approach. And we can wrap with potential next steps if there are any.

Does that sound good? Is there anything else you think we should cover?

Usually they will agree to your purpose and agenda as outlined. But you want to give them space to respond and mutually create the agenda.

It’s a dance. You want to simultaneously demonstrate competence and control of the situation, while also planting the seeds that you are mutually co-creating the business case you’ll ultimately be making. When we feel like we’ve created something we tend to feel more invested in it.

The Problem:

Your main goal with the call is to understand their problems. You want to get them talking about their business, the issues they are dealing with, and draw out the implications.

In sales, they call this “agitating” the pain. You want the prospective client to visualize their current situation and the cost of it as vividly and concretely as possible.

Quantitative impacts are certainly powerful – knowing that the problem is costing them X in terms of time or money is helpful. But just as powerful are the emotional or psychological costs of the problem not being solved. Those are what create urgency.

You want to pepper in thoughtful follow-up questions during this process, but otherwise you want to let them talk 90% of the time. You can make heavy use of “what else?” or “what happens because of that?”

As they go through this, you want to restate their problem back to them. This signals to them that you are listening. It also provides you an opportunity to make sure you understand the problem before launching into your solution.

I’m also a fan of using “objection questions”. There are questions that anticipate potential objections during the sales process. By asking them at the outset, you get the client to almost defend the need for a solution.

A great example would be, “It seems like you’ve been able to succeed to far in spite of this. Is there something driving the urgency to solve this now?” Asking something like this helps them remind themselves that the issue is urgent and needs to be addressed now.

Some other questions you can ask during this process:

• When did you first notice this issue?
• Why is that a problem for your business?
• What have you tried to do so far to solve this problem?
• What would happen if you were to keep things the way they are?
• Where does this problem rank relative to some of your other strategic initiatives?
• Who in the company is impacted by this problem?
• Has there been a task force or other initiative stood up to solve this problem?
• What barriers exist within the organization that would prevent you from being able to successfully tackle this?
• What does your decision-making process typically look like?
• How would solving this impact your role and career?
• What would a successful implementation look like? Is there a particular KPI you monitor that would signal it worked?
• What opportunities would solving this unlock for your company?
• How important are quick wins vs. long term solutions?

Last note - I’m a big fan of taking paper notes during this process. When you’re typing while on the call, there’s a chance you’ll get interrupted by a Slack notification or email. You want to give the client your undivided attention. Even if you aren’t typing in another window, they might think you are. And if you’re in person, having the laptop open creates separation. Use a notebook, even if you need to transfer the notes to your computer after the fact.

Your Point of View:

Two thirds of your call should be about the problem. But at some point you do have to say something.

Before launching into your solution though, I like to start with your Point of View.

If you’ve read our other articles, your Point of View is your primary tool for differentiation. Most profession services firms if they’re honest are selling commodified solutions. But the Point of View is how you can stand out.

The goal here is to directly tie your Point of View to the problems they’re experiencing.

Your Point of View, among other things, summarizes what you believe to be true about your domain of expertise. In an ideal world, your Point of View tells your prospective client why the issues they face are happening.

It’s not about your solution, it’s bigger. It comes from a deep and nuanced understanding of the market, the client, and the dynamics they experience.

Being able to tie your Point of View to their problems gives reassurance. It demonstrates that you’ve been there before and have dealt with their problems. It shows you know how to solve them.

If you can teach the customer something new, and get them to think in ways that are similar to you, you’ve won them over to your way of thinking. You’ve differentiated your service offering, and potentially created a situation where you’re now the only one who can help them with their problem. If they buy into your Point of View, they will buy into your solution.

Don’t move on until you get them to align to your perspective. If they don’t agree with your Point of View, they won’t agree with your solution.

Your Solution

Once you’ve articulated your Point of View and gotten alignment on it, you can transition to your solution.

At this point your solution will sound obvious. Because you’ve followed a logical progression. They’ve talked about their problems. You’ve explained why those problems are happening in a way that makes sense to the client. Your solution directly maps to those, so it clearly makes sense.

Focus on benefits, not features. Your benefits should again be focused on alleviating the pain the client is currently experiencing. There might be other things it can do as well, but focus what their specific pain points are. Relevance is more important than comprehensiveness.

The solution presentation at this stage can stay relatively high level. Your emphasis should be on outcomes, not process. You’re selling the vacation, not the process of getting to the vacation.

That said, don’t focus on tons of data, or on making promises. Everyone does it. There’s a good chance the client has worked with other advisors who made bold claims that turn out to be untrue.

Instead tell stories. Anecdotal. A well articulated client example is more compelling than numbers. It helps the client visualize themselves succeeding.

Don’t Worry About “The Close”

If you’re selling something with even a moderate price point, it’s unlikely you’re going to close on this call. So don’t try to. Don’t create false urgency. Don’t do anything heavy-handed.

Instead, simply secure a next step.

That next step depends on the nature of the work and the client. If the project is relatively discreet and marginally priced, you can send a proposal or engagement letter.

If the project is large or requires a committee-based sale, you are kick-starting a process with the internal champion of the project that might involve many steps. That might look like creating a business case document that they can use to circulate internally. Again, you’re consulting before you win the work - most of the conversations about this project will happen without you in the room. So your role is to equip and enable the champion to advocate for the project and for your involvement

What you don’t want to do is leave the call with NO natural next step. You want to keep momentum going. So make sure you get something down that is concrete, that the client agrees to.

Conclusion

A great intro call is establishes a solid foundation for a successful client relationship. Like every interaction with your business, it’s a trust building exercise. You don’t have a “sales” hat and a “client” hat. They’re one and the same.

By following a process like the one outlined above, you’ll build rapport, demonstrate empathy, signal competence by understanding their problems and why they’re happening, and be uniquely positioned to help.

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