Now that you’ve got your clients’ attention, it’s time to close the deal. Remember, these clients have already come to know and trust you and your team, and now they’re looking to you for advice to better manage their business. They want to know how your services can solve their day-to-day challenges.

Leverage Your Client Data

This is what offering Client Advisory Services is all about. Using what you know about your client and their financials to help them make impactful and valuable business decisions. So when we think about pitching bill pay services to clients, we should start by reviewing their financials and looking for ways we can help. Put simply, ‘Look to the Books!’, and use this data to show them how you can improve their cash flow by outsourcing their back office.

Interview the Clients You Want

Getting to the interview phase of the sales process means that you’ve collected the information required to move on to a more in-depth interview. This is where you land after you’ve qualified your prospect and identified them as a good fit for your business model.

At this point, you’ll continue to develop the relationship and build trust by offering prospects the right information at the right time. This means getting into a comfortable information-sharing cadence—educating clients, offering expert advice on ways to solve their pain points, and clearly articulating the value of your services.

From our Accountant Entrepreneur Series webinar ‘Art of the Sale’, there are two main guidelines to consider when having these conversations with a client:

• Ask open-ended questions—This is a no-brainer, but worth mentioning. If you ask a yes-or-no question, you’ll get a yes-or-no answer. Ask questions that encourage more thought and more emotion from the prospect. For example, if a prospect has revealed a major pain point in their business, ask: “Why do you feel this is an issue?” Or, “What is your ultimate goal for the business if this issue is corrected?” Asking open-ended questions will lead prospects to share far more information with you.
• Take a consultative stance—This is the stage where you’ll want to offer your expertise. This is an opportunity to dig deeper into pain points and offer insight on real resolutions. Taking the stance of an advisor will help build the emotional connection and further elevate your credibility.

Example Interview

Prospect: “Our manual AP process is taking far too much of my time." Firm’s response: Ask follow-up questions that make the prospect really face the pain of the issue—questions that will elicit a deeper, more emotion-fueled answer. Follow-up questions might include:

• "How does it make you feel to know that you're dedicating so much time to a manual AP process, and what would you do with that extra time if the process were more efficient?”
• “How have delays and errors impacted your business relationships with your vendors and suppliers?"

It’s important not to take initial answers at face value. The interview phase is the time to dig deeper. This information can then be used to mold your value proposition and show the prospect how you can help them solve their issues and accomplish their goals.

By truly listening to prospects’ wants, needs, and pain points and asking the right questions to elicit deeper, focused information, you set yourself up to better combat objections later in the sales cycle and earn their trust. And all of this adds up to winning clients!

Learn more about discovering client needs in Part I of our blog The Art of the Sale

Overcoming Objections

If you’ve been selling for a long time, you probably know better than anyone the types of objections prospects can lay out. And while objections can pop up at any time during the sales cycle, they’re most common during the discovery phase.

Over the years, four common objections have emerged in the profession—price, change in the status quo, loss of control, and security. As these objections surface, use the following tips and examples to more easily combat each. It’s also important to note that if you’ve done your due diligence in the discovery phase and know your prospect on a deeper emotional level, it will be easier to overcome objections.

Consider the following tactics to break through objections and how you might apply them in conversation to help win the client:

• Redirect the conversation—When prospects start throwing out objections, such as the price is too high or that they fear losing control of processes, it’s best to redirect the conversation back to the pain points you uncovered during the identify and interview stages. Remind the prospect of the challenges they want to overcome and the “price” of not changing with the times. You can also redirect conversations to bring in relevant examples of how companies that failed to change ended up diminishing in their respective markets.
• Reintroduce the emotion—Go back to your interview notes and remind the prospect of what they’re trying to accomplish and how you can help them. This will reestablish the emotional connection you created during discovery.
• Tie in your value propositions—Because you’ve done so much work in the discovery phase, you have a clear view of how you can help the prospect. As you’re working to redirect the conversation, be sure to tie in the value you bring to the table. It’s important to tell a complete “story” to help the prospect see the big picture, including both their challenges and the resolution to those challenges—you!
• Educate—Many times, objections from prospects are driven by pure fear—fear of the unknown or fear of change. Be patient. Take the time to educate prospects on better ways to run their businesses. They may naturally gain comfort regarding change and fear can sometimes turn to excitement.

Learn more about overcoming common objections in Part II of our blog The Art of the Sale.