Last year, Ingenuity spoke to professionals in every region of the country and in Europe. We asked professionals about their responses to the recession. Most of their stories were variants on at least one of three themes. We have heard about:

Commodity Price Pressure

•  With many more responders to every RFP, the bidding war is intense. Winners are often bidding so low that others wonder how the work can get done.

•  Even your great clients are asking for price concessions, not only because they are cutting costs but because your competitors are promising lower prices than yours.

•  Prospects are eyeing every dollar decision and making sure they shop around. It is much harder to make new sales.

Stagnant Growth

•  Flat is the new up. Firms that formerly grew upwards of 10 percent per year are scratching to grow 2 percent. Firms that had more modest growth during the boom are losing market share.

•  Firms that put in aggressive sales systems, have strong niche marketing and know their competitive differentiation are holding their own. Those that depended on referrals and word-of-mouth are finding it really tough out there as the low hanging fruit dries up.

•  Competitors are calling your best clients and offering some very aggressive pricing.

Transition Planning

•  With growth so hard to achieve, senior partners are wondering how their buy-outs will be funded.

•  Firms that depend on a few senior rainmakers to bring in new work are taking a serious look at the younger generation and wondering where the rainmakers are.

•  Mergers are happening within middle-size firms as small groups of professionals split off to form boutique firms and the rest of the firm merges — the original succession plan scrapped.

What Sells Now

As we have worked through this recession at Ingenuity, we felt the pain of scaling back, but we also invested in sales training boot camp (www.slatterlysales.com) and hired a Director of Growth. We learned a common language and processes that moved us from trying to sell pleasure to selling pain.

Pleasure

What worked in the boom was to sell pleasure: outstanding service, consistent teams, beautiful offices and a pretty website, a fun team with office parties featured on FaceBook, giving back to the community, etc.

Selling pleasure takes the form of lunches, small gifts and information about your company with gentle persistence. You can talk no more than 50 percent of the time during this type of sales conversation. It is about rapport building with the client, but also you and your services and the absolute happiness that the client will experience with you. It is a conversation that requires a medium level of skill.

In marketing, pleasure looks like “happy client” testimonials, an upscale-looking brand and key messages focusing on the talents and service ethic of your people. You can use a lot of advertising because the message is more you-focused. You need lots of sales support materials to hand out at trade shows. You respond to most RFPs that look good because competition is low and you land a fair number of them.

Pain

What works better in a recession is to sell pain. You have to be able to deeply dig into your clients’ or prospects’ psyches and help them identify what really keeps them up at night, their background fears and challenges in this economy. You have to make it safe for them to tell you everything, including how much it might be costing them to keep their current provider. You have to help them feel unsafe with keeping their pain, but safe in handing it over to you. It is a conversation that requires a high level of skill.

In sales, getting at pain takes the form of questions. You have to create intelligent questions that will allow your prospects to think through their issues and fears and then share them with you. If you thought keeping your mouth shut was hard before, pain selling means that you talk for about 10 percent of the conversation, much less than you could when selling pleasure! It is a complete overhaul of most sales systems. The questions have to be non-threatening, but help people open up. If you give them pain statements (“You must have low sales due to the recession”), you can easily make people feel defensive, which means you do not get the sale.

Marketing also takes a shift in a pain economy. Instead of focusing on how nice your people are or their outside interests, it is time to differentiate your firm for being the “best place to turn to” for specific needs. You do this through expertise and niche marketing.

Professional service marketing has always been different from other marketing because you are selling what’s in your head and who you are. In a pain sales process, you want to be visible to the markets you serve — a familiar provider — but also credible. Nothing says you know what you are talking about than authoring an article or being featured in the media about your subject of expertise. This kind of public relations lives on beyond a project press release or firm news because your articles show up on Google and reinforce your knowledge and expert status.

Speaking is another classic way to build your status as an expert. Make sure all your speaking engagements are mentioned somewhere on the Web. If your prospect is looking for a new employment attorney and finds that you have authored 12 articles and given six speeches in this area, your credibility meter rises exponentially. It shows that you are in demand and trusted to provide the right information.

Virtually all prospects now spend some time looking up their next vendors on Google. You cannot afford a dusty website! All those articles and speaking engagements should be featured on your site as well as strong expert-based bios and excellent practice area pages. This is the time to shine on all fronts — your reputation, your personal appearance, your website, your social media, your Google search results.  When people are afraid to spend money, you have to prove you’re worth it.

Niche Marketing

The other tool that is fueling firm growth right now is owning a niche market — not showing up at a trade show meeting here and there, but owning the whole arena. It is easier to build up credibility in certain niches markets than in your whole geographic area because there are usually trade associations, publications and meetings that define the marketing space. It can take years to own a niche, but there are some great shortcuts that include individual marketing plans for your team members (strength in numbers), niche public relations and a sales pipeline coaching process specific to that niche.

The economy is definitely taking an uptick in many areas and we are busy at something besides sales again! It might look like the worst is over, but don’t forget the lessons from 2008 through 2010: Whether the economy is tough or booming, focus on your sales and marketing. Spend money on it; get new training, fresh ideas and more systems. Hone in on the customer base that needs you the most. Step up your game. Contact Ingenuity Marketing if you would like to learn how.