By David A. Fields
You could easily drown in the sea of articles and books about making rain. Countless web sites and training firms are dedicated to upgrading consultants' business development skills. This article isn't about landing new clients and it's not even about winning follow-on projects with your current clients. No, while many resources reveal the secrets to selling more projects, I'll show you how to make each and every project you win bigger.
The VP of Marketing and Sales for a Kansas-based medical devices firm calls me to ask for a bid on a training program for his small sales force. "I'm talking to a number of other vendors and I want to keep this under $25,000," he explains. Three weeks later he agrees to a $95,000 program. Why? Because I escaped the Urchin Trap and leveraged all three determinants of "drop size" to turn average pieces of new business into exceptional profits. THE STREET URCHIN TRAP What is the most consistent barrier to increasing the total size of your projects? When I give presentations on this topic I ask consultants to answer the following two questions: 1) Thinking of the proposals you submit, what percentage of the time do you offer a price that you think the client will think is very high? 2) Still thinking of the proposals you submit, what percentage of the time do you offer a price that you think is very high?
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