Why Pitching into the Wind?

We’ve just been told it’s the end of the ‘nice’ decade and the business of business is about to get tougher, much tougher. Selling has been easy with such strong growth but we’re moving into a buyers market , a strong headwind for all of us with responsibilities–are you ready to “pitch into the wind”?
Engineers, architects, designers, IT developers and the enormous range of we professional people are a vain bunch and frankly we’re not often, natural salespeople. We don’t have ‘customers’, we have ‘clients’ and the idea of our needing, and I can barely say it without wincing, ‘sales training’ is, frankly, vulgar. Perhaps we call “sales” business development, client / account management, or whatever, but let’s at least be honest with ourselves for a moment; it isselling. We need to match a customer needto what we are offering and, particularly important in professional services where you are selling absolute intangibles, we need to demonstrate the value of that service clearly and very confidently. If we don’t then someone else will win the business we covet.
This handbook has been developed from work done by the authors, Phil as professional engineer and COO of a global metals and mining consultancy, Jim, as an entrepreneur, salesman, and consultant, to help you to sell more and better in the real world of business. Our goal is to give you practical help and advice to entrench a professional “pitching culture ” in your business, whatever it is.
2009