How to ‘accidentally’ gain sales from networking

Few ambitious accountants have ever chosen a career in sales. And yet, almost all accountants need to be able to generate income. Inevitably that income will come from clients and you will have some, possibly a large, responsibility for helping to generate those ‘sales’.

My friend, Richard White, describes those of us who are in this position as “Accidental sales people”. We didn’t choose to work in sales but it is still an integral part of what we do. Richard’s view is that we will be more successful if we adopt a ‘soft-selling’ style rather than attempt to emulate the salespeople whom we hate. You know – those pushy people who try to persuade people to buy things they don’t want.

We need to ensure that our sales techniques are appropriate and that our prospective clients do not feel we are pressurising them to engage us for services they do not want. For this reason traditional sales training techniques are unlikely to be very effective when trying to help ambitious accountants enhance the results of their networking and client development activities.

I have long admired Richard’s ‘soft-selling’ techniques as they are very similar to solution based selling and consultative selling. These are the approaches that I learned some years ago and still favour. The essence of all these concepts is to work with rather than against human nature. Rather than attempt to push your services, soft-selling demands that you first understand the primary motivations of your clients and prospective clients. Then, and only then, you should be able to make your services seem so compelling that they attract your clients to want to engage you.

The skills you need to develop are less a hard nosed approach to selling and more an understanding of human nature and a degree of patience. 

Last year Richard wrote the ‘Networking Survival Guide – the essential hands-on manual for winning more business and gaining new sales leads’. In it he demolishes the myth of the ‘elevator pitch’ and explains what you can do to stand out and be remembered as distinct from every other accountant. He stresses the power of stories and highlights the benefits of thinking this all through. Spend some time getting this right and you will start to ‘accidentally’ gain referrals and sales from your networking activities. It won’t happen overnight though. But it will happen a lot faster than if you network aimlessly. Richard encourages a clarity of thought that could benefit many accountants whose networking is proving to be less effective than they would like.