You meet a prospect and get very excited about the potential of working together. Then you find as your conversations progress that they can’t afford to work with your firm.
And how can you stop this happening time and time again. That’s what this episode is all about.
Getting excited about a prospect is not the same as a signed up client. And its your job as a sales person to find out early whether a prospect is going to be a great client for you and your firm.
Your partners are looking at whether you can be trusted to hit your new business forecast and bring in the right type of work, without burning through the little non-billable time you have.
I’m Heather Townsend, author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner & Still Have a Life. I’m the leading global expert in what it takes to move from senior fee earner to partner . Here are 5 ways to work with me.
In This Episode You Will Learn:
- The DUFF framework, so you can tell from one conversation whether a prospect is worth your time
- How to talk about money early without frightening off your prospect
- What it means when somebody says they have no budget, and when to keep going
- Two things to do before a first meeting with a prospect, before you waste too much time or emotional energy on the prospect
If you find this episode useful, don’t forget to like it and then subscribe so you don’t miss another episode.
What Help Is Out There For You?
If you’re thinking, ‘I struggle with these sales conversations, I just don’t know how to do it without sounding like I’m selling’, our Progress To Partner Academy can help you.
That’s precisely why we have the on-demand course ‘How to Go from Coffees to Instructions’ in the Progress to Partner Academy. It has a module on sales that takes you through what happens between the first conversation and the signed instruction.
You can also listen to this episode on Substack and on Apple Podcasts
Hello, and welcome!
You meet someone at a networking event. You get on well. You say, “Fancy a chat about your business?” And they say yes.
So you put an hour in the diary to meet them. The meeting goes well and you are thinking “this could be a great new client”
Then they say… We love you and your firm, but We can’t afford you.”
Oh.
What can you do about this group of prospects? The leads that you may get all excited about, that don’t go anywhere. That waste your precious non-billable time.
This episode is about how to pre-qualify out the leads that were never going to go anywhere, using a framework I call DUFF. This episode was inspired by a group coaching call with a group of lawyers on our How to Make Partner programme.
This is the How to Make Partner podcast with me, Heather Townsend. The author of Poised for Partnership, and co-author of How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life. In this podcast, I will be highlighting some of the great stuff in our Progress To Partner Academy. New episodes are released weekly, so press subscribe so you never miss a new episode.
Right. Let’s talk about the difference between a prospect and a qualified lead
Let’s talk about your pipeline of new business. In my book Poised for Partnership I break a pipeline into categories. I’ve put a link to the book in the shownotes.
Committed Spend is a signed engagement, where the work is agreed but you haven’t yet billed it or been paid for it.
Visible Spend is work in your pipeline that the client is committed to doing, but they haven’t yet signed up for it. But you know they have a budget and timescale to do the work in the next 12 months or so.
Speculative Spend is the work you know is probably out there, but you haven’t fully qualified it, or you’re not sure how committed the client really is.
Now, when we look at our own pipeline, we are often overly optimistic. We put things into Visible Spend that belong in Speculative Spend. For example:
The conversation went well, they seemed keen, they asked us to send something over, it looks like something is going to come off”
But we’ve never established whether this person can pay for it, whether they can sign for it, or whether they want it at all this year. Until you have qualified the lead, it is Speculative Spend at best.
Making this mistake will cost you. The first cost is your time. You’ve just wasted hours of your non-billable time. Time you don’t have to waste. The second cost is your credibility with your partners. You tell your Head of Department you’ve got a great pipeline of new business waiting to convert. Then it doesn’t land. The last thing you want is your partner or head of department to mistrust your personal forecasts.
So how do you qualify before you spend the time on prospects that are going nowhere? I use a framework I call DUFF. Decision maker, Urgency, Funds, Fit.
Let’s start with the decision maker. You have a conversation, it goes really well, and at the end they say, “Oh, can you send me a proposal? ” You send it. And then nothing.
What you may have now realised is that you were not talking to the ultimate decision maker. So early on, you need to find out three things. If this progresses, who else in your organisation is going to need to have a say? What will they need to see? And who takes the ultimate decision?
You might be thinking, “But I work directly with business owners, so it’s them.” Maybe. But you may well find that their other half, their husband/wife/life partner is the one who takes the ultimate decision. They aren’t on any org chart. They’re just the person whose opinion actually counts! Plenty of people will not commit to anything without somebody else ratifying it for them. Before you go any further, you need to know that you’re speaking with the decision maker and that they are on side.
Then there’s urgency. The question I always ask is, when do you want to have got this outcome? When would you like to see the results? That question tells you where this sits in the organisation’s list of priorities. If the honest answer is sometime next year, that’s useful too. It isn’t a no. It’s a clear not yet and a sign for you to stay in touch rather than get excited about the work landing soon.
Then there’s funds. This is where most of us get uncomfortable. We don’t want to raise money too early, because we’re worried about frightening away the prospect. What we forget is that the person on the other side of the table needs to know how much this is going to cost. They don’t need it down to the pound, shillings and pence. What they need is a broad understanding: this sort of work usually costs somewhere between this and this. Is that what you were expecting?
And when somebody says they haven’t got a budget, that is not the end of the conversation. Ask any litigator whether their clients had a budget set aside for the dispute that has just landed on their desk. Of course they didn’t. But they find one. So when you start talking money, what you are finding out is whether they’ve got the urgency and the motivation to go and find that budget.
And then there’s fit. Are they the type of client you and your firm want to work with? Do you like them? Is the chemistry there? Because if you and they are not gelling, it doesn’t matter that they’ve got the budget and that you can service the work. It isn’t going to happen. Or worse, it does happen, and you spend the next eighteen months on a client that nobody in your team wants to work for.
By the way, if you struggle with the bit between the first conversation and the work being signed off, there’s an on-demand course inside our Progress to Partner Academy called How to Go from Coffees to Instructions. It has a module on sales that takes you through what happens between the first conversation and the signed instruction. I’ll come back to it at the end.
Let me tell you about an accountant I was working with who was on the cusp of making partner.
He’d had three leads come in and he’d sat down with two of them. Both of them told him they couldn’t afford him. He came to me frustrated that he had spent a significant amount of time on two of these leads that were not going to go anywhere.
What was actually happening was this. He was meeting people at networking events and saying, “Fancy a chat about your business?” And people were coming along for a chat about their business. He’d get back to the office and think, I’ve got a lead. What he had was Speculative Spend at best.
So we worked on how he could qualify before he spent the time, and two things made the difference.
The first was what he said at the point they agreed to the chat. Rather than just putting it in the diary, he’d come back with something like: brilliant, let me ask you what you want to get out of the chat so that I can organise it properly and make sure you get the most out of it. And their agenda tells you whether you’ve got a chat or a lead.
The second was a PDF he sent before the meeting. What it’s like to work with us. What our clients typically pay for this sort of work, from this much to this much. And why they choose us rather than somebody else. So by the time the two of them sat down, the money conversation had already happened, and it hadn’t cost him an hour of his day to have it.
Whilst this won’t stop people telling you they can’t afford you, it does at least mean you find that out before you have given them your time.
Your partners are not only looking at whether you can win work. They’re looking at whether you can be trusted to hit your new business forecast AND bring in the right type of work in a time effective way. This is where you need to be hot on qualifying your leads before devoting a lot of your precious non-billable time to them.
Now, if you’re thinking, “I struggle with these sales conversations, I just don’t know how to do it without sounding like I’m selling”, that’s exactly what our How to Go from Coffees to Instructions is designed for. It has a module on sales that takes you through what happens between the first conversation and the signed instruction.
‘ve popped a link to our Progress To Partner Academy, which contains our How to Go from Coffees to Instructions course, directly in the show notes for this episode. Also in the show notes, you’ll find links to my books, Poised for Partnership and How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life, so you can easily find them on Amazon. And as a thank you for listening, there’s also a link for a 10% discount on annual membership for our Progress To Partner Academy using the code PODCAST10.
That’s all for this episode of the How to Make Partner podcast. What’s your action for this week? The next sales conversation you have with a new prospect use the DUFF framework to see whether this is a prospect that you should progress to a signed up client.
If you have enjoyed this episode please leave us a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or give us a comment on Substack. This helps us get the word out to others who may need this advice too. Remember to hit subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s episode. Thanks for listening!
I’m Heather Townsend, author of Poised for Partnership and co-author of How to Make Partner & Still Have a Life. I’m the leading global expert in what it takes to move from senior fee earner to partner – and when you get there, stay there. Here are 5 ways to work with me.
Take things further
Take the Partnership Readiness Assessment
Free to complete, 10 to 15 minutes, and gives you a personalised report across all 12 key indicators. Take the assessment here.
What help is out there for you to progress your career in the professions?
The Progress to Partner Academy is curated by key indicator. If the Partnership Admissions Process is what is in front of you, you’ll find everything in one place.
The course to start with is How to Create a Cast-Iron Business Case for Partner. This on-demand course takes you step by step through:
- Building a Business Plan for your practice using the STAGe model
- Working out the critical moves that will grow your practice profitably and sustainably
- Adapting that plan into a Business Case for partnership
- Answering the ‘Why me’ and ‘Why now’ questions your partners will be weighing up
- Pitching your Business Case to your partners
Under the indicator you’ll also find a set of Video Hub sessions and downloadable guides focused on the admissions process itself:
- 9 Differences of a Lateral Hire Partner Business Case
- Acing the Partner Admissions Process
- The Importance of Your Business Case Narrative
- Guide: How to Elegantly Handle Challenging Questions or Open Conflict
- Guide to undertaking your own Due Diligence
- Partner Panel Interview Timeline
These resources will help you:
- Understand what your partners are really deciding when they discuss your name
- Walk into your interviews with your answers prepared rather than improvised
- Get your Business Case down to a pitch you can deliver in the time you are given
- Handle the question and answer session without arguing yourself out of a partnership
- Know what to do in the weeks after the vote, whichever way it goes
If the Partnership Admissions Process is what is in front of you, this section of Progress to Partner will help you go into it prepared rather than hoping.
Use code PODCAST10 for 10% off annual membership. Click here to join.
Books mentioned
Poised for Partnership by Heather Townsend – https://amzn.to/3ETEYk3
How to Make Partner and Still Have a Life by Heather Townsend and Jo Larbie – https://amzn.to/4iLxugM
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