Back in late March, amidst some ridiculous client deliverable deadlines, I was asked to contribute 10 selling tips for an eBook entitled “Selling through a Slump: an Industry-by-Industry Playbook”. My initial thought was that this wasn’t a good fit for me or my blog , considering I’m not (by definition) a pure play salesman. However, after giving it some thought and looking at the existing contributors, I quickly realized that the word “selling” in the title of this eBook is used in a broad context. After all, I am a consultant and at the end of the day, if I don’t “sell” my services (however subtle that may be), I will be out of business. These tips apply to anyone really.
The one question I had to figure out was: “What is the unique market vertical that I operate in?”
The answer? Easy. “I am a marketing and social media strategy consultant, working solely for government and non-profit organizations”. I therefore entitled my section as follows: ” Business Development Tips for Marketing Consultants Working with Public Sector Clients”. For simplicity, this was later changed to “Selling to public sector clients”. I hope you find my tips to be of value.
The other contributors involved, along with their respective roles and section titles were as follows:
- Charles Green – Founder & CEO, Trusted Advisor Assocaites – “Selling for accountants and consultants”
- Skip Anderson – Founder, Selling to Consumers Sales Trianing – “Selling for retailers”
- Mike Wise – VP, Ideastar – “Selling for insurance agents”
- Matt Homann – Founder, LexThink – “Selling for lawyers”
- Anneke Seley – Founder & CEO, Phoneworks – “Selling in health care”
- John Caddell – Founder, Cadell Insight Group – “Selling in telecommunications markets”
- Dave Stein – Founder & CEO, ES Research Group – “Selling technology”
- Jill Konrath – Author, Selling to big companies – “Selling in services”
- Anne Miller – Founder, Chiron Associates – “Selling Media
- Dave Brock – President & CEO, Partners in Excellence – “Selling to manufacturers”
You can download the full “Selling through a Slump” eBook here.
I’m looking forward to finally reading the eBook in its entirety. Let me know what you think of it!
Thanks for the tips and the links Mike. The one tip I would add is to plan for a much longer selling cycle than with private sector clients. Public sector clients are spending public money and justifiably have to jump through a lot of hoops to do so.
Thanks , that should be tip #1 for sure.
Hi, Mike, thanks for mentioning my name in your post on the e-book. I think it turned out great.
One request: in the post, my last name is misspelled–it should have 2 d’s. Could you possibly correct it? There are a fair number of John Cadell’s out there, but many fewer John Caddell’s 🙂
Thanks very much.
regards,
John Caddell
Done!