Why do Venture Capital companies invest in Startups? This is a question I addressed in a conversation I had with Nelson Chu, a managing director in an Atlanta-based VC. Nelson has been working in Venture Capital since 1998. He focuses on information and infrastructure technologies, enterprise and Internet software, and other emerging software and hardware technologies. He has led a broad range of Kinetic…
So far, I’ve explained what to listen to and how people think. Now I want to combine both of these elements to show that this combination can help anticipate and understand how people get to decisions.
Selling innovation consulting means being able to understand how clients think. And considering that people think in different ways, understanding how clients think means understanding how different thought patterns operate. Last week, I talked idea association, deduction and induction thinking. This week, I’ll touch upon intuitive thinking, action and feeling thinking.
The innovation listener needs to listen to the facts and needs to be sensitive to feelings. But, understanding how client make a decisions also means being sensitive to how his client thinks. That’s critical to know how to sell innovation consulting.
Making the innovation consulting sale not only means getting the facts right. At a deeper level, closing the sales requires to capture implicit buying signals. That’s critical to know how to sell innovation consulting.
Selling innovation consulting means listening. But, as corporate meetings can be very dense and long, what should the innovation consultant listen to in greater detail?
Clients buy innovation consulting when their careers are at risk. The innovation consultant needs to listen in order to collect as much information related to his client’s career dynamics. Here’s more how to sell innovation consulting?
Many feel that the key to selling innovation consulting is expertise. There’s certainly some truth to that. But expertise is not enough. Decision-makers are time-pressured: they just can’t find the time to make their decision based on an in-depth understanding of supplier expertise. Therefore, the innovation consultant must not present his/her expertise in great depth, simply because the client doesn’t have the time to…
While many believe that selling innovation consulting requires promoting one’s expertise, the truth is that expertise alone isn’t enough to close a deal. Understanding how clients make decisions is, in my opinion, the most important skill any successful sales executive has to develop.
Many of my friends, who work in innovation consulting firms, often believe that the best way to sell innovation consulting is to develop an expertise. There is clearly some truth to that but, although this may cause disagreement with some of my friends, I believe that the best way to sell innovation is not so much to promote an expertise, but, rather, to understand…