What the tech industry can teach us about selling
They're used to selling invisible stuff
Expert services are based on trust.
Clients must implicitly trust you before they buy from you.
A useful way of thinking about trust in a buying context is in terms of information.1
More precisely, what information is available for you to make a choice when buying something.
There are 3 levels to this.
“Search goods” that you can point at and compare before purchasing. Clothes, Furniture or commodities fall into this category.
“Experience goods” that you can only truly evaluate after the fact. Going out to eat is a great example of this. You hope it will be good, but you'll only know after the fact.
“Credence goods” are difficult to judge even after you've purchased and received them. Danilo Kreimer uses the examples of legal, medical and consulting, of course.
If your clients can't fully comprehend the quality of your services, it means they must trust you, the provider of said services. Which is why publishing your insights, processes and results is so important if you're in this business.
But there's also another tool you can use to make people get a taste of your expertise.
We'll take a page from history and learn what works when selling something no one has ever seen before.
Risking death to sell new technology
It's 1984 and a crowd is massed around a tall structure.
The contraption resembles a massive guillotine, with its two tall poles connected at the top by a sturdy beam. From this beam, a thick rope is hanging, suspending a platform below. The rope is taut, hinting at the weight it's holding.
The platform is raised a mortal 30 feet above ground. On that platform there's a man called Elisha.
Elisha is an inventor.
What he invented would change the shape of cities and everything else.
But first he had to sell it.
The onlookers below craned their necks and later covered their eyes when Elisha ordered an assistant, armed with an axe, to cut the only rope holding the elevated platform.
There was no doubt in his voice and no hesitation on the assistant's hands.
As the blade severed the rope with a thud and a snap, everyone expected Elisha to crash down and be maimed or killed. Death and injury had been the consequence of every elevator failure in history up to today.
But Elisha's platform only slid down a couple of inches before stopping in a fraction of a second.
An unseen mechanism had detected the fall and sprung into action, locking into the tall beams and arresting the collapse.
Elisha Otis had demonstrated with undeniable flair that his invention worked.
The Otis Safety Elevator changed people's perceptions of elevators, launched the elevator industries, made skyscrapers practical and transformed how populations are distributed in entire countries.
In 1984, this was a tech demo.
Today, go on any B2B SaaS page and notice how often you find the “book a demo” button.2
Enter the Expertise Demo
I've been talking about Workshops and Taster Workshops, but I think Expertise Demo is a much better name. So I'm going to use it a lot, in the hopes that when you hear it, you think of me.
Here's my current working definition of an Expertise Demo:
A simple experience that a client can have, that immediately illustrates how your expertise can help them, now and in the future.
Breaking it down:
A quick experience…
You don't want your Expertise Demo to take too long or require too much preparation.
You don't want it to require highly trained employees.…that a client can have…
It’s centered around the client's experience, not yours
It's designed to take them through a specified process…that immediately illustrates…
It does not require complex explanations
Clients just get it!…how your expertise can help them now…
Its focus is immediate value for the client. Even if they don't buy anything else from you.
It places your expertise in the context of how it solves their problems…and in the future.
It hints at how much more you could do for them
Creates a clear path for contracting work from you
As you can see, the entirety of this idea revolves around getting clients to feel what it's like to work with you.
"Show, don't tell" kind of vibes.
How would you create a demo for your Expertise?
You know I like Workshops, so here are some ideas for Workshop objectives:
Workshop to quickly diagnosing a common problem
Solving a problem that is too small to focus on, but that makes everything easier. With a Workshop.
Incorporate Workshop elements in your sales presentation routine.
etc
In other news:
I've been intrigued about using elements of Luxury Hospitality for Professional Services Firms. What would be the Burj Khalifa of Workshops?
I've updated some references in my website. Books and whatnot.
Met Peter Giordano III for a quick chat and it was so good we extended and immediately scheduled the next one. He has lots of interesting ideas around pricing Strategy Services.
I've been planning a podcast season. The idea is to interview experts that have productized what they do in less than obvious ways. I'm calling it “Exotic Materials” because I'm a science nerd.
People have liked these LinkedIn posts of mine:
Using the beach as a flipchart. This started a bit of a series where I talk about frameworks, on the beach.
Workshops as a way to get Social Proof. Very practical.
3 Types of Visual Frameworks. Also a beach post.
See you next time!
I've learned this from the great newsletter Boutique Consulting Club. My friend Danilo Kreimer writes it and it's always very good, full of references off the beaten track. I recommend you subscribe to it. The Credence Goods issue is this one: https://www.boutiqueconsultingclub.com/blog/consulting-and-credence-goods
Product-Led-Growth (PLG) is changing the need for booking a demo. Software is now easier to use on one's own, without the guidance of a trained sales specialist. But the concept of letting people use the software solution (via trial periods, free tier pricing, etc) is still very valid.