In traditional sales, step # 4 is the final step. Once you get the purchase order or signed contract, your job as a salesperson is complete.

Of course, you follow up with customers to make sure they are happy, but its time to move on to the next sale. (We’ll address that for consultants in Sales Step # 6.)

Not so with the small consulting practice. You just “sold” yourself, and now it’s time to deliver. This is the fun stuff — doing what you wanted to do in the first place!

As a small businessperson, you are still in sales mode, albeit lower key. Not only do you want to have a happy client today, but you want to pave the way for future business and referrals tomorrow. .

Here are some suggestions, particularly for a first time consultation.

(1) Show up as scheduled. As a colleague once said, “If you are not ten minutes early, you’re already late.”

If you run into problems, such as a traffic jam, call your client right away. Thanks to cell phones, there is no excuse for not doing so.

If out of town, don’t take the last flight out. If things get screwed up, you may be able to recover. This is particularly important if you have a meeting with several people.

If you’ve never been to the client location, map it out ahead of time. If out of town, make a dry run the night before. (You did take an earlier flight, right?)

You never get a second chance to make a good first impression.

(2) Show up suitably attired. This depends on your client, but business casual is usually safe. But ask – you don’t want to show up casual if the company norm is suit and tie.

For years, I struck a happy medium with a sport coat, slacks, and tie. If nobody was wearing a tie, I quickly removed it.

But times change. Since I’m dealing with fellow engineers, I now wear slacks, a short sleeve dress shirt, and carry a tie with me if needed. If we’re going to a test lab or on the factory, I usually go with jeans and a golf shirt – just in case we need to get down and dirty.

Don’t be like one client I met. He showed up in the lobby wearing torn jeans, a cartoon T-shirt, and sandals. His boss, however, was wearing a tie. He may have been a good engineer, but I fear he was limiting his career advancement.

How you dress can be as important as how you perform. 

(3) Involve your client. Review the situation, and ask preliminary questions. Don’t jump to conclusions, even if you are pretty sure of the diagnosis. Keep an open mind.

Find out if there is a preferred approach. In my business, I asked “Do you prefer a circuit board fix, or a box level fix?” If the circuit board was purchased, that often precluded making changes. On the other hand, if they were about to redesign the board, we’d start there.

Check with the client as you progress. Nothing worse than getting to the end of a project to find you were going down the wrong path.

Keep the appropriate management in the loop.

(4) Offer a summary report. Done right, this is an effective sales tool. Not only does it document your efforts, but it remains long after the consultation. We had calls years later based on an earlier report, so make sure you contact information is on every page.

Our policy was to charge a flat fee (one day) for a report. They typically ran 5-10 pages.

The first page was a title page (contact information), and the second was a ONE PAGE summary. This summary is important, as it is what management will read. Keep is simple.

The remaining report contained the details. If test data was involved, we included that in appendices. Recommendations were in bullet form, to make them easy to follow.

Your report is your LAST impression – every bit as important as the FIRST impression.

(5) Getting paid. As my late business partner said, “The project isn’t complete until the check clears the bank.” We’ll discuss this more in a later post, but make sure you have a purchase order or contract before proceeding. For larger projects, you may want progress payments or retainers.

Next up – Sales Step #6 – Follow Up – and how to facilitate the next sale (and the next one after that.) Remember, a happy client is happy to buy additional services!

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