Selling Professional and Financial Services Handbook

An effective strategic framework for successful face-to-face selling for financial services industry professionals

Times are very tough for people who sell professional services and Selling Professional and Financial Services Handbook offers a new solution proven in practice. The book describes methods the authors have used and taught since the 1990s, most recently at a major consulting firm, where they led a Global Business Development team to revenue gains of 500% over six years — in a period that included the recession of 2008-10.

The solution is not any new twist on face-to-face selling techniques or the art of persuasion. It’s a strategic approach built around a simple fact:  the markets are tight but far from static. Even with lean budgets, client companies must respond to urgent changes and emerging threats in their industries. Thus they will buy services from the sellers who can help them detect, understand, and cope with what’s coming their way.

This handbook outlines a systematic way of becoming such a valued resource. Readers learn to scan the horizon for early signs of “rock-ripple events.” Major changes in the business world often spring from new developments that are little noted or heeded, at first, by the client companies soon to be affected by them.  But like a rock dropped in a pond, these events set off ripples that sweep through entire industry sectors, creating must-have service needs.

The book is written for everyone who sells, or is responsible for selling, professional services. This includes but is not limited to: law firms, consulting firms, finance industry, public relations, engineering, and architectural services.

Readers who can benefit from the dynamic approach hold a variety of positions. They include:

• Attorneys, consultants and other practitioners who must sell their services as well as execute.
• CEOs, equity partners, practice-area leaders, functional and divisional leaders
• Private Equity or Venture Capital executives
• Sales or business-development professionals, from entry level to senior level
• Sales and marketing managers

But the book is for sellers in every category who need a new and better approach to selling. Many, even the most skilled, simply have not adjusted to the new normal of today’s economy. They persist with old strategies that cannot be as productive as they once were, such as pursuing one-off opportunities (which are too few and too hard to win in lean times) or old-style “relationship selling” (which gains little if any traction). Selling Professional and Financial Services Handbook gives all such readers a new strategic framework within which to apply their face-to-face selling skills. It is an approach that puts them in position to win — so they can sell from ahead of the game, instead of struggling to keep up with it.

SCOTT PACZOSA is a Managing Director in the Chicago office of Navigant Consulting, Inc., with a global leadership role in strategic initiatives, identifying emerging issues and developing strategic responses to breaking market developments. Mr. Paczosa has spent over twenty years coordinating a wide array of services to clients from Fortune 10 corporations to law firms, and across numerous industries including banking and finance, healthcare and pharma, energy, insurance, steel, and transportation. These services have included investigative and litigation services, expert witness testimony, restructuring, valuation, strategy, M&A, performance improvement, due diligence, compliance, and innovative risk-reduction. He frequently works with corporate executives and attorneys from leading law firms to develop innovative solutions for complex issues, both in domestic and international markets. Mr. Paczosa has been intimately involved in developing the firm's approach to assisting clients impacted by the turmoil of the credit crisis. Mr. Paczosa has also been heavily involved in the data breach, healthcare, antitrust, white-collar, mortgage servicing, securities initiatives, and key account program to name a few.

CHUCK PERUCHINI is a Managing Director in the Chicago office of Navigant Consulting, Inc. He has sixteen years of experience providing clients with a range of financial advisory services, such as litigation support, valuation, restructuring, and investment banking services. At Navigant, Mr. Peruchini is focused on developing innovative strategic initiatives. Working with practitioners across the firm, he applies the strategies depicted in this book to translate emerging issues into innovative solutions for clients' most pressing needs. Mr. Peruchini is an inaugural inductee into Navigant's Client Service Hall of Fame.