Visual Thinking for Professional Services

Are you in the business of client retention? Do you need to communicate what you do to clients and potential clients? Is building client relationships a crucial part of your working day? 

Challenge 1

Explaining complex information in an easy-to-understand way. Your know your world inside out, but does your client? You want to give them enough information that demonstrates your credibility and expertise, but you don't want to confuse them. After all, a confused mind never buys. 

Solution

Create a high level visual overview. Think big picture, key points, instant visual summary. Not something created by your communications team, something created by you. What makes this easy is that simplicity is key. Your clients will thank you.

Challenge 2

Communicate ideas quickly. Time is money. Do you have the time to write a 25 page whitepaper highlighting the permutations, combinations and configurations of all your services? Does your client have the time to read it?!

Solution

Use a visual. The processing time is so much quicker (images are processed 60,000 times faster than words).

Challenge 3

Showcasing your credibility and knowledge. You want your clients to believe not only that you know what you're talking about but that you are the right person for them.

Solution

Draw a picture live in front of your client. This instantly communicates mastery. After all, you must know what you are talking about if you can draw something off the cuff.  

Challenge 4

Building relationships with potential clients. People buy from people they know, like and trust. You've heard this a million times. But how do we build trust and accelerate relationship building? After all, building relationships takes time.

Solution

To help your client get to know you, to build that trust, draw a picture for them. Worried your drawing might not look perfect? Their 'imperfection' is your greatest asset. No one draws in the same way. You are communicating your humanity (yes, and vulnerability) which is the cornerstone of good relationships. Drawing is a great leveller and speaks to our common humanity.

Challenge 5

Standing out ahead of the competition

Solution

Yes, you can guess what I'm going to say here. How many other professional services firms in your industry sit down with their clients and draw out a picture of how they can help them?

“Wow – that’s amazing, I love it”.
 

As a salesperson that’s music to your ears right? Well imagine if the majority of your sales meetings could be that way, that’s the power of Visual Thinking.
 

We’ve all seen the fantastic examples of graphical communications and the work done at TED talks and the like, but did you ever believe you could do it, or that you could make it part of your toolkit.  I didn’t, yet, you can!

The clue is in the name “Visual Thinking” – did you know that to communicate an idea the drawing has only got to be about 30% accurate, our minds work out the rest, without help, how brilliant is that.

In sales we spend huge amounts of time trying to convey a solution to a complex problem, build rapport, convince a prospect to trust in our experience, and our solution. Often our focus gets lost, often in the wrong place, shrouded in words and charts, whitepapers and data – lots of data – so how do we focus on the solution?
 

Draw them a picture – of course its pre-prepared and rehearsed a hundred times, yet creating the solution visually, before their very eyes is quick, clear and magical.  Use the pen to bring the ideas into focus as your narrative tells the story – you’re showing that you understand the issue, you understand it so well; you can draw it, and the solution, right here.

You can refine and explore it with them, right now; Give them a pen and watch as they lay out all their objections and together you solve them.

I’ve been selling solutions for decades and the quickest most compelling way to build rapport, to show understanding and get into collaboration ever, has been Visual Thinking – No Leonardos or Monets needed – just a few easy icons and you’re on your way.

Try it, you’ll love it.

 Dave Fardoe, Accordant Solutions

Email me on emer [@] emeroleary.com and we'll have a quick call to see if there's alignment there and we both feel it's something we'd like to persue. If you've read this far, chances are good!