“Oh, Bill, we don’t sell at our accounting firm. We prefer to wait until the phone rings with referrals. Besides, selling is so unprofessional.”

Believe it or not, I actually heard that once–from a CPA. Can you feel the fear in his voice?

Absurd I know, but talk to some young attorneys or accountants today–or anyone who sells professional services–and rarely will they say they’re prepared for selling. It was never taught in grad school–so it must not be important.

In fact the way they get around it is they call it “marketing.” Well, let’s set the record straight. Selling is the discipline of communicating your value (solutions) to a potential client with the intent of determining if they have a need for it.

If you’re a professional services deliverer (technical / subject matter expert) you sell, every day.

Whether it’s talking to new prospects, getting referred by your current clients, uncovering problems your clients have, or getting a fee increase, you are selling.

In my work with services firms, the first thing they must do — and the only point of this message –is reframe the discipline of selling. Right now, you must start thinking of selling as the “finding and solving of problems.”

Once you do that, you will be set free.

You won’t have to convince, persuade or defend your price. You’ll be liberated to go find problems. If you show up and the prospect loves his current lawyer (insert “supplier of your product” here), has no problems now or doesn’t anticipate problems, then he is not a prospect. And you can leave. Don’t stick around and tell him how great you are and how smart you are (we know you are).

I’ll go even one better than that—become effective at articulating that position to your client. Say to him, “I have no idea if I do anything that could be of service to you, but here’s the kind of people we work with–with these issues–do you fit?” It may not be quite that straight, but it’s pretty close.

If you really believe you help your clients solve problems, then you are obligated to ask for referrals.

If you don’t, you’ll leave a lot of people on the sidelines, unable to take advantage of your value. You’ll leave them laying in the muck of their own pain.

So you see, it’s time to ask for referrals and go find problems. Stop selling and convincing and start solving. You’ll get paid a lot more for that anyway.