It All Begins with Sales
Tom Boogher, CPSM, and Richard Cilley, CPSM
This is the first edition of a new feature focused on the profession of sales and business development as it applies to the A/E/C industry.

The Seller is a Business Development Institute feature that will provide tips, best practices, and suggestions on how to excel at sales and client development. Remember: Nothing happens in business until you make a sale!

The Business Development Institute (BDI) is a Specific Interest Group of SMPS, dedicated to providing members and their firms an association benefit and resources focused on sales and business development to compliment and build on the strong marketing foundation within SMPS. BDI’s goal is to promote, inform, and educate the A/E/C industry on the importance of sales and the necessity for business development best practices.

Co-authors for this column are Richard Cilley, CPSM, CEO of Transcendent Consultants, and Tom Boogher, CPSM, Executive Vice President of Professional Service Industries, Inc. (PSI). Richard and Tom have a combined 50+ years of experience in marketing and sales within the A/E/C industry and are recognized leaders and practitioners in the area of business development. They will be reaching out and soliciting articles and commentary from other recognized sales and business development professionals both within and outside of the A/E/C industry.

Your comments, feedback, suggestions, and questions are encouraged. We want The Seller to address issues and topics that are important to you and that will contribute to both you and your firm’s success. You can reach co-authors Tom Boogher at tom.boogher@psiusa.com and Richard Cilley at rcc@transcendentconsultants.com.

We hope you find The Seller both useful and helpful, and we hope this helps you and your firm sell more effectively, make money, and have fun.

Without sales you have no clients, and without clients you have no income, and without income you have no business.

It is a business fact that you can’t make a profit without income and that maintaining a steady income stream and growing income through effective sales or business development efforts are vital to the success of your company. Understanding the importance of sales—sales being the lifeblood of your company—and how to maximize your firm’s sales success is an absolute necessity in today’s business environment. Professionals who sell are the most important people in the business world. They sell so the firm can produce and deliver services or products, so equipment and technology can be purchased, so employees’ salaries and benefits can be paid, and so the firm can keep prospering in the face of unrelenting competition.

Sales just don’t happen, and selling is not an art. In fact, sales can be looked at as an engineered process or a science with a defined series of actions that result in the exchange of services (or products) for a fee. Like engineering, selling effectively involves the application of a series of steps or best practices to deliver the desired outcome—a yes, the order, or the job. And like science, selling requires experimentation to determine what does or doesn’t work and what theories have practical application to your firm or selling situation.

Selling is a learned skill acquired by people with the attitude, aptitude, fortitude, desire, and persistence to succeed. Nobody is a born salesman. That is one of the biggest myths in the business world. Selling is an acquired skill, and one that takes practice and commitment to master. Do not underestimate what it takes to really be effective at selling: The sales or business development professional whom you may think was born to sell painstakingly developed the traits and characteristics to do so, and then went about learning and applying the science of selling to maximize the effectiveness of their sales efforts.

Selling can be approached as a bona-fide and honorable profession. This is possible because research shows that, for every major buying decision, buyers follow a consistent, predictable pattern in making a series of decisions that lead up to the final decision on which firm to hire. Research also shows that most all buyers make similar decisions and in pretty much the same order. If you accept and understand that buyers follow predictable patterns to make decisions and then build a body of knowledge and skills upon it, you have the makings of professionalism.

It is also important to understand that sales is a team sport. There are few “unassisted tackles” in the sales game. Everyone in your firm can and does impact you and your firm’s ability to sell effectively and build client relationships. Recognize the fact that anyone at any time can make or break a sale or client relationship by how well they do or don’t do their respective job. And “anyone and everyone” are everyone and anyone in your firm or working on behalf of your firm—administrative and support staff, technical employees, professionals, management, subcontractors or subconsultants, and principals.

There is no lack of techniques, guidelines, rules, or opinions available to you related to the subject of sales and business development. Each month, The Seller will discuss critical aspects of the sales process and will share with you proven tips and best practices. The real challenge for any successful sales or business development professional is to learn to choose from the multitude of techniques and principles available related to selling and then applying these techniques and principles daily to succeed in the real world. This means your world and your business environment.

Some of the sales topics and selling skills The Seller will address in upcoming issues are:

• Researching Your Marketplace and Identifying Opportunities
• Planning and Preparing for Sales Calls and Client Meetings
• Networking for Success and Profit
• Getting in the Door: Converting Leads into Face-to-Face Appointments
• The Critical Acts of a Sale
• Sales Is a Team Sport
• Linking Strategic Planning to a Marketing Plan and a BD Plan
• The Business Development Process
• Managing and Tracking Your Sales Efforts
• Turning Your Firm into a Selling Machine
• Proposals, Qualifications, Collateral Materials: Making Sure They Help You Sell
• Building Client Relationships: Tips and Suggestions
• Communicating Effectively and Following Up
• Other topics or areas of interest based on your feedback and input.

We hope you find The Seller a worthwhile and beneficial resource—or at least a thought-provoking read. Take pride in being a sales or business development professional and recognize that today’s successful salespeople rely on truth, integrity, a knowledge of their firm’s services and products, an understanding of the marketplace, and the needs of their prospects, clients, and competitors in order to sell successfully.

Remember, it all begins with sales. Everything else—brilliant people, extraordinary management, sophisticated systems, the best equipment, past prestigious projects—amounts to nothing if you don’t have the work!

About the Authors Richard Cilley, CPSM, is CEO of Transcendent Consultants (www.transcendentconsultants.com), and Tom Boogher, CPSM, is Executive Vice President of Professional Service Industries, Inc. (www.psiusa.com). Richard and Tom have a combined 50-plus years of experience in marketing and sales within the A/E/C industry.

Hosted by SMPS' Business Development Institute, this column provides tips, best practices, and suggestions on how to excel at sales and client development. Remember that nothing happens in business until you make a sale! The Business Development Institute is a Specific Interest Group of SMPS with the goal to promote, inform, and educate the A/E/C industry on the importance of sales and the necessity for business development best practices.

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