Marketing Your Skills

Introduction

In my classes, one question arises that seems to stump many students and their organizations - "How do we sell our services?" In Newsletter 17 (July 1999) I discussed how to get facilitation accepted in your organization. This time, I'll focus more on how to get clients (internally and externally) to hire you as a facilitator.

First of all, know what you are selling. If your potential client doesn't know why facilitated workshops are beneficial, you may need to sell that concept first. If they understand the benefits of facilitated workshops, then you need to sell your ability as a facilitator. Let's look at both scenarios.

Selling Facilitated Workshops

When clients don't know the benefits of facilitated workshops, you need to sell more than just a workshop. You need to sell the entire process and why your implementation of the process is better than what the client was using. In other words, in the past, they used various processes to gather requirements, design systems, and develop strategic plans, etc. Why weren't those processes working? They need to understand that the process you bring will get them to the proper solution. You need to show:

• The process produces a deliverable that is meaningful to the client.
• The process works better when more people are involved.
• Serial interviewing is filled with potential errors, rework, and missed opportunities.
• Following your process will improve productivity and quality - often by a factor of 4 to 1.

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