You can’t create the maximum value for your clients without taking risks.
Some of your prospective clients will already have a solution in mind. But you may have a way to create an even bigger, even better outcome for them. But that puts the opportunity at risk if your contacts aren’t interested in something bigger and better. They want what they want. Pushing may jeopardize your deal–or your relationship.
A bigger and better value creating opportunity may also increase your risk by extending the time it will take to put a deal together. It may require more time to build consensus around the bigger opportunity. Some contacts and stakeholder groups may want to kill your bigger initiative. There’s even the possibility that as the opportunity grows, you open yourself up to competitive threats; someone may want to see competitive offers. Pushing may jeopardize your deal or push into someone else’s win column.
And your bigger and better value-creating opportunity will absolutely increase the price. It may create massively more value, but the higher price tag is sure to raise eyebrows among the cost containment focused stakeholders–and maybe even your main contact. You may blow up the price–and the deal along with it.
And here is the rub: You are either a value creator–or you are not a value creator.
The risk isn’t that you jeopardize your relationship by fronting the biggest value creating opportunity you can. The risk is that you jeopardize the relationship by not creating enough value.
The risk isn’t that by finding the biggest, best opportunity you lengthen the sales cycle and force a discussion about a bigger price tag. The risk is that you fail your clients–and that someone else shows up with the courage to have the conversation you should have had.
You want to be a trusted advisor? Be someone who can be trusted to do what is right even when it is uncomfortable and even when it makes you vulnerable. You want to be consultative? Then give the right advice, not the easy advice.
Audentes fortuna iuvat.
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