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One of the easiest ways to establish credibility as a cash flow consultant is by being perceived as a professional. You can do that by using the process that professionals use.
What is this process? It is following steps that lead to the discovery of clients needs and wants and, ultimately, a solution to their problems. Doing things in this manner instantly makes people perceive you to be a professional.
Think back to the last time you visited any professional. (For our purposes, we will define a “professional” as a doctor, lawyer, accountant, and even an upscale automotive salesman.) What was the process they used? By the very act of following a specific set of procedures, this “professional process,” they established themselves as professionals.
Here it is, in the short form:
1) Qualify
Find out if the client is qualified. When you go to a doctor’s office, the first thing they do is qualify you (your ability to pay, the nature of the treatment you require). Then the doctor sits with you and asks close-ended questions. Such as, “Where does it hurt?”
The first step in the process for a cash flow consultant is to determine if a client qualifies. The next step is to determine if you can help them. In cash flow, you do that by asking qualifying questions. These are short, close-ended questions. If the prospect is selling a mortgage, here are some questions to ask:
- Are you receiving payments on a cash flow stream? What is the cash flow stream?
- How many months have you received the payments? Are they on time?
- What is the note balance?
- What is the monthly payment?
- What is the interest rate?
- What is the credit of the payor?
- What is the loan to value?
- How old is the collateral?
- How much money do you need?
- Other streams would have similar questions tailored to their needs.
With factoring, you would ask different close-ended questions. Notice that the questions are structured to elicit a short, one-word response:
- Is this business to business?
- Do you have invoices?
- Do they pay in a timely manner (30 to 90 days after invoice is presented)?
By asking these questions, you determine quickly if you can help the client. In the qualification process, eliminate those clients that you can’t help. The process consists of close-ended questions (probing questions that can be answered in short sentences) and amplifying questions (questions that amplify the probing questions and require more elaborate answers). The next step is the most important aspect and is ignored by non-professionals.
2) Needs/benefits analysis
A doctor does his needs/benefits analysis through a process they call an examination. If a doctor brought you into the office and, without examining you, told you that you needed surgery and whipped out a knife and start waving it at you, you would run out of his office. The same rules apply to you as a certified cash flow consultant. You have to build your credibility by asking open-ended questions to determine the client’s motivation, situation, and circumstances.
One of the first questions that my mentor used to ask was “Can you tell me a little bit about your situation?” He called it “intense listening.” As the client described his situation, my mentor would direct the conversation in a series of open-ended questions.
Here are some open-ended questions that you want to ask:
- Can you share with me a little about your situation?
- Can you tell me a little about what you want to do?
- If you had the cash to grow, how would you do it?
- What would growing your business quickly do for you? (Let them visualize this. Let them own the vision, and let them understand that the avenue to reaching that vision is by following your lead.)
- Determine broadly what the clients needs are and when they need something to happen, then narrow them down to specifics.
As you listen, look for indications that what they are saying is important to them. If they become animated in response to one of your questions, go deeper and probe. (If their eyes are bright and their pupils dilate, they are excited. If their eyes glaze over, they are not interested in that aspect.)
Think of the needs analysis process as a funnel. The top of the funnel is very wide. At each step of the way, you are probing deeper and attempting to determine the clients’ needs and to have a laser-sharp focus on achieving that need.
At times, you will need to go back and ask qualification questions. It might be that you had thought that a specific deal was a straight factoring deal, but after doing extensive questioning, you determine that the client would be better served by first doing purchase order funding, followed by invoice factoring. Don’t pigeonhole the clients until you have started asking the questions that you need to get a deeper understanding of their businesses. You want to get to know their needs better than they do by asking open-ended questions.
If you do the needs/benefits analysis well, you will spend the majority of your time in this section. If you try to rush to the close, you will have a very limited success rate.
The majority of your time should be spent doing a needs/benefit analysis with a qualified client. When you go in depth with the clients, you will be delving into areas that they possibly haven’t explored before. They will be flattered and want to tell you EVERYTHING. Your challenge is to channel the conversation and guide it to a deeper understanding of what their needs are in their business. Your role is to guide the client toward their goal. Think of it as herding cattle, not cats. Cattle can be driven to a destination; cats wander aimlessly.
Let’s clarify what the needs/benefits analysis is not. It is not getting chummy with the person and having a free-flowing conversation with no goal in sight. Instead, it is a focused, intense listening session where you are probing with open-ended questions and clarifying with close-ended questions to discover exactly what the client desperately needs.
Your goal is to discover their road to success, even if they don’t know the direction. When you give people a goal and a plan, it is not a difficult task to convince them that they should take that path with you as the guide, rather than going with another service provider.
They already know the answer; your task is to find it within them. By finding out specifically where they want to go and how they want to get there, you will be facilitating their solution to their problem. When you get to the close, it will not be a surprise; they will have helped you prepare it.
3) Presentation
In the presentation, you are going to be doing a summary of their wants and needs and presenting proposed solutions. In the doctor analogy, the presentation is the diagnosis. “According to my examination and after receiving the results of the tests from the lab, it appears that you have … In cash flow, you would want to state; “According to our discussion and after having done due diligence to determine the best solutions for your business, it would appear that …”
You want to get acknowledgement at this point that your proposed solutions are correct. By articulating the question, you typically answer the question. One of my students uses a phrase to summarize, “If I understand you correctly, you are stating that … ” Use that phrase. You want to find out what the client feels is his need so that you can accurately identify the solutions.
If you have done a thorough needs/benefits analysis, the clients will agree with your summary and you are ready to skip quickly to the price and close section. If they have objections, the presentation stage is the perfect opportunity to handle them. You haven’t moved toward the close; instead, you are clarifying and perfecting the solution. The clients are going to assist you in helping close the sale because they are telling you exactly what they are looking for. The more thorough the discovery stage is a needs/benefit analysis, the easier the close will be.
Here is where you are going to do the needs/benefit analysis. You are going to match up their needs with your benefits. Let’s do an example.
Needs:
- To not have payments show up on debt to Income ratio or credit report
- To not have to borrow money to make payroll
- To have cash to purchase supplies to manufacture materials to sell at a profit
- To have greater ability to get more cash as needed
Our benefits are:
- We will buy the invoices for cash
- Since this is a purchase, it will not affect the debt-to-income ratio and will actually improve their credit report
- The purchase will provide cash to purchase supplies; with cash, the client can make volume purchases and get a large discount
- The faster the client grows, the more factoring can help it. At a certain point, it will grow out of the need to factor, unless it continues rapid growth
- This will relieve the client’s stress about needing cash and being able to pay their bills
- We match up their highest need with our highest priority: If they have a need for which we don’t have a benefit, ignore it.
We will simply address our strongest benefits. You have just found out their concerns and solved their problems.
4) Price
In a doctor’s office, the price section is handled by the reception ists. Doctors are smart. You want to have the price be so far into the process that the benefits outweigh the offer that you are making. People are looking for a professional to lead them by the hand and solve their problems. If you follow the professional approach, they will gladly accept your price.
In cash flow, the price (or quote) is determined by the funding source. When you have done a thorough job with the needs/benefits analysis, you will have solved the clients’ problems and earned their eternal thanks. They will be grateful to pay your fee because you have earned it.
5) Close
In a doctor’s office, the close is usually so routine that you don’t even think about it. “Why don’t we schedule your heart surgery (that is going to cost $100, 000) for next Tuesday?” In cash flow – following the professional process approach, you want to have the summary of benefits in relation to needs be agreed upon before you ask for the close. By the time you get to the close, the client will see the benefits to their solution clearly and be more eager to close than if you do not use the professional process. “If you would like to move forward on this, for all of the obvious reasons, let’s start by just putting some thoughts on paper. What’s your full name?” (And start filling out the worksheet.)
In the traditional sale, the close is a high-powered, nerve-wracking test of wills where the high-pressure salesperson power closes a customer, not a client, by forcing his will upon him. Sales manuals are filled with examples of closing techniques to distract, mislead, and overpower the customer.
Using the professional sales approach will create a collaborative atmosphere, rather than an adversarial atmosphere. You will have manifested ultimate professional credibility. The clients will willingly allow you to lead them to a beneficial solution to their problem.
As Jay Abraham, the marketing guru and author of Ho w to Get Everything You Can out of All You’ve Got, describes it: “A customer is somebody that you sell things to. A client is someone under your protection.”
If you treat your seller like a customer, you will be taking yourself out of the professional process. If you treat him like a client, he will be working with a professional.
Written by Reed Sawyer a Member Advisor Specialist for the Dynetech Corporation.
Source: The American Cash Flow Journal – October 2005

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