Never Say Sell

CHAPTER 16Discipline 5: Listen

We can't tell you the number of times we have witnessed practice leads sit down with potential buyers and begin by talking about their own firm's experience and capabilities.

In addition to audit and tax, we are able to help you with payroll and bookkeeping, fractional CFO services, M&A, compensation, and cybersecurity assurance. We've done this work in the automotive, manufacturing, agriculture, healthcare, consumer products, and financial services industries …

But if you are talking, you're not listening, and if you are not listening, you have no idea where your client needs help.

Chris Fosdick, managing partner at The Cambridge Group, states this point succinctly: “The more people can think about cross-selling as a listening exercise rather than a brainstorming-what-we-could-sell exercise, the more likely it will be to bear fruit.”

But We Are Different

Sandy, a chief marketing officer for a multinational firm, looks out of the window of her downtown Chicago office. She points out the bean-shaped Millennium Monument to Stephanie Cole, a managing director at PIE, and they both look down at the crowd of tourists posing for pictures. Stephanie was introduced to Sandy by one of her colleagues, who has been engaging with Stephanie to convene a group of CFOs on behalf of Sandy's company in a different practice area. Stephanie took the opportunity to stop by Sandy's office while she was in Chicago visiting another client.

Sandy twirls a pen between ...