Social selling for professional services firms

Social Selling Lead Generation System MNC Social Media Series
Mike Nevin Consulting Ltd Research Material All rights Reserved 1
Social Selling
How Professional Services Firms are developing and
growing key stakeholder accounts quickly and efficiently
using breakthrough social media techniques
A White Paper from Mike Nevin Consulting Ltd (MNC)

Contents
Executive Summary........................................................................................................3
Background ....................................................................................................................4
The FAB System Credentials...........................................................................................5
The FAB System in Action...............................................................................................6
Step One – Find Them .......................................................................................................... 6
Step Two – Make Appropriate Contact with Them............................................................... 7
Step Three – Build the Relationship with Them.................................................................... 9
Building Your Expertise – The Route to Trusted Adviser.............................................11
Using LinkedIn Tools.....................................................................................................12
Example Case Study .....................................................................................................13
The Background.................................................................................................................. 13
The Problem ....................................................................................................................... 13
The Solution........................................................................................................................ 13
The Result........................................................................................................................... 13
Call to Action - What Should I Do Next? ......................................................................14
About Mike Nevin Consulting ......................................................................................15
Appendix 1 – Relationship Selling Research Materials................................................16
Sales Systems Already Proven Compatible with FAB.......................................................... 16
Research Materials............................................................................................................. 16

Executive Summary
The following are the key points in this white paper:
 Most professional services fee earners are using a small fraction of the power of
LinkedIn to develop new business. Typically less than 20%.
 LinkedIn is the perfect tool for building ‘added value’ deep and enduring
relationships quickly and effectively with key target clients.
 The reason that most people don’t get full value (in business development terms)
from it is that they don’t use a logical and proven system.
 The suggested approach (FAB) is a simple three step process which has been proven
to work quickly and produce outstanding results.
 The FAB Approach is a Social Selling methodology, and is probably the first
documented methodology of its kind.
 The FAB approach can be integrated seamlessly into any existing corporate sales
system or process. So far it has been proven to work with: Miller Heiman, Holden,
Huthwaite, Infomentis, Franklin Covey, PMI, TAS and Customer Centric Selling.
 It will take less than one day to train business development and fee earning
professionals in the use of the system.
 MNC is so confident that the approach will work well and quickly that it is prepared
to guarantee a 400% ROI (Return on Investment) on the training within 90 days.

Background
Social media’s rapid rise in recent years has given business development professionals in all
business sectors exciting new tools for communicating with customers and prospects.
Established marketing tactics such as email and websites are fast becoming old fashioned,
one-way channels that consumers are increasingly likely to ignore. Social networks such as
Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter offer alternative two-way communication channels where
business developers can listen more than talk, and then engage with clients and prospects
in a true dialogue.
Nowhere is this change more pronounced that in the Professional Services Sector. Fee
earning professionals (whatever their specialism) are recognising that they need an
alternative approach to existing and prospective clients. One that will not identify them
early in the process as a ‘hard nosed salesman’ but at the same time one that will allow
them to develop a ‘trusted adviser’ status with their target audience.
The range of social media tools available to busy professionals is bewildering: LinkedIn,
Facebook, Twitter, Spoke, Xing, Blogging, YouTube, etc, etc. The list goes on and on.
But one ‘tool’ stands out as the de facto standard for developing quality business to
business (B2B) relationships – LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com).
LinkedIn started life (in March 2003) as an online networking system employed primarily by
High Tech employees in Silicon Valley in the USA. Since then it has become the number one
connection tool for busy professionals worldwide and currently has over 130 million
members.
Fastest growing areas include: the United Kingdom, Scandinavia and particularly India.
During its nine year history it has evolved and developed into a powerful and sophisticated
businesss development and marketing tool, and the best news of all? It’s free!
However, research from the Institute of Directors in the UK shows that more than 95% of
business executives use less than 25% of its capability. There is clearly an opportunity for
social media ‘savvy’ rainmakers in profesional services firms worldwide to get a head start
on the competition by using more of the hidden capability in the system.
That is the purpose of this white paper. To introduce fee earning professional services
executives of all levels and backgrounds to a simple three step system for optimising their
use of LinkedIn. This paper seeks to prove that by using an unashamedly relationship
building tool, business developers in: consultancies, law firms, training companies,
recruitment companies and others can be more effective, more quickly and at a fraction of
the cost of alternative business development methods.

The FAB System Credentials
It has been known for some time that selling services is not the same as selling products,
and in addition that selling high value items or services is different again from low value
items. (See amongst others: SPIN Selling by Neil Rackham).
In the professional services area the relationship is paramount and the truth of that
expression is reflected in the well know saying: ‘people buy from people’. This indicates
strongly that developing a relationship with the person buying your services is a high
priority in a business development system.
The relationship development system from Mike Nevin Consulting has three steps. These
are:
1. Find hard to locate key decision makers in key clients or prospective clients.
2. Make appropriate contact with these decision makers that establishes yourself as a
trusted adviser and thought leader in your field, and
3. Build a deeper and more trusting relationship with the prospect over time.
This process is normally acronysed into the FAB process or FAB system.
This basic process is founded on a deep understanding of the underlying principles of
relationship selling in professional services. This specialised form of selling is sometimes
called ‘consultative selling’ and is based on the premise that the key element to a
successful services sale is the development of a high degree of trust betwen the seller and
the client.
These principles are supported by the leading large account sales systems in use today such
as: Miller Heiman, Huthwaite, Target Account Selling (TAS), Franklin Covey, Holden, Value
Selling Association, InfoMentis, Porter Henry, and Customer Centric Selling.
In addition they are further supported by thoght leading professional services ‘gurus’ such
as: David Maister, Ford Harding, Bill Cates, Peter Block, Richard Denny, Tom Lambert, and
Anthony Parinello.
Indeed MNC developed the FAB system by studying at first hand with many of the authors
mentioned above.
Note: For a full list of sources for these commentators please see Appendix 1 :
Relationship Selling Research Materials.

The FAB System in Action
So how does the FAB system work in LinkedIn? The answer is simplicity itself!
Step One – Find Them
The first step is obviously to find your prospective clients. Not only to find them but to find
clients who have the authority and the budget to purchase your services.
LinkedIn is perfect for this task as it provides a comprehensive advanced search screen that
allows you to search on any combination of: Keywords, First Name, Last Name, Location,
Country, Post Code or Zip Code, Title, Company School, Industries, Relationship, and
Language.
In addition with a Premium Membership you can also search on: Seniority Levels, Interested
In, Company Size, Fortune 1000 and Openlink.
This richness of functionality in the search tool is remarkable. Let’s take a couple of
examples. Let’s assume you are an IPR Lawyer specialising in the Pharmaceutical Industry.
You want to find internal counsel in large pharma companies with whom you’d like to
arrange a meeting.
Simple. Go to your home page, now navigate to the search box on your home page (top
right) next to it you will see the word ‘Advanced’ in blue writing. Simply click on this word
and you are immediately taken to the ‘Advanced People Search’ page.
Next decide the scope of your search (country specific or anywhere). Then choose
Pharmaceuticals in ‘Industries’ choose the size of company that you require (0 – 10,000+).
Finally type ‘Counsel’ into the ‘Title’ section. That’s it you are all done. It’s taken you
less than 5 minutes to find 1,341 results! All of whom are potential prospects for your
services and have the budget and the seniority to purchase them!
A fluke I hear you cry. That was a lucky coincidence. OK so lets try another example. Find
the Advanced Search Screen (exactly as you did above) and then lets assume you want to
find CEOs of mid to large size automotive businesses. Again simplicity. The search would
look like this:
‘Title’ = CEO (Current), ‘Location’ = Anywhere, ‘Industries’ = Automotive, ‘Company Size’ =
500 – 10,000+. The result? – 6,509 Automotive CEOs to sell to!
But wait a minute, lets not get carried away. It’s all well and good finding people but if
they are miles away from your office it is unlikely in reality that you will be able to service
them, and even if you could the cost would be very high. So let’s try another type of
search.
Let’s imagine that you are a consultant based in London, UK. You want to find key decision
makers who have a need for your services ‘on your doorstep’.
Go to the Advanced Search Screen again but this time in the ‘Location’ tab put the value
‘Located in or near’ and then simply type your office post code into the ‘Postal Code’ tab.
You can then decide what distance from your office you would like to search: 10, 25, 35, 50,
75, or 100 miles. Lets assume that you feel that 25 miles is a good travelling distance.
Then choose the ‘Seniority’ of the person that you wish to find. Remember they should
have the authority to buy your services and make quick decisions. (Suggestion: VP, Owner,
Director and CXO). Next choose the size of company you are targetting. Lets say we make
it 500 – 10,000+ employees again.
The result? – 76,038 !!
But what happens if you are not based in the UK but are based somewhere else? No
problem. Simply go to the Advanced search screen and repeat the actions above but now
put your country’s name into the ‘Country’ tab. Here’s an example to show you how it
works:

Search: ‘Location’ = 25 miles from the centre of New York City, ‘Seniority’ = VP, CXO,
Owner, and Partner, ‘Company Size’ = 500 – 10,000+ employees. The result is 109, 519 !!
But wait it gets better! Look at your searches and you will notice that you can choose how
the search results are displayed. This means that LinkedIn will prioritise the results based
on how near (in connection terms) the search results are to you. To make this happen just
make sure that on the results page you have the results ordered in terms of ‘Relationship’.
(Hint: At the top of your search results screen you will see the field ‘Sort by’ and then a
drop down box that allows you to sort by: Relavence, Relationship, Relationship +
Recomendations, Connections, or Keywords. Just choose ‘Relationship’).
The result is that your target list is sorted in terms of relationship to you i.e. 1st degree
connections first, 2nd degree connections second, etc. This means that you can contact
them direct (1st degree connections) by sending them a message or you can ask your
trusted contacts for an introduction to them (2nd – 4th connections).
Note: We have found that recommendations are only truly effective up to 4th degree links,
after that the mechanics of passing through so many ‘hand offs’ make the chances of
success remote.
If you are a Premium member of course, you can simply send an ‘In Mail’ to your chosen
targets.
But wait it gets even better! If you have a Key Account strategy in your firm (as most
professional services practices do) then you can also search on companies specifically. To
do this simply go to the same Advanced Search Screen, input the name of the company you
want to search on and the seniority, function, or industry that you are interested in. Hey
presto! Targeted Key Account Senior Decision Makers at the click of a button.
And don’t forget that all of this is available to you with basic membership and therefore at
no cost to you or your firm!
There are masses of other cool ways to search for people on LinkedIn but by now I feel we
may have won the argument regarding its ability to complete Step One – Find Them. So lets
move onto Step Two.
Step Two – Make Appropriate Contact with Them
It’s all well and good being able to find people but there is no way of knowing whether they
want to speak to you about purchasing your products and services is there? Well actually
yes there is, and by now you will surely have guessed that – It’s simplicity itself!
Once you have found a prospective purchaser of your services all you need to do is scroll
down to the bottom of their profile and ‘lo and behold’ they tell you exactly what they are
‘Interested In’.
The categories are as follows:
 career opportunities
 consulting offers
 new ventures
 job inquiries
 expertise requests
 business deals
 reference requests
 getting back in touch
So all you have to do is match the thing that you want to talk to them about with the thing
that they are prepared to hear about. Simple. So let’s assume that you want to talk to
them about offering your services, then you would send them a message with ‘Consulting
Offers’ as the topic. Or if you have a client that would like to do a deal with them, then in
that case the topic would be ‘Business Deals’ or if you were looking for a job it would be
‘Job Inquiries’. Here’s an example we have used with almost 100% success in the past:

Dear Prospect
Your LinkedIn profile shows that you are interested in 'Consulting Offers' and I have a good
one so I thought I would contact you!
If this is a mistake and you'd like to remove 'Consulting Offers' from your profile just let me
know and I will show you how to achieve this.
My name is Mike Nevin and I am the Managing Director of a company that offers
‘Rainmaking’ training to Professional services firms using LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is the perfect business development tool for busy professionals. It allows business
developers to:
1. Find hard to identify key decision makers in target clients.
2. Make appropriate contact using permission marketing methods that ensure a warm
reception, and
3. Build on-going valuable relationships leading to ‘Trusted Advisor’ status and repeat
business.
However, the reality is that the vast majority of business people don’t know how to utilise
this breakthrough system. According to the Institute of Directors in the UK over 95% of UK
senior executives are not making full use of LinkedIn; indeed the majority of people
typically use less than 25% of its capability.
As a relationship management consultancy we have been active users of LinkedIn since
August 2002 (as beta testers nine months before the official launch on 5 May 2003). In that
time we have developed three separate businesses using LinkedIn. As a consequence we
can help firms like yours maximise their use of this 21st century marketing system to its full
effect.
In a recent assignment, for instance, we helped a firm of lawyers with 240 staff generate an
additional £500,000 in fee income in 5 months.
My ‘Consulting Offer’ is simple: could you spare me half an hour for a conversation to
explore with you whether LinkedIn could similarly benefit your organisation?
I will contact you in the next 7-10 days to book a meeting, if now is not a particularly
convenient time perhaps you could suggest a better one?
Best wishes
Mike Nevin, Managing Director Mike Nevin Consulting
I say almost 100% success and I can hear you thinking ‘Is it really that easy? And would
people really be prepared to take my call?
To answer that question let me share some statistics with you:
I personally used this approach consistenly from 1 January 2011 until 31st October 2011 in
that time I sent out 554 ‘In Mails’. They resulted in the following Feedback Score:
Last 10 Rated: 10 Positive, 0 Negative, 0 not rated.
Total In Mails Sent: 554. Results: 140 Positive, 8 Negative, 406 not rated.
This resulted in a five star Feedback Rating.
So when I said almost 100% what I meant was I scored 8 negative out of 554 or 1.44%. That
means that my satisfaction rating from the people I contacted was 98.56%. As I said almost
100% !!

The more cynical amongst you (and I am sure there are some!) may say ‘Hang on. Just
because someone’s profile says that they are interested in ‘Consulting Offers’ doesn’t mean
that they necessarily are that interested it could be that they just haven’t turned off that
preference in their ‘Settings’ page.
Very true. But what I have found is that even those people who don’t know that they are
advertising that they are open to consulting offers are very amenable when it is pointed out
to them. I have had multiple situations in which a senior executive comes on the phone to
speak to me saying: ‘My secretary tells me that you said I was open to accepting a
consulting offer from you? I said no such thing!’
When you explain to them that indeed they are ‘saying’ that on their LinkedIn profile they
are horrified, that is exactly the time to state simply and politely: ‘Would you like me to
show you how to turn that off?’
In every case that this has happened (probably 10-15 by now) the prospect is immediately
grateful that you have helped him or her avoid being bothered by those ‘pesky consultants’
and as a consequence he or she is quite prepared to hear you out with your offer. But
better yet, you have ‘closed the door’ to other consultants who might want to use a similar
approach. So not only have you got through to your prospect but you have also taken them
‘off the radar’ of your competitors, who now can’t use the same approach. Cool huh?
By now you have completed steps one and two. Which is to say that you have: 1) Found key
target prospects and 2) Made appropriate contact with them. But what happens if you get
the following response (or something very like it)?
“Thanks for your approach it was good to hear the services you can provide, but I have to
tell you that times are tight at the moment and we just can’t afford the services you are
offering, great value though they are. Maybe some time in the future perhaps?’
What do you do now? Well that brings us to Step Three:
Step Three – Build the Relationship with Them
You have found some great prospects who have the seniority and the authority to buy your
services and you have made friendly, non threatening contact. So why cast them aside and
chase some new ones. They have already said that they may use you in the future so why
not stay in touch and build the relationship?
The concept of building the relationship that I use is taken from a great book by Seth Godin
called ‘Permission Marketing’. Seth makes the distinction between traditional marketing
methods which he calls ‘Interruption Marketing’ and a new style for the 21st century which
he calls ‘Permission Marketing’.
Permission Marketing (as its name suggests) is the process by which you gain ‘permissions’
from your contacts to develop and deepen the relationship further. In doing so you both
add value to your prospect and also build your credibility in his eyes towards the goal of
trusted adviser.
Let me demonstrate to you how it works. Notice that in our model so far we have used the
concept of permission marketing to gain access to the prospect. Now we are going to
secure further ‘permissions’ which will build the relationship even further.
Having had our first meeting, in all likelihood the prospect has exchanged business cards
with you so at the end of the meeting you can then say: ‘Thank you for your time today, do
you mind if I keep in touch from time to time by sending you relevant articles that you may
find useful?’
Notice that you are asking permission to send the materials and that in addition you are
simply offering to do something which will help him or her. In all the times I have asked to
do this I have never been refused.
(Note: Sometimes prospects are wary of the volume of materials that you may send or the
type. Don’t send too much and never send sales materials. The point is not to bombard
the prospect with sales ‘guff’ but to grow the relationship. The most useful materials are

research papers or discussion documents relavent to the prospects industry. Keep them up
to date with what’s going on and they will be grateful).
I’ll describe slightly later a feature of LinkedIn which makes it simplicity itself to find and
professionally disseminate such articles when I introduce you to a neat LinkedIn widget
called the ‘Sharing Bookmarklet’. (See ‘Using LinkedIn Tools’ later in this paper.
Its now time to add the final piece of the FAB model to the mix, that is the development of
a LinkedIn Group. By now you will have: 1) Found hard to find key decision makers and 2)
Made appropriate contact with them. You may have had a face to face meeting, equally
you might have had a telephone based interview. Either way you have made contact with
your prospect. If you have followed the advice given above you also have the prospects
permission to send him relavent information from time to time. The next step is to
introduce him to other professionals in his situation who can 1) Help him think through
some of the challenges that he faces and 2) Recomend you and your firm.
The most efficient and economical way to do this is by inviting the prospect to join a group
that you set up on LinkedIn. By setting up a group you are creating a place where valuable
dialogue can take place between typically three constituents of your prospect community:
1) Existing clients 2) Prospective clients and 3) Collateral providers.
Note: Collateral providers are people who can introduce interesting and thought provoking
content to your group.
But wait a minute (I hear you cry once more!) I already have a place for all this. It’s my
website and I and my firm have spent hard effort and good money to develop a quality site
so that prospective clients will come back time and time again. In addition we have
invested in SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) techniques to attract the right kind of people
to the site. So why should I also invest in a LinkedIn group as well?
Good point! So let one of my Mike Nevin Consulting satisfied group members answer that
question for you:
“Mike, the thing I like about your MNC group on LinkedIn is that I get a wide diversity of
answers to questions that are relavent to my job. Don’t get me wrong I like your website
and I have been there a number of times but I much prefer your group. When I go to your
website I only get one point of view – yours. But when I go to the group I get multiple
views through the ‘Discussions’ tab. And not just from you but from other interested
parties who may have nothing to do with MNC. The conversation is two way and is a much
richer and more useful dialogue than any website I have ever visited.” Nancy Breiman
Alliance Director IBM Corporation.
Thanks Nancy, I couldn’t have said it better myself if I’d have tried!
The skill then is to start a group and invite a balanced set of: clients, prospects and
collateral providers to join. You will find that in the beginning you will need to post
discussion articles and interesting topics that you have found. But as membership grows
you will discover that the group takes on a life of its own and the work of posting
discussions is taken up increasingly by members. (This usually happens at a ‘tipping point’
of critical mass. In the MNC Group case this number was somewhere between 75 – 100).
The group allows you to keep in touch regularly and also to track (through the ‘Discussions’
tab the issues and challenges facing your prospective clients, and thus develop solutions for
them).

Building Your Expertise – The Route to Trusted Adviser
The group performs another valuable function in that it allows you and your firm the
perfect opportunity to display your subject matter expertise and establish yourself as an
expert in your field. The beauty of this approach is that it probably doesn’t require any
extra work as in all probability you (or your marketing department) is already producing this
information on a regular basis.
This regular reinforcement of expertise is a crucial aspect of establishing yourself as a
‘Trusted Adviser’ to your clients and prospective clients. By regularly displaying your grasp
of your subject matter and more importantly by commenting on the impact of the
discussion point on your clients business, you will develop yourself into the person that your
client approaches when he or she wants advice or even just a valauble sounding board for
their critical business issues.

Using LinkedIn Tools
What are LinkedIn tools and how can you find them?
They are located at the bottom of your home page and some of them are really useful. If
you scroll down on your home page to the absolute bottom you will see the following list:
Help Center, About, Blog, Careers, Advertising, Recruiting Solutions, Tools, Mobile,
Developers, Publishers, Language, and Upgrade Your Account.
The category that we are interested in is ‘Tools’ and the ones available are:
Overview, Outlook Social Connector, Browser Toolbar, Mobile, Lotus, and Sharing
Bookmarklet.
Notice the last one? ‘Sharing Bookmarklet’? That’s the one we are interested in.
Click on it and it will take you immediately to the install page.
Installation is simplicity itself. All you do is follow the instructions on screen and it puts a
new ‘Share on LinkedIn’ facility into your browser. It works with all the most common
browsers (e.g. Explorer, Safari, Firefox, etc.) and it is incredibly powerful for keeping your
prospects updated.
When you are browsing the web and you come across something that you think would be
useful to your contacts you simply click on the ‘Share on LinkedIn’ command in your
browser ‘Favorites’ menu and it opens a window that allows you to share that page with
either individulas or groups on LinkedIn. It’s a great way to add relavent material to groups
at a stroke and keep your profile high in your prospect’s consciousness.

Example Case Study
The following is an example case study, there are many more available from the MNC
database. To order extra copies or to see a full list of available case studies please contact
MNC at mike.nevin@mikenevinconsulting.co.uk
The Background
Withy King has been an established regional law firm in the South West of England for well
over 100 years and was initially recognised for its outstanding reputation for providing legal
services to private clients. In the 1990s the firm expanded its services and developed a full
range of commercial service expertise alongside the services for individuals.
Today Withy King has expanded rapidly from its traditional West Country roots and has
offices in Abingdon, Bath, London, Marlborough, Oxford, Swindon and Thame. But with over
a century of expertise, it remains committed to providing quality services, innovative
service delivery and expansion into new markets and sectors. The firm currently has 240
staff and gross fee income last year was £18.7m.
The Problem
The problem was simple. The commercial department was not going to hit its fee income
targets for the year. This would put a considerable strain on the firm’s resources as the
commercial practice was the highest fee earning unit within the firm. The knock on effect
on PEP (Profits per Equity Partner) would be damaging both to firm morale and the ability
of Withy King to hold on to talented staff at a difficult time.
The imminent launch of the Legal Services Act making it possible for non legally trained
personnel to own law firms in the UK was having a disruptive influence on the market.
This meant that firms with low PEP results were potential targets for takeover both by
other firms but also by retail institutions like: banks, venture capitalists, and even
supermarkets!
Withy King asked MNC to help it turn the situation round in as short a period of time as
possible. It was clear that traditional marketing and sales efforts would be too slow as
more than half the year had already gone and morale in the group was low.
The Solution
MNC ran a one day LinkedIn training course to introduce the whole group to the concept
and principles behind the FAB approach. It then worked specifically with fee earners over a
two week period to:
 Rationalise existing contacts into a series of key client accounts
 Discover hard to find decision makers in the targeted firms
 Make appropriate contact with them and introduce the Withy King range of services
and offerings available
 Develop individual relationships on an ongoing basis
 Identify new key clients that satisfied the firm’s selection criteria
 Establish a client interaction forum on LinkedIn (Group)
 Leverage existing contacts within the group to produce ‘warm’ referrals
 Establish relationship building action plans for fee earners
The Result
An increase in fee income of £500,000 in 5 months. The commercial department turned the
year around and achieved its stated target for the year. But perhaps more importantly the
FAB system and the manner of working that it encouraged helped the practice to double its
fee income for each of the following two years.

Call to Action - What Should I Do Next?
There is no doubt that if you haven’t invested in some kind of coherent thinking about how
to integrate social media into your existing business development mix then you are placing
yourself at a disadvantage.
More importantly you are denying yourself the benefits of a breathrough strategy which
could (quite literally) transform your business development results within 90 days.
If you would like MNC to conduct a free LinkedIn assessment please feel free to contact us
in any of the ways below and we will be hapy to provide a free, non obligatory business
case assessment for LinkedIn use in your firm.
Call: +44 16 75 44 24 90
See: www.mikenevinconsulting.co.uk
Write: mike.nevin@mikenevinconsulting.co.uk
Visit: Mike Nevin Consulting Ltd, 196 Old Station Road, Hampton inArden, Solihull, B92 0HQ,
United Kingdom

About Mike Nevin Consulting
Mike Nevin Consulting (MNC) is a research and benchmarking company specialising in
helping its clients build greater value strategic business-to-business relationships. This field
of study is sometimes referred to as Strategic Relationship Management (SRM).
MNC is based in the UK (although it works with clients globally) and its partners are a group
of independent business relationship experts who each specialise in some aspect of
strategic relationship management. Its goal is to increase the knowledge and subsequent
adoption of proven best practice SRM principles. To support it in this endeavour it has
researched SRM relationships deeply, and maintains an extensive database of observations
of such relationships ‘in action’ gained from many leading edge organisations. This
database (The Mike Nevin Consulting Database - MNCDTM
) currently contains over 180,000
entries.
We welcome contributions from anyone who would like to submit research for consideration
into the database or from organisations that would like their major relationships to be
benchmarked against the database. Please direct all enquiries in the first instance to
info@mikenevinconsulting.co.uk or if you would like further insights from the database
please visit our website at: www.mikenevinconsulting.co.uk

Appendix 1 – Relationship Selling Research Materials
Sales Systems Already Proven Compatible with FAB
The following relationship selling approaches have alreday been validated with the FAB
system and found to be fully compatible. If you have an alternative system that you would
like to use we would be happy to assess it and judge it’s ability to integrate into the FAB
system.
 Miller Heiman – The New Conceptual
Selling
 Miller Heiman – The New Strategic
Selling
 PACE – Creating New Clients
 PACE – Managing Existing Clients
 SPIN by Huthwaite International
 Rackham – Major Account Sales
Strategy
 David Maister – Managing the
Professional Services Firm
 David Maister – The Trusted Adviser
 Jim Cathcart – Relationship Selling
 Richard Denny – Selling to Win
 CHAMP – Internal Alliance Sales
System from Siebel Corporation
 TAS – Target Account Selling
 Holden – Find the Fox
 Holden – Powerbase Selling
 Holden – World Class Selling
 Ford Harding – Rainmaking
 Ford Harding – Creating Rainmakers
 Bill Cates – Professional Referral
System
 Bryce Webster – Consultative Selling
Techniques
Research Materials
In addition the following materials have also been used to develop the FAB system:
 Neil Rackham, SPIN® Selling, McGraw-Hill, 1988, ISBN 0070511136
 Neil Rackham, Major Account Sales Strategy, McGraw-Hill, 1989, ISBN 0070511144
 Neil Rackham, R. Ruff, Managing Major Sales, Harper, 1991, ISBN 0887305083
 Neil Rackham, L. Friedman, R. Ruff, Getting Partnering Right: How Market Leaders
Are Creating Long-Term Competitive Advantage, McGraw Hill, 1995, ISBN
0070517827
 Neil Rackham, J. DeVincentis, Rethinking The Sales Force, McGraw Hill, 1999, ISBN
0071342532
 David Maister (With Patrick J. McKenna) First among Equals: How to Manage a
Group of Professionals, Free Press (New York, NY), 2002.
 David Maister Practice What You Preach! What Managers Must Do to Create a High
Achievement Culture, Free Press (New York, NY), 2001.
 David Maister (With Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford) The Trusted Advisor,
Free Press (New York, NY), 2000.
 David Maister True Professionalism: The Courage to Care about Your People, Your
Clients, and Your Career, Free Press (New York, NY), 1997.
 David Maister Managing the Professional Service Firm, Free Press (New York, NY),
1993.
 David Maister (With W. Coxe et al.) Success Strategies for Design Professionals,
Krieger (Malabar, FL), 1987.

 Paul H. Selden (1997). Sales Process Engineering: A Personal Workshop. Milwaukee,
WI: ASQ Quality Press. p. 23. ISBN 0873894189.
 William H. McNeese and Robert A. Klein (1991). Statistical Methods For The Process
Industries. Milwaukee, WI: ASQC Quality Press. ISBN 082478524X.
 Todd Youngblood (2004). The Dolphin And The Cow - How To Sell More Faster With
Sales Process Engineering. Acworth, GA, The YPS Group, Inc.
 Dianne Galloway (1994). Mapping Work Processes. Milwaukee, WI: ASQ Quality Press.
ISBN 0873892666.
 Arturo Onnias (1992). The Language of Total Quality. Castellamonte (To), Italy:
TPOK Publications on Quality. pp. 190–191.
 George A. Smith, Jr. (1995). Sales Productivity Measurement. Milwaukee, WI: ASQ
Quality Press.
 George A. Smith, Jr., Paul H. Selden and Fred Burton (2003). Systematic Selling: A
Process Map Portfolio. Kalamazoo, MI: Systematic Selling, Inc..
 The Sales Funnel - Keeping Control of Your Sales Pipeline - Leadership Techniques
from Mind Tools
 Paul H. Selden (November 2000). "The Power of Quality Thinking In Sales and
Management". Quality Progress: 58–64.
 Michael T. Bosworth (1994). Solution Selling: Creating Buyers In Difficult Markets.
New York, NY: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0585048193.
 Robert B. Miller, Stephen E. Heiman and Tad Tuleja (2005). The New Strategic
Selling: The Unique Sales System Proven By The World's Best Companies. Boston, MA:
Business Plus. ISBN 0688043135.
 Godin, Seth (1999). Permission marketing: turning strangers into friends, and
friends into customers. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-85636-0.
 Godin, Seth (2001). Unleashing the Ideavirus. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 0-7868-
8717-6. Book online - Detailing the idea of Viral marketing
 Godin, Seth (2003). Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable.
Portfolio. pp. 224. ISBN 1-59184-021-X.
 Godin, Seth (2006). Small Is the New Big: and 193 Other Riffs, Rants, and
Remarkable Business Ideas. Portfolio Hardcover. ISBN 1-59184-126-7.
 Godin, Seth (2010). Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?. Portfolio Hardcover. p. 256.
ISBN 1591843162.
 Anthony Parinello - Getting to VITO (the very important top officer): 10 steps to
VITO's office, John Wiley and Sons, 2005 - 258 pages
 Jill Konrath - Selling to Big Companies, Kaplan Publishing, 2005 - Business &
Economics - 250 pages
 Jeff Thull - Mastering the complex sale: how to compete and win when the stakes
are high!, John Wiley and Sons, 2003 - Business & Economics - 220 pages
 Anthony Parinello - Boost Sales by Turning Gatekeepers into Allies By Anthony
Parinello, author of Getting to VITO, the Very Important Top Officer, Internal
Research paper Produced Fall 2009
 Ford Harding - Creating Rainmakers: The Manager's Guide to Training Professionals
to Attract New Clients, ISBN 0471920738 (0-471-92073-8), Hardcover, Wiley & Sons,
Incorporated, John
 Ford Harding - Cross Selling Success : A Rainmaker's Guide to Professional Account
Development, ISBN 1580627056 (1-58062-705-6), Hardcover, Adams Media
Corporation

 Ford Harding - Rain Making: Attract New Clients No Matter What Your Field, ISBN
1598695886 (1-59869-588-6), Softcover, Adams Media Corp
 Mack Hanon - Consultative Selling: The Hanan Formula for High-Margin Sales at High
Levels, Publisher: AMACOM, Pub. Date: March 15, 2011, Print ISBN-13: 978-0-814-
41617-4, E-Book ISBN-13: 978-0-814-41618-1

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