Selling High End Services Through Customer Dilemmas

Having to sell intangible services is bad enough. But having to sell a complex and high end service like consulting or advertising is a nightmare. If you provide outplacement service, what do you tell and what do you sell ? How do you position yourself ?

The technique of  differentiation based on some elements of "marketing mix" - product, price, place, people, process, or physical evidence, does not work well in high end services. 

That is where the technique of selling based customer's dilemma comes in. A dilemma is defined as a choice among options that seem equally unfavorable or equally favorable. Dilemmas are not problems - because problems have solutions but dilemmdeas do not.  Dilemmas are not solved but resolved - by properly weighing competing options.   

If you sell your service as a solution to a problem, the client may say “I can do it better myself" or "I know someone who can do it as well as you". But say the same thing as an answer to his dilemma and he may get interested. For example, take the outplacement service mentioned above. Don't say "we are in the business of outplacement". Say "We help management fire one of their friends.”

Similarly, don't say "We are business lawyers" - so what is so great? Say;  “We are retained by corporate clients who are caught in a dilemma - if they move too quickly, the company may not be acting in shareholders' best interests but if they don't they may fail in their fiduciary responsibility.”

Positioning based on dilemma captures several messages at once. It conveys what you do and also the special way in which you do it.  

Dont say "we are PR consultants". Saying "We help align the company's message with its strategy" is better. But saying “we help companies develop communications in situations where communicating facts is a risk but not telling them is also a risk". 

Dont say "I am a financial planner". Say “I work with senior executives who don't trust experts but are simultaneously afraid that the world is complex and if they don't take an expert advice they may forego  opportunities.  

An HR consulting firm may say "we help clients who do not know whether to take a rigid approach to treating talent and see their best people leave or whether to treat people on a case by case basis"