Selling expensive services is not about closing faster, but about building enough trust to become the obvious call later.
You can’t kick the tires on trust. Can’t test drive it. Can’t return it to Walmart.
That’s the problem with selling engineering, architecture, consulting, legal services, or any expensive intangible for that matter. You’re asking your prospect to buy a promise, usually a pricey one, from someone they could have just met 20 minutes ago. Trust refuses to be rushed. Decide on Tuesday that you need to close a $250,000 engagement by Friday, and you’ll spend Friday afternoon wondering why your calls go to voicemail.
I learned this very early in my career, selling recruiting services to architecture, engineering, and environmental consulting firms, where clients had almost no way to judge what they were buying until it was too late to unbuy it. Some of those clients from 46 years ago will still pick up a call from me. That’s longer than most marriages, most companies, and certainly every car I’ve owned, and I did it without a CRM or a robot pinging me about a LinkedIn anniversary.
Since then I’ve sold architecture, engineering, environmental consulting, management consulting, M&A, valuations, real estate development projects, houses, and raised millions from investors buying confidence in people.
The best relationships took years. Somebody reads an article, hears me speak, or listens to a podcast. Maybe we have a Zoom call or even meet for a coffee or lunch if they are local. Six months later, they call with a question, no invoice attached. Three years after that, their company hits a wall. Guess who they call? That’s how selling expensive intangibles actually works, and why I’ve never bought the idea that every conversation must be monetized on contact.
The biggest mistake people make is treating every human being as a transaction. You can see the calculator running behind their eyes: this guy owns a 150-person firm, how much can I get out of him? People smell that instantly, and it clears a cocktail party faster than a fire alarm. We all don’t like it when the only time we hear from people is when they want something out of us.
Try being useful instead. Introduce people. Share what you know. Answer a question for free. Send an article about something they actually care about, instead of a drip campaign opening with “Hi Mark, I noticed your impressive background in the AEC industry.” Nothing says warm relationship like knowing a script scraped your LinkedIn profile. Teaching helps too. It builds credibility without ever announcing how credible you are, which is why I’ve always believed in writing, speaking, and publishing.
AEC firm owners will pay their trusted advisor a fortune and won’t spend a fraction of that with a stranger, no matter how slick the deck. Price is rarely the real objection. Risk is. Familiarity makes it (the risk) feel smaller. Same thing with raising capital. Even though my experience is very limited there, one thing I know is that nobody wires six or seven figures into your company because your PowerPoint had cool pictures and used a flattering shade of blue. They do it because they believe in you. My experience with Janus Motorcycles reinforced this. A motorcycle is tangible; investing in a motorcycle manufacturer is not. Investors are buying a future that doesn’t exist yet, and need to believe you understand the problems, aren’t hiding bad news, and will keep pushing. Telling people what’s wrong often builds more trust than telling them how great everything is.
One thing most businesspeople underestimate: staying in touch when you don’t need anything. It’s a secret weapon. Call people for no reason because you actually care about them. Congratulate them. Send a lead. Help their kid land an internship. Refer someone to them to fill a critical role. Remember what they told you six months ago, because remembering is basically the only proof you were listening.
And stop keeping score. There’s no formula for “Buy lunch, but make it profitable.” Some people you help will never do a thing for you. Others become clients in 15 years. A few become close friends. You cannot predict who’s who. The best rainmakers are rarely the slickest salespeople. They just know a lot of people, stay visible, tell the truth, and keep doing it for decades. Eventually, when someone has a big, expensive, uncertain problem or opportunity they want help with, they think of them.
It might have started with a coffee, a returned phone call, a project you worked on together 46 years ago. Selling expensive intangibles isn’t about closing harder. It’s about stockpiling trust before you need it. No app for that. No AI shortcut. No HubSpot drip campaign that replaces four decades of actually knowing people.
What a horribly inefficient system. After 46 years, I still haven’t found one that works better.
 |
Mark Zweig is Zweig Group’s chairman and founder. Contact him at mzweig@zweiggroup.com. |
