The Art of Making Offers That Get Accepted

A colleague and I once approached an organization that we thought we could help. We were invited to present to the board of this group, leaders of the top companies in this industry. We had never met most of these people.

We were told we had 10 minutes. 10? We were used to having an hour or two for a meeting like this. We asked for more time, but our contact held firm.

On the day of the presentation, we stuck to the guidelines, provided detailed handouts and took a couple of questions. About three hours later, we received a call. We were hired.

Mastering the art of making offers that get accepted can have enormous impact on your success as an internal or external consultant—as well as your ability to make a difference in more lives. My firm got this organization's attention in our presentation because board members were astonished by how well we understood their concerns.

As I learned from one of my first coaches, the better you are at positioning yourself as an expert on someone's concerns, the closer you are to being seen as having the expertise to address them. Making offers that get accepted is about listening and asking the questions that elicit vital information— knowing what your client really cares about. In my experience, most people don't focus enough on uncovering and addressing a client's concerns.

In the story above, we didn't leave this step out; we were just creative in how we did it. This was an important piece of business to us, so we interviewed 20 people in the industry to ask what they thought the organization's challenges and concerns were. We presented this as part of our 10-minute presentation and included what we thought they should do about it. The people we interviewed were names they knew and respected.

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Jackie Sloane is an executive coach and has a background in marketing communications. She specializes in enhancing clients’ ability to engage others. She can be reached at 773-465-5906 or jackiesloane@comcast.net.