If you’re an accountant, lawyer, financial planner – anyone who sells a service, this blog is for you!

Selling a service is a bit different to selling a tangible product like a TV.  If I want to buy a TV, I can read reviews, compare brochures, see one at my local shop and then shop around for the best deal.  A service is a bit different…..it’s more difficult to touch and feel.  There’s a higher risk involved – in most cases you can’t see the actual thing you’re buying.

I can’t physically show you good financial advice.  I can give you a written document that outlines the advice, but the actual product you’re buying is the advice I provide.  A hairdresser can’t show you the haircut you’re about to have.  They can show you pictures of how it looks on other people, but you won’t know how good the hairdresser is until after they finish the haircut.

Before I continue, you may be wondering….”who is Allan Ward and why is he writing this blog?”

A few years ago I was studying for an MBA and working in the financial planning industry.  I’d held various roles in the industry starting as a financial planner and at that time I worked as a manager for an Australian financial planning company.

I’ve always been interested in the marketing aspects of this industry and read as many articles as I could to understand how people made decisions about their money.

In the second year of the MBA I enrolled in a subject called ‘Services Marketing’.  It totally changed the way I viewed the world.  I’d already completed a couple of marketing subjects so I had a good understanding of the broad principles of marketing, but this subject was specifically about selling services – things that are intangible.

Our lecturer decided there was no standout book on the subject so instead he used articles from various journals.  He took the ‘classic’ services marketing articles and made them our reading material – a bit like a greatest hits album.

Every lecture I’d get fresh ideas about how to market services to consumers and then I’d go away and think about how I could apply this knowledge to the financial planning world.

I now run a financial planning business and I’m slowly implementing the things I’ve learnt into the business.  It’s taking a while, but I’ve got a much better understanding of how our clients make decisions and why they do the things they do.

I love teaching other people how to sell their service.  You may be a hairdresser, lawyer, accountant, medical professional or financial planner or in one of the thousands of different services that exist today.  If you have an interest in learning how to sell your service more effectively, then I want to help.

As this blog grows and develops I’ll share the knowledge that I’ve learnt over the past 14 years in the financial planning industry as well as what I’ve learnt through my MBA and other studies and reading.

Please look around and interact – let me know what you think. 

I’m still learning – we all are.  I’ve you’ve got things to share that work for you, let us know.  The ideas and knowledge we all have isn’t always industry specific and can work for other businesses.

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