PROFESSIONAL SERVICES: HOW TO SELL TRUST.

Faced with sluggish product sales, a good many developers are beginning to take a fresh look at consulting, custom development, implementation, and other professional services. And they often make a depressing discovery: Customers who are deeply committed to a vendor's products are nevertheless hard to sell on professional services from the same source.

One reason for this kind of customer pushback, according to a group of McKinsey & Co. consultants, is simply lack of trust. Unlike products, which have tangible features that can be tested and reviewed, consulting jobs are "sold before any result is delivered." Worse, the McKinsey consultants found, "the risks involved in software projects are enormous--in fact, failing projects are more the rule than the exception."

Still, the McKinsey group, which recently published a book-length study of software and services management insights, says there are some "secrets of success" that can help enhance a software company's reputation for trust and reliability:

* Sponsor a conference: The McKinsey consultants point out that top professional services firms routinely host their own conferences, seminars, and high-level "discussion circles," which help demonstrate a company's depth of knowledge about critical topics. By bringing together new business prospects, current clients, and the consulting firm's own experts, they add, these events create an especially credible sales environment; typically, service firms find that a third of their new clients sign up after a conference or seminar.

* Publicize success stories: As consultants have always known, publicity is a powerful confidence-builder. But it turns out that where you get the ink makes a big difference, the McKinsey consultants say. "Software firms are less interested in the big, mass circulation press than they are in client-specific publications. In the telecommunications industry, for example, magazines like Telephony, Billing World, International Communication, or Wireless World are where it counts."

* Showcase top technical talent: "The software services business is a people business, and nothing sells a company better than the quality of its people," the McKinsey consultants point out. Their advice: Give key technologists and project managers a major role in presentations, seminars, and road shows. And don't skimp on rehearsals and feedback sessions, they note, because technical speakers may have weak communications skills. One consulting firm made its lead speaker "run through his presentation 40 times before he hit the road," they report.

* Watch out for failure-prone projects: Regardless of who's at fault, a consulting firm's credibility always suffers when one of its projects blows up. The best strategy, the McKinsey consultants argue, is to walk away from jobs that seem doomed. "We found that while the less successful service companies take almost any business that comes their way, the high-performing companies reject more than 40% of their potential business."

* Share the risks: "We are the experts, so why should the client take all the risk?" asks Malcolm Frank of Cambridge Technology Partners, a $600 million software services firm. His firm routinely guarantees a fixed price for complex projects and even lets unhappy clients jump ship to another services firm after an initial planning phase.

* Build a brand name: Professional services firms usually prefer a "quiet and restrained" image, but the McKinsey consultants say that more aggressive tactics--including advertising, direct mail, and sports sponsorships--are becoming more common as a way of building a company's credibility. Keane president John Keane argues that "advertising is what cuts through the clutter" in a crowded professional services market; his company recently spent $250,000 on a direct mail campaign to IT executives that generated more than $25 million in new business.

Secrets of Software Success, by Detlev J. Hoch, Cyriac R. Roeding, Gert Purkert, Sandro K. Lindner, Ralph Muller. Harvard Business School Press; $27.50.