Jenny, a young professional at a big firm, had spent four years in a specific practice area.  Because of her smarts and interpersonal skills, she was seen as having high potential for rapid advancement.  This assessment was confirmed when a senior executive at a client where she was working invited her into his office to talk about another issue he was facing.

Jenny quickly realized that the issue was outside of her area of specialty, though well within her firm’s capabilities.   After a ten minute conversation, she offered to identify the right person at the firm to help with the matter, but by the time she had done so and could get back on the executive’s schedule, he had found someone else to work with.

It is doubtful that the executive expected Jenny to have a ready-made solution to his problem; he knew what she specialized in.  He was, more-likely, looking for someone who understood his organization, could understand his problem, participate with him as a thought partner about it and marshal the right resources to help him.  If that was the case, Jenny didn’t demonstrate the confidence and technique to serve as this kind of trusted adviser.  She lost the opportunity to advance her relationship with the client and to provide him greater value by cross selling a number of her firm’s services.

This is a limitation of many narrow specialists, including many who are older and more experienced than Jenny.  They don’t know what to say and do when presented with a problem outside of their specialty, other than to off-load it to someone else as quickly as possible.

So, what are people in this position to do?  They need two things, the right mindset and good questioning technique.  I will address the first of these here and the second in a later post.

The mindsets of trusted advisers and specialist differ on several dimensions, including:

Goals:

• Specialist:  To prove my knowledge of the special characteristics and implications of the client’s problem.
• Trusted Adviser:  To help the client articulate his concern and its implications and bring him the resources that can help him solve it.

Role:

• Specialist:  Solver of the client’s problem.
• Trusted Adviser:  Thought partner, representative of the client’s interests and needs within your firm and with others who will assist in providing a solution, the one who marshals the right resources.

Method:

• Specialist:  Ask questions that, by their nature, reveal command of the specialty and allow scoping of the assignment in detail.
• Trusted Adviser:  Ask questions that help the client explain and develop his own thinking on the matter at hand by helping him amplify his own beliefs and judiciously challenging them.  When appropriate, empathize with the client showing a shared understanding of the stresses, costs and opportunities that he faces.

Resources:

• Specialist: Largely from within own practice
• Trusted Adviser: From wherever needed; inside the firm, inside the client organization or elsewhere

Duration:

• Specialist:  Often one, and seldom more than two or three conversations, prior to submitting a proposal.
• Trusted Adviser:  Often several conversations, in order to ensure that the right problem is being solved and the right resources applied.

Once you have the right mindset, you are ready to learn technique.

Starting a new relationship with someone who you have no explicit reason for contacting is one of the most difficult steps in selling professional services.  Almost as hard is advancing a relationship with someone you know hardly at all.  This isn’t just for of the professions; it is characteristic of business in general.

I just got off the phone with someone seeking to become my financial advisor.  At the beginning of the call, I told him that I was not interested in a sales call at this time.  He assured me that it wasn’t his purpose to sell me anything.  But, of course, at the end of the call, he couldn’t resist trying to do so with a we-can-help-you-with-that offer at the end.  This offer had, also of course, been the sole purpose of the 10 minutes of gobbledygook which preceded it.  In short, he was trying to begin relationship by lying to me about the purpose of this call and wasted my time in the process.   Did he think that I would turn over my money to someone who tried to deceive me the very first time he spoke with me?

It amazes me how common this is and how many forms it comes in.  Those mass mailings that come with what looks like a handwritten note, sometimes on a yellow sticky, saying “you should see this” or something similar, are another example.  They try to trick you into believing that the document was forwarded to you by a business colleague or friend.

When employing tactics to meet someone or to warm up a tepid relationship, the professionals must do nothing of this kind.  I suspect that even the word, tactics, will make some readers blanch, so let me give an example.   Asking for advice is one frequently recommended way to get in front of someone you don’t know well to warm up a relationship.  This can be effective with two cautions.  First, only do this with someone whose advice you would value on the subject in question.  If the advice asking is used simply as a ploy, there is a good chance that the contact will catch on and shun you thereafter.   Second, never, never try to turn the advice-seeking conversation into a sales call.  You should only talk about how your services can help the contact, if he explicitly asks you to do so, and even then with some reluctance.  (I didn’t come here today to sell you anything, but if you want we can talk a little about . . .).

You never want the contact to come away from a meeting with the feeling that you left it thinking, “Gotcha!”

John was a young professional assigned to work with a team at a client’s office complex.  Late one Friday afternoon he stopped by the office of Bill, the Vice President in the client organization to whom John and his team reported.  He had a question that needed an answer if he was to keep his team working the following week.

Bill seemed busy, but the question was important enough that he took time to pick it apart with John until they found an answer.  As John turned to leave, Bill said, “Have you got a minute more?  I’d like to ask you a question.  I have my monthly meeting with Tom Monday morning, [Tom was the EVP to whom Bill reported], and I’d like to go over something I plan to say to him.”  For the next hour, John helped his client work through how he would handle some tough issues with his boss the next day.  This was, of course, outside the scope of his assignment.

The following Monday John ran into Bill in the hall and asked him how the meeting had gone.  Bill, obviously happy, gave him a quick summary of what had happened.

This was the first time that John had ever provided career coaching to a client and he liked it.  He realized that his stature had risen in Bill’s eyes.  He also learned things about what was going on within the client organization and about important people who worked there that he might never have known otherwise.  Later in the month, he was able to use some of this information in the way he responded to a question that EVP Tom asked during a meeting.  Without having to disclose that he knew something that was not generally known, the knowledge helped shape his work and the way he spoke with his client.

Bill had told him that he had a monthly meeting with Tom.  Noting that the men had met on the first Monday of the month, John found an excuse to drop by Bill’s office the Friday night before the first Monday of the following month.  Sure enough, Bill asked for John’s reaction to something he planned to say to Tom the next Monday.

The matter that John and his team were working on ended months ago, but they are all still there working on other assignments for the client.  And on the Friday afternoon before the first Monday of every month, John stops by Bill’s office to go over the meeting that Bill will have with Tom.  This has never been formally arranged and it’s outside the scope of any of John’s work.  But both men have come to expect it and both get a lot out of it.

(Two earlier posts, Networking Up, Part 1 and Part 2, described how rainmakers network with executives, who are their seniors in age, authority and income.  Here is another on the subject.)

Few of us can shanty up to a senior executive’s office and just pop our heads in to say hello.  These are busy people and they have little time for casual visits.   Gatekeepers bar entrance to those who might fritter away the executives’ time.  So, even if you meet a senior executive during the course of your work, maintaining contact is hard.  To do so requires knowing more things of substance to share with her than most of us do.  And, if you don’t maintain contact, you will lose the relationship.

Carl whose slow, easy-going manner masked a fast, hard-charging mind, was easy to talk to and even easier to underestimate.  He built relationships with senior execs and so a successful practice, also cross selling many of his firm’s other services.  The execs learned that he was an astute observer of their organizations and so, worth talking to.  He was well briefed on matters that were just beginning to filter up to the executive suite.  His way of coming up with insights into client organizations, like many successful rainmaking techniques, was simple:  He drank a lot of coffee and listened to gossip.

“People want to target the big guys in an organization and not waste time on people in lower levels. They forget that you can’t just buy a senior executive a cup of coffee and have a chat, but you can with someone lower in the organization.  Those people will tell you what is going on and what you need to know to talk with someone higher up,” Carl explained.  “Talk with enough of them and you can learn about anything you want to know.”

Of course, Carl isn’t the first to discoverer of this technique.  In modified ways, it has been used by professionals for a long time.  In some current cases, LinkedIn replaces coffee as the medium through which information is passed.  But the underlying method is the same and forever being rediscovered, because it works so well.

Two years ago I was coaching a young German strategy consultant.  When I asked him to make some calls, he refused, arguing that later in the week he had a meeting with the general manager of a major business unit of his biggest account.  “I need to spend my time figuring out what I am going to say,” he protested.  I asked if he knew people working in the business unit with whom he could gossip a bit.  He did and agreed to call and talk with them.  Half an hour later, he came back beaming; one of the people he had talked to had laid out an agenda for his meeting with the boss.

Coffee and gossip, that’s not a bad way to spend some time each day!

To hire you, a client must trust you.  Yes, she must trust your honesty.  This involves your putting her interest above your own, not engaging in deceptive practices, and the like.  If you want to pursue that subject, I recommend you go to Charlie Green’s blog, Trust Matters.

In addition to your honesty, she must also trust your professional judgment.  Professional judgments are made by applying reasoning, often specialized reasoning called a methodology, and specialized knowledge to a specific problem.  An obvious example is a doctor’s diagnosis and recommendation for treatment.  Professional judgment is what professionals sell.

To win business, you must convince a client of your judgment.  This creates a tension between presenting yourself as a generalist or a specialist and is the source of some tough career decisions.  The more specialized you are, the less qualified you are to make judgments outside your area of expertise.  The more of a generalist you are, the less a client is likely to accept your judgment on the most important and cutting-edge matters she faces.  The broader someone’s knowledge, generally the more shallow it is; the deeper it is, the more narrow.

Age provides a third dimension to this tradeoff.  The less time you have spent in a profession, the narrower and shallower your knowledge is likely to be.  A client can accept that a young professional has gained a reasonable depth of expertise in a specific area.  She will find it much harder to accept him as a generalist able to “do it all,” as some young professionals want to claim.

Experts are more precise in their professional judgments and more likely to be right.  Clients know this: that’s why clients trust them.  So, you need to become an expert for clients to perceive your judgment as more trustworthy than someone more senior, but with less depth in the matter in question.

While doing so, be careful to avoid the kinds of errors in professional judgment that experts are prone to and which can ruin all of your hard work to be perceived as worthy of the client’s trust.  Experts can be:

Þ      Longwinded:  Some people become experts, because they get to learn all about subject and then get to tell people about it.  They forget that clients want to hear their professional judgments, not all their knowledge.  Keep focused on the client’s issues, not on your knowledge.

Þ      Stubborn: Experts are also likely to be adamant that they are right, much more so than the generalist, . . . even when they are wrong.  This is especially true of experts regularly expected to make firm recommendations, rather than explain alternatives.  (This is sufficient reason, by itself, to get a second opinion before undergoing any major surgery.)

Misplaced certainty in your own judgment will destroy a client’s trust, if your error becomes apparent.  I remember vividly several instances when experts challenged a client’s judgment, when the client proved better informed than they were.  This always resulted in a lost sale.  In most cases, when this mistake was brought to the expert’s attention during a debriefing, the expert rejected the client’s knowledge out of hand, in spite of evidence that the client was right.   Yes, experts can be stubborn.

So, as you become an expert, remember to keep your focus on the client.  Before you demonstrate your professional judgment, learn what the client knows already and what she needs to know.  Then, when you speak, your words will be relevant and your advice sound.

And she will trust you.

It’s about time someone spoke up for distrust for a change. 

I have an April 1 guest post on distrust on Charlie Green’s Trust Matters blog. See Ode to Distrust and join the discussion.

As someone who writes and thinks a lot about selling, I’m well aware that where there has been a sale there surely has been trust first.

I’m honored to be hosting the January 2008 Carnival of Trust. The Carnival of Trust is a monthly blog carnival created by Charlie Green, co-author with David Maister and Robert Galford of The Trusted Advisor, which focuses on the topic of building valued relationships with clients and the author of Trust-Based Selling, which is about the role of trust in sales.

There were many excellent submissions, making it difficult to winnow the list down to just 10. Here are my selections:

Tip of the Week—Do You Have Integrity
Susan Cartier Libel points out that when you are a sole practitioner, integrity takes on new importance. I wish the author and pondered the subject a bit longer.  There is more to be said on this subject, so I hope she pursues this issue further.

How do Women Buy Services?
Mike McLaughlin reports briefly on preliminary, but interesting, findings on how gender affects how people buy services.  One of the findings is that trust matters more to women than to men.  One wants to learn more than this short piece offers.

Do You Trust Your Boss?
We often hear about background checks on new employees, about employee theft and other indications that employees can’t be trusted.  Well, Boss, it’s your turn.  You have to earn trust, too, and, usually your actions are more visible because they have greater impact.  Every boss should read this post by Kelly Spores of the WSJ.

David Anderson on Trust
Well worth the read, though the author (Pascal Van Cauwenberghe) is reporting on messages that come from Anderson.  Anderson has a list of ways to earn trust that is a good starting point for anyone trying to build it.

Trust on Social Networks
David Mead addresses an issue that is on many people’s minds these days: how can social networks function without trust and how can you build trust into an electronic system?  This may well be the issue on which social networks stand or fall.

Who You Know
Seth Godin’s compelling point is made more so by its brevity.

Trust is the Business Word for Love
Another fresh idea delivered with clarity and brevity from Brad Feld. This one is a bit cute, but I like it.  The author didn’t originate this idea, but mined the gem that others had missed in another person’s commentary, which is a real contribution. But Mr. Feld, don’t you know not to give away your punch line in the title?

Building Community—Trust Begets Trust
This posting by Don Frederiksen is as much about the value of catch phrases as it is about trust.  The longest discussion of this value happens to be about the catch phrase “Trust Begets Trust.”  Still, it’s a catchy little read.

How to Achieve the Ultimate Credibility
Bonnie Budzowski wrote a gripping post about her daughter’s bike accident and the helicopter ride to the hospital.  It’s memorable because the argument is made with a story that brings Budzowski’s points to life.

A Very Long Post on How to Rebuild Trust
Hugo Schwyzer tackles an important subject and has valuable things to say about it.   He tells it straight with the story of his own life.  He seeks no sympathy, but offers hope.
 

There is a lot of good information about trusted advisor relationships, including the excellent book, entitled Trusted Advisor by David Maister, Charlie Geen and Rob Galford.  Another good book, Clients for Life, by Jagdish Seth and Andrew Sobel, deals with the subject without using that term.  Blogs, such as www.trustedadvisor.com  and www.davidmaister.com/blog/ are devoted to the subject or deal with it frequently and other blogs and ezines mention it sporadically.  It’s a worthwhile subject.
 
All of these sources provide commentary and advice, most of which can be reduced to one sentence, If you want to be a trusted advisor, act in a trustworthy way and know your stuff.  Living our lives by this simple dictum isn’t easy.  It is no wonder that whole books can be written on the subject and should be.  I will call this the behavior model and I don’t reduce all this material to a mere sentence with any desire to disparage it.  Rather, I want to contrast it with another approach to becoming a trusted advisor which doesn’t fall within the broad cover of this sentence.

I am referring to the age model.  The one-sentence reduction of this approach is: If you know your stuff and stay in touch with clients who are clearly rising stars and who are five to ten years younger than you, you have a good chance to become their trusted advisor in five, ten or more years.  I don’t have proof to support this, but I do have lots of anecdotal evidence.  For the past few years I have asked the rainmakers I interviewed their ages and the ages of those who treat them as trusted advisors.  In the greater number of these relationships the advisor is older than the advisee.

There are a number of reasons for this to be the case. It is obvious if you ask a 65 year old rainmaker about the trusted advisor relationships he has today, he will cite more people younger than he is.  But, I don’t believe the bias toward older advisors is solely based on an age ceiling for advisees.

Several other beliefs I have support the age model.  For example, I believe that most people find it easier to accept advice from someone older than they are.  The five to ten year spread between advisor and advisee seems about right for the advisor to be able to understand the advisee’s world.

This is all supposition.  But there is also the nature of networks.  Most networks form a power curve.  To understand what that means, think of the distribution of income in any country.  A few people have wealth beyond imagination, a few more are very rich and a few more are just rich.  Then come the broad middle class and the poor.  The difference in income between the wealthy beyond imagination and the very rich is immense compared spread of income between the middle class and the poor.  A few get most the goodies in a power curve.

There a two ways to end up on have-it-all end of the curve.  The first is to be in the network longer than others.  Our old rainmakers meet that criterion.  The second is to be fitter at the job, meaning know your stuff.  The comfort of confiding in older mentors and other explanations are, then, just the behavior mechanism that creates the power curve.

None of this takes anything away from the behavior model and all the good work that Maister and Green and others have done.  It does provide another path for research that I hope someone follows.

For the professional seeking to develop more business it is an explanation of why rain making gets easier every year you do it.  Older rainmakers know this, but younger professionals either don’t know or don’t quite believe it.  I spend a lot of energy trying convince young professionals that it is true.  In any event, you can’t win if you don’t play.  So, get out there and learn your stuff and build your network, focusing a part of your attention on the up-and-comers in the client companies.

Oh, and one other thing . . . while you’re at it, grow old! 

Do you think you can handle this last part?   If you can, you may well end up a trusted advisor to some important clients.