Practice What You Preach and HR Professionals

by David Creelman 2001

Appeared on HR.com, June 4, 2001

Richard Wood is much admired for his work on professional firms. He recently wrote a new article, Practice What You Preach, which gives research-validated answers on what drives profitability.

First, tell me a little bit about the research that you did. What did you want to accomplish?

RW: I've had over 5 years of experience, and I counsel an approach that involves focusing on how you treat your staff. Every single time I advise a client they will say something like "It all sounds very logical, but who's doing it? What evidence do we have that it works?"

In the past I've always had to rely on anecdotes. I knew individual firms that were doing things particularly well, but anecdotes only take you so far when you are trying to be convincing.

I've always thought that it would be wonderful to get solid data to test some simple propositions that I have been advocating for many years. I had the good fortune to have a major global conglomerate as a client. This conglomerate owned a large number of different businesses, each of which had a large number of separate offices. It was a wonderful opportunity to collect some data on employee attitudes and financial performance. Then we can ask a very basic question: "Is it true that employee attitudes are correlated in a measurable way with financial performance?"

To my obvious pleasure the answer comes across very clearly: yes.

Is this research really solid, solid at the level full-time academics would demand?

RW: Yes, I think it's solid. I used to be an academic years ago, and have a degree in business, so I'm supposed to know how to do this properly. I think it is defensible as academic-level research, although the article is not presented as an academic study. It's an article for your average line manager, but is based on scholarly, defensible data.

The businesses you studied were professional service firms, right?

RW: Yes, although what also attracted me is that this particular conglomerate owns public relations agencies, advertising agencies, direct mail, yellow pages and other sorts of marketing communications businesses. There was a wide diversity of businesses; it's not restricted to one form of professional service firm. Some of the businesses offer high-level consulting, but others are doing direct mail and are staffed almost entirely with minimum-wage people, and it's mostly a "get the stuff out the door" production type of business.

Another element that made it interesting is that every one of the businesses is part of a publicly held corporation. There's always been this rather interesting question, "Are professional firms different because they are private partnerships?" My article is called Practice What You Preach, because in my years of consulting I've learned that most people know what to do. The basic lessons of good management are not very sophisticated, but it takes a degree of courage to live up to them and not to succumb to short-term temptation.

For example, you may know that it is wise to keep your people briefed on what is going on, but on any given day it can be horribly tempting to ignore that in order to chase a new client.

When I point to examples of people who do have the courage to live up to these practices, people say, "My goodness, are they in public companies? Because when you are in a public company, I am told there's a lot more short-term pressure."

What made this study so delightful was that, within the 139 offices studied, I found quite a large number of managers who were able to manage with their eye on the long term, even though they were in a publicly held company subject to quarterly financial reporting.

It's interesting when you think about how an article impacts practice. It's not so much that you are finding things that will surprise people as that you are creating a way of building people's courage so that they will do what they may in their hearts know is right.

RW: That's correct. I've used this metaphor throughout my career, and I hope I'm not now overusing it, but I talk about a fat smoker. It's a humourous metaphor but it's real, and the truth is that people don't need one more speech on the benefits of getting thin or giving up smoking. Similarly, in business most people have heard the sermons about motivating your people and looking after your clients. We've all heard the sermons. We know what we should do. If I go to my doctor and ask how to lose weight, he'll tell me to eat less and exercise more. Similarly, the advice I give is not necessarily very innovative. The basic advice I give is like eat less, exercise more; that is, do the basics. The reason that business people have such trouble is the same reason all of us, as human beings, have such trouble. It's self-discipline.

The largest part of consulting, and this is very relevant to HR professionals helping within a business, is not getting people to be innovative; it's giving people the courage to do what they should be doing anyway. That's really where the change management added value lies.

To tie this back to where we started, it is very, very encouraging to have a live example of somebody who's actually doing these sorts of things. In the article, I include nine case studies, not because the case studies are different one from another, but merely to show nine real human beings actually living up to their standards -- and, even more, that it does produce higher financial returns.

Charles O'Reilly said the same thing when I asked him why he wrote Hidden Value in a case-study format. His answer was that managers want to see a real-life case study in enough detail that they can draw some of their own lessons.

RW: I think that's right. We like to look at someone and say that if he or she could do it, maybe I can too.

Take us to some of your specific findings.

RW: One of the analyses shows that if your staff rate highly on nine aspects of employee attitude, then we can predict over one-half of the financial performance of the business, even if you don't know what business the company is in, or what country it is in, or what size.

The nine items are as follows:

1. Client satisfaction is a top priority at our firm.
2. We have no room for those who put their personal agendas ahead of the interests of the clients or the office.
3. Those who contribute the most to the overall success of the office are the most highly rewarded.
4. Management gets the best work out of everybody in the office.
5. Around here you are required, not just encouraged, to learn and develop new skills.
6. We invest a significant amount of time in the things that will pay off in the future.
7. People within our office always treat others with respect.
8. The quality of supervision on client projects is uniformly high.

The quality of the professionals in our office is as high as can be expected.

Now if you pause for a moment on the question "Is client satisfaction is a top priority around here?" you realise it's a very old sentence. That's not a new thought. What is new is that we're not asking, "Does management preach this?" The evidence says that where the employees believe it is true, then you make more money. If the employees do not believe this, then you will make less money. That's a substantive finding because it turns out that among the 139 offices studied there was enough variation that in some of the offices the employees were saying, "Darn right this is us," and other employees in other offices were going, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, heard that before."

A second result is that if the employees agree with the sentence "We have no room for those who put their personal agenda ahead of the clients or the office," the business will make more money. Many, many people have advocated that for years, but this finding shows that it's not good enough just to have a general "we are team players around here" feeling. In fact, I included that milder version of the question in the survey and it turned out not to predict financial performance at all. That's a significant lesson -- "sort of kind of" being something doesn't make you money. What makes you money are people who can turn around and say, "Darn right! If you are individualistic, we have no room for you in our company."

We've talked about this a bit before. What really matters is that the company has a very clear stand on something that people truly believe in.

RW: Again, this should not be a surprise. It is nothing more than having a clear strategy, knowing exactly how you plan to compete and what virtues and strengths you plan to bring to the market.

All of the logic is saying that if you actually live up to your belief, then you can make money at it. But if you are only living up to it some of the time, it's unlikely that you will. For example, there's a role for a high-class restaurant that uses the freshest ingredients and so forth. Now as long as it sticks to that view, there's a market niche for that restaurant, just as there is a niche for McDonalds, which is fast and cheap. The question is, could either of those two businesses succeed if they only lived up to their goals some of the time? It takes a certain level of courage to stick to your theory of business and to resist the temptation to be expedient. To return to the personal matter again, here I can say, "Oh well, one cigarette wouldn't hurt," and the next thing you know, I'm not a nonsmoker at all. If you want to get the benefits of being a nonsmoker, you've got to stick to it.

In your article, when you talk about a theory of the business, you show a causal map of how enthusiasm is causally linked to coaching, which is linked to employee satisfaction and so on, all the way to financial performance. This looks very much like the strategy map that Bob Kaplan and Dave Norton are promoting.

RW: Yes, although the diagram actually is closest to the work of Heskett, Schlesinger and Sasser in their book The Service Profit Chain. They did a good job in explaining that there is an order to things, and that first you must energise your employees to achieve high standards. If you do that well, they deliver high-quality services and products to your marketplace. If you deliver high-quality services and products to your marketplace, you make money. So you can see there is a logical flow of work.

Now prior to my article, this was presented as a logical theory. I've been able to prove statistically that this causal sequence is true.

Those people who went to school at the same time that I did would have learned that statistics can give correlations, but you are talking about causation.

RW: A lot has happened since you and I went to school. I got a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern Queensland in business, but that was 10 years ago! Back then, they beat into our heads that correlation is not causality. However, and in the article I cite the precise references, in the last 20 years statisticians have developed techniques that do allow you to make statements about causality.

I've spoken a lot about the balanced scorecard, and I know that Mark Huselid would be very excited to see your data, because you've created a validated strategy map for professional service firms, and that map is the basis for a balanced scorecard.

RW: Yes. And to me, the article is encouraging because, with one or two mild exceptions, the lessons that come out of both the statistical data and the case studies are indeed familiar lessons. This article is not revolutionary. It's meant to be completely consistent with what the balanced scorecard and Jeff Pfeffer have done, as well as the lessons Collins and Porras deliver in Built to Last.

This research has actually provided evidence that reaffirms the sorts of lessons advocated by the people we all admire.

There were other findings that I found interesting. One is that, when it comes to culture, the office outweighs the firm.

RW: Yes, this is a major finding.

Before we get to that, the first finding is that the difference between those who are succeeding superbly and those who are doing okay is not that they are doing innovative things, it's not clever strategies and it's not advanced human resource activities. They are enforcing certain basic standards.

For example, one of the standards is "Management gets the best work out of everybody." The real secret of success is good execution on familiar themes such as this.

What comes out is that success is almost entirely dependent upon the character and behaviour of the individual local manager. In other words, whether or not things get enforced is not a matter of corporate policies, it's whether or not the local manager has this interpersonal ability to energise, enthuse and excite those who report to him or her.

For HR people, that's an important finding to keep at the front of their minds.

RW: I may be speaking with insufficient evidence here, but when I've talked to HR people, I have found that they are not very involved in selecting managers. My article is saying that rather than spending large amounts of time and money developing strategies, the real point of difference is that we need to get better at selecting managers.

HR needs to be developing selection processes and methods of evaluating managers. My experience is that many people in HR spend 99 percent of their time on things for employees in general and less than 1 percent of their time selecting and keeping accountable the people who occupy managerial roles.

That's a profound comment right there, and I see how it can reframe where you think HR can achieve leverage.

RW: This article is unequivocal in its findings. If you really want to make a difference to employee satisfaction and financial performance, not to one or the other but to both, then you focus your attention on the managers.

These studies are on professional service firms. To what extent do lessons about professional service firms serve as a model for organisations like Kodak or Cisco?

RW: All the trends in our economy point towards traditional companies facing the same issues that professional service firms have had to live with for a long while -- for example, the increasing importance of the knowledge worker and the mobility of professional staff. It has always been true that professional staff move around from firm to firm.

A third point is that professional firms have always lived with the idea that, even if you had positional power, e.g., you were a practice head or office head, you managed more by interpersonal influence than relying on formal authority.

All of those things are increasingly relevant to managers in business generally.

It would probably make sense for any firm to take a close look at well-managed professional service firms to see what lessons they can pull out of that for their own environment.

RW: I don't want to grant to the professions any special status. We are all working stiffs. The central issue is how crucial the employee's input is to your business success. If I'm running a paper mill, the honest truth is that the employee's motivation helps a little, but what's going to happen in a paper mill really is going to come from the machines and the technocratic decisions on scheduling, changeovers and things like that. The lessons are really important for any business where the real value add lies in the people and less in the machines.

Is there anything that you would like to add that we haven't covered?

RW: The biggest surprise for me in the article was that the sentence, "People treat each other with respect around here" turned out to be one of the nine profit predictors. I'm delighted with the results because it matches my values, but it didn't get in there because of my values. I was actually surprised that it emerged because it's not true that in many businesses people treat each other with respect. So for me, to say that it actually is measurably a profit contributor was one of the most fascinating findings.

David Creelman is a knowledge manager at HR.com.

He has ten years of experience working for major international consultancies both in North America and Asia. He is a regular speaker at HR conferences and has published many articles on management issues. Prior to working in HR, David worked in finance and IT. He has a MBA and a Hons B.Sc. in biochemistry and chemistry.

How Clients Choose

The single most important talent in selling professional services is the ability to understand the purchasing process (not the sales process) from a client's perspective. The better a professional can learn to think like a client, the easier it will be to do and say the correct things to get hired.

Fortunately, this is not difficult. Most professionals have themselves been through the process of retaining other professionals: lawyers retain accountants, actuaries hire consultants and public relations counsellors, like the rest of us, need tax advice. Every professional can deepen their understanding of what's really going on in the purchase process by drawing on their own experiences as a client.

Professionals traditionally view their practice development task as divided into two stages: marketing (generating the lead) and selling (converting a lead into a sale). From the buyer's perspective, these two stages are experienced as qualification and selection processes.

First, I (the client) try to reduce the large number of possible firms and professionals that might be considered down to the set of those that I judge to be qualified. In this qualification stage, I consider these elements: "Who have you worked for?" "What are your capabilities?" "What depth of personnel do you have?" "How good are your references?"

Except in the most unusual situations, where the problem is so complex and high risk that there is only one viable candidate, even the most thorough due diligence (examination of available facts and references, interviewing of candidates, etc.) usually ends with more than one firm or individual that is technically qualified to handle my problem. Typically, after exhausting my abilities as a client to make technical distinctions, I am still left with a choice of reputable firms with good references, all eminently capable of solving my problem.

This leads to an important conclusion: Unless their skills are truly unique and unmatched by any competitor, professionals are never hired because of their technical capabilities. Excellent capabilities are essential to get you into the final set to be considered, but other qualities get you hired.

Once I have decided which firms I will consider in the final set, my focus of inquiry shifts significantly. I am no longer asking, "Can you do it?" but rather, "Do I want to work with you?" I am no longer interested in the institutional characteristics of your firm; instead, I'm now trying to form a judgment about you. By the fact that you are sitting here talking to me, you can assume that you have successfully marketed your firm. Now the time has come to sell yourself.

What It Feels Like to Be a Buyer

Buying professional services is rarely a comfortable experience. Among the unpleasant emotions frequently felt are the following:

First, I feel that I'm taking a personal risk. By hiring anyone, I am putting my affairs, or my company's affairs, in the hands of someone else, and I'm giving up some degree of control. This is my area of responsibility, and even though intellectually I may know I need outside expertise, emotionally it is not comfortable to put my affairs in the hands of others. Even if the matter is a relatively routine one, I need to be convinced (beyond protestations of good intentions) that my problem will receive prompt and serious attention.

I'm feeling insecure. Since I find it hard to detect which of you is the genius and who is just good, I'm going to have to commit myself without feeling totally confident about my decision. What is more, I don't yet know if I've got a simple problem or a complex one; that's why I need you, the specialist, to help me. But I'm not sure that I can trust you to be honest; after all, it's in your interest to convince me that my problem is complex. Professionals are always making mountains out of molehills. Nothing is ever easy.

I'm sceptical. I've been burned before by these kinds of people. I get a lot of promises. How do I know whose promise I should buy?

I'm concerned that you either can't or won't take the time to understand what makes my situation special. Will you be one of those typical professionals who are hard to get hold of, who are patronising, who leave the client out of the loop, who befuddle the client with jargon, who don't explain what they're doing or why, who..., who..., who...? In short, will you deal with me in the way that I want to be dealt with?

To a degree, I am also exposed. Whoever I hire I'm going to have to reveal some proprietary secrets to, not all of which are flattering. I'm also a little threatened. You will be working on things for which I am responsible (marketing consultants are hired by the vice president of marketing, lawyers by the general counsel, actuaries by the benefits manager). By the very fact that you are suggesting improvements or changes, there is the risk that you will uncover things that I haven't been doing right up till now. Are you going to be my ally or my enemy?

What all this reveals is that from among the set of qualified candidates I am looking for the one I can trust. The act of hiring a professional is, by very definition, an act of faith. I must, inevitably, believe a promise. In selecting a professional I am not just buying a service, I am entering into a relationship. Your selling task is to earn my trust and confidence -- with an emphasis on the word "earn."

What a Buyer Looks For

How am I to determine with which candidate I want to have a relationship? Certainly the answer is not contained in the promises you make. Talk is cheap. Someone who tells me, "Trust me; we'll show a special interest in you," is not likely to win my confidence simply by that assertion.

Inevitably, even if I view myself as a sophisticated buyer, I am forced to rely on clues obtained through the interview process in order to guess at what kind of person you are. My impressions and perceptions are created by small actions that are meaningful for their symbolism, for what they reveal. How you behave during the interview (or proposal process) will be taken as a proxy for how you will deal with me after I retain you. Unlike the process of qualification, which is predominantly rational, logical and based on facts, the selection stage is mostly intuitive, personal and based on impressions.

The first thing that will catch my attention is your preparation. There is nothing more off-putting than someone who begins the meeting by asking me some basic facts about my company or situation that they could have found out in advance. It not only reveals laziness but it makes me feel like just another "cold call" -- you don't have any special interest in me; you're on a fishing expedition, trying to drum up some revenue.

On the other hand, if someone says to me, "I noticed from your annual report that you recently opened a new plant in XXX. What has that meant for your department?" they will catch my attention. It may not be intellectually challenging to read my annual report, but it shows that you do your homework. It tells me something about you.

This point can be taken further because preparation is your opportunity to demonstrate initiative. Why not contact my industry association and gather some information about my company's public data compared to that of my competitors? It will help you ask me more substantive questions and will demonstrate your willingness to earn my business. If you want to bring along some printed material, I will be a lot more impressed by something that has clearly been put together for me rather than a pre-printed brochure. At least that shows a little thought and consideration.

Professionals who are over-eager to impress and thereby spend the whole meeting talking about their accomplishments, what their firm has done and why they are qualified to help me come across as insensitive to me, to my company and to my situation. It sounds like what it is: a standard spiel, reflecting no special interest in me. I do not want to hear about you and your firm -- I want to talk about me and my situation. The only way to influence me is to find out what I want and show me how to get it. I hate to be sold, but I may be willing to buy if you can show me that my company and I have some problems to solve or some opportunities to capture.

Getting me to acknowledge that there is an opportunity or a problem won't necessarily be easy because I'm suspicious of your motives. First you must make me feel comfortable, perhaps by asking me what's going well. Give me some new information. Tell me what my competitors are up to. Tell me what you've been doing for other companies like mine. Find a way to be helpful to me.

Give me an education. Tell me about alternate ways that common problems of my industry might be dealt with. Help me understand the advantages and disadvantages of some of the things I have been reading about. Ask me how I am doing things now, and use that as an opportunity to help me understand some options I may have for doing things differently. Tell me something I don't already know. If I walk away from the meeting saying, "That was interesting; I hadn't thought of that," you've won. I may or may not hire you today, but I'll certainly want to talk to you again. Don't be afraid to float high-risk ideas early on ("just an idea"). Demonstrate your creativity.

I discount all your assertions about your expertise until you give me some evidence to back them up. For example, don't tell me about your experience in my industry (or on a particular topic). Instead, illustrate it by asking questions that reveal your knowledge of key industry terminology, facts and figures or latest events. That way I'll draw my own conclusions (which I'm going to do anyway) about how well you understand my business and my issues.

While I want you to know my industry, don't patronise me by trying to tell me what's going on in my business. Instead of saying, "Here are the three most important things happening in your industry," say, "Our experience suggests that these are the three most important things. Do you agree?" If I agree with you, fine. If I disagree, we can have a conversation.

To avoid coming across as arrogant, patronising and pompous (a common experiences with professionals) turn your assertions into questions. By doing so, you convert possible signs of assertiveness into evidence that you'll respect my opinions, involve me in the thinking process and be sensitive to the need for a congenial relationship. Your manner of speech -- how you choose to phrase your sentences -- tells me something about how you deal with clients. Make our meeting a conversation. Don't talk all the time, and similarly, don't grill me.

Show a sympathetic understanding of my role in my company. Understand who I report to, how I'm measured, what my budgets are. By asking me about these things, I'll believe you are treating me as a person, not just a purchasing agent.

This doesn't mean that I want you to wine and dine me or try to win my business by becoming my friend. It does mean that I want you to be sensitive to the fact that your prospective client (me) is a person, not a corporate entity.

Don't start telling me how you can solve my problems until I have acknowledged that there's a problem or an opportunity here. Simply asserting to me that I have problems or opportunities isn't enough. If you say it, I can and will doubt you. If I say it, it's true.

The key talent in good selling is being good at getting me, the client, to reveal my problems, needs, wants and concerns. If I'm talking, telling you about my company and my needs, you're ahead; if you're talking, you're losing. Professionals talk too much. Ask good questions and listen.

As you try to get me talking about my problems, demonstrate your sensitivity. I do not respond well to someone who asks me right up front, "What are your problems?" That's too assertive and you haven't yet earned the right to an answer. Similarly, don't ask, "What's not going well?" I'm not going to answer that. But I might answer, "What don't you have time for?" I can answer that without feeling uncomfortable.

While I am unlikely to tell you my problems, I may be willing to acknowledge problems you already know about. For example, ask me why we do things the way we do, why we haven't tried certain options. Instead of asking, "What problems do you have with that way of doing things?" say, "Some of our other clients who do things the way you do have had to contend with the following issues as a result. What have you done to deal with those consequences?" This question gives you an opportunity to show that you are familiar with my type of situation, and it doesn't confront or challenge me.

If I do begin to show interest in a given issue, your next task is to convince me (or get me to convince myself) that the issue is big enough to bother with. Remember, I don't like working with professionals and will only do so when I have to. So I'll only proceed if I'm convinced that the benefit is big enough and certain enough (two separate issues) to justify the expense, discomfort and disruption of using you. Before I want to hear how you'll solve my problem, you need to get me to agree that it's worth solving.

Your most productive tactic is to ask me, "How valuable would it be if...?" and complete the sentence by describing some future state of affairs that you can get me to. Help me picture in my mind the benefits I will receive by reaching that state of affairs. If you get me excited about the possible benefits (not by asserting them, but by getting me to admit that they would be desirable), I will then want to know more about how you can get me there. If I don't acknowledge the benefit, nothing else you say will be of any interest to me.

If I'm still with you, still interested in (maybe) proceeding, I may ask you how you would go about handling my affairs. Don't rush to give me a singular, concrete answer as to "your firm's approach." It may be one that I'm not interested in. For example, maybe I want the "permanent fix" -- the version of the assignment that deals with the issue once and for all. Or perhaps I might want the "quick fix" -- the version that shows results as soon as possible.

Perhaps I will be more interested in proceeding if your approach will incur minimum disruption to my ongoing operations or will reduce the extent of involvement and effort required by me and my people.

The key is to give me options, help me understand their advantages and disadvantages, and let me choose. If you present me with "your firm's approach," it strikes me as standardised. By educating me regarding alternative ways to proceed, I get value from the discussion. By letting me choose, I am also left with the sense that you're the type of professional who will respect my judgment and involve me.

Recognise that it's unlikely that I'm going to say "yes" or "no" in front of you. I'm going to consult before I make a decision. So don't pressure me. Don't try any "closing techniques" on me. Give me reasons and reasoning I can use when I consult with my superiors and colleagues.

Instead of reaching for a sale at every meeting, make your objective that of making progress in our relationship. Maybe I'll agree to meet one of your specialist partners, consent to provide additional information to you or provide access to one of my other executives. Perhaps I'll participate in one of your seminars or agree to an additional, more focused meeting. Any one of these should be taken as a success. If you try to rush me, I'll take it as a sign that you're more interested in making a sale than in helping me.

I may ask you to submit a proposal, but never forget that because my ultimate decision is based on who I trust, the sale will be made during the face-to-face time we spend together. The vast majority of professional projects are awarded at the pre-proposal stage. The formal proposal and presentation merely confirm (or destroy) a decision already made. If you can't afford to spend time in up-front contact, don't bother writing the proposal.

Here's what I want if I ask you to make a presentation. Sit down, distribute your materials in advance and we'll go through them together. Don't lower the lights, put up your slides, stand up and walk me through your canned speech. It makes me feel that I'm being lectured to. If I want to ask about something, don't say, "We'll get to that." It makes me feel that you're inflexible.

If I interrupt you, deal with my question. I want to see how you handle yourself when I ask a question, not judge how practiced you are at your standard spiel. Most of you do rehearse your presentations, but you rehearse the wrong things. I'm not looking for how smoothly you can get through your practiced presentation. That's not what will influence my decision. Rather, I give great weight to how flustered you get when I ask hard questions. Flunk that test and I'm not sure you're the one I want to trust. What you should be rehearsing are your responses to my questions.

I want you to prove that you can listen by picking up on my comments, by adapting in real time, by replying to what I've just said. Involve me. Ask what I think. I know that someone's listening to me when they show the ability to depart from their prepared scripts and base their subsequent comments on what I've just said. If you don't have the talent to depart from your script when I throw a curve ball (and I'm going to), then why should I believe in your abilities?

When I challenge you with an objection, hear it out and don't interrupt. Don't tell me I shouldn't be concerned about that: I've just told you that I am concerned. Acknowledge what I've said as a valid concern. I'll let you rephrase and soften it, but make sure you check for my acceptance of your rephrasing. Then give me an answer, and ask me whether I accept your answer. Don't try to "survive the moment" by waffling and moving on. You may get out of an uncomfortable moment, but I'm going to be left with the feeling that you didn't answer my question -- and that means I won't trust you.

I'll be impressed if you've clearly anticipated my issues and thought of that objection or concern beforehand -- it shows me that you've taken the time to see things from my perspective. So predict my objections and practice your responses as part of your preparation -- on such things sales are won or lost.

Summary

There is an old joke about doctors that says they "get fascinated with the disease, but couldn't care less about the patient." Unfortunately, this attitude (and behaviour) is all too prevalent in a wide array of professions. Too many professionals get overly focused on technical matters and lose sight of the essential relationship nature of professional transactions. This doesn't mean that technical skill is irrelevant -- of course, it is critical. But having technical skills is only a necessary condition for success, not a sufficient one.

Above all, what I, the client, am looking for is that rare professional who has both technical skill and a sincere desire to be helpful, to work with both me and my problem. The key is empathy -- the ability to enter my world and see it through my eyes.