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Client Service vs. Client Servility

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With every technological advance in communications, we get another chance to negotiate the boundaries between good client service and client servility.

Where do you draw the line?

Better yet: How do you draw attention to a line that’s already there, if we think about it rightly?

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Most client-serving organizations I know make a pretty big deal about client service. It is right at the top of their list of stated virtues. And rightly so.

But sometimes, things can get a little twisted.

What do you make of:

o The SDR who unquestioningly responds in detail to every detailed request, without adding perspective. Regularly.

o The project manager who video-cons the team on Sunday to re-work the slide deck. Regularly.

o The senior officer who drops in on the staff meeting to “show the flag” but leaves early because “when the client calls, you know…”  Regularly.

o The salesperson who cuts price at the drop of the hat when the client demands.  Regularly.

o The VP who cancels the cleanup position on the third round interview because, “I had no choice, the client changed the date.” Regularly.

o The manager who joins the training session late and slips out to take calls between scheduled breaks, because “we’re in the middle of a really tough time for the client – they need me.”  Regularly.

The key word is, of course, regularly.  Any one of those examples can be held up as a case of client heroism.  If, that is, it’s an isolated event. But if it’s endemic – then that’s not client service, that’s client servitude.

They are not the same. Great client service is being willing and able to behave in unusual ways when faced with unusual situations; and doing them selflessly, for the sake of the client.

Being servile is quite another thing. It means seeking out options to give faux service.  Terms related to servile include sycophant, suck-up, boot-licker, and toady.

We suspect those who are servile of dishonesty – of speaking falsely in an attempt at self-aggrandizement. Their motives are suspect; which means their credibility is at risk as well.

Ironically, their servility costs them in terms of respect from the very people they are most trying to impress.  Above all, we don’t trust such people.

If we’re honest – I’ll just speak for me here – if I’m honest about it, there’s always a tiny touch of servility lurking around the edges of most client service I perform.  It’s hard to be unaware of the value of being perceived as client-serving.

The trick is to not be overcome by a need for recognition. To do the next right thing, yet to be detached from the outcome; particularly whatever benefit clearly might accrue to me from doing the right thing.

This is the heart of it.  Client service is doing good for the client.  Period.  We are not surprised when we get credit for doing it.  But expecting good from doing it is Station 1 on the slippery slope; the End-Station is doing client service  in order to get credit for doing it.

That way lies client servility.

Most clients don’t want servants at their beck and call – they want equal partners at the table who can make a plan and stick to it; who have enough respect for themselves and their own firm that they will, on occasion, push back; who take the partnership seriously enough that they will keep their own team healthy enough to deliver in the long run, rather than burn it out in a never-ending series of faux client crises.

And if you really think you have one of those rare clients who actually wants servants – then put your money where your mouth is.  Give that client to a competitor.

The Five Levels of Customer Focus

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iStock_000019257535XSmallOne of the Holy Icons of marketing is the concept of customer focus. It’s almost always used to signify a good thing, and something that is self-evident – that doesn’t require a lot of explanation. Of course, in reality things are a little more shades-of-grey.

Here, then, is a guide for distinguishing between Five Levels of Customer Focus.

1. Target Identification. Also known as the customer focus of a vulture. At this level, customer focus generally means follow the smoke to the fire, find the decision-maker as fast as you can, screen out the low-probability leads. In short, find that target so you can zero in on the bullseye.

2. Target Optimization.  At this level, customer focus means to find the ideal overlap between the customer’s need and your product. Find that need and feed it; find that pain point and pressure it; get the customer slavering for a solution, and pitch your product as the Filler of (that) Need.

3. Target Outreach. Reach out and touch someone the buyer. Get along with them, be friendly. Teach them how to buy, how to sell your product internally, how to be your ally within the customer company. Because that way you get higher share of wallet, higher ROI for the seller, better KPIs. Mo’ money for you, big picture.

4. Target Development.  Customer focus at this level means adding perspective to the customer’s view of their own business, challenging their belief systems, jointly developing product needs for the future and metrics to manage them by. You get longer client retention, lower sales costs, higher ROI for you both.

5. Post-Target Focus.  Get rid of the “target” metaphor entirely. Don’t see customers mainly as sources of profit; they are not means to your end – they too are ends. They are people and organizations with whom you spend time, helping to make them better. By this view, sales and profits are  byproducts – not the goal itself.

This taxonomy is of course arbitrary. You may have one of your own you like better, and that’s fine. In this particular view of things, things get better as you move from 1 to 5.

What do I mean by “better?”  Thanks for asking.

a. The seller’s profit goes up as you move up the scale. This is counter to the knee-jerk reaction that you make more money by being more rapacious.  You don’t, not in anything but the shortest of time-frames and the narrowest view of reputation.

b. The buyer’s profit goes up as well as you move up the scale. At level 1, one plus one equals two (actually less, because rapacious behavior leads to long-term system breakdown). As you move higher, efficiencies go up, effectiveness goes up, trust goes up, and so forth.

c. Economic utility gets maximized. Not only do seller and buyer each make more money, but the total benefit of the system is increased as you move up the scale. Costs go down, quality goes up, employment goes up, suppliers succeed, and so forth.

d. Social utility goes up too – not just economics. The world is generally happier when people get along than when they don’t. Suspicion and pessimism are unfortunate traits in business; trust and optimism are not only their own rewards, but are self-fulfilling prophecies.

Where do you and your business fit on the Customer Focus spectrum?

 

Creating a Culture of Trust: Virtues and Values

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This post comes from our upcoming book, The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading With Trust, from the chapter on Implementing a Culture of Trust. Tools for trust initiatives include principles, or values, at the organizational level, and personal attributes, or virtues, at the individual level. The chapter explores five tools for implementing trust change initiatives: leading by example, stories, vocabulary, and managing with wisdom. This post explores two diagnostic tools: the Trust Temperament™ and the Trust Roadmap™.

We will be sharing selected portions of the book with our readers leading up to the publication date. The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook will be available from Wiley Books on October 31, 2011, or you can pre-order The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook today.

What Is a High-trust Organization?

Our definition: an organization of people who are trustworthy, and appropriately trusting, working together in an environment that actively encourages those behaviors in employees as well as stakeholders.

Creating a culture of trust requires a different emphasis than do most change initiatives. What works to reduce accident rates, increase customer-centricity, or become ISO-9000 compliant isn’t the same as what’s needed to create a high-trust organization.

Trust is about interpersonal relations. For people to trust and be trusted by others, they must take personal risks and face personal fears in ways that cannot, by their nature, be fully planned and structured in ways that typical change initiatives can rely on.

That suggests a different emphasis: an initiative built around personal change.

Two Keys to Trust Culture Change: Virtues and Values

Creating a high-trust culture boils down to two main thrusts: virtues and values. “Virtues” are the personal qualities that high-trust people embody, and “values” are what guide the organizations they work in. In trust-based organizations, virtues and values are consistent and mutually reinforcing.

We use these words very intentionally, because they’re commonly understood–and common language matters. Each deserves its own word and understanding, and both are required for trust culture change. In our experience, some companies rightly focus on organizational values, but few focus enough on personal virtues.

 

The virtues of trust are personal, and involve your level of trustworthiness and your ability to trust. The virtues of trust are contained in the trust equation: credibility, reliability, intimacy, and self-orientation.

It is virtuous for someone to tell the truth, to behave dependably, to keep confidences, and to be mindful of the needs of others. Unless people take personal responsibility for their own behavior around trust, the organization will never be a trust-based organization.

 

The values of trust are institutional, and drive the organization’s external relationships, leadership, structure, rewards, and key processes. The values of a trust-based organization are reflected in the four trust principles: other-focus, collaboration, medium- to long-term perspective, and transparency. An organization that espouses these values treats others with respect, has an inclination to partner, has a bias toward a longer timeframe, and shares information.

Trust-based organizations take values very seriously. If your organization has never fired someone for a values violation, then either you’ve been astoundingly successful in your hiring and development efforts, or you’re not a strongly values-driven organization.

Diagnosing Trust

To improve virtues and values, it’s helpful to know where you’re starting from—to have some kind of diagnostic. For virtues, there is the trust quotient: for values, there is the Trust Roadmap™.

Virtues.

The trust quotient is a self-diagnostic taken at the individual level, based on the four values of the trust equation.   With individual data aggregated anonymously at the group level, you can profile the organization in terms of Trust Temperaments (the pair of highest-scoring values in the trust equation for an individual), as follows:

Trust Temperament™ Highest Ranked Attributes Motto
The Expert C, R “Lead, follow, or get out of the way.”– Anonymous
The Doer R, I “As for accomplishments, I just did what I had to do as things came along.”– Eleanor Roosevelt
The Catalyst C, I “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”– Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Professor C, S “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.”– Albert Einstein
The Steward R, S “My goal wasn’t to make a ton of money. It was to build good computers.” – Steve Wozniak
The Connector I, S “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.”– Anonymous

 

Values.

The Trust Roadmap is a diagnostic tool that surveys the Trust Values across components of organizations, as below:

Collaboration Medium- to Long-Term Perspective Transparency Other Focus
External Relationships
Leadership
Structure
Rewards
Processes

 

Generic and organization-specific questions are developed for each of the 20 cells, and the survey administered to groups of stakeholders: customers, employees, managers, for example.   For example, the question for Leadership and Medium-to-Long Term Perspective might be “Your leaders are willing to sacrifice short-term gains for the long-term benefit of the organization.”

The survey results allow a management team to assess, in a structured manner, where the organizational values that drive trust are being implemented, and where they’re not; how those patterns vary across constituencies; and what they feel the priority should be in addressing the issues.  In short, a Trust Roadmap.

The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading With Trust will be published by Wiley Books on October 31, 2011.  Pre-order your copy of The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook today.

When Should Your Clients Take a Back Seat?

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I was coaching Bob, a busy lawyer.  One of his key goals was business development – obtaining new clients. He told me that he just didn’t have time to work on business development –too busy.  So I asked him a question (that’s what coaches do). 

What are your priorities?

“Who is your most important client?” Bob responded with the typical answer. He started naming some large companies. “And what’s on your “to do” list?”,   Bob started listing specific tasks including depositions, client meetings, briefs…well, you know the rest. 

“What’s not on your list?”  He struggled to answer for a bit. Finally, he got it. His business development tasks were nowhere on the list. He didn’t mention himself as an important client, and didn’t think of those tasks – the ones where he was investing in his own future – as being enough of a priority to even make it to his list.  So, I asked the obvious question. “How will you accomplish your own marketing tasks if they don’t get on the list?”   Of course, he said: “I can’t”. 

One of my own long-time coaching clients, Peter Vogel, a prominent Dallas attorney, shared the wisdom of the “who is your most important client” with me several years ago. He got it from his father, a well-respected Dallas accountant.  We are our most important client. Once we get that clear, we can create the right balance between our work, our clients and our lives.  

Put yourself on the list.

Some of us have a fear that if we put ourselves on the list, we’re no longer client focused, that it’s wrong to address our own needs if there’s a client need to be attended to. But that simply is not true. If we don’t take care of ourselves, we’re not as valuable to our clients. 

Examples we can all relate to: exercise, eating right, getting enough sleep. If we don’t do these things for ourselves, we won’t be able to function well eventually. 

Examples we don’t like to relate to: taking a vacation, spending time with family, reading. These help us function at a higher level. Doing these activities clears our head, gives us valuable input, and can be emotionally stabilizing.

Examples professional services providers often fail to acknowledge: networking, social media activities, writing, speaking, building relationships – are all part of the job. Most of us have to do these and other activities so that we can obtain paid work.   

Is it self-orientation to care about yourself?

Yes, of course it is. So what? There is nothing wrong with having things you have to do for yourself on your list. The type of self-orientation we talk about in Trusted Advisor Associates, reducing our Trust Quotient, is not about taking care of you. It’s about being self-absorbed, and unable to get out of your own way. When you take care of yourself, you are better equipped to focus on others. 

Professionals who truly care about their clients often forget that they need to address their own needs as well. This includes the exercise and family time I noted above. It also includes taking steps to develop business in the future. Just because you have work on your desk today, doesn’t always mean that the work must trump a networking or business development activity. 

Treat yourself as if you are a client.

Imagine that you are one of your clients. When there is a conflict between an activity you need to do for you, and one you need to do for another client, analyze the conflict and priorities the same way you would if you had two clients competing for your time. You decide which client has the more immediate priority, and you let the other client know when you will address that client’s needs. When you use this process, sometimes your needs will trump the client work. So if you have a referral-source lunch and work that needs to be done by 5, and you believe you can get it done when you get back, don’t blow off the lunch. Take care of yourself, and then take care of the client. The work will still be on your desk when you get back, and you’ll get it done in time. 

So – what will you do?

Are you ready to put yourself first sometimes? Here are three easy rules to follow: 

  1. When you create your work task list, put your marketing, and personal tasks on the same list.
  2. When you prioritize your task list, include all your tasks, not just your work tasks.
  3. When there is a conflict with your time, don’t exclude your needs when you make your decision on set priorities. You may have to take a back seat some of the time, but not all of the time.

Putting yourself first isn’t easy, and sometimes may feel selfish. Just remember that we do respect people who take care of themselves along with caring about others.

The Curious Case of Curiosity in Selling

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What’s the top, number one, single greatest factor affecting success in sales?

There are often multiple answers to questions like that, because all the prime candidates overlap similar territory. You might argue for a can-do attitude, or customer focus, or a committed team.

Let me make the case for curiosity.

Imagine being in a constant state of heightened curiosity when you are with, doing work for, and thinking about your customers. What would that look like?

The answers fall into two broad categories, I think:

1. If you were curious on your customer’s behalf, you would:

• Notice an awful lot of things about their people, products and customers
• Formulate many hypotheses
• Ask a lot of questions to pursue those hypotheses
• Want to know lots of things on general principle: preferences, history, culture, practices
• Be other-focused

2. And while you were being curious, you would spend less time on:

• Worrying about how to get the sale
• Worrying about how to speed a decision, or close, or qualify a lead
• Trying to portray yourself in ways you assume will influence the customer

Now here’s the punch line. Most approaches to selling tell you to ask a lot of questions—basically like the first category.

But they also tell you to worry about that second category. In fact, they say the sole purpose of all questions is to get the sale. Most sales approaches say you absolutely should worry about getting the sale, speeding a decision, qualifying, etc. Which kills curiosity.

Curiosity says, to hell with that. Curiosity says, the purpose of questions is to find out what could be: what could be better, what the right thing is, what the customer should do.

The paradox, of course, is that curiosity-driven selling just plain works better. It works better because the questions are grounded in the customer’s world, not the sales person’s needs.

The linear, process-driven, metrics-based approach to selling that has become so prevalent has many virtues, but one gigantic, glaring defect: By trying to maximize the sale, it has devalued the customer—thereby reducing sales effectiveness (insert ironic music here).

Curiosity may have killed some cat once upon a time; but it serves salespeople well. Curiosity isn’t a sales tactic. Done right, sales are a natural byproduct of being curious.  There’s something very simple and right about that.

Client Service vs. Client Servility

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Most client-serving organizations I know make a pretty big deal about client service. Consulting, law, HR, IT, accounting, and salespeople in complex businesses—client service is right at the top of their list of virtues. And rightly so.

But—sometimes, things can get a little twisted.

What do you make of:

o The administrative assistant who delivers the Officer’s laundered shirts to him at the airport at 9PM. Regularly.

o The project manager who hauls the whole team in on Sunday to re-work the slide deck. Regularly.

o The senior officer who drops in on the staff meeting to “show the flag” but leaves early because “when the client calls, you know…” Regularly.

o The salesperson who cuts price at the drop of the hat when the client demands.  Regularly.

o The VP who cancels the cleanup position on the third round interview because “I had no choice, the client changed the date.” Regularly.

o The manager who joins the training session late and slips out to take calls between blackberry-checking time, because “we’re in the middle of a really tough time for the client—they need me.”  Regularly.

o (The presidential candidate who, in mid-speech, stops to take a phone call from his wife on his cellphone from the podium. More than once.)

The key word is, of course, regularly.  Any one of those examples can be held up as a case of client heroism.  If, that is, it’s an isolated event. IF it’s endemic—then that’s not client service, that’s client servitude.

Client service is not client servitude. Great client service is doing things above and beyond the norm; being willing and able to behave in unusual ways when faced with unusual situations; and doing them selflessly, for the sake of the client.

Being servile is quite another thing. It means seeking out options to give faux service.  Terms related to servile include sycophant, brown-noser, suck-up, boot-licker, ass kisser, obsequious, and toady.

We suspect those who are servile of dishonesty—of speaking falsely in an attempt at self-aggrandizement. Their motives are suspect; which means their credibility is at risk as well.

Ironically, their servility costs them in terms of respect from the very people they are most trying to impress.  Above all, we don’t trust such people.

If we’re honest—no, I’ll just speak for me here—if I’m honest about it, there’s always a tiny touch of servility lurking around the edges of most client service I perform.  It’s hard to be unaware of the value of being perceived as client-serving.

The trick is to not be overcome by a need for recognition. To do the next right thing, yet to be detached from the outcome; particularly whatever benefit clearly might accrue to me from doing the right thing.

This is the heart of it, I think.  Client service is doing good for the client.  Period.  We are not surprised when we get credit for doing it.  But expecting good from doing it is Station 1 on the slippery slope; the End-Station is doing client service  in order to get credit for doing it.

That way lies client servility.

Most clients don’t want servants at their beck and call—they want equal partners at the table who can make a plan and stick to it; who have enough respect for themselves and their own firm that they will, on occasion, push back; who take the partnership seriously enough that they will keep their own team healthy enough to deliver in the long run, rather than burn it out in a never-ending series of  faux client crises. 

And if you really think you have one of those rare clients who wants servants—then put your money where your mouth is.  Give that client to a competitor.