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Four ingredients that turn any client interaction into an opportunity for exceeding expected results while simultaneously building trust. For more, click here.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

Whether you are a working for a large consulting company or an IT/Telecoms vendor, chances are you may be wasting one of your best resources to win business- the resources that are the least “threatening” with the most potential to influence; your professional services, consulting or sales engineering team.

Buyers buy from a non-rational (emotional) approach. Most companies (salespeople, consultants, engineers and services) approach it from a rational approach- that is positioning on a technical and/or a needs base basis. There is nothing wrong with this, however it needs to be recognized, because if it only goes to a technical or needs base basis, then chances are opportunities are missed and wasted.

As you build your relationship and the client relationship progresses, it moves from the  technical or needs base basis and  reaches its peak at the next level, the relationship level. Again, there is nothing wrong with this, but rarely does it reach the trusted advisor status, the highest status of all relationships.

Reaching a trusted advisor status opens up more opportunities by easing the lines of business and the relationship highways that need to be built for current and ongoing business.

It is also a BIG differentiator in today’s competitive services world, that everyone wants a part of.

What keeps most companies from meeting the trusted advisor status?

The sales organization’s “processes.”

The pressure of sales organizations tends to drive salespeople to be very “seller” centric, which then tends to drive the buyer away. This gives the professional services team the opportunity to be more customer or buyer centric (focusing on the buyer’s personal needs), as they don’t have the pressure to sell and close.

Most sales organizations treat their clients as “competitors,” often holding information back and not collaborating. They are often afraid to open up and share too much. Buyers value openness and openness build trust. Professional services team don’t typically feel the “heat” of the corporate led competition attitude – this gives them the opportunity be transparent and to collaborate.

Most sales people are not good listeners (and it’s not always their fault). They are focusing too much on the sales process, the outcome of the meeting, the “advance” and their own “seller focused” agenda. Professional services teams have a better opportunity to listen (once they get over their rational, technical product approach) and the power of listening builds relationships.

Most salespeople are short term focused- whatever it takes to close the deal to meet monthly or quarterly objectives. Buyers sense this and know it- and don’t necessarily like it. Professional services teams can capitalise by looking medium to long term- to build the relationship, to keep the client long term.

(I am not blaming the sales people for their faults- it is typically the system that drives their behaviours. The system, or sales process is typically a “one size fits all” process. A process is OK, it just needs to be flexible)

All of these models build trust. And trust transforms relationships, which transforms business.

The Personal and Risk Aspect

Trust and relationships are personal. Professional services teams appear to be less threatening in the eyes of the client, and therefore have great potential to become more personal, to build trust and relationships, and therefore influence, without changing the professional services teams status quo and making them feel “uncomfortable.” After all most professional services people are not salespeople and many don’t want to be.

The risk in buying professional services is also very high. Why?

The product is partially intangible and partially comprised of people knowledge and skills

The overall stakes are high

The range of outcomes can be wide and unclear

The seller typically has command of technical expertise that the buyer does not (which makes it somewhat threatening to the client)

There is financial and business risk–but there is great emotional and political risk as well. In a trusting relationship, risk is mitigated because the “transactions” become personal.

Is it time to look at your business, transform it and fill your pipeline by releasing your hidden weapon of influence- your professional services team? Give it a think. A big think.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

….and Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time”

Ok so this book is about 5 years old. Maybe I am a bit slow getting to it. Doesn’t matter. After about a half dozen people recommended it, I bought it “used” on Amazon.

It is the best book on meaningful connecting and networking I have yet to encounter. There are no voodoo tactics. It is all real. OK, so Keith is smart- he is extraordinary. Doesn’t matter, he is real.

Read it early in your career. Read it when you near the middle or end of your career. Read it. Please.

The following quotes sum the book up better than I can. Why reinvent the wheel?

Ferrazzi grew up in rural Pennsylvania, the son of a steelworker and a cleaning lady, yet his ability to connect with others led to a scholarship at Yale, a Harvard MBA, and a prestigious partnership at Deloitte Consulting. His skills at creating and maintaining a network of contacts are nothing short of those of a serious presidential contender. All business hopefuls seek to enter a sphere of players more powerful than themselves, and Ferrazzi says that sometimes all it takes is asking. The book is dense with suggestions. Seek out mentors to guide you and introduce you to the people you need to know and then become a mentor yourself. Use your initial conversation to show the other person what you have to offer them, and never keep score. Make others feel important by remembering their names and birthdays. And don’t be afraid to open up and show vulnerability–it’s a great icebreaker. Ferrazzi presents a whirlwind of ideas to widen your circle of contacts that goes way beyond the usual stale concepts of “networking.” David Siegfried
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

The youngest partner in Deloitte Consulting’s history and founder of the consulting company Ferrazzi Greenlight, the author quickly aims in this useful volume to distinguish his networking techniques from generic handshakes and business cards tossed like confetti. At conferences, Ferrazzi practices what he calls the “deep bump” – a “fast and meaningful” slice of intimacy that reveals his uniqueness to interlocutors and quickly forges the kind of emotional connection through which trust, and lots of business, can soon follow. That bump distinguishes this book from so many others that stress networking; writing with Fortune Small Business editor Raz, Ferrazzi creates a real relationship with readers. Ferrazzi may overstate his case somewhat when he says, “People who instinctively establish a strong network of relationships have always created great businesses,” but his clear and well-articulated steps for getting access, getting close and staying close make for a substantial leg up. Each of 31 short chapters highlights a specific technique or concept, from “Warming the Cold Call” and “Managing the Gatekeeper” to following up, making small talk, “pinging” (or sending “quick, casual” greetings) and defining oneself to the point where one’s missives become “the e-mail you always read because of who it’s from.” In addition to variations on the theme of hard work, Ferrazzi offers counterintuitive perspectives that ring true: “vulnerability… is one of the most underappreciated assets in business today”; “too many people confuse secrecy with importance.” No one will confuse this book with its competitors.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore (go get ‘em, tiger! 虎 )

The following is an article from the Singapore Business Times, January 13, 2010, written by the Managing Director and Head of Private Banking Southeast Asia and Australasia for Credit Suisse, Dr. Francois Monnett.

He gets it, but do they really “walk the talk?”

Retaining clients, rebuilding trust

The sustainability of the private banking business model comes under scrutiny in the wake of the massive industry shake-up. In the aftermath of the massive industry shake-up which has taken place over the last 18 months, we are confronted with a very different operating landscape in private banking. Together with a significant loss of trust and confidence in the markets and industry, clients are also expecting higher standards of service and advice, as well as greater transparency and disclosure over products and services. There is also a shift towards safer, simpler and more liquid investment solutions.

One major implication is the critical question of the sustainability of the private banking business model. During the boom period, many institutions built their private banking model primarily based on the assumption of continued growth and perhaps a certain belief in its immunity to economic cyclicality. The infrastructure that many private banks have put in place to deliver value to clients and the fact that much growth has been built through expensive acquisition of bankers have also resulted in a costly model.

Revenue generation in private banking, particularly in the Asia-Pacific, has been very much volume-driven with a heavy reliance on a sales culture. With slowing revenue generation and increasing cost-income ratios in the past 18 months, the sustainability of this business model has been seriously tested. Much of the pressure is also coming from outside, namely from regulators and clients, that will propel the industry towards more radical and dramatic changes to the business model.

In the rapidly changing regulatory environment, investment suitability is here to stay and investor protection will become an even more important dimension in this business. There is also a lot of discussion on offshore banking, capital requirement and bankers’ compensation.

But the most important driver for change is the disillusioned clients. There has been a significant loss of investors’ trust and confidence in the markets, in regulators, in the financial institutions as well as their advisers. We have also observed among clients a flight to safety and quality, a shift from risk aversion to loss aversion, and a back-to-basic type of appeal for more direct and liquid investment vehicles.

Very importantly, there is a much greater need for transparency and disclosure. This is not just about the products, but also the service levels that clients pay for, fee structures, performance of their investments, as well as transparency regarding business partners and counterparty risk.

Client segmentation

For private banks to reclaim and reaffirm their critical status as trusted advisers, we need to enhance our value proposition on a few levels. First and foremost, we need to focus on client segmentation and differentiation to significantly lift service levels.

To put the client at the centre of a segmentation strategy is the only way to avoid the ‘one size fits all’ approach, which doesn’t work to lift service levels. This requires a disciplined, systematic and structured approach to defining client segmentation that goes well beyond assets under management. It has to consider the source of the client’s wealth – is it inherited or built? It has to consider the investor’s behaviour – is he or she a delegator, a participator or self-directed?

We also need to understand better the investor’s knowledge, experience, sophistication as well as domicile. Once these dimensions are clearly mapped out, the resulting value proposition has to deliver a tiered service offering in a disciplined and consistent way that will define different access to product specialist or management as well as the depth and breadth of the service offering.

Eventually, we will be measured as well in terms of the level of transparency and interaction we achieve with our clients. Risk management has to be an integral part of the advisory process and an investment suitability framework is the ultimate transparent guide to portfolio construction.

This involves the profiling of clients – the detailed and structured assessment of their knowledge and experience vis-Ã -vis the complexity of the portfolio solution, and their risk and loss tolerance. This profile is used to build a portfolio which is simulated in terms of asset allocation and is fully disclosed to the client.

Consistent client experience

The private banking business is all about execution. We need to deliver on the promise of being a trusted adviser in a consistent way. A major pre-requisite for a consistent client experience lies in the bank’s IT-based processes. From the relationship manager (RM) accessing an open architecture platform with thousands of solutions for the client, implementing a common advisory process, to utilising portfolio construction tools that build asset allocation against the client’s profile and analyses of risk scenarios – this level of consistency can only be achieved through a control process.

The re-engineering of processes is critical not so much for productivity gains, but has enormous impact on how much time the RM is able to spend with clients and the quality of the client experience. A recent study shows that RMs spend as much of their time marketing services to new clients as solving and dealing with administrative matters. If we are not able to free RMs from the loss in valuable client-interacting time, we will not live up to the promise of being a trusted adviser.

From a client perspective, there is also a constant request for better, more consolidated and comprehensive client reporting. They also want more direct access to almost real time data through client portals.

As private banking continues to grow in the Asia-Pacific, automation, IT systems and the re-engineering of processes will increasingly become the backbone of the business. How good a bank’s infrastructure is will be the cornerstone in delivering quality client experience. It will optimise relationship management time with clients and ensure a culture of consistency throughout the firm.

Re-skilling of RMs

If we want to differentiate ourselves in terms of providing an advice-centric operating model to clients, we will also have to consider the extent to which we need to re-skill our RMs. The permanent education of RMs is of paramount importance. Particularly in Asia-Pacific where the industry is still young and fast-growing, there is an immediate need to make sure that the culture of a firm is being consistently instilled into the new joiners that all bankers interact with their clients through a consistent and structured advisory process.

Eventually, as front organisations continue to expand, we also need to enable RMs to grow in their roles over time, from a junior level adviser, to an expert RM or a manager and leader. This requires a long-term, modular and state-of-the-art training curriculum and development model that captures the career cycle of each RM. It is also important to align reward systems with the clients’ satisfaction. When we measure performance, we need to focus not only on ‘What financial performance did you achieve?’ but also the ‘How did you achieve it?’ metric. This softer side of performance measurement has to be benchmarked against the values of the bank and how it wants its RMs to run the business, and against the client’s satisfaction. This will involve tracking the degree of adherence to the sales and advisory process, risk management tools and control standards, as well as client satisfaction surveys.

This greater alignment is a condition for regaining and earning more trust with our clients in the new landscape, acknowledging the new landscape, refining and sharpening the value position and eventually delivering on a bank’s brand promise.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

It’s not about you.
It’s all about them.
Your clients, that is.

Building personal relationships (which enhance your business relaionships) requires a dialogue, and a dialogue requires great questions.

The dialogue then needs to be  focused on the client, not you.

Great relationship building questions are better when they are not formulated for an immediate business result. You don’t need to “close” all the time with questions. You do  need to be honest, open, straightforward and trustworthy in your approach.

Many people have formulated numerous questions to create dialogues; here are the ones that have worked best for me.

Examples of Questions

How are you measured and what are your KPIs?

Tell me something about you and what you have done in business or your personal life that will surprise me.

What book(s) are you currently reading?

What do you do outside of work? What are your hobbies and interests?

How did you come about getting to your current role?

What frustrates you the most in your business today?

Tell me something about your company that I probably don’t already know (assuming you have already your research on the Internet)

There are many more questions that you can formulate on your own- work with whatever you are comfortable with.

Tip 1: Ask questions in areas where you may have similarities with your prospect/client (such as the area you grew up in or schools you attended) to build a common ground-this  is a lot more powerful.

Tip 2: It never hurts to preface a question with ‘Do you mind if I ask you…?” This gives you permission to ask and makes the prospect/client more comfortable.

The timing needs to be perfect on your questions to ensure sensitivity. You may not want to ask some of these questions on your first meeting- do it when you are comfortable. Keep in mind that you are trying to connect emotionally- so many business questions are based on logic, and so many business decisions are based on emotion.

Why are these great questions? They are not too personal and not overly business like. They bridge the gap between the two and can open up further conversations and build a stronger relationship.

Where to use these questions? You can use them to start off the conversation when you first meet and greet, or on the second or third meeting - whatever you are most comfortable with.

I also recommend you use them to set the tone for a lead into something like, or similar to, Trusted Advisor Associates’ ELFEC or whatever your sales process (Huthwaite SPIN, Value Selling, etc) suggests. They set a good tone.

Great questions, when done sensitively and when focused on the client, work wonders.

If you have any you want to share that you have been successful with, please do so by commenting.

 Trip Allen (Happy New Year!), Team Egyii, Singapore

What am I talking about here? Coffee? A hospital?

You may need both to help build stronger business relationships…but that is not what I am referring to.

The “Drip Method” is all about feeding the client bits and pieces of valuable information to “hook” them into a long term relationship.

How is this done?

To start, you need to always be:

Understanding the client’s business

Anticipating his needs

Listening to him to understand his needs/priorities

Keeping a record of those needs/priorities so you can constantly refer to them

What is next?

You use the vast world of the internet, your creative mind and your network. You then gather the pertinent information, put it all together and send “value packages” to your prospects and clients.

With the value packages of client pertinent information, you feed your prospects and clients, on ocassion, through emails or face to face, pertinent articles (preferably ones that you write in your own blogs) and verbal tid-bits of information. Make sure that every message is personalised and timely. Make sure it is unobtrusive.

What does this do? It keeps you in front of the client with their agenda, not yours. It builds a value add relationship. Simple as that.

Keep in mind that this requires a lot of thinking and research… and it takes time, but it will bring results.

By the way, I drink my coffee expresso style…

Cheers.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

 (A true story)

Successful.

Uneducated.

Wealthy.

Four priority bank accounts.

Four banks.

Four different Relationship Managers.

There is a fifth bank that also wants his business.

The fifth bank will get his business- if they do it right.

Why and how?

This particular “prospect” is an acquainance of one of the bank executives. The prospect is open with the executive, shares his personal life, discusses business matters and financial matters, socializes regularly with him, talks sports and even shares aspects of  his social life. He respects the bank executive for his knowledge and there appears to be no threat. He is comfortable with the relationship. They are friends. 

Interestingly enough, the bank executive is not a relationship manager- he is not in sales.

How does the bank executive do what is best for the bank, and “convert” this into a sale? That is the dilemma.

Clearly the “prospect” is an unsettled man. He has new-found wealth and is somewhat leery of the people around him. This is probably why he spreads his wealth between four banks and four relationship managers.

How many times have you come across this or a similar situation to this?  A situation where there is a bond or relationship between a client or prospect and a non-sales related executive? From my experience in my days of technology sales, quite often the relationship was between the client and the sales engineer. Is that because there was no “threat” from the sales engineer? Was he providing more value? Was he not chasing the sales for the close?  Most probably.

So why is this happening and why does it happen? And how do we turn the banking scenario around and turn it into a “sale?” I will let you figure that out on your own.

For related articles (and for a clue to why this may happen) see:

Two Simple Keys to Success in Sales

Want to Add Value in Your Sales “Process?” Try Adding Trust

The Agile Mind of a Salesperson: Motivation

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

No longer can global or major accounts programmes rely on decisions being made in mother countries. Decisions now need to be made on a local, Asia Pacific level, whether it is in Sydney, Singapore, Hong Kong, Mumbai, Shanghai or Tokyo.

And no longer can account teams rely on relationships alone. They must also add value.

Adding value means understanding what is on the mind of the client and giving them the tools to meet their personal and business goals. It’s not all about bits and bytes, bandwidth or speed or bells and whistles. To meet the goals, it’s all about understanding their problems and where they are in the decision making cycle…and being sensitive to that.

Neil Rackham, of Huthwaite and SPIN, was not a salesperson, but a behavioural psychologist. He studied how buyers bought and did not focus on how sellers should sell. He built a simple yet powerful tool to understand the buying cycle, or decision making process. He added sensitivity to the buying cycle.

In the buying cycle, there are multiple stages..changes over time, recognition of needs, evaluation of options, resolution of concerns, decision, implementation. No matter where you enter the buying cycle, you need to work (by continually adding value) with your client until he enters the “recognition of needs” area. This is the crucial time to be side by side, collaborating with your client to build the solution. (Rackham  also recognises that all of this takes time, so focus on medium-long term, not short term).

Once you are at the recognition of needs phase, you should understand how the client makes the decision.

What motivates him to buy?

The client (or buyer) typically has four levels of questions when it comes to the question of motivation when buying:

1) The product and its characteristics/features

2) A solution to the problem

3) A good business partner

4) Someone we can trust

Buyers state that they want want the first or second and ocassionally the third. Most sales programmes/processes focus on levels two and three- focusing on identifying the buyers’ needs through consultative selling.

Levels one through three are rational and impersonal. The fourth level, a person we can trust, is far more powerful.

If you understand the buying cycle and ultimately what motivates your client when buying, you are one step ahead of your competitors.

There is a lot more to it than that for global/major accounts selling but understanding the crucial aspects of buying are vital.

*Derived from Trust-based Selling by Charles H. Green.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

(The author ran the Anixter Asia Pacific Global Accounts programme in the earlier part of this century. There are certainly a few things he did well but there are a lot of things he could have done better. He wishes he had known all of this then.)

Products aren’t the only things that need marketing. People do too. How do you build your presence for your clients- to market yourself and your company?

In a world where millions, if not billions, of people converge on a digital platform, communicate via mobile phones and meet face to face, to really establish a presence, a salesperson should create his own personal brand.

Twitter. Facebook. Linked In. Blogs. All free ways to create your extended presence.

Your extended presence  is a great way to add value to your current relationship. Post and share your content and others’. Build upon subject matter that is relevant to your clients’ needs. Base it on the last conversation you had with your client.

A few helpful hints…peruse the following; Dan Schawbel’s articles as he is the personal branding expert who pens Personal Branding Magazine and, of course,  the business guru Tom Peters, whose  article The Brand Called You was originally written in 1997.

After all, the client’s relationship and loyalty is with the salesperson, not with the company.

Heat up the branding iron.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore

“Effective networking is about building relationships with others who can refer you once they’ve come to trust you, have confidence in you and feel loyal to you. This truly is the key to networking success. And this process takes time.”  Duct Tape Marketing, “The Keys to a Referral Relationship.”

What is the easiest way to get new business? Referrals.

Is it easy to get referrals? No and yes.

The Dilemma

Most salespeople and managers agree that referrals are the best way to get leads for new business. There are methods for getting referrals, however it sill remains “difficult” for a salesperson to get them.

So how do we “speed up” the process and make it simple?

Build the Relationship

As for “speeding up” the process, there are no methodologies that can really get you to where you need to be to ask for referrals quickly. Too often salespeople jump on the opportunity too early, at the wrong time. It takes time. So be patient.

Where to start? Make steps to build the relationship and add commercial and personal value. The best way to build a relationship and add value is by establishing  trust. In order to build trust for refferals, you should understand the components of trustworthiness. 

The Components of Trustworthiness

The components of trustworthiness, in the world of the The Trusted Advisor, reside in the Trust Quotient.

The Trust Quotient consists of the Trust Equation=

C=Credibility

R=Reliability

I=Intimacy

S=Self-orientation

C=Credibility has to do with the words we speak. In a sentence, we might say, “I can trust what she says about intellectual property; she is very credible on the subject.*

By contrast, reliability has to do with actions. We might say, for example, “If he says he’ll deliver the product tomorrow, I trust him, because he’s dependable.” *

Intimacy refers to the safety or security that we feel when entrusting someone with something. We might say, “I can trust her with that information; she’s never violated my confidentiality before, and she would never embarrass me.” *

Self-orientation refers to the focus of the person in question. In particular, whether the person’s focus is primarily on himself or herself or on the other person. We might say, “I can’t trust him on this deal—I don’t think he cares enough about me, he’s focused on what he gets out of the deal.” Or—more commonly—“I don’t trust him—I think he was too concerned about how he was appearing, so he wasn’t really paying attention.”

Keep in mind that Credibility and Reliability are the easiest aspects of the Trust Equation. Intimacy and Self Orientation are by far more difficult to attain.

(*for more information, see Trust in Business: The Core Concepts from Charles H. Green, Trusted Advisor Associates)

Simply Ask for Referrals

So, once you establish the relationship, you can simply ask for referrals. The biggest problem is, salespeople just don’t bother approaching clients for referrals. How many times do salespeople actually ask for a referral? rarely. Ray Silverstein suggests a few simple but great pointers in his article, Get More Referrals by Asking.

So, build the relationship and ask. It may take some time but it sure is simple.

Trip Allen, Team Egyii, Singapore