We bring you this edit article by David Maister, a well known author, lecturer and consultant on business development:
Most young professionals realize early in their careers that, at some point, skill in generating business will be an important determinant of their success. However, many believe that, in the early stages of their career, they do not have much opportunity to develop these skills.
This could not be further from the truth. The way most clients choose among professionals is identical to the way people choose their friends. At the point of selecting a professional to work with, clients go with providers who can:
(a) Make them feel at ease(b) Make them feel comfortable sharing their fears and concerns
(c) Can be trusted to look after them as well as their transaction and
(d) Are dependably on their side.
If you have an active social circle and people like being with you in your personal life, the odds are that you will have a significant advantage in learning the skills and habits of business development. If, on the other hand, you’re a social recluse personally, you will find it more difficult to get clients to see you as the trusted advisor they wish to work with.
Two key points must be stressed. First, none of this means that you can be anything less than excellent technically. The issue is not whether you are competent or trustworthy, but whether or not you are both. Second, it is not necessary (or even always advisable) to actually make your clients your best friends. Friendship skills, while useful in both personal and professional life, can be put to different purposes. But first you have to develop them.
Making friends
I had to learn these lessons the hard way. For years, I have worked for clients who have been gracious enough to invite me to dinner the evening before or after my work with them. They weren't trying to get more work out of me; they just wanted to be sociable. However, after a long day's work, the prospect of still being "on duty" has not been attractive to me. It's not that I don't like my clients, but that I prefer to unwind by being alone. I'm not that sociable by nature. (I don't drink, I don't like sports. I like the Bee Gees. You get the idea.).
This is something I now regret. I have missed a lot of opportunities to form relationships with interesting people, and I know it would have helped me a lot professionally to make the gesture occasionally. I know I missed something important due to my social habits.
A talent for friendship
There are people in this world who have a talent for friendship. My (late and very lamented) friend Roger Bennett, with whom I went to Harvard Business School, was so good at friendship that, in his 40s he was still in regular touch with people he went to school with at age 12, with people from all walks of life, tastes, social standing, income levels and preferences.
Roger could talk sports with some people, switch to an intellectual discussion of philosophy with others, share cooking tips with a third group. Lots of people considered Roger their best friend, and few people did not enjoy his company.
Yet he was never anything but himself. He was not a chameleon, acting differently just to blend in. He fit in everywhere because he was interested in a broad range of things.
The actress Angelina Jolie was interviewed on television and asked if she had to like the characters she was portraying in order to act them well. Her answer was brilliant. She said something like: "You can’t love everything about everyone. But there must be something there. The key is to find that one small slice of overlap between you and them, and focus intensely on that overlap, ignoring everything else." I don’t know about acting, but that sounds like a perfect recipe for human relationships to me.
Notice, it’s not about pretending. It’s about actually working hard to find the area of mutual interest or common ground, whatever that might be. People can get very lazy at this, or unpracticed in doing it with politeness and sincerity.
Ask questions
For example, if I am in the wrong mood, I can find table talk at a dinner party to be an effort. I say to the person my left "And what are your hobbies?" "Oh," he or she might reply, "I love mountain climbing."
At this point I have to fight an overwhelming desire to turn immediately the person on my right side to save me from having to ask a follow up question with the first person. Mountain climbing! Ye gods, this is going to be a long night!
Other people can and do immediately think of three or four follow-up questions ("Where do you go? Do you climb alone? What got you started in this?") and can keep posing additional questions all evening long.
By the end of dinner, their table companion, who has done nothing but talk about himself or herself the whole time has come to think of the questioner as an enjoyable person to be around. He or she will look forward to meeting again.
Put the person at ease
So it is with business development and client relations. The most trusted advisors in every profession are not those who have a ready answer for every client problem, but those who can, through questions and conversational style, put the other person at ease, make them want to tell you about themselves and engage in a dialogue.
And just as in personal life, it is done not by trying to be impressive, but by learning how to show a genuine interest in other people and keep them talking, not primarily doing the talking yourself.
Surprisingly, it also turns out that you are also more likely to build a bond with someone by letting them help you than being too keen to try and help them. You will accomplish more by saying to potential clients "I’m not sure I understand why you are doing things the way you do, could you explain it to me?" than you will by saying "If you’ll just shut up and listen, I’ll tell you the right answer to your problem." As professionals, we sometimes think that, to be impressive, we must demonstrate our competence by never revealing our weaknesses or areas of ignorance. This belief is incorrect. One of the ways you build friendships is to let people help you. Developing the self-control to do it that way is a lifelong learning process!
Start as you mean to begin
When I was young I thought that the way you made friends was by turning yourself into an interesting person. Eventually, I learned the truth: You don’t make people want to spend time with you because they feel good about you. You do it by making them feel good about themselves when they are with you. For example,
It turns out to be the same in business development. The key to getting hired is not convincing the client things about you ("I’m terrific, trust me!") but being convincing that you will look after them. It’s also worth pointing out that, with people, you get points for trying. It's like a romantic relationship. You don't have to be perfect. Your partner just wants to see that you're sincerely trying to do the right thing. Your motives are more important than your abilities.
Friendship attitudes and behaviors
Abilities, however, do count and that’s where getting started early matters. For example, to be seen as considerate you have to be able to remember to follow up with things that people told you about their lives last time you met, thus proving that you listened and paid attention. The classic example of this in business is to send along a newspaper clipping or article that you find that responds to something the other person made reference to.
To achieve the desired effect, this must not come across as, and must not be, a formulaic gesture. You don’t "cheapen the currency" by doing it all the time, and you must ensure that the clipping or article actually is useful so that you are not immediately seen to be making phony gestures.
It also helps to follow up with questions about what you were told last time you met, as long as you are skilled in phrasing your query ("How did it all work out with that guy you met?") so that it comes across as concern and not as overly intrusive. They are not inherent talents, but habits of social intercourse. Habits that can only be developed with practice.
Social courtesy works in personal and business life. It is remarkably powerful to call clients after a business meeting to say something like: "I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the opportunity to work with you. Thanks! See you next time, as planned." Such a call can go a long way to making the other person realize that you do not just see him or her as a "business contact," but as a person with whom you want a friendly relationship. Not everyone will reciprocate, but the majority of people will.
If you do not develop the habit early in life, the act of making such a telephone call after a meeting could feel awkward and you will either leave it out or do it poorly, not quite creating the casual, comfortable "just a quick call between us friends" atmosphere that you wish to create.
For example, my old friend Roger was very good at working at staying in touch with everyone. He didn’t need an excuse to telephone. He would just pick up the phone to ask how everything was going. He did that to all his business clients as well as his friends. To him, there was no difference, and one context was no more difficult or embarrassing than the other. It was just the way he dealt with people.
In almost every society, ancient and modern, the cultural norm is to build friendships over food and drink. There is no more culturally accepted way to develop a friendship than to share a meal. You want to be good at business development later in your career? Start inviting the people that you meet in the course of your work (whether they are powerful client executives, administrative assistants or anyone else) for coffee, lunch, a drink. Ask them about their work lives and their personal lives.
If your reaction is that doing so will not pay off for you immediately and therefore is not worth doing now, then you are missing the whole point about human relationships and you are going to be very bad at getting people to entrust you with their business. If you only do things when it pays off for you in the short term, your attitude will be readily transparent. People will see that you view them "instrumentally," interested in them only to the extent that you can get what you want. And if they detect this in you, they will give you what you want less often. The key to business development success is making people believe that you are truly interested in a two-way relationship, and that you are willing to earn and deserve your relationship. You must first make deposits in the "trusting relationship bank" if you wish to make withdrawals later.
One of the most important habits of friendship is taking the initiative and doing the inviting, not just waiting to be invited. Do you remember that from adolescence? The way you get people to ask you out for a drink is to ask them out for a drink first. If it feels uncomfortable the first time, and an act of tremendous courage, well, it is. We all need to get to the stage that we can talk to someone we’re interested in (a client or a romantic prospect) without being frozen into inaction by our hopes and fears. The guidelines are well known. Keep it casual, keep it small, take it a step at a time, but get out there and start meeting people.
More friendship habits
People good at friendship work hard at developing joint habits and routines, whether it’s as simple as discussing "last night’s game" or going to the same place each time for a cup of coffee.
Good friends go out of their way to celebrate each others’ small triumphs and make it their business to be there in times of need for their friends. They stay alert for any opportunity to help, in ways big or small, without keeping track of who has done how much for whom. That’s exactly what happens in effective business development. Clearly, there is more to say about friendship skills, but my purpose here is not to report everything you have to learn. Goodness knows, I have only learned a little of what I should have. The key lesson is that it is learnable. You don’t have to be a natural to get better at this. And, for goodness sake, start earlier than I did!
You are the BEST BEST BEST BEST
Posted by: Alexandar | November 22, 2007 at 10:50 AM
Dear，how are you today? I wish you a happy day!
Posted by: Air Force Ones | November 08, 2010 at 09:53 PM