Professional firm reputations, branding, facilities, systems, and policies don't create the chemistry with clients: they're just a backdrop to all-important moment-by-moment professional encounters with clients.
Teach and coach your professionals, right from the early career stage in key interpersonal skills on which successful client relationships and business development hinge.
Take the basics like:
It's not safe to assume that your professional team members just know what to do, let alone that they do it consistently.
Because first encounters matter most, separate each component part. Hone and refine introductions, eye contact, body language, facial expression, and the plethora of elements which go to creating the right early impressions. Not everyone "just gets" this stuff. Stiff penalties are imposed on patterns of poor performance in first encounters.
It’s worth the effort to train, mentor, and help partners, senior people, and early career professionals to do better in each of the settings they're likely to encounter.
Expecting people to somehow pick up a comprehensive repertoire of highly effective client interaction behaviours is unlikely to produce ideal outcomes. Because so many professionals, most especially in their early years, focus so intently on technical learning, they frequently skip over the "soft" areas and business skills which have high impact on their ultimate career achievement, bargaining power, and firm success.
Work on professional behaviour 'til it hurts.
For highly effective workshops to help develop your firm's professional behaviour, please get in touch.
|
