Im Beratungsgeschäft stößt man häufig auf Fragen wie:
"Wie bekomme ich besseren Zugang zu meinen Kunden?"
"Wie bringe ich meine Kunden dazu, mich anderen in ihrer Organisation vorzustellen?"
"Wie kann ich cross-selling verbessern?"
"Wie kann ich vermeiden, als Spezialist in nur einem bestimmten Gebiet abgestempelt zu werden?
"Was mache ich in den Gebieten, in denen ich kein Experte bin?"
"Wie bekomme ich den Kundenfokus weg vom Preis?"
"Wie kriege ich meine Kunden dazu, fair mit mir umzugehen?"
Die Antwort der Autoren Maister/Green/Galford im Buch "The Trusted Advisor" ist: Du musst das Vertrauen der Kunden verdienen und gewinnen. Das Buch hat zum Ziel, die Eigenschaften und Vorteile einer "Trusted Advisorship" sowie den Weg dahin zu erklären.
Ich bin selbst Berater und habe einiges im Buch wiedergefunden, das ich auch bei erfahrenen Beratern beobachten konnte, insofern hat mir das Buch geholfen, erfolgreiches Vorgehen bewusst zu machen. Erfolgreiche und erfahrene Berater werden vermutlich an vielen Stellen nicken und sagen "so mach ich das häufig schon, hm, nur das hier ist mir neu". Weniger erfahrene Berater erhalten einen Rahmen, der Grundlage für eine erfolgreiche Beraterkarriere werden kann. Aber auch im Vertrieb der Professional Services hat man mittlerweile erkannt, dass Geschäft ohne Vertrauen langfristig unmöglich ist. Insofern empfehle ich das Buch Beratern wie auch Vertrieblern und Managern als Basis für langfristig erfolgreiches Verhalten im Beratergeschäft.
Die Deutsche Bank hatte mal einen sehr passenden Slogan, der für das Consulting-Geschäft mit seinen komplett immateriellen Produkten essenziell ist: "Vertrauen ist der Anfang von allem."
Für eine Übersicht der Inhalte habe ich die wichtigsten (nicht worgetreuen Zitate) in drei Grundthemen "Advisorship and Trust", "Typical problems and advisor's mistakes", "What to do" und "Selling" kategorisiert. Da das Buch für mich sehr viele erhellende Wahrheiten (auch über das Beratungsgeschäft hinaus) enthält, sind es einige mehr geworden.
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About Advisorship and Trust:
"Brand name and reputation may get an institution on anyone's short list, but only a person can keep it there."
"If I am the client, then trusting you requires that I can believe you will do what you say you will do. And, perhaps most critical of all, I will trust you if you exhibit some form of caring, if you provide some evidence that my interests are as important to you as your own interests are."
"Advice giving is almost never an exclusively logical process. Rather, it is an emotional "duet", played between the advice giver and the client. If you can't learn to recognize, deal with, and respond to client emotions, you will never be an effective advisor."
"It is not enough for a professional to be right - An advisor's job is to be helpful."
"Reliability in this largely rational sense is the repeated experience of links between promises and actions."
"Amazing though humans are, we are considerably limited in the number of perspectives we can consider simultaneously. When we are confronted with too much complexity, we often fall into an endless cyvle of frustration until we, or someone else, manages to simplify the problem statement."
"The members of the trusted relationship do not expend energy protecting themselves, and both can be open with information about their lives, their strengths, and their weaknesses. They share information and ideas, feel comfortable with themselves, and have great access to their emotions and inspirations."
"Success comes to those who have chosen not to make success their primary goal. The way to be as rich as Bill Gates is to care more about writing code than about being rich."
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Typical problems and advisor's mistakes:
"It is an essential part of the professional's craft to reveal nuances, problems, barriers, and issues of which the client is unaware. If these are not conveyed with tact and skill, the client could easily believe (however unfairly) that, rather than relieving fears and being helpful, the professional is creating complications."
"What clients frequently want is someone who will take away their worries and absorb all their hassles. They are, above all, looking for someone who will provide reassurance, calm their fears, and inspire confidence.
Yet all too often, they encounter professionals who add to their worries and create extra headaches, forcing them to confront things they would prefer to ignore."
"After all, when I'm the client, I'm the one in charge. If I don't understand what you are saying, then maybe the problem is you, not me. Of course I don't know your field, that's why I hired you! Explain it to me in a language I can understand. Your job is not to assert conclusions, but to help me understand why your recommended course of action makes sense."
"If you've said 'You've got to do X' and the client says 'No I don't', you've nowhere to go.
You could say something like: Let's go through the options together. These are the ones I see. Can you think of anything else we should consider? Now let's go through the pro's and con's of each course of action. Based on those pros and cons, action X seems the most likely to work, doesn't it? Or can you think of a better solution?"
"As a quick rule of thumb, it is usually better to turn assertions into questions. Instead of saying
'This is the best solution', try 'My other clients usually do X for the following reasons. Do you think that reasoning applies here?"
"Trying to prove a client how mich you have done for him or her, especially when true, is as likely to breed a negative reaction as a positive one."
"When someone says 'I think this', the appropriate response is not, 'Well, I think that'. Instead, you need to find out why they think what they do."
"Ironically, the professions attract people who are prone to fears of embarrassment, failure, appearing ignorant or incompetent, or fear of loss of reputation or security. Being overachivers cursed with an ability to envision a great numbers of ways to fall short, it makes sense that our worst nightmares tend to center on these fears."
"Some of us never make it through the transition from technician to full professional. Then, the fears which drove us to excellence in the first place reemerge."
"When we are buying something, we have very little difficulty in detecting whether or not someone has our interests at heart. We want people who care about us enough to go on the journey with us.
You do yourself no good by continuing to serve clients who can see you are not fully engaged. The damage to your reputation will outlast any cash penalty you pay while searching for a client you can enthusiastically serve. Reputation before revenue!"
"Can you get by only on technical excellence? Yes, you can, barely, if you're world-famous. The rest of us cannot."
"Clients say: Too many advisors come in just asking me what my problems are and wanting to listen. They bring nothing of value to the meeting.
Clients don't open up just because we listen, they have to think we're woth talking on this issue."
"You could say: We have some unique insights into your industry and we'd like to come and share them with you, for free. We don't pretend to know your business as well as you do, but we think we've got some information and views that are a little different. May we come and discuss with you?"
"Make sure that you have at least two or three things that you'd like to talk about with them. Anybody who doesn't do internet and literature research is missing an important step. If you can't add value, postpone the meeting until you can."
"An agenda is a prestatement and should never be presented without discussion. If we pretend we own the agenda, we effectively create a 'me versus you' dynamic."
"Blame is a defense mechanism protecting the ego of the one doing the blaming. As such, it is just another form of self-orientation."
"Clients espouse the belief that content is king. They will characterize their consultants as content experts. When they compliment you, it's likely to be about your technical mastery. This misleads to instinctively jump ahead in the trust-development process to what looks like content."
"Consider the typical clientm who is sometimes intimidated by the technical expertise of the advisor, which by definition far exceeds his own. A common feeling (however unconscious) is one if 'you expert, me dummy'. This sends psychological echoes many levels deep. Those echoes may include resentment, awe, jealousy, identification, competition, desire to be liked and so on."
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What to do:
"The ability to shift comfortably between levels of personal relationship is important."
"So part of the role is putting your own credibility at stake on behalf of the client, despite the fact that he is inevitably flawed. You support their strengths and help compensate for their weaknesses."
"Building trust has to do with keeping one's interests in check, it can be won and lost rapidly."
"The ability to trust someone else is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for being trustworthy."
"The most effective way to influence a client is to help the person feel that the solution was his or her idea and decision. Help the client understand all the available options by conducting a thorough exploration of advantages, disadvantages, risks and costs. Then let them choose for themselves."
"But remember: If the client says 'Cut the crap and tell me what you think', you should do so."
"Like the overager spouse, you must learn to hold back the temptation to say, early on, ' I know how to solve your problem, you need to do the folowing...' You may be right, but your advice will probably not be accepted."
"You'll have more fun and success by focusing on helping other people achieve their goals than you will by focusing on your own goals. To get what you want from someone, you must first focus on giving them what they want!"
"Learning to focus on the other isn't an instantaneous decision: It's a lifelong learning experience. It's about moving from 'I' to 'We'."
"It is often easier to change one's action's (adopt caring behaviours) as a way to achieve caring than it is to change one's mental state. Fake it till you make it."
"The trick of earning trust is to avoid all tricks."
"A good rule to remember is that, in relationships, there are no win-lose or lose-win combinations: There are only win-wins and lose-loses."
"Don't give answers until the right is earned to to so (and the client will let you know when you have earned it)."
"Focus on defining the problem, not guessing the solution."
"Talk to your client as if he or she is a friend. Our conversational tone and tenor has to be one of friendship."
"The development of trust takes place in five stages: Engage, Listen, Frame, Envision, Commit."
"Introduce the topics in an order that relates to the amount of time available with the client. If you have got only five minutes in the hall, start with the urgent and end with the important. If you have somewhat more time, start with the important."
"Good listening respects the speaker by respecting the sequence of the story he or she chooses to tell us."
"Always tell the exact truth about what you can and can't do, and when you can and can't deliver. Sometimes in an effort to get the work, we say yes to work that can only be completed (if at all) with great personal pain. It's not worth it. Repeat: It's not worth it."
"Show your enthusiasm. It's a great client, it's work you like, it's work you wanted, they asked you to do it. What could be better?"
"Ask the questions that are troubling you earlier rather than later, it'll help the client see you're focusing on the tough issues right from the start."
"Clients more readily perceives the value of counseling done with them in their presence (and will pay for it) than they perceive the value of what advisors do back in their office."
"Make sure that there is a complete understanding of what you are supposed to be doing for the client before you walk into a meeting."
"To act professionally, the advisor must at all times have the client's best interests at heart."
"To build trust during engagement, we must clients keep up to date, continue to ask, letting them know the troublesome parts of the assgnment, ask about what else they're up to or worried about."
"Trust comes from respect, and since respect comes from seeing some performance, it becomes imperative that we find means to deliver a small, fast result to evidence our efforts."
"We must always tell the truth and not what the client wants to hear."
"Don't answer a question the first time the client asks it; ask for clarification."
"Say something revealing about yourself, but not manipulatively."
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Selling:
"Trusted relationships are less plagued by pro forma procedures that waste time and drive professionals crazy, such as proposals, presentations, studies, activity reports .."
"While most providers sell on the basis of technical excellence, most buyers buy on the basis of emotion."
"We've heard all variations in the following theme: 'We absolutely must do this, but now there's so much going on that we simply don't have the capacity to tackle this now.' There is not enough time, budget, organizational support and so on."
"Effective counseling can be the most effective means of generating future revenues that exists. What would you rather do? Be someone's counselor or write proposals?"
"The truth is, sales and service, when thought of properly, converge. Serving means helping the client so that he or she is delighted, wants to hire us again, and tell all their friends and business partners about us. What is that if not selling?"
"To be professional, we must point out possibilities. Some call that selling. We call it contributing ideas."
"Good selling requires giving the client a taste of what it feels like to work together. Hence, the best technique is not to sell, but to go to work immediately and commence the service process. Use the allotted three hours as the first three hours of the scheduled project. No client wants to buy air unless they can breathe it first."
"'Account' is a word that we dislike for obvious reasons."
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Buchempfehlung:
The Trusted Advisor von David Maister u. a.
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