How Your "Subject Matter Experts" Can Demonstrate Sustainable Trust-Based Relationships with all Your Clients and Customers

By:

Mark Hordes,

Mark Hordes Management Consultants, LLC

Houston, TX 77006

Sometimes “Hard Lessons” are The Best Teacher

April 5th, six years ago is a day I will long remember. After spending close 4 weeks responding to a request for an improvement consulting engagement, I received a phone call from the client informing me that they had awarded the work to another firm.

It’s funny when people have to deliver bad news how short their conversations are. “But wait I responded before she hung up, can you give me some feedback as to why I didn’t win the work?” Sure, she said. “You all had the best services model, the most experience in our industry, best economic model, highly experienced talent, but you know we just liked that other group better!”

What on earth do you mean I responded, how could that be the deciding factor given everything else you mentioned?” “We just seem to like them more, they bonded better with our team, had better chemistry with us and we felt they put our best interest first and we trusted them more!”

So at the end of the day, I learned a very important lesson about working with clients, It’s all about building trust and creating relationships  and acting like a trusted advisor that really makes a difference.

For any company staffed with technical subject matter specialists, consultants, recruiters, technology experts, finance and accounting personnel, engineers or field employees, how can you make the transition from being a subject matter specialist to trusted advisor in all your interactions with cl

                 Six Skills are Required:

# 1. You Have to Think Strategically

A trusted advisor understands the forces that your client is faced with, and has information about competition and the critical business issues that are on their minds. They also have in their back pocket several best practices, and they can describe lessons learned from similar engagements.

Every client has an interest in best practices since few have the time and energy to capture this kind of information even after their own successful project work.

Provide best practices and lessons learned, and how these two factors can be applied in their organization. Want to see a client’s eyes light up? Ask if it’s okay to share a few best practices. This will help establish your credibility an important factor in establishing a trusting relationship.

#2. You Have to Understand the Fundamentals of Change Management and How to Manage it.

         Frequently, a technical specialist has the perfect solution to a client’s problem but cannot gather the internal support to implement it. Why is that?

Issues such as resistance, change history, lack of good communications about the change, and sponsorship, as well as not talking to the client about how people in the company will be impacted by the change, can derail the entire solution set.

In order for specialists to build trust into their client relationships, knowledge about how people and organizations change is an essential ingredient.

Clients like to know that you are smart enough to have thought about these issues even if they haven’t. Hey, they are people too! Being knowledgeable about change management fundamentals, principles and processes will help foster the belief that you can be of great help in managing the change, not in having the change manage the client and their organization.

#3. You Need People Expertise Coupled with Good Communications Skills

    Regardless of how great your technical skills, if you lack solid people skills, your flame can only burn so long.

       Clients respect a specialist’s core competencies. That’s one of reasons they want to hire you. But possessing just core skills is only half the battle. You also need to be able to communicate business concepts in a manner that is user friendly and doesn’t make the client feel like you are talking at them.

In order to make that successful transition, your specialists need skills in how to present clear and useful information. How to manage group dynamics as well as how to utilize creative graphics, analogies, and stories to get their points across.

 I recently attended a feedback session related to a “voice of the customer” assignment with a client and the presenter showed slide after slide of statistical data that even a Harvard graduate couldn’t comprehend. At the end of the presentation, my client asked the question, which by the way was never fully answered, “So what’s the point in all this?”

Great information poorly presented and understood. Net result, a loss of trust and credibility on the part of the technical expert.

#4. You Have to Project a People Presence

         It’s really not that difficult for a technical specialist to learn some basic people fundamentals. I know, your thinking, “Why would I want to bother with teaching them things like how to read non-verbal behavior, use open probes, reflective listening, and in engage in a mutual dialogue versus a lecture as to what is needed.

The answer is because a client likes to feel that they are dealing with a person first who also understands them as people, not just a client.  At the end of the day they have to make decisions that affect the top and bottom line, so your understanding of their people issues enhances communications and adds to the trust formula.

Wouldn’t it be great if your subject matter experts could be more than dangerous on these people fundamentals? I’m not suggesting that everyone go back to school, but a technical specialist that understands the client’s organization from a people perspective first will be a more confident communicative and better specialist with strong communications and presence.

#5. You Need to be Able to Talk About Value

         What is value? There are many answers, but most of them typically fall into two buckets, benefits and costs. Benefits like, lowered costs, improved quality, improved output and improved image always have to be stronger than factors such as costs, time, money and hassle

 Here is an exercise for you to use with your subject matter experts. Ask everyone to articulate what the value proposition is for your current services offerings? What value does it deliver to your client’s and how does it positively impact the client’s business? Ideally everyone will score a 100 because that is what is required to establish trust, too.

Clients want to understand the value that your organization offers to them and how it will affect them. Benefit statements are a necessary part of this equation and like having business and people acumen should be tied into a well defined value proposition. The word value maybe be getting a bit shop worn these days, but we are all still value buyers.

#6. Building Trust Is Based Upon Creating Relationships

         For every specialist trying to transition to being a “trusted advisor”, creating relationships with clients is an essential component. But what is necessary to fulfill this mandate?

Below are a list of ideal skills that are needed:

Teaching everyone how to deal with different client personalities and how to flex to their particular style’s in order to build fast rapport.

         - Understanding verbal and non-verbal behavior

         - Learning how to ask open-ended questions and probes.

         - Being confident with interviewing techniques.

         - Learning how to be an active listener.

         - Knowing how to negotiate.

         - Being familiar with how to manage conflict.

         - Feeling comfortable managing group and team dynamics.

 Capabilities in the “nuts and bolts” of how to foster client development.

         - Facilitation acumen.

         - Knowledge in how best to display data in an interesting manner.

         - Capabilities in managing client expectations.

         All of these skills are important, and when coupled with the other five areas discussed above, create a winning trusting combination with clients.

Conclusion

         What would happen if your clients trusted you more? All kinds of great things, like allowing you into enter into their world, asking for your advice, sharing what things will occur before they actually do, seeking you out to help other parts of their organization without the constant focus on just price, and treating you like a partner who has terrific ideas which are acceptable and highly valued throughout their organization.

         Bottom-line, creating a trust based relationship with all your clients for yis a journey worth pursuing. The skills learned in this process will always sustain the test of time. Remember, its all about building trust!

About the author

Mark Hordes is an independent consultant serving global businesses and owner of Mark Hordes Management Consultants, LLC, a Houston, Texas change management consulting and trust and relationship building training firm.

Contact Mark @ 713 416 1781, [email protected]

https://www.trustedadvisortraining.com