We Have to Be Truly Empathetic Trusted Advisors

Today, many people are working and living in the same space. And many of us are still trying to adapt to a cloud-first, remote work world, with which many people aren’t yet fully comfortable. It’s a time for empathy with our teams, our clients and our loved ones.?

At TD SYNNEX , we place a great deal of emphasis on servant leadership. We know that the best way to guide future leaders is to put their professional development and their needs first, to reciprocate candor and vulnerability, and in many cases, to make our needs second to theirs. This theory is central to our stance on professional development – namely that it’s inseparable from personal development, and dependent on encouraging learning in our up-and-coming talent.?

Integrity, accountability, collaboration, inclusion and excellence are values championed by the highest levels of leadership in our organization. They help us to better craft a leadership culture of support, empathy, teamwork, and innovation, and to make those values a core part of our organization.??

I think that the servant leadership theories are extremely productive internally, but I’d also argue that many of them translate into how we should approach our customer relationships, too. Here’s how.?

Be customer-focused. It’s all about empathy. You can’t anticipate customer needs if you can’t put yourself in their shoes. Partners’ ultimate goal shouldn’t be to sell or upsell customers, but to provide them with a guiding light and a path to success. If you can understand where your customers are coming from and what’s keeping them up at night, you’re able to better communicate your recommendations and prove value. This leads to a closer relationship with your clients, who have come to depend on you as a true trusted advisor.?

Be strategic, not tactical. Tacticians execute solutions in an ad hoc manner, so they oftentimes lack the big picture. By assuming a more consultative role in the customer relationship, partners can see additional ways to plug in to help clients reach their business goals. Speak confidently about your areas of expertise. After all, that’s why clients hire you! Just like anything else in the modern age, back your recommendations up with data and performance metrics in order to provide insights that not only solve your customers’ problems, but help them sleep better at night.?

Drive towards concrete results. Set out goals in business reviews and regular check-ins, then consistently measure yourself and your client against them. Outline your customer’s strategic business imperatives, even those that don’t directly touch technology. You never know where you can find additional ways to plug in, make yourself valuable, and solve some pain points for your customer. Continually make sure that you and your client are aligned on their goals and the mutual objectives you’ve set for yourselves. Be a voice of positivity in the relationship, and motivate customers to drive toward the goals they’ve laid out by working hand-in-hand with each other.?

Keep an eye on the future state. It’s important that you take the insights you’ve garnered to continually drive improvement for your client. It’s critical to never to dump an issue in your customer’s lap without a solution in mind. Technology is complex and oftentimes difficult for those outside of the industry to fully understand. While you live and breathe tech, it’s entirely possible your customer doesn’t know what the cloud actually is. It’s your responsibility to break down the complexity of technology and be a leader for your clients, taking them into a place that’s better than the one you found them in.?

Servant leadership is extremely effective as an internal, team-building tool, as study after study has shown. The tenets of servant leadership are invaluable in terms of mentoring and developing future leaders. But they can also be powerful guideposts in your customer relationships. If you truly put the customer first in actions, then you’ll embody the role of the trusted advisor, making yourself invaluable to your clients and ensuring a healthy, lucrative relationship.?

Let’s be deliberate about the values we’re instilling in our leaders. How do you create a culture of service within your teams??