Focus, Focus, Focus!

Do you know Drew McLellan? Marketer, editor of the Age of Conversation books*? He’s brilliant, always. But this week he’s sent me way into raving fangirl mode with his blog post called Be Brave Enough Not to Tell the Whole Story.

Drew’s premise? When you get excited and try to tell your customers everything at once, they don’t hear anything. To quote, this “is satisfying to us, but miserable for the audience. Like a firehose — we’ve flooded them with facts, features and benefits. And in the end, they can’t remember any of it.“

Yes, yes, YES. Reading the post, my little heart went pitter pat. Because in professional services, we’re probably more guilty of this faux pas than most other businessmen and women. Our work is intangible. Complex. We want people to believe in the value we provide. We want to look smart – smarter than the other firms who are bidding on the work we want to do.

Unfortunately, this desire to show off our competence often makes us talk too much.

Look around in your firm. Bets are that you know folks who manage client meetings (or collateral, or business development events) like this:

• Telling the prospect every scrap of experience the firm has ever had in their industry.
• Giving exhaustive bios of every professional who will touch the client’s work.
• Providing arcane detail about technical issues so the client will know the firm REALLY knows its stuff.

And then, when the firm does’t get the work, they wonder, “Why, oh why, didn’t we win that proposal?! We had everything they wanted!”

The answer is THESE FOLKS LOST THEIR FOCUS. Toooooo much information. And it killed the story. Suddenly, there’s nothing memorable, nothing that says, “This is why you will love working with us.”

Yes, LOVE. Because purchase decisions are emotional, not intellectual. Even in professional services. Maybe especially in professional services.

Drew’s brilliant expression of this truth: “Too many words clog the brain and never allow you to connect with their heart. And that’s where the buying decision happens.”

So next time you’re talking to a client, or attending a proposal meeting, or writing a piece of collateral, I encourage you to get brutal with yourself. Find out as much as you can about that prospect or group of prospects, and decide what ONE thing they really, truly care about, and focus on that. Make that thing your theme – the single idea you need to convey. And find a way to state it elegantly. I think you’ll be impressed with the results.

Be sure to check out and comment on Drew’s post – and click through from his post to watch the Nissan ad that was the genesis of his idea.  Whether you like the brand or the message or not, I’m pretty sure you’ll agree that it’s darned effective and a good example for how we might rethink messages in our own industry.

And don’t forget to let me know what you thought!

*NOTE: I was a contributing author for The Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time to Get Busy.

Photo by ihtatho (license).

Beat Perfection Paralysis – Take it to the Happy Line

To quote the immortal Hannibal Smith from A-Team, “I love it when a plan comes together.”

All right, I can’t believe I’m quoting the A-Team. But it’s true. Don’t you love it when your projects are spinning along just right? When your writing zen is on and you author the blog post of your life? When the marketing campaign you dreamed up lands ten times its projected leads? When your well-placed phone call makes the difference between keeping and losing the biggest client on your balance sheet?

Of course you do.  I do too.

When you’re aiming at perfection and actually hitting the mark, work is bliss. As the poem says, God’s in his Heaven and all’s right with the world.

But there’s a problem in this land of sunshine and glory, and I’m sure you already know what it is.

People. And circumstances. And you. Yes, you, on the days you have a cold, or didn’t get enough sleep, or had way too many jalapeno poppers at dinner the night before, or whatever other circumstance you can imagine. Stuff you can’t predict will always get in the way, darn it. And things get messed up.

Note, mind you, by “messed up” I don’t mean that your project is a train wreck, or even a moderate failure. By messed up, I mean that it doesn’t match up to what your inner perfectionist says it should be.

I’ve lived in this place. It’s not fun.

For the longest time, when things at work didn’t go exactly the way I thought they should (nevermind what anyone else thought), I would feel like a huge loser, because I knew I could do better. I had a vision of the perfect result I should have achieved, and my evil inner perfectionist would whisper, “What makes you think you know anything?” or, “If you keep this up you’re gonna get fired.” Then, I would react in one of two ways:

1. Overwork it. If the project didn’t feel perfect the first time, I’d keep at it. Rewrite for the thirtieth time. Take it back to design again – and again. Set up another focus group. Hold another group of employee meetings. Better to deliver the best possible job than let go something that’s less than perfect.

2. Avoid it. If I was afraid I couldn’t do a perfect job, then I’d push the project down to the bottom of the to-do list until I had the experience/skills/talent/contacts to do better. Or I’d ignore it until the need for it went away and I didn’t have to worry about it anymore.

Bad, baaad.  The perfection paralysis became a never-ending, vicious cycle, with my self-esteem as the target.  It took a very wise boss to jerk me out of it.

One afternoon a number of years ago, this boss called me into his office and asked to see the status of a marketing campaign I was working on. I told him I wasn’t happy with it, that there was still work to be done, that I wanted to tweak it for a couple more days.

He looked at my work, tossed it on his desk, and said, “Send it.”

“But wait,” I protested, “It’s not ready.”

“Oh yes it is,” he replied. “You’re at the Happy Line. Get it out the door.”

As I was leaving, he called after me, “Quit trying to make everything so perfect. Get to 80% of perfect and 99% of people will be happy with it. And you’ll get a heck of a lot more done. Take it to the Happy Line.“

His advice rocked my world.  And I still live by it today.  Because he’s right.

Sure, there are some professions (tax accounting is one of them) where 100% accuracy is required.  But in marketing and customer service, the truth is that 80% of perfect is always, always better than 100% of unfinished.

By applying the Happy Line principle in my job, I’ve discovered:

1. I get more done – and more quickly – than I ever did before.
2. My creativity opens up and I have fresher ideas.
3. I stop playing it safe and try new things – and those things sometimes turn out to be my most innovative and groundbreaking work.

If you try this, what you do won’t be perfect.  But your work will be finished (on time!) – and maybe even great. Probably even great.

Aim for the Happy Line and see how far it can take you.

At minimum, you won’t be driving yourself crazy anymore.

Photo by • • • annajarske.com (license).

You Are Not a Loser if You Hate to Blog (or Tweet, or Facebook, or…)

Wherever you go these days, there are people talking about how we have to get into social media. Blog now! Start a Facebook page! WHAT? You don’t have a LinkedIn profile??? The mantra, “You have to be ‘out there’ to be successful today” resounds from every corner of the business world.

But if you’ve given it a try, and every time you type a tweet your innards scream “I don’t WANNA!” Or if every time you sit down to write a Facebook status or blog post your guts cramp up, I have a wonderful, liberating piece of news for you.

You don’t have to.

Yes, social media is real and is here to stay. The blog, the Twitter account, the Facebook page – all that stuff will change the way some businesses work. But these things are TOOLS to help you do your business, which is accounting or law or whatever other great service it is that you provide. Contrary to what many, many consultants will tell you, it is permissible to read other people’s blogs and learn from them without having your own. You are not a gutter-trawling loser for limiting Facebook to just your friends and family.

Doing anything – social media or otherwise – because you’re afraid (of looking dumb? of being left out? of losing business or friends?) is a really bad idea. Fear is an incredible spur to action, but a terrible way to stay motivated and productive.  So don’t give in to fear.

If you have other offline ways you’re more comfortable working with people – you’re fabulous face-to-face or on the phone, but you’d rather eat uncooked tripe for lunch than write – then for goodness sake do what you do best. Work your magic your way and to hell with what anyone else thinks. Just realize that your clients may be looking for you in these social media spaces, and if you don’t want to be there, you’ll have to find other ways to keep them engaged. Or find clients who don’t care whether you have a social media presence or not. Both things can be done. You can do things your way and be successful.

This is not permission to quit with social media before you start. This is permission to say “No thanks, I really, truly tried that, and it doesn’t work for me.” That’s honest. And the people who work with you will know the difference.

Photo by jeannahmc (license).

Professional Services, It’s Time to Join the Age of Conversation

Let’s talk social media for a second, folks. By that, I mean the “it’s more than just technology” part of social media.

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs – they’re all exciting tools (or toys) on their own, sure. But it’s the stuff behind the technology where the magic happens. All that “people” stuff we were supposed to be good at as professional services providers before? Social media just makes it, well, MORE. Bigger. Like a guitarist who figures out how to crank his amp six notches past “10″ and rock the night away.

When you take on social media and become “part of the conversation”, you open a door to tremendous possibilities: the potential to build and maintain solid relationships over distance. To share ideas. To make connections. To help people do their business better.

Pretty spiffy stuff.

And now, no matter where you are on your social media journey, there’s a book that will give you a lot more insight about how to get social media working its magic for you and your firm. It’s called The Age of Conversation 3: It’s Time to Get Busy – and I am pleased and proud to say that I am a contributing author.

171 folks contributed to this book, providing lessons, insights, and examples of how to stop talking about social media and actually get the job done. As editor Drew McLellan says on his blog, “There are excellent case studies, some very candid ‘this bombed’ examples and a much more pragmatic, ‘from the trenches’ view of social media.”

I personally found a tremendous number of takeaways – and I believe the honest insights in this book would be of help to any professional services firm seriously interested in taking their firm to the next level with social media. Plus, 100% of the proceeds from sales of the book go to the Make a Wish Foundation, so you help kids while you’re helping your firm. What could be better?

You can find the book here: Hardback, Paperback, or Kindle.

Thanks to editors Gavin Heaton and Drew McLellan for giving me the chance to participate in this project. It’s been a blast! If you’d like to read the blogs of some of my fellow authors, click in the table at the bottom of this post. You’ll be blown away by the insight and value you’ll get from them.

Then check out The Age of Conversation 3. Because the world has changed. Our business has changed. And there’s no going back.

Thank goodness.

Adam Joseph	Priyanka Sachar	Mark Earls
Cory Coley-Christakos	Stefan Erschwendner	Paul Hebert
Jeff De Cagna	Thomas Clifford	Phil Gerbyshak
Jon Burg	Toby Bloomberg	Shambhu Neil Vineberg
Joseph Jaffe	Uwe Hook	Steve Roesler
Michael E. Rubin	anibal casso	Steve Woodruff
Steve Sponder	Becky Carroll	Tim Tyler
Chris Wilson	Beth Harte	Tinu Abayomi-Paul
Dan Schawbel	Carol Bodensteiner	Trey Pennington
David Weinfeld	Dan Sitter	Vanessa DiMauro
Ed Brenegar	David Zinger	Brett T. T. Macfarlane
Efrain Mendicuti	Deb Brown	Brian Reich
Gaurav Mishra	Dennis Deery	C.B. Whittemore
Gordon Whitehead	Heather Rast	Cam Beck
Hajj E. Flemings	Joan Endicott	Cathryn Hrudicka
Jeroen Verkroost	Karen D. Swim	Christopher Morris
Joe Pulizzi	Leah Otto	Corentin Monot
Karalee Evans	Leigh Durst	David Berkowitz
Kevin Jessop	Lesley Lambert	Duane Brown
Peter Korchnak	Mark Price	Dustin Jacobsen
Piet Wulleman	Mike Maddaloni	Ernie Mosteller
Scott Townsend	Nick Burcher	Frank Stiefler
Steve Olenski	Rich Nadworny	John Rosen
Tim Jackson	Suzanne Hull	Len Kendall
Amber Naslund	Wayne Buckhanan	Mark McGuinness
Caroline Melberg	Andy Drish	Oleksandr Skorokhod
Claire Grinton	Angela Maiers	Paul Williams
Gary Cohen	Armando Alves	Sam Ismail
Gautam Ramdurai	B.J. Smith	Tamera Kremer
Eaon Pritchard	Brendan Tripp	Adelino de Almeida
Jacob Morgan	Casey Hibbard	Andy Hunter
Julian Cole	Debra Helwig	Anjali Ramachandran
Jye Smith	Drew McLellan	Craig Wilson
Karin Hermans	Emily Reed	David Petherick
Katie Harris	Gavin Heaton	Dennis Price
Mark Levy	George Jenkins	Doug Mitchell
Mark W. Schaefer	Helge Tenno	Douglas Hanna
Marshall Sponder	James Stevens	Ian Lurie
Ryan Hanser	Jenny Meade	Jeff Larche
Sacha Tueni and Katherine Maher	David Svet	Jessica Hagy
Simon Payn	Joanne Austin-Olsen	Mark Avnet
Stanley Johnson	Marilyn Pratt	Mark Hancock
Steve Kellogg	Michelle Beckham-Corbin	Michelle Chmielewski
Amy Mengel	Veronique Rabuteau	Peter Komendowski
Andrea Vascellari	Timothy L Johnson	Phil Osborne
Beth Wampler	Amy Jussel	Rick Liebling
Eric Brody	Arun Rajagopal	Dr Letitia Wright
Hugh de Winton	David Koopmans	Aki Spicer
Jeff Wallace	Don Frederiksen	Charles Sipe
Katie McIntyre	James G Lindberg & Sandra Renshaw	David Reich
Lynae Johnson	Jasmin Tragas	Deborah Chaddock Brown
Mike O’Toole	Jeanne Dininni	Iqbal Mohammed
Morriss M. Partee	Katie Chatfield	Jeff Cutler
Pete Jones	Riku Vassinen	Jeff Garrison
Kevin Dugan	Tiphereth Gloria	Mike Sansone
Lori Magno	Valerie Simon	Nettie Hartsock
Mark Goren		Peter Salvitti

Stifle Your Inner Wallflower

Last week, I had the chance to attend a really cool session by MECLabs (parent to Marketing Experiments and MarketingSherpa) on Marketing ROI. The materials were great. Dr. Flint McGlaughlin had some truly eye-opening things to say. There was an entire room full of engaged, bright people there to share ideas with.

And I blew it.

I didn’t talk to anyone outside the two people sitting on either side of me at my table. I didn’t initiate conversations. I didn’t try to find out more about why people were there and what they’re dealing with and how I might learn from their pain.

That’s not like me, either. Usually, I’m full of advice and ideas and stories and — well, let’s just say I ain’t shy. And more to the point, when I’m up in front of professional services marketing directors talking about networking, my first advice regarding events is “Don’t hide in the corner.” I didn’t even take my own advice! Ai yi yi.

So what happened?

Bluntly, the topic was not in my comfort zone.

See, if you put me in a room of professional services people, or maybe even social media people or customer service people, I’m good to go. I know the lingo, and I have enough experience with the industry to know the general pain points and maybe even some solutions. I have stories to tell. I can gab. It’s fun. And I shine.

But at this meeting, I was the newbie. I’m not a numbers gal, and I’m not a huge believer in ROI. I attended the meeting to see what I might learn, what I might be missing – but I really felt unsure of my handle on the topic. My tongue tripped over phrases like “quantifying returns” and “multivariate test results”. Frankly, I felt a little dumb.

So I shut up. Did my best wallflower act. And I missed out on a great opportunity to connect with neat people.

I know for a fact I’m not the only one to do this. Great consultants in our industry coach on networking skills all the time. They talk about firm handshakes. About how to enter and exit gracefully from a conversation. About asking for the business card or the referral.

But probably the most important piece of advice I can think of is one that gets missed in many coaching sessions: you don’t have to be an expert on everything.

We all seem to have a touch of this animal fear when confronted with a subject that’s not our passion: I don’t know enough yet. I’m not good enough yet. I’m not enough of an expert yet. I can’t talk about that!

Maybe not. But here’s what I figured out, after a “try again” moment at an event this weekend where the topic was way outside my expertise: You can engage. You can listen. And you can learn.

At my weekend event, the hot topic was tax implications of the new healthcare bill – another area where I am definitely out of my depth – but because I jumped right in and asked good questions instead of playing the wallflower, I walked away with a handful of business cards and a whole lot of valuable information I can use both in my job and my personal life.

It was a magical sort of thing, really. When I asked questions, people got engaged. They liked it when I let them talk about what they know. I didn’t have to be the expert on their thing (taxes and healthcare). I could be the expert on my thing (service and relationships), and my questions helped us find common ground so we could talk about both. Hooray!

You can bet I’ll be taking these tools to my next session on Marketing ROI (and every other meeting, conference, and event I attend from now on.)

Take it from me: the next time you’re thrust outside your comfort zone, stifle your inner wallflower and tell the fear to go stuff itself. Dive in, introduce yourself, ask a few questions, and listen. You’ll end up smarter and more confident. You’ll make new connections with great people.

And you won’t look dumb in the process.

Photo by Bettina Tizzy (license).

Be Who You Are – Out Loud: Why Authenticity + Consistency Are Critical to Wooing and Keeping Clients

I have a new crush.

A few weeks back, a friend of mine turned me on to a great company called Better World Books. This bunch sings to me on a lot of levels – I’m an avid reader, a bargain junkie, a believer in literacy programs, and “green” enough to be a good recycler. Win + win + win.

But the other thing I love about Better World Books is their style. Check out this follow up email:

If your order hasn’t blessed your mailbox just yet, heads are gonna roll in the Better World Books warehouse! Seriously though, if you haven’t received your order or are less than 108.8% satisfied, please reply to this message. Let us know what we can do to flabbergast you with service.

Fun, simple and service oriented, just like their site and blog. These guys will get my money, because from site to blog to email, they present a consistent voice that I relate to.

But there’s another part to this story.

You might not like Better World Books’ message, and that’s cool too. If you’d rather have a cup of Starbucks at Barnes & Noble and finger the pages of every book before you buy, go with their blessing. There are plenty of other people in the world, like me, who belong with them. It’s a matchmaker’s tale. Find a person / client / business that resonates with your needs and values, you’ll wind up together.

With all that in mind, here’s the lesson for our industry – and the $64K question for you:

Are you gutsy enough to take the Better World Books approach? To unapologetically be who you are, with an eye toward working only with clients who are a great fit for your firm?

In a down economy, it’s such a temptation to say that any work is good work. Believe me, it’s not.

Doing work you don’t like for clients whose worldview is a bad match to yours sucks the energy out of your culture. Over time, your office will become a giant revolving door – for work, for clients, for staff. Because the synergy, the passion, the “why we belong together” isn’t there.

Do you know your firm’s culture inside and out? If not, then get to know it now. This minute. Be able to put images and words around it. Show other people what you’re good at, what you like to do, and how you get it done. Then be authentic and consistent in sharing that special culture of yours everywhere you do business, online and off.

Because if your communications don’t reflect the culture of your firm, the disconnect is costing you business – both by saddling you with clients who are a bad fit based on misperception, and by missing clients who would be perfect but who don’t understand why you’re great for them.

It’s not about fitting into what “society” says is hip and cool, either. It’s 100% OK to be a buttoned-up, marble-column, three-piece-suit firm in today’s world. But clients who want a firm like that won’t find you if your Web site is full of edgy Madison Avenue imagery and your firm partners network at trendy cocktail parties.

On the other hand, if your firm is hip, fun, and youth-oriented, having a Web site with a five-year-out-of-date board room photo of the partners on the main page, a blue and grey color scheme, and a nonexistent social media presence won’t do a thing to win the clients you want.

The path to success lies in fluently expressing your firm’s culture in communications designed to reach your “right people” (as Havi Brooks would say), and not being concerned about clients who aren’t a good fit. If you stay consistent, the right people will find you. And because they are your right people, the likelihood that they’ll stick around for the long haul is a lot higher.

Be who you are – out loud. Because authenticity + consistency = clients that stay. Clients you like, because at least to some degree they think like you.

Getting there is worth the effort.

Photo by Roland (license).

Your New Busy Season Mantra: Just Take the Darn Call

Have you met Sparky Firepants?

If not, you should.

Mr. Pants (aka David Billings) is a darn brilliant graphic designer and an equally brilliant wordsmith.  On his blog, he’s got a lot to say about the business of making art.  Which, by chance, happens to say a lot about the business of doing good business. Which, in turn, directly applies to all of us folks toiling away in the accounting and legal sphere.

This week, he’s penned two thoughtful (and very helpful) posts – Why I’ll Never Say I’m Booked, and Why I Said Not to Say “Booked”.  The gist – it’s never a great idea to just hang a sign on your (locked) door that says “Sorry, Can’t Help You Now,” no matter how busy you are.  No matter if tax returns are stacked in mountains threatening to collapse on your head. No matter if your email box passed overflowing two hours ago and your iPhone is starting to smoke.

Just. Take. The. Darn. Call.

I can’t think of a more important message for accounting folks to hear at the beginning of Busy Season. (And all you lawyers out there, you listen up too – sometime your case load will reach tilt-tilt-tilt overload and all of this will apply to you too.)

Here’s a short excerpt:

There’s a big difference between announcing to the world, “I’m booked” and turning down a project after you’ve heard the deadline. Saying, “I’m booked” is locking your door until August. Then what? You open the door, peer out and wonder aloud, “Where did everybody go? I’m ready now. Heeeeyyyyyyyyy!”

What does it cost to listen? How much time does it take to let someone in your shop (figuratively speaking) and ask you for help?

Yep, Mr. Pants nails it, 100%. You should read both posts this minute and take them to heart. Because here’s the bottom line: the thing that kills relationships – especially professional services relationships – is insufficient communication.

When I tweeted Mr. Pants’ post earlier today, I got a great response from Dennis Howlett (@dahowlett), a guy who knows whereof he speaks, with 10 years under his belt as an accounting firm partner and a long IT consulting career after that:

“The biggest source of ‘pissed offness’ is NOT to speak with clients, however busy you are. A 2-5 minute call does wonders.”

Hallelujah! You bet it does. Because it’s about respect. And decency. And the kindness to say, “I hear you, and what you need matters to me.”  Nothing elaborate. Not an hour long “how’s your great-grandmother’s butler-in-law these days?” coffee clatch. Just acknowledgement, and a promise to follow up or a helpful referral. Even if you say, “Sorry, my schedule is full, but here are some other options for you,” you will have acknowledged that client’s need. You’ll have shown that you care.

And “I care” does a heck of a lot more to build and cement relationships than (indifferent) silence.

So take your calls. Return your calls, every day. Especially when you’re busy.  Do it quickly and with all the empathy you can muster.

It’s the best way I can think of to ensure that your post-Busy Season will be, well….busy.

Photo by Mr. ATM (license).

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

Did you miss me?

No, really, did you?

Hurrah if you did (you make me blush)….but my bet is you’re so busy you never even noticed that I’d stopped posting to this blog for the last two months.

The stopping part wasn’t on purpose, mind you. A freakish set of health issues and work crises conspired to make every second of my available time disappear from November to now. But I’m grateful to say things are better, and I’m back on station to to share and discuss ideas with you.

SO – now you know where I’ve been, back to the question at hand.

Did you miss me?

The answer isn’t about my ego. It’s important because your reaction to my absence proves a point that’s applicable for your professional services career.

When you lose regular contact with the people you do business with, EVEN PEOPLE WHO LIKE AND CARE ABOUT YOU, you very well may drop out of their scope.

People like important clients. Referral sources. Heck, even good friends.

The old saw “Out of sight, out of mind” is a very real thing.

It’s not that people don’t care. They’re busy. According to studies, busier than ever before. And stressed to boot.

If we don’t make the effort to stay in touch, even (maybe especially) when we’re busy and overcome with crises, the likelihood is the important people in our lives won’t remember to either.

And when the moment arrives when it would be beneficial to reconnect….well, it’s awkward. Difficult. Easy to postpone. So we don’t.

And if we don’t – the potential for lost opportunities is infinite.

In my case, I’d have been much better off if I’d written a quick post every couple of weeks. Nothing earth-shattering, just a little placeholder note to the blogosphere to keep the connection open. For you, it might be sending a greeting card with a quick two-line note to a favorite client. A three word email (“Thinking of you!”) to a friend you haven’t talked with in a while. A forwarded article, or maybe a five minute phone call with a referral source you’ve neglected.

Even the smallest gesture can make a difference.

Sure, there are times when life happens. When we lose contact with important people. When we stop blogging, or emailing, or calling for real, honest reasons. And it’s hard to get started up again. Reconnecting is awkward. What do you say? How do you explain why you didn’t call or write or blog? It feels icky – at first. But, trust me, the benefits from the connections we reforge infinitely outweigh the discomfort of our avoidance.

For all you accountants out there, Busy Season is coming. Getting intentional now and making a firm commitment to stay in touch with the important people in your life and career, before your schedule swerves out of control, will go a long way toward keeping you TOP of mind, instead of OUT of mind, when April 15th rolls around.

As for me, watch this space. I’ll be hanging around here regularly from now on.

Photo by helgasms! (license).

The Teaching Moment: Relationship Builder or Dealbreaker?

One of my guilty pleasures in life is making homemade jam.

Few things make me happier than spending hours chopping and dicing peaches or strawberries, then stirring and stirring that boiling pot of fruit and sugar until the smell fills the whole house. Oh, the simple beauty of those little gemlike jars of goodness lined up in perfect order on the countertop. Bliss. Unadulterated, yummy, creative bliss.

But teaching a group of my friends how to do it, one summer a while back? Um. Wow. Huge lack of bliss there.

Important point – it wasn’t their fault. All my friends are plenty smart. And they showed up on time that day, with the right equipment, ready to learn. But when I worked with them, my usual bliss experiment wasn’t so blissful. It was work. Hard work. None of us had any fun at all. I was so disappointed – but at that moment, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why things went wrong.

Then, just recently, I read these two beautiful little tweets from @carl_ingalls:

When you teach or advise, let people discover things. Don’t tell them all the answers.

and

When people discover an answer, the knowledge becomes theirs.

AHHHHHH.

Reading those tweets made me think about my jam problem on that afternoon so long ago. And I realized something pretty embarrassing.

That fateful day, from the minute my friends set their bags of peaches on the counter, I’d told every single one of them exactly what to do without telling them why. I’d said super lofty (and, dangit, super stupid) things like “No! What are you doing?,” usually followed by snatching the spoon out of someone’s hand and completing the task myself.

How utterly asenine of me.

So WHAT if there had been a lot of questions, a lot of false starts, a lot of mistakes? We could have laughed about them. It might have made us closer, a real “remember when” event. We might still have been laughing about it – over a jar of  THEIR homemade jam – 20 years from now.

But nooooo. I was a lot more worried about looking smart and being the expert than having fun and building on my relationships. And I lost an opportunity. A big one.  You can bet none of them wanted me to teach them anything for quite a while after that. Fortunately, they’ve forgiven me since. But they’re good friends and I’m a lucky gal.

Now, my question to you:

Are you making my “jam” mistake in your business relationships?

Are you more concerned with showing off your impressive credentials and sharing your hard-earned expertise than understanding what your clients and potential clients want to know?

Every time you come into contact with a client or potential client, you have the opportunity to help them grow. To build a relationship. To lead them to new knowledge without preaching at them. To be helpful without needing to look smart. Are you taking advantage of those opportunities? Or are you wasting your time just snatching the spoon away, so you can show them what an expert you are?

Your clients might not be as gracious as my friends are. There’s no promising they’ll give you a second chance.

These days, I’m a lot more mindful about how I share what I know. And the difference in all my relationships – both professional and personal – is astounding.

How can you use your knowledge to build and strengthen relationships with the people who need your advice?

Photo by Kfergos (license)

Doing Great Work Should Not Equal “Be Boring”

A few months back, I read a post by Michelle Golden about the fact that a creative and edgy approach to business attracts clients.

She is sooooo right.

With startling regularity, I meet people who do really interesting things for a living. People like my chiropractor, who studied with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (yeah, the Beatles guru guy, that guy), or my neighbor who owns a balloon delivery business and leaves for work in a gorilla suit almost every Saturday. Or the gal who’s making a killing running a full-service day spa for dogs.

No matter what their line of work, these quirky, interesting people have one big thing in common. When I ask them, “Why did you choose THIS job,” almost all of them say, “I just couldn’t imagine doing something boring – like being an accountant, you know, or a lawyer.”

As if a professional services job is the most dull, lifeless, autonomic career in the entire universe.

Huh. I want to shout, “Buddy, you don’t know the accountants and lawyers I know!”

But maybe that’s the point.

Somewhere back in the mists of time, someone decided that accountants and lawyers shouldn’t present themselves to the world as quirky and interesting. I’m not sure who started the conspiracy. But whatever the cause, far too many firms succumbed (and STILL succumb) to the “me too” boring-itis of navy blue logos, bland Web sites, and marketing copy full of generic speak about “quality service”. For now, the professional services firms who choose to take a more personal, more creative approach to business are still the exception rather than the norm.

That shouldn’t be true. It doesn’t have to be true.

Social media gives you a seriously easy path to show a new, more personal way of doing business – one that’s a heck of a lot more fun. If you want to see how it can work, check out the people Michelle mentioned in her post: Valorem Law Group, MoFo, and Choate. And if Michelle’s list wasn’t enough to convince you, try these on for size:

Kelly Phillips Erb (TaxGirl) – Arguably one of the funniest and best tweeters in the legal profession, TaxGirl’s blog is also full of great repartee. Her site says it all: “Why Taxgirl? Because paying taxes is painful… but reading about them shouldn’t be.”

Steven Zelin – Tax accountant Steven Zelin isn’t just your average tax guy – he’s also The Singing CPA.

Jay Shepherd – Author of the top-rated Gruntled Employees blog and a witty tweeter, Jay’s work shows you that his firm definitely isn’t your run of the mill employment law firm.

Scott Heintzelman* – Scott’s Exuberant Accountant blog and his tweets put a face on “Servant Leadership” and provide a great introduction to him and to the values of his firm. Scott’s not zany – just real – and that’s an edge a lot of firms could use.

Paul Neiffer – On his FarmCPAToday blog, Paul talks to his clients in a personal way, in a language they understand. You won’t find a better example of a niche blog anywhere.

Stephen L. Snyder – This guy is a high powered litigator with major wins under his belt – and a massive sense of humor, as evidenced by his “Snyderman” videos. (Hat tip to Legal Blog Watch for introducing me to Snyderman.)

Notice – these are all high-quality professionals doing high quality work. Just like you. But they’re getting loads of attention (and business, by the way) from their commitment to showing the world not just what their firms can do, but who they are, why they are, and why it matters.

Not one of them is doing something you and your firm can’t do.

All it takes is the decision that being a professional services person doesn’t have to be cookie cutter. Or boring. It’s not a sin to show a little personality in your work – even if it does involve spreadsheets or legal briefs.

How can you and your firm show more creative spark?

Photo by Mommyof4Ruggies (license).

*In the interest of disclosure, Scott Heintzelman’s firm, McKonly & Asbury, is a member firm of my employer, IGAF Worldwide.