Читать книгу Never Say Sell - Tom McMakin - Страница 9

We're jetting back and forth across the country visiting clients. It's Friday afternoon, and we are looking forward to finally spending a weekend at home. Jacob, the younger of us, is thinking about the prospect of winning Spokane's Hoopfest for the third year in a row with his in-laws. Tom is dreaming about scouting for elk in southwestern Montana in preparation for hunting season.

We are coming off a two-day string of meetings in Manhattan with clients and prospects. It's been a fast-paced and satisfying trip, but as we contemplate our travel home, with the long layover and dozens of follow-up emails from our last two days, we both let out a sigh.

Tom's wearing a blue suit, print tie, and black lace-up shoes. Jacob's sporting a natty charcoal suit, no tie, and brown shoes with green argyle socks. Two businesspeople, each with varying degrees of gray hair, pushing our way through LaGuardia on our way home.

We duck into the bathroom at the east end of the terminal, and change from our suits into jeans, comfortable shoes, and sweaters for flight back home. Tom is headed to Bozeman while Jacob will part ways with him in Salt Lake City and head home to Spokane.

There are certain rules to changing at the airport. Don't pick a stall without a hook, don't take off your socks, and don't put the roller board on the toilet seat or it won't stop flushing.

Like you, we're road warriors, crisscrossing the country in service of our clients. Our particular expertise is helping expert services firms drive business development, but we could equally be accountants, human resources specialists, attorneys, software integrators, engineers, strategy consultants, or cybersecurity wizards.

We all share one thing in common: We are fellow travelers in the land of building trust and credibility in an effort to sell our expertise. We recognize problems in client companies and help them meet those challenges. This work looks different across the spectrum of professional services, but the work all aims to accomplish the same outcome for clients: to innovate, to solve, to create, and to build.

The Economist recently wrote that consultants “scare companies by laying bare where they are failing, then soothe them with counsel on how to improve.” We don't agree with the “scaring” part – that sounds like the kind of sales manipulation we hate – but we do know that expert services providers work to help improve their clients. As experts, we offer our experience, our point of view, our intelligence, our training, and the bitter lessons we have learned from doing what we do for many years.