Creating a Service-Driven Culture

January 25, 2023 by Jim Rogers

Steve Osborn, P.E. Founding Principal, CE Solutions

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Steve Osborn, Founding Principal at CE Solutions, Inc., discussed how he has created and continued to sustain a service-driven culture within his company. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Steve.

Jim: What do you do within your firm to instill your values within your employees?

Steve Osborn: I’ve been lucky because I started the firm from scratch by myself and have been able to grow it organically. The hiring process is probably the most important thing we do since we’re a service provider. It’s important to have that culture — that foundational philosophy and those principles instilled in people when they come on board here. Our recruiting process is very intentional.

During the interview process, we talk a lot about what our firm is like, what’s important to us, what our foundational principles are, what our brand attributes are, and how we deliver service. We can tell by listening to people if they align with us. We look for the character values and attributes that we want. We’ve had really good success with that.

We create a lot of opportunities for those individuals to grow quickly. We involve them in client contact and give them all the responsibilities of project management upfront. The only thing that they don’t have is experience — but they have all of the other qualities that we’re looking for in a strong project manager. So we allow them to manage their own projects under the supervision of an experienced senior professional.

They can then be responsible for their work. We develop and prepare them. By the time they’re ready to take their PE exam, they’re very comfortable, prepared, and have a high success rate of passage. Then they get their own projects and fly solo after that.

Our clients have complimented us on that approach. They think it’s pretty unique that we give young individuals that many opportunities at an early age. They enjoy working with them as well. The young professionals are the point of contact, but they know they’ve got the senior guy next to them. Our young people get excited about that opportunity.

Perseverance Builds Confidence

January 18, 2023 by Jim Rogers

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Laura Wernick, AIA of HMFH Architects in Boston, shared her experience building confidence as a seller-doer. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Laura.

Jim Rogers: The middle game of business development is the hardest part of this, in my opinion. If you can think of a time when you first took ownership of that middle phase and led a potential client or a potential project through to fruition – how did you learn how to do that?

Laura Wernick: I don’t think my path was a particularly easy one. I can remember very clearly talking to a potential client and then feeling very crushed when we weren’t shortlisted for the project. But maybe what I did is a useful tip for others. I followed up and said, “Geez, you know, I was disappointed. I was excited about this project.” And I remember very clearly the person saying, “Well, Laura, you’re a nice person but you seem kind of awkward. And I wasn’t always comfortable talking with you.” Whoa, that was a tough one.

Jim Rogers: Wow. Unvarnished honesty there.

Laura Wernick: I was trying so hard – And it can take a while for many of us to be comfortable, to find ourselves, and to speak as ourselves. You’re trying so hard to be this perfect salesperson that you’re not perhaps perceived as being genuine or true to yourself. It was a bit of slow learning perhaps. It takes a little while and maybe some maturity for many of us to become ourselves.

It’s hard to be a good marketer if you’re not comfortable in your skin and comfortable with who you are. I think that’s something that people can learn – And it takes time. It takes encouragement, trial and error, and learning what your natural voice is.

Jim Rogers: Trial and error yield wisdom and confidence.

Laura Wernick: Absolutely.

Jim Rogers: I think it takes care of itself over time. You can’t just tell somebody, “Don’t be nervous when you’re talking” – It doesn’t work.

Laura Wernick: I believe the key to all business development is being persistent over time, trying to learn from your mistakes, and sticking with it. That’s always the hardest thing because often the gratification is long delayed. When you finally make that sale and close a deal, it’s a wonderful feeling, but there are a lot of dead ends and sowing a lot of seeds before that final contact can be made sometimes. And I think that persistence and sticking to it is really hard.

Jim Rogers: Beyond just building the gravitas and confidence that comes with experience – Was there anything that you did intentionally to study some of the skills that you needed to acquire? Such as training or finding the right coach or mentor to help you learn and develop those skills.

Laura Wernick: I was always looking to others as role models. Fortunately, one of my partners loves doing business development, and it always helped me to talk, connect, and ask questions. I found that partner to be my greatest role model. My greatest learning technique was seeing others do it and then doing it myself over time. You become more sophisticated in how you spend your time, what works, and what doesn’t work for you. I’m very active in a range of professional organizations now, and when I see other people, I study how they reach out to people and what they are involved with. That’s been my pathway – Learning from my peers or from people who have been doing it for a while. I study their approach and what works for them – And then try to make it work for who I am.

The Importance of Exceptional Client Service

January 11, 2023 by Jim Rogers

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Steve Osborn, Founding Principal at CE Solutions, Inc., spent the most time talking about what it means to deliver exceptional service to clients — and how that helps you build your business. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Steve.

Jim: Steve, you’ve been very methodical and intentional about what you do to ensure your folks deliver great client service. Could you tell me about that?

Steve Osborn: Absolutely. Happy to do that. The idea behind starting my firm 19 years ago was based on four foundational principles: strong relationships, mutual respect, integrity, and ethical practice. It’s how we operate and make decisions daily. It’s how we have grown the business and determines everything we do, from the hiring process to who we do business with – I’m very much a relationship person. I’m very interested in the business of the business, as well as the profession of structural engineering that we serve.

As a result of being a relationship person, I’m also a very caring person, and I want to be able to take good care of the people that entrust us with their projects. I can’t over-emphasize how important real effective communication is in our business. It involves keeping our clients informed of the progress that we’re making on their projects regularly. I don’t like when our clients have to contact us and ask about the status of something. I like being proactive in keeping them informed. It’s important to me that we hire people with similar characteristics because I feel those are the kind of things that are difficult to teach someone. It’s also about doing business with people we know and trust — people who care about and respect us as well.

Jim: Can you give me an example?

Steve Osborn: Sure. We’re proactive in terms of providing regular updates on the projects. Before they ask, we give it to them. We get nice feedback and are complimented all the time about that. Clients say, “We always ask that of somebody, but we don’t always get it.”

Another good example is the level of completeness of our documents. We produce and deliver them in the timeframe that we promise. We get complimented all the time about coming to progress meetings which are intended to discuss 50% completion, and we bring documents that are 75% complete. The clients notice that.

Another thing we’ve done is deliver projects ahead of schedule. We’ve delivered projects two to four weeks ahead of schedule — and sometimes when we’re prime, it allows them to put it on an earlier bid letting. In one case with one of our institutional clients, our project was scheduled for a bid letting towards the end of the year, so it was jammed. They had a lot of projects going on in that bid letting, so they were worried about getting good competitive pricing. We were able to deliver the project several weeks ahead of time, which put it on an earlier letting — which had less competition for projects going out. As a result of that, they felt they got better pricing.

Jim: That’s a great example of an outcome a client gets from that kind of service.

Steve Osborn: In a follow-up, even the client commented when we did that. They said that this is unheard of. They had never experienced that before with somebody, so I felt like it set us apart. It was kind of surprising that nobody has done or offered that. I remember them specifically saying, “Nobody does this. This is incredible.” It was a nice thing to hear.

I tell my staff all the time — “You never know where your opportunities will come from. Just go out there and be sincere. Be yourself. Don’t be shallow. Don’t be artificial. Don’t just go through the motions. You have to be real. You have to be who you are.” That’s why we consider those characteristics during the hiring process. We try to hire people who truly care.

Discovering and Developing Your Public Speaking Skills

January 4, 2023 by Jim Rogers

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Laura Wernick, AIA of HMFH Architects in Boston, shared insight on the importance of public speaking and that her firm involves younger staff in presentations — even high-stakes presentations — early on. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Laura.

Jim Rogers: One of your professional strengths is public speaking to help develop business in the K-12 school market. Did that come from experience, or did you intentionally work on getting better with outside help?

Laura Wernick: Public speaking was one thing I always enjoyed doing. Even when I was nervous, I was still enjoying it. That carried me through in a lot of ways because I enjoyed going out and speaking, as well as making presentations. I also enjoyed doing interviews. As I did it more, I certainly became more comfortable with it. I learned by watching other people, including learning techniques from educators.

I have also gone through some professional training in terms of how to organize my presentations and present more effectively. That has been very helpful regarding refining techniques and understanding how I appear to others in a presentation format. I would certainly recommend getting a professional trainer, whether you’re an experienced presenter or just starting. That type of good coaching is huge.

Jim Rogers: Do you offer any formal training for your professionals?

Laura Wernick: We do have a professional coach who comes in every few years to provide some training on presentations. We’re also doing more mentoring, and this is more of a bottom-up request from our employees. We’re always taking a younger person with us whenever we go to any professional organization or community event. It allows them to watch us and others operate while learning what types of events we’re trying to participate in. We’re trying to get people out in the marketplace on a more regular basis.

We also work very closely with a writer who will help our young people put together ideas for articles. To whatever extent is needed, he will either support or critique their writing so that we have more people producing articles for magazines. We’re encouraging people to participate more in making presentations as well.

There are several public speaking opportunities across the calendar year, so we always try to have people from the firm speak at different presentation opportunities. We always have younger people not only come to interviews with us but play roles in those interviews. We’ve found that if you’re going to be part of an interview team, you have to have a role. Their role may be small at first, but we work with them to make sure they understand their script. There are also opportunities to be an observer, but if you’re on the team, then you’re presenting. People rise to the occasion.

From personal experience, I have found that if you’re speaking about something you care about, you may stumble a bit, but your passion comes through — and showing you care deeply is one of the most important things in giving a presentation. Oftentimes, that is even more important than the actual content. We find that our younger people do very well in interviews.

Drawing Younger, Less Experienced Staff into Marketing & Business Development

December 21, 2022 by Jim Rogers

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Laura Wernick, AIA of HMFH Architects in Boston, discussed how to support younger, less experienced staff in developing their networks and becoming involved in marketing and business development. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Laura.

Laura Wernick: It’s important for me to bring in opportunities or connect younger people in the office to help them build their networks. I’m often doing that initial introduction within the firm as a way of helping and then providing those leads to other people in the office.

They can then develop their networks and become marketers and business development people on their own. So that’s another end of the spectrum — making sure that others in the office have the opportunity to build networks and develop their prospects.

Jim Rogers: How do you know when people are ready to be more involved in business development?

Laura Wernick: I think some people are naturally inclined towards business development. They feel comfortable being introduced to people. They feel comfortable carrying on conversations and pursuing potential clients. So sometimes, it’s obvious.

There are other times when you’re trying to develop a person who may not see this as their forte, but you want to help them grow. So that’s probably the more challenging thing. That’s a little bit more of a push-and-pull situation. And I think it’s a gradual process.

The first layer is just getting them out to meet people in professional organization environments or community events and seeing how they respond, while providing feedback and encouragement. Hopefully, you’re able to push them into other situations and see how they respond at each level. Most architects are not inclined to do business development. They’d much prefer to sit at their desks and solve problems — solve the specific problem that’s handed to them.

So I think it’s about encouraging those with that natural inclination and giving them opportunities. And when do you know? I think that when you’re working with younger people on projects, on actually doing the design and following through with a project, and you see how they’re relating to the clients that they’re working with on a day-to-day basis — you begin to see those who can easily interact with their clients, lead their clients, and gain the confidence of their clients. So you know that those people are going to do well in the larger marketing environment. It just takes some encouragement, support, and opportunities for them to do well.

For other people, I think you just have to keep nurturing and nudging and building them up over time. And ultimately, not everyone will be able to do it easily. So you want to just help people to rise to their greatest potential.

Everybody has to be doing some level of marketing and business development; some people will do well at it, and others will just participate.

Building Recognition for Your Authority

December 12, 2022 by Jim Rogers

Picture of woman with speaking to an audience at a conference.

Building your authority through speaking at professional and industry conferences.

In Becoming a Seller-Doer, I introduce the RLOCK model that reflects the five stages of the client lifecycle: Recognition, Lead, Opportunity, Close, and Keep. The R is about building recognition for your professional expertise and your firm’s brand and capabilities.

Building recognition can be done in many ways: blogging, writing articles for professional or trade periodicals, speaking at conferences, or conducting webinars or lunch-and-learns.

One of the 44 executives I interviewed for the book, Laura Wernick, AIA of HMFH Architects in Boston, spent the most time talking about how “authority marketing,” as some call it, helped her generate scads of business over the decades. This post is an excerpt from my interview with Laura.

Jim: Tell me about yourself.

Laura Wernick: I’m a graduate of Cornell University. I got my Bachelor of Architecture there and then came to Boston, and I’ve been in the Boston Cambridge area ever since. I’ve been with HMFH Architects for over 25 years. I focus on educational design and how to create the best facilities for teaching and learning, primarily for students in K-12 environments.

Educational design really captured my imagination. We were working with young kids a lot, so everything we did was to stimulate their curiosity and excite them. To be able to design in a very playful and imaginative way – We had some very wondrous and special environments, which were engaging, and I fell in love with that. I also got intrigued by how schools are a piece of the community. They really are community centers.

I got very engaged in the history of school design and if schools have always been that way. There is a fascinating story to school design and how you can use it thematically to look at history, to look at lighting, to look at mechanical systems, and to look at how education has evolved over the years. And that’s my fascination with schools as a building type. It was my entry point into starting to do marketing, even before I knew that’s what I was doing. I turned my interest in school design into research and the research into, early on, some talks at small conferences. And I think for the first conference, I actually paid for my transportation and registration fee because I didn’t even know that that was important to a firm’s marketing.

I think the first place I spoke was at a conference for what, at the time, was called the Council for Education Facility Planners International, CEFPI. It’s since become the Association for Learning Environments, A4LE, but in both manifestations, it focuses on creating great environments for students.

Jim Rogers: Often, people with technical expertise who want to put it out in the world to help others like to go to their professional association to do that. Well, that’s where your competitors, peers, and colleagues are, and if you’re not taking it to where your prospective clients are, then you’re limiting your impact. Is there a talk that stood out for you that paid off or surprised you with the result you got?

Laura Wernick: Well, that first one was quite the learning experience, and I had people asking me questions that I didn’t know the answers to, so I had to learn to sharpen my game. In terms of payoff, I think it helped allow us to spread more nationally. Over time, as I attended these conferences regularly and ultimately became part of the organization’s leadership, I got invited to other places in the country to interview and participate in pursuing schools. So that was one outcome, but I can’t tie it to a single presentation. It was building that over time.

The other thing, as you said, is that there are different architects or competitors at those conferences. The advantage was we could get invited to other places in the country where these teaming partners needed our expertise. I found over time that those peers sometimes became resources for us when we were looking for consultants in a different part of the country.

Want to Ace your Virtual Short-List Interview? Follow These Tips to Keep the Focus on You and Your Message Instead of on the Technology.

February 10, 2021 by Jim Rogers

One year into the pandemic, MS-Teams and Zoom meetings have become the new normal for most of us. What’s more, your clients are now routinely conducting most, if not all, short-list interview presentations remotely.

More so than an in-person interview presentation, video conferencing inherently has many variables that could distract your audience, undermine your confidence, and ultimately compromise your team’s chances for the award. The variables are compounded by the number of presenters you have and how many virtual sites are involved. If you have six presenters presenting from separate locations, that’s 6x more chances something could go wrong.

With proper preparation, you can reduce the chances for such distracting problems and you can deliver a more polished and professional presentation that outclasses your competitors. If you and your team members are equally polished, then your professionalism will be all the more impressive.

In this post, you will learn techniques to make sure your technology comes off without a hitch and creates a more professional perception of you with your client. While you should check in with your “IT guy,” here are some DIY steps you can take, regardless of how much tech support you get.

Technology/Bandwidth at Home

Your office is a safe, fast, reliable place to be for an interview. That said, most of my clients have been in their home offices because of the recent surge. Home is not usually as reliable.

At home, be sure to head off any connectivity issues. First, if you can, connect your computer to your router through an ethernet cable instead of Wi-Fi. Your ethernet cable will be more reliable. If your computer is within sight of the router, you may find that your 5G frequency will perform better than 2G. However, if your router is in another room, you may find 2G to be more reliable.

Reboot

If you haven’t rebooted your equipment in a while, take the time to restart your laptop, cable modem and router. Your internet service provider should have instructions on the sequence you should use. Play it safe by doing it the day before, not hours or minutes before showtime — you don’t want to get frantic the day of the presentation if you encounter an issue that takes some time to resolve.

Pause Sync

Contention for bandwidth can yield poor audio and video quality. To ensure that your video conference software isn’t competing for bandwidth, pause any backup synchronization software such as Dropbox, OneDrive, iDrive, or Google Drive. This is especially important if you do not have blazing fast internet. Then, make sure you’re not competing with other members of your household. If it can be helped (hey, lots of us have kids at home doing remote instruction), take care that they’re not downloading or streaming movies or music — or gaming!

Checklist for go time

Ask household members not to stream music and movies or play games online during the call
Close any applications not needed for the presentation
Pause any backup services
Fully charge your headset
Fully charge your laptop, or better yet, plug it in.

Sound

The key here is that your voice should be heard clearly — and it should be the only thing heard. Make sure you are close enough to your microphone. Check for ambient noise in the room, for example, a fan. If you are using two computers, make sure that you only have one microphone open and that you only have one speaker active.

Checklist for go time

Place a do not disturb sign on your door
Turn off the cell phone ringer
Mute email alerts on your computer
Mute Alexa or Siri, or whoever your personal assistant may be
Mute yourself when not speaking, so the client can hear your teammate.

Video

Even though their cameras may be off, your client wants to see your face — and your expressions: camera positioning and lighting drive that. Try to avoid having a window behind you and be sure to have a light in front of you. A selfie ring light is a good choice, but a desk lamp will do. I have a $20 desk lamp in front of me with a low wattage bulb, pointed a bit downward so I’m not blinded by it.

Proportion matters: Don’t center your face on the screen; this leaves a big open space above the top of your head, which is distracting. Vertically, your screen should show from armpit to top of cowboy hat (that’s 3 fingers above-head if you don’t have a cowboy hat!) with your eyes at 2/3 of the way up. Laterally, your face takes up the middle 30% of the screen. Put your laptop on a box or stack of books, if necessary.

Get a Quality Camera

Make sure you are happy with the quality of your camera and microphone. Many laptop cameras are grainy and hate low lighting.

For a high stakes presentation, consider an upgrade to an external HD camera with a better lens and more features, like adjustments for low lighting. I have a Logitech C920 for under $100 that has worked great for hundreds of webinars and video calls over the years. [Note: Many firms have been buying and shipping equipment upgrades directly to interview teams or are reimbursing them after the fact, because they know what is on the line … and it’s a small price to pay.]

A word about virtual backgrounds … because it is friendlier, I recommend using your office (wherever that may be) as a natural work setting if you are able to stage it nicely. Make sure the scenery behind you is professional and reflects your work personality. As I live in Kentucky, I have a bottle of bourbon (unopened, mind you) on the table behind me for a conversation piece. If I had a high-stakes presentation with a client that didn’t know me well, I would consider stowing it out of sight.

Alternatively, a meaningful virtual background would be one that reflects work that you have done or are doing, such as a clear photograph of a client project you’re proud of. Such green screen-type, virtual backdrops are tricky, though — when you move, you break up around the edges of your head and body outline. Parts of you can disappear as you are talking if you’re an animated presenter.

Checklist for go time

Point camera at eye level
Wipe camera lens clean
Check the background for distracting items
Make sure you are front-lit, not backlit
Position yourself close enough to adjust the camera if needed
Turn off the camera when not speaking, so you can feature the speaker (but follow whatever rules your presentation team has agreed on)

Finally

Remember, your work does not speak for itself — your video presentation speaks for it. If your work is worth a client’s attention, aim to deliver it flawlessly. To keep your work from being obscured by any distractions, there is a lot to attend to.

Adopt the mindset of an athlete — respect the importance of pregame preparation by attending to these many variables. And when you’re done, win or lose, you’ll be satisfied knowing that you left it all on the playing field.

Want to See Better Business Development Success in 30 Days? Then Become a Better Listener

February 2, 2021 by Jim Rogers

Business development is about building relationships. Listening builds relationships.

If you’re trying to develop new clients, then listening well is your surest way to build rapport. In mere minutes, it can generate lasting positive feelings that accelerate the relationship-building process. In fact, you will earn their trust quicker, which typically takes a while with new relationships.

When it comes to existing clients, listening more effectively will not only position you better for immediate and long-term opportunities, but it can also lead to the sort of bond that only trusted advisors have with their clients. And those clients can end up sticking with you not just for years, but for decades.

So, ask yourself: Are you a good listener? A good listener:

is in the here and now, avoiding distraction
avoids rushing to judgment
is curious and asks the right questions
does not interrupt, and
makes others feel heard.

Developing a Listening Mindset: Empathy is the Key

Your first key to listening is to set aside your own needs for a few minutes and genuinely seek to understand what the other is trying to convey. This is about mindset. If you go into the conversation thinking about “selling,” then you’re more likely to be waiting for your turn to jump in and be interesting, solve a problem, or prove how smart you are. The “selling” mindset is the saboteur of listening. Business development is built on relationships and listening builds relationships. So listen first, sell second.

If you want to be a better listener, you need to know how good listeners do it. Effective listening is a skill that has three parts: attentive listening, active listening, and most importantly, empathic listening.

First, attentive listening.

Attentiveness is physically showing that you’re listening and are paying attention. We show attentiveness with non-verbal cues such as steady eye contact, head nodding, the occasional uh-huh or hmm, or even through a knowing smile. At a networking event, you aren’t looking over their shoulder to see who else might be in the room. And you’re not looking at your phone for tapas recipes on Pinterest.

Second, active listening.

Active listening makes people feel heard. It means being involved in the conversation by paraphrasing what the speaker has said and asking effective follow up questions. Rather than mimicking or parroting what they said almost verbatim, it’s better to just use your own words to confirm that you have heard them correctly.

Good stock questions that make people feel listened to are:

What do you mean?
Why do you say that?
What happened next?
Can you give me an example?

Finally, empathic listening.

If you want to truly connect with people, empathic listening is the best method. It means playing back the emotion you hear behind what the other person said. An empathic response shows that you hear the emotion behind the words. An active question may make someone feel listened to, but an empathic listener makes someone feel understood.

Empathic listening requires a thoughtful response. If a client’s response to your simple query of “How’s it going?” is a sarcastic, “I’m living the dream, staring at spreadsheets all day again,” an empathic listening response would be: “You’d rather be doing something else.” Or “Sounds like that’s not the most exciting part of your job.”

Empathy Is not Easy but Blocking It Is

For most of us, the empathic response is not our stock response, and it takes some work to learn. In fact, some of our stock responses to the people around us who need empathy result in exactly the opposite: we further alienate them. We fall back on these “empathy blockers” when we seek to distract from a trying situation and force someone to move on from it, whether or not they’re ready to.

If you find yourself having cliché, knee-jerk reactions to the complaints of those around you, you may be blocking empathy. If your response to the above client is a throwaway line like “Yeah, I spend way too much time in front of Excel too,” or “Maybe you should hire an assistant,” or “At least you have a job,” you are not helping them. You are blocking empathy — and the possibility of a deeper connection.

How to Practice and Improve

Ceasing to block empathy is a positive step, however, to build empathic listening skills takes practice and you master it gradually. Start small: instead of using every communication interaction you have with every human you interact with, to get practicing, pick one person from your work life and one from your home life.

By having one person in each environment in mind to practice empathic listening, each time you encounter them will be a trigger for you to stop, listen attentively, and really try to get at their emotion. Try this for a week and when you’re comfortable, pick one more person to focus on for the next week.

Generally, it takes about a month to develop a new habit — if you work at it. In the case of listening, you will quickly notice people responding to you differently, and the value added to your business relationships will last your entire career. And it will show up as new opportunities in the pipeline and more revenue on the books.

Want to Get Better at Listening?

There are many good resources for improving listening skills.

Web Articles

If you are on ToolsHero, go to https://www.toolshero.com/communication-skills/empathic-listening/

Harvard Business Review has a nice summary:

https://hbr.org/2016/07/what-great-listeners-actually-do

Moving from Active Listening to Empathic Listening:

https://www.mindtools.com/CommSkll/EmpathicListening.htm

Web Videos

Communication Coach Alex Lyon has a great session on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO1gpzakbik

Therapy in a Nutshell has a good video with strong examples for your personal life:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGdgUP8XLwc

Print Books on Listening

The Lost Art of Listening: How Learning to Listen Can Improve Relationships (Michael P. Nichols)
The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change (Chapter 7: Seek First to Understand)
Working with Emotional Intelligence (Daniel Goleman)

Public Speaking Is Essential for Seller-Doers: Here’s How to Get Better Right Away

January 28, 2021 by Jim Rogers

Warren Buffet, one of the world’s wealthiest men, asserts that public speaking is the single greatest skill to boost your career. Even if you’re not a business tycoon, the advice still rings true: improving public speaking skills is one of the most fundamental ways seller-doers can hone their business development skills.

I define a seller-doer as “a billable professional who takes purposeful action to help generate revenue for their firm.” In professional services, purposeful action may be speaking at conferences, taking part in interview presentations, and conducting lunch and learns.

Competency as a speaker can also help make you more effective when presenting at project or public meetings or even at a professional association chapter meeting.

What Level of Speaker Are You and Where Do You Need to Be?

The public speaking skills you need to develop will depend on your current capability. It will also depend on what speaking opportunities will help you best serve today’s clients and attract tomorrow’s.

Novice speakers are still nervous about speaking to groups. Novice public speakers should aim to overcome their fear of public speaking and learn the fundamentals — keeping their focus while picking up on audience engagement. Novice speakers are generally comfortable with small groups; a good place for them to practice might be an internal meeting where the faces are familiar and the stakes are low.
Intermediate speakers are comfortable with an audience and are consistently effective. Intermediate speakers should aim to be more agile when communicating complex ideas, and to pivot to a new topic if something isn’t working. These speakers are more comfortable with larger audiences; they might be good candidates to host lunch and learns or technical training.
Advanced speakers project confidence and can speak with little preparation on topics they know well. Most AEC roles don’t require expert-level presenters, but advanced speakers looking to step up their game should focus on making their presentations more engaging. These speakers are often the best key presenters for interview presentations.

So where do you fit in and where do you need to land? If you’re going to have a substantive role in short-list interview presentations or be an industry thought leader presenting at several conferences a year, you may aim to become an advanced speaker.

If you’ll primarily be presenting at public meetings, conducting lunch and learns, and occasionally presenting on technical topics at conferences, then intermediate may be a good enough landing point for you. Regardless of where you’re headed, if you’re a novice, it’s time to get started – with purpose – to improve.

Skill-Building Strategies

The best way to become a better speaker is to practice. Books about public speaking are ineffective teachers since they can’t give you the depth of wisdom you’ll gain through experience. Once you’ve learned a few tips, the fastest and most effective way to become a better speaker is to just do it.

With that in mind, our strategies to build your skill and comfort with public speaking are:

Join Toastmasters
Fail Small
Volunteer
Persist!

Join Toastmasters

Toastmasters is a nonprofit organization that helps people become more confident speakers—and with more than 16,600 clubs in 143 countries, it’s likely that there’s a chapter near you. Because the organization is 100 years old, it has carefully crafted and road tested a process for helping people succeed at speaking.

Although many people join Toastmasters to overcome their fear of speaking, others join to become better leaders, more competent speakers, or even to join the ranks of professional speakers.

For a low semi-annual fee, you’ll be able to meet weekly or bi-weekly to practice your speaking skills and do some self-study and speech preparation in your outside time. The structure of the program ensures that people get a chance to practice not only speeches, but also writing, impromptu speaking, storytelling, and more!

You can also get involved in committees and leadership roles to develop marketing, interpersonal, and leadership skills. Whatever role you decide on, Toastmasters’ members are always genuinely nice and deliver feedback in a kind, constructive manner. As a bonus, many it’s fun! It’s easiest to learn in a safe, fun environment, and Toastmasters delivers on this, for speakers of all skill levels.

Fail Small

Seek out low-risk opportunities to speak, whether you’re trying to overcome your fear of speaking or develop from a more solid foundation. The types of preparation that will help you exude confidence are the small, everyday ways you can practice speaking, whether you’re asking a question in a large meeting or hosting a brown bag lunch.

Small steps mean practicing the basics; for example, learning how to speak succinctly instead of rambling. In general, it’s good to aim for thoughtful contributions that make people glad you stood up to speak.

If you’re a bit rusty at public speaking, you’ll inevitably make mistakes, but from those failures will come important growth that will help you succeed when it really matters. You’ll thank yourself later when you’re facing a more high-stakes situation, like an interview presentation for an important client.

Volunteer

Volunteering in leadership roles is a win-win: the community benefits from your service, and you benefit from the opportunities to practice public speaking. Community service and volunteer leadership roles give you valuable training, as they often involve a public speaking component. When you’re called on to use your public speaking skills, you’ll receive informal training that will hone them through experience alone. No matter what your current skill level is, you’ll improve with practice.

Volunteer roles can take many forms, including coaching youth sports, taking part on the board of a nonprofit, or presenting in a public meeting. Whatever organization you volunteer for, make it something you are passionate about.

Persist!

If you tend to look up to principals in your firm who speak with confidence and think, “I could never do what they do,” you might be surprised at how people got where they are today. Many advanced speakers started out as nervous, novice speakers. Practice is the key to improving your public speaking skills—never turn down a chance to speak.

Recommendations for Further Reading:

If you’re a new speaker trying to overcome your fear of public speaking, this HBR article outlines a unique way to use kindness to your advantage: https://hbr.org/2019/09/to-overcome-your-fear-of-public-speaking-stop-thinking-about-yourself

Looking for a few quick tips? inc.com has a list of 20 general tips that help you prepare for a presentation: https://www.inc.com/brent-gleeson/20-tips-for-mastering-art-of-public-speaking.html

For some guidance on a specific type of speaking engagement, Toastmasters has public speaking tips for awards, sales pitches, technical briefings, and more: https://www.toastmasters.org/resources/public-speaking-tips

Finally, listen to some speakers in action with this TED Talks “Before public speaking…” playlist: https://www.ted.com/playlists/226/before_public_speaking

The 4 Capabilities Every Seller-Doer Must Develop

October 27, 2020 by Jim Rogers

If you are in professional services and want to work on the most exciting projects for the best clients, maximize your compensation, become indispensable, and take command of your career, then merely delivering excellent client service is not enough. You must do something, anything, to help bring in revenue.

That’s what seller-doers do.

Seller-doer defined

I define a seller-doer as a billable professional who takes purposeful action to help generate revenue for their firm.

The word “doer” implies that you are actively engaged in billable client work as opposed to being a full-time business developer or marketing professional.

“Seller” refers broadly to marketing and business activities that generate revenue for your firm.

I include the word “help” in the definition because your involvement in generating revenue will be based on the nature of your business and where you are in your career. In other words, you don’t have to be a rainmaker, or principal, to be a seller-doer with impact.

Take purposeful action

The middle part of the definition, “takes purposeful action,” simply means that you are doing something other than just delivering top quality deliverables and successful outcomes for client projects.

Below are five examples of activities in which seller-doers might participate.

Raise awareness of your firm by speaking at conferences, blogging, and being active on LinkedIn or Twitter or both.
Grow your network and develop leads for new clients by attending networking events.
Ask an existing client for a referral.
Help identify opportunities for new projects with existing clients… before your competitors do.
Write or contribute to proposals and interview presentations.

What must a seller-doer learn?

To succeed in those activities, there are four capabilities that every seller doer must develop: communication, marketing, business development, and closing the sale. Let’s take them one by one.

Communication

Communication is the foundation of everything a seller-doer does and is the place to start if you don’t have these building blocks in place. If you can’t communicate effectively, tackling the other skills will be difficult if not futile. The skills include the following:

People skills
Business writing
Public speaking, and
Persuasion.

Effective communication is the key to establishing healthy working relationships with clients. Similarly, people skills allow you to build rapport and credibility, thereby fostering trust between you and your clients. Being able to write and speak clearly and persuasively will help you convey your best ideas in a compelling way that helps you stand out from the crowd.

Marketing

Marketing is the most important means of attracting new clients. A large part of this for any professional is in growing your network and raising awareness of your firm’s (and your) capabilities. You can do this through writing, speaking, and attending networking events, and being active on LinkedIn.

If you’ve been tasked with finding new clients rather than just developing new work for existing clients, then prospecting is essential. This may require your being able to perform market and client research to identify best clients.

You’ll need to know how to get referrals from existing clients and others in your network. And you’ll need to have the phone skills that can get a prospect to take a first meeting with you. Do an excellent job and you’ll soon be pumping new project leads into the pipeline. And when it comes to revenue generation, the pipeline rules all.

Business Development

Business development is the process for moving project and contract opportunities through the pipeline up to the brink of proposing on and winning the business. It’s in this middle stage of the client lifecycle where most deals are won or lost. Four business development skills that you will need are listed below:

Planning a compelling sales call
Questioning and listening
Positioning (i.e., articulating your value proposition), and
Capture planning and making good go/no-go decisions.

Closing the Sale

Closing is the last step in getting work in the door and an important seller-doer capability. For you to operate within this part of the client lifecycle, you need to learn these skills:

Proposal writing
Interview presentations, and
Negotiation.

These skills get the fees on the books. If you’re just starting out, you might volunteer to help by writing similar project descriptions and resumes for a proposal or to help run the dress rehearsal for a high-stakes interview presentation.

Speaking of Volunteering

I asked 30 top AEC executives how they would recommend developing seller-doer skills. Number one? Volunteering.

Volunteer in your professional association, in your client trade associations, and in your community. You’ll not only develop skills, you’ll be growing your network and discovering new clients.

The top four strategies for developing seller-doer skills, as recommended by executives are these:

Volunteering (as described above)
Conducting lunch & learns for existing clients. . . and prospective ones
Joining Toastmasters International (a nonprofit educational organization that teaches public speaking and leadership skills through a worldwide network of clubs), and
Joining or participating in the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS).

Be sure to check back next week for upcoming posts on this subject with more details on how to become an effective seller-doer.

And, if you want to stay apprised of the upcoming book tentatively titled Becoming a Seller-Doer, then click here to sign up for periodic alerts.