Information

You want to find information, it’s all there.  More information is available for free today than ever before in history.  Whatever you’re interested in, you can Google any questions you have and you’ll be able to access a whole range of information that is specific to your topic.

So are we any better off because all this information is available?  Maybe not.

If I want to find information on setting up a company, I can find it on the web, for free.  The information is available.  But I have to find it, read it and understand it.  That’s where the next bit comes in – knowledge.

Knowledge

Knowledge is understanding information.  Knowledge is taking the information contained in multiple sources and putting it together so it makes some kind of sense.

A lot of MBA students have knowledge.  Say they’re taking a marketing subject.  They can learn all about positioning, the four P’s, value propositions, distribution channels etc.  They can obtain information from different sources and convert it into knowledge. 

But knowing about something and actually being able to do something are two different things.

And that’s where expertise comes in.

Expertise

Expertise is being able to take the knowledge and learnings from past experiences and being able to apply it to a particular situation.  You can’t buy expertise – you earn it through years of doing.  Gladwell talks about needing 10,000 of practice before you become proficient at a skill – that’s expertise.  You can have all the knowledge and information, but actually using it and learning from it is how you gain expertise.

• Expertise comes from making mistakes – and learning from them.
• Expertise comes from having huge successes – and understanding what made them successful.
• Expertise comes from learning from other experts and watching them operate.
• Expertise comes from applying your knowledge and information and watching the outcomes.

What Do You Sell

This blog is aimed at people who sell professional services. 

In professional services, if all you sell is information, you’ll quickly become redundant.  Because if it’s not already available for free, it soon will be.  A great example is mutual fund ratings.  For years financial planners had exclusive access to mutual fund ratings – if you wanted a five star fund you needed to see a financial planner to find out who the good fund managers are.  That information is now available for free.

If all you sell is knowledge, it’s not enough.  Many potential clients think they’re able to do it themselves because they can access the information and convert it into knowledge.  But knowledge without experience is dangerous.  It’s the investor who knows who the five star funds are and invests blindly into those funds without stopping to think about whether the performance is likely to continue.  It’s the difference between reading about how to fly a plane and having actual experience in the air flying.

If you’re selling knowledge and you’ve been around for a while, you can sell expertise instead.  Expertise is hard to quantify, but clients value it.  Your job is to make the benefits of your expertise tangible to your clients.

Legal services is a good example.  Say you need to write a Will.  Of course you can obtain the information and knowledge to write one.  You can even buy a DIY Will kit and complete it yourself.

But you lack expertise.  The lawyer doesn’t.

It costs a bit more to get a lawyer to draw up your Will, but you gain peace of mind.  If you did it yourself, you wouldn’t know about any problems until it was too late (then your Estate would find out about those problems).  You may forget about the tax implications of selling assets, you may mention assets in your Will that won’t actually form part of your estate – there are a range of things that can go wrong in even the most simplest of estates. 

So if I was a lawyer, I’d be promoting my expertise to potential clients.  I’d be highlighting potential problems and then explain how my advice could prevent them.  I’d be selling the benefits of my experience – this is my job, it’s what I do for a living.  Sure you can try and do it yourself to save some money now, but it may turn out to be more costly in the long term.

So what do you sell?  Information, knowledge or expertise?

Which ones do you think are worth more?

How do you differentiate between the three when you’re speaking with clients?

How can you make your experience more tangible to your clients?

Let me know what you think and leave a comment.

Our financial planning business has an architectural firm as clients.  I visited them in their office the other day and was impressed by what I saw.

I guess if you’re an architect it could be hard to sell your value to some clients.  A lot of what you’re selling is intangible.  The plans you draw up may look ok, but how can I be sure the building you’re designing will look good once it’s built?

How do I know that you can do the job I’m asking you to do?  What’s the risk if I pick you and it turns out to be the wrong decision?

This firm has some smart ways to help the client feel at ease and relaxed with their ability.

When you walk into their office, the reception area is modern and stylish.  The seats are comfortable (there’s nothing worse than having to sit in a waiting room on an uncomfortable seat).  Their receptionist is well presented and polite.  She asks if I’d like a tea or coffee and lets me know when she’s told my clients I’ve arrived.

The colour scheme is modern without being too over-the-top.  Instead of the usual paintings on the wall, they display photos of the buildings they’ve designed.  In the past they’ve had framed architectural drawings on the walls.  Thinking about this point they seem to change the wall art every 6 months or so – perhaps a subtle indication to clients that they’re progressive and always looking for new ideas?

Their boardroom is well laid out – again the artwork on the wall consists of photos of their successful projects and framed drawings. 

This business has worked on a range of high profile projects here in Adelaide.  Because the photos provide images of such a range of projects, most clients would see a picture of at least one building that they’d know of and be familiar with.  This firm has worked on that building.  What a great way to build credibility.

Finally, the offices look great.  Whilst clients would usually only spend time in the front boardroom and interview offices, today I got to look behind the scenes and I was impressed.  You expect an architectural firm to have good looking offices, but so often only the public areas look great.  Not with this firm.  Their back office area looked great and provides a fantastic environment for their employees to work and learn in.

The overall impression you get from visiting this firm is that of quality.  You see the evidence of their past work, the care they take in designing their own appearance and you walk away with the confidence that they can help you with your project.

How do you show prospective clients that you’re good at what you do?

Are you able to show examples of your work?  Does your work environment look professional and convey the right image?  Or does it show that you’re out of touch and don’t care about your staff?

Think about the first impressions a client receives when they enter your office.  What do they think when they first walk in?

Have a think about how they’re greeted – who does the greeting, do you script what they say?

One financial planning firm I used to visit had a sign on their front desk that said ‘Welcome Mr & Mrs Client Name’ – they updated it before each scheduled appointment.  When the clients walked in they immediately felt special.

Another business invested in a good coffee machine and created a menu of all the drink options ranging from water, soft drinks to different teas and coffees. 

New clients are always looking for clues about the quality of the service and these little ideas help them feel more confident in the person they’re dealing with.

Do this exercise.  Pretend you’re a new client visiting your business for the first time.  What’s the experience like?  What do your premises say about your business? 

Have a think this week about the experience of visiting your office.  Is it good or bad?  How can you improve it?

It stands to reason that if we want to provide great customer service, we need to understand what our clients think great customer service looks like.  Spending time understanding their expectations can lead to more effective results.

The authors summarise customer service expectations into five areas: reliability, tangibles, responsiveness, assurance and empathy.  We’ll cover these in more detail below, together with some examples.

Reliability

This aspect of service delivery is all about doing what you said you were going to do when you said you were going to do it.

Have you ever waited at home for a tradesman to arrive hours later than they’d promised?  Or been frustrated that the person on the phone who promised to call back with some important information regarding your insurance hasn’t called?

When you’re selling a service, customers use reliability as one of the important clues to make a decision about whether or not to use your services.  You see, when they can’t see your physical product, they look for other cues that demonstrate whether you’ll be able to deliver the promised product.  Do you do what you say you’ll do?  This means when you say you’ll call them tomorrow, you actually do.  Or when you promise to post some documents, they arrive on time and the clients don’t have to call your office to follow them up.

If you say you’re going to do these little things and you actually do, then people have faith that you’ll be able to deliver on the big service they’re buying from you.

As an absolute minimum, if you want to meet your clients expectations, do what you say you’re going to do.

If you want to exceed their expectations, read on and do the next four things well.

Tangibles

How do you make your service come alive?  It’s hard for me to show a client a mutual fund, but I can talk about the companies they deal with every day that the fund invests into. 

As a client interacts with your service experience, they use the tangible things they see to make decisions.  If your offices look messy and untidy, this affects their perception of your service. 

What about when you stay in a hotel and they put that paper sash across the toilet lid.  It’s there as evidence that the toilet has been cleaned.  You wouldn’t necessarily notice the clean toilet by itself, but the sash draws attention to it.  The implication is – if the toilet is clean, the rest of the room must also be clean.

I’ve been in waiting rooms that have magazines from 5 years ago in the magazine rack.  Maybe it’s just me, but my brain thinks that maybe that business is stuck in a mindset of five years ago, and maybe they’re not up with the latest ideas and strategies that I need to know about.

Have a good hard look about the physical elements to your service – your office, appearance, documentation you use etc.  Does it convey to your clients that you’re professional and capable?

Responsiveness

Are you interested in helping customers?  Being responsive means understanding that when a client calls with a query, they are responded to quickly.

We recently changed the provider for our home phone.  It was an interesting experience.  When we called the sales area, we spoke with a live person very quickly.  Once we were an existing customer and had queries about the service not working properly, we were on hold for over 20 minutes before we got to speak with someone.  This shows to me that the company really isn’t that interested in me.

How do you show that you’re responsive?  One thing we do is try and return all phone calls on the same day we received them so our clients understand they’re important to us. 

How willing are you to help clients?  How can you show this?

Assurance

When a client deals with your organisation, do they have the confidence that the employees are capable and able to do their jobs well? 

We recently took our dog to our regular vet to get them to look at a lump that had developed on her side.  We were seen by a younger vet (not that there’s anything wrong with that!) and, after a brief feel and a quick blood test, she made a diagnosis that involved surgery.  To be honest, we felt that she’d rushed things a bit and maybe hadn’t done a complete diagnosis.  Of course, the cost of following her advice would involve a significant financial outlay as well as the mental pressure of having a dog have surgery.  As a result, we took our dog to another vet for a second opinion.

You see, when I haven’t got faith in your ability to deliver, I’ll question the things you suggest.

In your service business you need to find ways to convey your credibility to clients.  One very effective way is through the use of client testimonials.  Potential clients can read about how you’ve helped someone similar to them, and this gives them confidence that you’ll be able to help them in a similar fashion.  If you don’t have any existing clients who will give your testimonials, use case studies instead that show how your advice could benefit a particular type of client. 

Empathy

This last point is all about showing the client that you care about them and their personal situation. 

In our business we have a phrase “It’s not about the money”.  As financial planners, in one sense it’s actually all about the money.  But it’s not.  It’s about wanting to understand what the money represents to our clients – what are the things they want to do with it.

At the moment we’re dealing with the extreme market volatility.  We have clients who have lost 20% or 30% over the past year.  In our conversations with those clients we’re taking a lot of time to just sit and listen, and find out how they really feel.  We understand the pain they’re going through. 

We’ll say things to them that other clients in a similar position have already said.  If they’re retired, a popular phrase is ‘I can’t go back to work to recoup my losses’.  I’ll say to clients ‘I understand that you can’t just go back to work to recoup your loss’.  Most clients will nod their head and agree – they’re seeing that we understand how they feel.

Most people just want to be valued as an individual – that’s what empathy is all about.

Putting it Together

If you want to meet your client’s expectations, the best thing you can do is be reliable – deliver the service you say you’re going to deliver.  In other words, give them the outcome they’re expecting.

But if you want to exceed their expectations, you need to have a service process in place to deliver the elements of tangibles, responsiveness, assurance and empathy.

Think about a time in your life where you’ve had an experience where your expectations were exceeded.  How did they do it?  Chances are it wasn’t from just doing what they’d promised, but it involved one of the other four elements we’ve discussed.

Have a thought about your business and think of innovative ways you can deliver these five elements of service so that you don’t just meet the expectations of your clients, but you exceed those expectations.

Leave a comment below and let me know what you think.

Have you ever been served by someone who was obviously having a bad day?  We all dislike receiving poor or indifferent service – when I go shopping I want to feel special and valued by the stores I frequent, not ignored.

If I’m buying a tangible product, I can overlook a degree of poor service because I’m buying a tangible thing, not a person’s services.

But when I’m buying a service, I’m buying people.  I’m buying the idea that these people have the knowledge or experience that can help me with a need that I have.

And that’s where the performance aspect comes in.  I’ve had days in my financial planning business where I’m not giving the best performance.  I may be tired, rushed, preoccupied with other thoughts, and as a result I don’t give me best in an appointment with a client.

I’ve experience times where the support staff of businesses are clearly having a bad day and sadly create a poor impression of the business.

I’m a guitarist.  And I find interesting similarities with my music and my business.

If I’m planning for a concert (performance), there are a few things I need to do.

Firstly, I need to know the songs.  To do this I need to practice them by myself to make sure I learn my parts.  I’m relying on my other band members to do the same thing.

Step two is to rehearse with the band.  We’ve all learnt the parts individually, now we come together and hear how it sounds as a group.  We each contribute ideas and thoughts, and playing with others has the ability to inspire you to play at a different level.

Finally, we’re ready for the performance.  We go to the show ready – we know our parts and we have the confidence that the service we’re delivering (our show) is going to be valuable to our audience.

The point is, we don’t play a concert without preparation, but in our business life, we perform frequently without preparing properly, and we wonder why we don’t get the results we desire.

In your service business, how can you better control the performance?

Things we’re looking at in our business include:

·         Scripting how our staff interacts with clients, including how the phones are answered and the language they use.

·         Creating articles and brochures that reinforce the value proposition of the business.  We send these to clients before they see us so they can have a better idea of our business before they come in.  We’re very happy with the content of the brochure, and feel the words it contains can sell our business more effectively than we could if we had to rush to explain it at the start of an appointment.

·         Creating these articles has helped us develop the language and phrases of our business.

·         We make our staff aware of the power of first impressions.  In many cases the lowest paid staff member has the first contact with clients – you’d better make sure they’re having a good day.

·         Creating some defined systems and processes, to ensure the service is delivered in a consistent manner.  This includes having a set fee structure.

·         Through our podcasts, audio programs and (in the future) videos, we aim to create a series of tools that explain our financial planning process clearly to clients, no matter who their financial planner is within the business.  This enables us to grow our staff numbers, knowing that a large part of the interview process is controlled by us through these tools, not left to the individual planner’s discretion.

·         Finally, and most importantly, we remind the staff about the importance of the performance.  Like a band playing a concert, you only get one opportunity to deliver the service.  If you mess it up, you’ve still got an opportunity to recover, but some damage has been done.

How do you deliver a good performance?  Even the best bands get it wrong on stage sometime, and I’m not suggesting you control the service delivery so tightly that the individual personalities of people get stifled.  But what things can you do in your business to improve the performance factor?  Share them with us so we can all perform better.