Accountant, lawyers, insurance brokers – they all view their self-worth through their technical acumen.

 

After years of being trained and challenged over their technical capabilities it comes as a bit of a shock when they are expected to win and grow business.

 

As one partner once said to me “Peter, if I’d wanted to be in sales I’d have joined the Unilever graduate scheme, not an accountancy firm”. 

 

I must have conducted over a hundred sales training courses many of which made a real difference in demystifying “sales” and business development for the nervous participants. Often though, we were unwinding years of mis understanding and bad habits that could have been prevented if soft skills training had been alongside technical training. It’s no use being technically excellent if you can’t relate that expertise to the client’s needs and explain the benefits.

 

From that experience of professional services firms the return on their investment in technical capability has been undermined by a lack of time spent on communications and influencing skills. As much as ad hoc or short-term training courses have their purpose, a long term development strategy would yield more sustained results and have a bigger impact on culture.

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• Identify the soft skills needs for professionals in their journey through the organization.

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• Empower and upskill their managers (or alternative solution) with the soft skills and coaching capabilities to reinforce training with on-the-job experience.

 

Where we’ve been able to do this the results are quantifiably better for the organization not least because of the greater self confidence of client facing staff.