White Paper 14:
How to Build Influence Relationships with
Clients, Peers and Partners
If we examine what is going on in dysfunctional work relationships, we
can reverse engineer a framework for building any solid relationship
based on certainty and confidence.
Here’s what we’ve been seeing lately in different client situations. A
line business manager has to get something done—a new IT change, an
open personnel requisition to be filled, a new vendor to be found and
contracted with. He or she turns to internal departments for help. But,
because the organization is in the process of implementing a new
structure that assigns generalists aka business liaisons, business
partners or “relationship managers” to the business unit, it isn’t
simple anymore.
Instead of making one phone call and getting started, there is now a
new, multi-step process to follow, the relationship manager to meet,
and—this is the problem—the client’s sense of confusion and
uncertainty about how, when and even if this need is going to be met.
The irony is that these changes—the formal process, the generalist-
business liaison role—are designed to better serve the internal client.
Ideally, the business liaison position is fashioned more as a consultant—
someone who can understand the strategic and day to day context the
internal client is working in, assessing and anticipating various needs
and marshaling resources from the specialist pool. Specialists are able
to concentrate on developing the right solutions, exploring state of the
art techniques and technologies to bring to the client and delivering
solutions that are effective and on time.
Alas, that’s not what is happening in the places we’ve been. Here are
the archetype symptoms we’ve seen in these situations:
The business liaison delivers the service the specialists are
supposed to deliver. “It was easy, so I just did it.”
Specialists feel cut off—distant and alienated—from internal clients
with whom they’ve established working—and personal relationships.
Business liaisons and specialists are blind-sided by calls from clients
who are inquiring about ongoing issues that they know nothing about.
People feel left out of meetings that they “should have been invited
to”.
The formal process intended to produce results through a
progressive series of steps, gaining buy-in and spreading clarity,
instead feels restrictive, imposed and inflexible.
The client doesn’t know on whom to call for what, and he or she is
not getting answers even when the call is made.
The business liaison is knowledgeable about some of, but not all, the
services and the status of projects that specialists are involved in. So,
when there is a question from an internal client to the business liaison,
it often winds up with a specialist. The client begins to question the
value of the intermediary role.
The business liaison begins to believe he/she is working for the
business area, not the service group. The line of advocacy is crossed
over, and the business liaison soon takes a provincial, narrow-minded,
perhaps defensive view of his/her own work unit.
There is a growing sense of loneliness, not collegiality among people.
When these get carried to an extreme, specialists feel de-valued,
clients are confused and often angry because answers are hard to
come by, and business liaisons become a target from both sides. While
the “system” or “business model” might be in place, the relationships
needed to make this work aren’t.
What is really going on here is a failure to pay attention to how to build
influence relationships in a new operating environment, in fact, in any
operating environment. While the formal process has been engineered
to a fare-thee-well, and the job description of the business liaison has
been scrubbed for clarity, there is a missing ingredient—how this is
supposed to really work between people. As we’ve heard so many
times when asking people what the secret sauce is in workplace
effectiveness, the answer usually comes back to “relationships.” So,
what we are seeing is the tip of the iceberg where influence skills are
needed, but not practiced.
Master Moments of Truth in the Client Experience: The
Keys to Influence
We have developed a way to break through this awkward phase. The
remedy is to become client-focused and purposely engineer an
experience—with your clients, peer, partner that results in clarity for
all, confidence in what is happening and why, and results in value for
the client and everyone else involved. When expectations are clear all
around, trust isn’t far behind.
The key in doing this is to focus on the critical moments in the client (or
peer, partner) experience that must be done exceptionally well; we call
these “moments of truth”. When you view these together, they form an
“Influence Process”, or a description of how to work together. This
literally floats above the multi-step formal processes that may have
been created to guide the development of, say, an IT system. If we pay
attention to building an excellent experience that creates clarity and
delivers on that promise for the client, we will have built a new
relationship based on confidence and mutual trust.
In a way, these “moments of truth” are not unlike the experience you
have when checking into a hotel or getting your car serviced; you have
certain expectations for that exact experience that, if not fulfilled,
create a disappointment that undermines your view of the brand you
are dealing with. The idea is to take each moment of truth, anticipate
what can go wrong—what will distract, create confusion, and breed
disappointment and uncertainty—, understand what the client cares
about in those moments, and then engineer a useful and valuable
experience in its place.
Here are the “moments of truth” we’ve identified in a generalist-
specialist environment with internal clients. Bear in mind, these
guidelines are also perfectly applicable to any client, peer or partner
relationship. In fact, high-performing salespeople have discovered that
making the client experience valuable is a key to relationship building
and sales success. Focusing on making “moments of truth” bullet-
proof is probably the core skill in influencing others. It also becomes
your brand, just as FedEx or Marriott have branded protocols for clients.
As an organization or entity, how can you purposefully…
Start Something New. Contracting at new beginnings—whether it is a
new project, relationship or problem to solve—focuses on clearly
explaining and/or mutually designing how the process ahead will
unfold. If there is a formal, multi-phase process of development, the
goal is to explain how it will work, how it can flex, who will be involved,
what the roles are of specialists and relationship managers and what
the other people involved can expect. While the formal process may
have a designated “kick off meeting”, that meeting has to be conducted
so that the client emerges with a sense of certainty about what will
happen and why. Start Something New is an opportunity to plan the
future with the client, peer or partner so that it works for them. When
expectations are clearly set and a path to follow is in place, the future is
more certain.
Deal With the Unexpected. Recovering from the inevitable problem
is clearly a moment of truth. Can you decide beforehand how you will
handle slip-ups? Telling or working out guidelines for handling when
things go wrong before they go wrong creates another layer of
confidence in the relationship. A discussion that anticipates and plans
for bad times, describing what steps will be taken, what options might
be available, etc. yields a ready-to-go plan and a sense all around of
being ahead of –-rather than being overwhelmed by problems when
they emerge.
Manage Conflict. There are situations where a client, peer or partner
will have different points of view from yours. You can position conflict
positively, or you can just let it happen. If you agree to view differences
as a positive opportunity to improve work process and outcomes, then
you can problem-solve. If you and your client, peer, or partner view
difference as a contest, then you have an argument. Explicitly steering
your client to a positive view of conflict is in everyone’s best interest,
and it is another core influence skill. The experience of resolving
differences can become a creative, inclusive and memorable “moment
of truth”.
Keep Informed. It may appear to be a small detail, but how and what
you regularly communicate makes a difference to the client, peer or
partner experience. This gets complicated when there are a number of
functions involved, and each has a different need for information. To
be effective, you have to know who needs to be informed, what media
to use to communicate and who needs to keep you informed. Regularly
recapping the big picture works; use charts and at-a-glance exhibits.
We’ve heard from our clients that email isn’t effective anymore—the
challenge is to get back to talking with people; it is clearly the best
answer. The question is how to get more face-time. Think lunch,
hallway and elevator discussions, cubicle drop-ins, beers after work.
Huddle on Decisions. One of the most challenging “moments of
truth” is decision-making in an influence environment with specialists,
generalists, clients, partners, etc. The question of who has approval,
who recommends, who is involved, can be defined upfront for the
majority of the decisions that need to be made. But that’s not where
decision-making breaks down; it’s the decision that doesn’t fit the
pattern, especially where there are overlapping responsibilities,
multiple roles that have a stake in the outcome, and people who feel
they should be heard. The challenge here is to take the time to literally
figure it out, and the rule of thumb is inclusiveness. That means
discussing options in a group or with another—not via email until a
consensus emerges. Being able to facilitate an all-stakeholders “figure
it out” decision session or an impromptu hallway meeting with a partner
is a vital influence skill.
The Payoff: Your Personal and Your Work Unit’s Brand
If these “moments of truth” are executed effectively and consistently,
your clients, peers and partners will experience a relationship that
works. If you are conscientious about informing your client-base—
“advertising” how you work, you are creating a brand promise. Your
clients, peers and partners will know what to expect when working with
you.
On the other hand, we’ve seen when these relationships don’t work. If
internal clients, peers or partners are disappointed at the beginning of
a relationship because of a cloudy start, it is very difficult to recover.
Trust is the first casualty when a “moment of truth” doesn’t live up to
what the client, peer or partner cares about. Regardless of what
happens afterwards to rectify or mitigate, the other person will be on
guard, watching and cautious not only now but in the future and not
only with you, but with everyone from your organization.
Immediate action step: Think about—or ask—how your clients, peers
and partners view you and your organization at these critical moments.
Put yourself into their experience and see how it feels to working with
you. Using that as a start, build an influence process from there.
How to Build Influence Relationships with
Clients, Peers and Partners
If we examine what is going on in dysfunctional work relationships, we
can reverse engineer a framework for building any solid relationship
based on certainty and confidence.
Here’s what we’ve been seeing lately in different client situations. A
line business manager has to get something done—a new IT change, an
open personnel requisition to be filled, a new vendor to be found and
contracted with. He or she turns to internal departments for help. But,
because the organization is in the process of implementing a new
structure that assigns generalists aka business liaisons, business
partners or “relationship managers” to the business unit, it isn’t
simple anymore.
Instead of making one phone call and getting started, there is now a
new, multi-step process to follow, the relationship manager to meet,
and—this is the problem—the client’s sense of confusion and
uncertainty about how, when and even if this need is going to be met.
The irony is that these changes—the formal process, the generalist-
business liaison role—are designed to better serve the internal client.
Ideally, the business liaison position is fashioned more as a consultant—
someone who can understand the strategic and day to day context the
internal client is working in, assessing and anticipating various needs
and marshaling resources from the specialist pool. Specialists are able
to concentrate on developing the right solutions, exploring state of the
art techniques and technologies to bring to the client and delivering
solutions that are effective and on time.
Alas, that’s not what is happening in the places we’ve been. Here are
the archetype symptoms we’ve seen in these situations:
The business liaison delivers the service the specialists are
supposed to deliver. “It was easy, so I just did it.”
Specialists feel cut off—distant and alienated—from internal clients
with whom they’ve established working—and personal relationships.
Business liaisons and specialists are blind-sided by calls from clients
who are inquiring about ongoing issues that they know nothing about.
People feel left out of meetings that they “should have been invited
to”.
The formal process intended to produce results through a
progressive series of steps, gaining buy-in and spreading clarity,
instead feels restrictive, imposed and inflexible.
The client doesn’t know on whom to call for what, and he or she is
not getting answers even when the call is made.
The business liaison is knowledgeable about some of, but not all, the
services and the status of projects that specialists are involved in. So,
when there is a question from an internal client to the business liaison,
it often winds up with a specialist. The client begins to question the
value of the intermediary role.
The business liaison begins to believe he/she is working for the
business area, not the service group. The line of advocacy is crossed
over, and the business liaison soon takes a provincial, narrow-minded,
perhaps defensive view of his/her own work unit.
There is a growing sense of loneliness, not collegiality among people.
When these get carried to an extreme, specialists feel de-valued,
clients are confused and often angry because answers are hard to
come by, and business liaisons become a target from both sides. While
the “system” or “business model” might be in place, the relationships
needed to make this work aren’t.
What is really going on here is a failure to pay attention to how to build
influence relationships in a new operating environment, in fact, in any
operating environment. While the formal process has been engineered
to a fare-thee-well, and the job description of the business liaison has
been scrubbed for clarity, there is a missing ingredient—how this is
supposed to really work between people. As we’ve heard so many
times when asking people what the secret sauce is in workplace
effectiveness, the answer usually comes back to “relationships.” So,
what we are seeing is the tip of the iceberg where influence skills are
needed, but not practiced.
Master Moments of Truth in the Client Experience: The
Keys to Influence
We have developed a way to break through this awkward phase. The
remedy is to become client-focused and purposely engineer an
experience—with your clients, peer, partner that results in clarity for
all, confidence in what is happening and why, and results in value for
the client and everyone else involved. When expectations are clear all
around, trust isn’t far behind.
The key in doing this is to focus on the critical moments in the client (or
peer, partner) experience that must be done exceptionally well; we call
these “moments of truth”. When you view these together, they form an
“Influence Process”, or a description of how to work together. This
literally floats above the multi-step formal processes that may have
been created to guide the development of, say, an IT system. If we pay
attention to building an excellent experience that creates clarity and
delivers on that promise for the client, we will have built a new
relationship based on confidence and mutual trust.
In a way, these “moments of truth” are not unlike the experience you
have when checking into a hotel or getting your car serviced; you have
certain expectations for that exact experience that, if not fulfilled,
create a disappointment that undermines your view of the brand you
are dealing with. The idea is to take each moment of truth, anticipate
what can go wrong—what will distract, create confusion, and breed
disappointment and uncertainty—, understand what the client cares
about in those moments, and then engineer a useful and valuable
experience in its place.
Here are the “moments of truth” we’ve identified in a generalist-
specialist environment with internal clients. Bear in mind, these
guidelines are also perfectly applicable to any client, peer or partner
relationship. In fact, high-performing salespeople have discovered that
making the client experience valuable is a key to relationship building
and sales success. Focusing on making “moments of truth” bullet-
proof is probably the core skill in influencing others. It also becomes
your brand, just as FedEx or Marriott have branded protocols for clients.
As an organization or entity, how can you purposefully…
Start Something New. Contracting at new beginnings—whether it is a
new project, relationship or problem to solve—focuses on clearly
explaining and/or mutually designing how the process ahead will
unfold. If there is a formal, multi-phase process of development, the
goal is to explain how it will work, how it can flex, who will be involved,
what the roles are of specialists and relationship managers and what
the other people involved can expect. While the formal process may
have a designated “kick off meeting”, that meeting has to be conducted
so that the client emerges with a sense of certainty about what will
happen and why. Start Something New is an opportunity to plan the
future with the client, peer or partner so that it works for them. When
expectations are clearly set and a path to follow is in place, the future is
more certain.
Deal With the Unexpected. Recovering from the inevitable problem
is clearly a moment of truth. Can you decide beforehand how you will
handle slip-ups? Telling or working out guidelines for handling when
things go wrong before they go wrong creates another layer of
confidence in the relationship. A discussion that anticipates and plans
for bad times, describing what steps will be taken, what options might
be available, etc. yields a ready-to-go plan and a sense all around of
being ahead of –-rather than being overwhelmed by problems when
they emerge.
Manage Conflict. There are situations where a client, peer or partner
will have different points of view from yours. You can position conflict
positively, or you can just let it happen. If you agree to view differences
as a positive opportunity to improve work process and outcomes, then
you can problem-solve. If you and your client, peer, or partner view
difference as a contest, then you have an argument. Explicitly steering
your client to a positive view of conflict is in everyone’s best interest,
and it is another core influence skill. The experience of resolving
differences can become a creative, inclusive and memorable “moment
of truth”.
Keep Informed. It may appear to be a small detail, but how and what
you regularly communicate makes a difference to the client, peer or
partner experience. This gets complicated when there are a number of
functions involved, and each has a different need for information. To
be effective, you have to know who needs to be informed, what media
to use to communicate and who needs to keep you informed. Regularly
recapping the big picture works; use charts and at-a-glance exhibits.
We’ve heard from our clients that email isn’t effective anymore—the
challenge is to get back to talking with people; it is clearly the best
answer. The question is how to get more face-time. Think lunch,
hallway and elevator discussions, cubicle drop-ins, beers after work.
Huddle on Decisions. One of the most challenging “moments of
truth” is decision-making in an influence environment with specialists,
generalists, clients, partners, etc. The question of who has approval,
who recommends, who is involved, can be defined upfront for the
majority of the decisions that need to be made. But that’s not where
decision-making breaks down; it’s the decision that doesn’t fit the
pattern, especially where there are overlapping responsibilities,
multiple roles that have a stake in the outcome, and people who feel
they should be heard. The challenge here is to take the time to literally
figure it out, and the rule of thumb is inclusiveness. That means
discussing options in a group or with another—not via email until a
consensus emerges. Being able to facilitate an all-stakeholders “figure
it out” decision session or an impromptu hallway meeting with a partner
is a vital influence skill.
The Payoff: Your Personal and Your Work Unit’s Brand
If these “moments of truth” are executed effectively and consistently,
your clients, peers and partners will experience a relationship that
works. If you are conscientious about informing your client-base—
“advertising” how you work, you are creating a brand promise. Your
clients, peers and partners will know what to expect when working with
you.
On the other hand, we’ve seen when these relationships don’t work. If
internal clients, peers or partners are disappointed at the beginning of
a relationship because of a cloudy start, it is very difficult to recover.
Trust is the first casualty when a “moment of truth” doesn’t live up to
what the client, peer or partner cares about. Regardless of what
happens afterwards to rectify or mitigate, the other person will be on
guard, watching and cautious not only now but in the future and not
only with you, but with everyone from your organization.
Immediate action step: Think about—or ask—how your clients, peers
and partners view you and your organization at these critical moments.
Put yourself into their experience and see how it feels to working with
you. Using that as a start, build an influence process from there.
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| Singularity Group For more information: www.singularitygroup.com |
| Singularity Group For more information: www.singularitygroup.com |