When you invite a prospective client, investor or business partner to meet you, is the following visible:

• Your meeting location is easily found without staring aimlessly at unmarked building entrances in the street or staring into a backlit screen.
• Your office reception and the behaviour of those working there is representative of your desired first impression (warmth, professionalism, responsiveness)
• Your office environment is consistent with who you are today, not overly consumed by your past glories (deal tombstones, portraits of the founders) nor achingly futuristic (think a legal practice in a WeWork building).
• Your guests are treated like grown up adults, not children awaiting the headmaster. They are directed to the appropriate meeting place, offered common courtesies (drinks, facilities etc.), and the meeting starts on time.
• Your meetings respect all parties time, objectives and competing priorities.
• Meeting objectives are discussed, and agreed, at the outset.
• Appropriate time is given to get acquainted (what’s your story), move onto important issues (relevant expertise), pivot towards areas of obvious and less obvious mutual benefit and agree on “next steps” (next call, next meeting, information shared) and appropriate follow up (accountability, timeline).
• Both parties feel like they are in the presence of a confident peer, intent on building a trusting relationship with the other (offering immediate and relevant value) rather than merely rushing to get to a deal or to get the other party out of the room before their 10am conference call or executive committee meeting.
• They are in the company of someone, who is demonstrably a peer of, and of interest to, a diverse and global group of impressive people, irrespective of their title, wealth or age. They have sort, and acquired, life experiences and relationships that leave you wanting to spend more time in their company.
• They use humour and language intelligently. They don’t resort to crude or inappropriate comments.
• They avoid “one upmanship”.
• Although they do drop names, not to bloviate their own importance, but because it is relevant and in keeping with the conversation.
• Points of agreement or disagreement, victories/defeats and viewpoints or opinions, however, contrarian are substantiated by hard evidence or strong anecdotal information. Not “blow-hards” pontificating or “passive-aggressives” seeking to assert their superiority (intellectual or material wealth).
• Both parties feel the other, is leaving “informed” on the route ahead, the credibility they confer and with greater value than when they walked into the room. That doesn’t presume they agree on the value but at a minimum, they feel they have had a “fair hearing”, and a genuinely engaged party across the table. Not someone using the other person’s business card to pick their teeth (I have seen that happen!).
• Basically, someone who you’d leave your company respecting your accomplishments (business and life), the way you work with others (ethics) and your value (results). Not necessarily, someone who they personally like or agree with what they have heard, although that may be a helpful bonus.
• Follow up commitments are routinely adhered to, and accomodation is made for exceptional matters (illness, a promotion or competing business).
• Whether there is immediate business or not, the relationship building process and value received doesn’t stop when they leave the building . With their approval, the guest is added to your mailing lists and other non-promotional activities where it is in their self-interest. Including “virtual” and hard copy communication with your firm and awareness of where you might be of greater and relevant benefit to each other’s future (ideal buyers, networking events, media, pro bono promotion activities etc.).

Most businesses think too mechanistically about their presence, physical or virtual, and way too little about the emotional and psychological aspects. How they behave and the attitudes they express, says way more about them than the shiny offices, the skills they teach their employees or the corporate gifts.

If you don’t think there are areas of improvement in your own presence that you can, and must, begin working on today, your competitors do, and they are waiting to pounce.

Tags: Behaviours, client relations, communication, expertise, marketing, skills