In the world of professional service businesses, what separates the great from the mediocre? This was one of the most critical questions I grappled with in my previous professional life.
As our business grew, we needed to focus relentlessly on what delighted clients. Maintaining the qualities of great professional service every step of the way was invaluable to retaining revenue so we could build on our existing business and grow sustainably.
In this post, I’m going to break down the qualities of great professional service, focusing on three critical components:
- Personalization
- Credibility
- Effective Delivery
Most people understand that Personalization, Credibility and Effective Delivery are essential for professional services. So, we’ll take a step deeper and break down each of these qualities, making it more practical for professional service business leaders to engender them in their businesses. As we unpack each element, we’ll explore how each quality contributes to creating satisfied clients and true advocates for your business.
Let’s dive into the qualities that can elevate your professional service from good to great.
Personalization
Personalized service goes beyond advice; it’s about deeply understanding each client’s world and developing solutions accordingly.
To achieve personalization, a professional service business needs to tailor its engagements to each client’s circumstances, objectives and needs.
Depending on your circumstance, the same advice can be helpful or harmful. A penicillin prescription can save your life, or it can kill you if you’re allergic. That’s why professional service requires taking the time to learn the lay of the land – often through a detailed intake process in which the client shares lots of information.
Getting the facts is a necessary prerequisite to personalization, but it’s insufficient on its own. Personalization also requires understanding objectives – what the person receiving the advice ultimately wants to achieve. My healthcare practitioner shouldn’t recommend Lebron James’ $1 million-a-year health and wellness plan. It works well for Lebron, but my goal of NBA stardom disappeared decades ago.
The third component of personalization is the needs of the person receiving the advice. Unlike your circumstances or objectives, your needs are often hidden from plain sight. They include the potential barriers to your goals and, importantly, the root problems underlying those barriers. Getting to these root problems is why professional service starts with questions, not answers. The Five Whys approach, pioneered by Taiichi Ohno at Toyota, is a simple yet powerful method of problem-solving that involves asking “why” five times to peel back the layers of a challenge, revealing its core cause and paving the way for tailored and impactful solutions.
To summarize, great professional service is personalized, reflecting the client’s circumstances, objectives and needs. But more than personalization is needed to offer great professional service. Professional service also needs to be credible, as I’ll explain next.
Credibility
“I regularly see people ask totally uninformed or non-believable people questions and get answers that they believe. This is often worse than having no answers at all.”
Ray Dalio
The second pillar of great professional service is credibility: It comes from people who can believably guide someone else through a particular problem.
To be credible, professional service needs to come from practitioners who have expertise, track records of success and credentials.
Imagine you’re on a hike and get lost in the forest. While trying to find your way out, you come across another hiker. Elated, you run over to them. But as you look closely, you see the other hiker is more lost than you are – wandering aimlessly for their car, wearing days-old clothes, looking disheveled and exhausted.
Then, a second hiker comes by. This person clearly knows where they’re going – briskly walking with a dog, GPS on their wrist, smiling as they admire the trees.
Who do you ask for advice – the first or second hiker? The answer is obvious. We ask the second hiker. The second hiker is credible on the topic of how to get out of the forest, and the first person is just as lost as you are. (What’s less obvious is that if you ask the first person for advice, he’ll probably give it to you anyway.)
In the professional world, we can’t rely on how someone looks to determine credibility. Instead, professionals demonstrate credibility with:
- Expert knowledge: An understanding of the subject matter and area you’re asking about. You don’t always need the best expert in a given field, but you always need some minimum amount of subject matter expertise.
- A track record of success: Credible advice comes from people who have already been successful in that area. Maybe that’s not the case on social media, where a 25-year-old can become a life coach. But in the business field, clients want to know they’re paying for advice from someone who has successfully guided people through similar problems in the past.
- Credentials: Certifications, degrees, and accolades provide tangible proof of a professional’s dedication to their craft and area of expertise. Assessing knowledge is hard, so credentials act as a shorthand for clients, offering a quick, reliable indicator of capability and commitment. Sometimes, credentials are legally required, especially in technical or highly regulated sectors.
Having broken down credibility, we’re ready to move on to the third and final quality of great professional service – Effective Delivery. Unlike the previous two qualities, effective delivery is about style, not substance.
Effective Delivery
Effective delivery is often the most overlooked differentiator between professional service that is genuinely great instead of just “good enough.” Poorly delivered advice is like the tree falling in the woods – it might make a sound, but no one will hear it, and they definitely won’t act on it.
Effectively delivered professional service is actionable, timely, and continuous. In short, it works. If you want to make sure your advice isn’t brushed aside, it needs to be delivered with the following characteristics:
- Actionable: Clear, practical steps can be implemented immediately to address their specific challenges. Being actionable is the difference between vague suggestions and a well-defined plan. Advice must be tailored to the client’s capacity, resources, and context to be meaningful. Just as a map is only useful if it starts from your current location, actionable advice must start from the client’s current reality.
- Timely. The value of professional advice often hinges on its timeliness. Delivering solutions when they’re most needed – ideally, even before – can be the difference between valuable and useless advice. Timeliness requires a keen understanding of the client’s timeline and the agility to respond to their needs swiftly. Whether navigating market changes, addressing immediate operational challenges, or seizing a fleeting opportunity, the right advice at the right time can be a game-changer.
- Continuous. Unlike one-off transactions, great professional service is characterized by continuity. It’s about establishing a lasting relationship that evolves with the client’s needs. This continuous engagement means being there for follow-up, offering ongoing support, and adjusting advice as circumstances change. It’s a commitment to walking alongside clients, providing insights and guidance throughout their journey. This approach ensures that the advice remains relevant and the client feels supported over the long term.
There’s a common trope that professionals – especially consultants – just talk. But effective delivery allows professionals to make a dent in the universe. History is replete with professionals and business leaders like Herbert Allen (banking) and Michael Ovitz, who understood the power of effective delivery to make big things happen.
Professionals can amplify their impact by focusing on actionable steps, ensuring timeliness, and committing to continuous engagement, driving growth and deepening relationships.
Conclusion: Qualities for Great Relationships
As we close this exploration into great professional services, it’s evident that it isn’t just about what a business does; it’s about how it’s done. Personalization, Credibility, and Effective Delivery are not business tactics; they’re the essence of meaningful relationships, the kind that leaves a lasting impact on those we serve and, ultimately, on ourselves.
Reflecting on any professional success I may have had, it’s clear that scaling a professional service business required an unwavering focus on what truly mattered to our clients. This understanding didn’t just help us grow; it helped us build real connections, turning clients into advocates and transactions into relationships.
Perhaps the real takeaway here isn’t just a set of strategies to implement. It’s a mindset shift. It’s about seeing beyond the immediate transaction to the broader impact of our work. It’s about striving not just for client satisfaction but for client success. The challenge isn’t just to maintain these principles but to deepen them, to not just meet the standards we’ve set but to exceed them, continuously.
So, as you move forward, think of these principles not as a checklist but as a compass, guiding your efforts and illuminating your path. Remember, the goal isn’t just to provide a service but to make a difference. The companies and leaders who understand this – who see their role not just as service providers but as partners in their clients’ success – are the ones who truly stand out.