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And it gets better as the book progresses. It is highly likely, if you're honest with yourself, that you are pretty much motivated by your own self-interest and that will come through to clients and friends - regardless of the words you speak or protestations to the contrary.I wish I had come across this book (and the follow-on book by Charles Green, Trust-based Selling) years ago. Anyone who desires to develop lasting relationships with clients will want to read this book.
It also explains how frustratingly easy it is to lose the trust we've built up. It would have explained much about the success I had with clients as well as the failures that I suffered. Those who have difficulty maintaining long term solid relationships with friends or clients would do well to check their self-orientation.
This book is right on target. I have found this simple equation to be most useful in gauging the strength of relationships built over the years. This book will move the successful mentor/coach from the level of conscious incompetent to conscious competent and on to the ultimate goal of unconscious competent.
From the outset the authors hook the reader by establishing the three basic skills that a trusted advisor must have: (1) earning trust; (2) giving advice effectively; and (3) building relationships. The concept of building trust is brought home in a succinct equation: T = (C + R + I)/S where T is trust, C is credibility, R is reliability, I is intimacy and S is self-orientation.
Step by step, it guides you into making youself a very real trustworthy advisor in front of your client. This is THE best book about professioanl selling skills I have ever read.
All of the content seemed like a great deal of common sense to me and I eventually lost interest in continuing. I will confess, I never made it to the end. A colleague of mine suggested I buy this book. For some reason, I could not get past the endless number of lists, checklists, etc.
I would highly recommend this book to any consultant - new or experienced. It reads well and we chose it for the required reading for a class for new consultants that join our company because it teaches everything we want them to strive to be. The basic message seems to be listening skills, so we also paired our training with some listening lessons and exercises.
But if you can read just one and want to balance learning with the enjoyment of the read, I recommend The Trusted Advisory for all consultants and service industry professionals. David is the written word authority on professional advisory services. The trusted advisor is a book, I first read when it was published and I find myself returning to it and sharing it along with other works of David's again and again.
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