Are You a Service Slave (Task-Based) or a Service Professional (Value-Based)?

by Tom "Bald Dog" Varjan, Organisational Provocateur

What difference would it make to you in your business and life if, instead of travelling all over the place in pursuit of suspects in the hope of turning them into paying clients, they would come to your office to attend the first meeting with you with all their key documents and a cheque as a sign of commitment to working with you provided you find a mutually acceptable basis to do so?

Is your business flooded with clients who...

• ...you should have ditched long ago and run away from very fast and very far?

• ...piss you off because you care more about their success than they do?

• ...expect you to slave away on their projects and dedicating your life to them?

• ...make you work too hard on their projects while they go on vacations?

• ...demand long working hours from you, so you can actually "earn" your fees?

• ...keep haggling over your fees and want to get it all for as cheap as possible?
  

• ...make you ask yourself, "Why am I wasting my life on this jerk?"

In contrast to the above, have you ever desired clients who...

...proactively promote your services and furnish you with referrals?

...actively participates in projects and takes your advice seriously?

...pay you on time for the value you contribute, not just for your time?

...treat you as a peer and the relationship is based on mutual trust and respect?

...works with you collaboratively to make the most of your advice?

If the answer to any of the above question is "yes", there is a good chance you are being perceived as a Service Slave and work far too hard as a service slave.

And this is exactly how most service professionals work. They are extremely busy, stressed out, interrupted by all sorts of phone calls and other time wasters, and running around like headless chickens.

I often ask service professionals these two questions

1. On a scale of 1 to 10 how busy are you, that is how fast are you running on your proverbial treadmill?
2. On a scale of 1 to 10 how financially productive are you by running that fast?

In most cases the answer to the first question is pretty much between 7 and 10. It means, in some cases they simply cannot do any more.

But the answer to the second question is somewhere between 3 and 5.

Then I ask, "If you are already maxed out on your time, what are you planning to do to push your earnings any higher?"

Yes, it is happening every day. Service professionals believe just because they are busy, they are productive too.

Many of them are wasting a lot of time and effort on activities like preparing proposals for tyre-kickers and volunteering to attend "brain picking" sessions with suspects on the mission of collecting information. Sadly, the conventional wisdom has become that service professionals have to bend over backwards for clients and jump as clients whistle. And this is exactly how "Service Slaves" – activity-based professionals operate.

Essentially, Service Slaves are hired to perform certain tasks and compensated in proportion with the amount of manual labour they put in. Their operation is task and activity-based.

The other group is the Service Professionals, who are hired to help their clients to achieve amazing things with as little effort as possible, and being compensated for the perceived value received by their clients.

And the two groups of people operate drastically differently.

It is common practice among Service Slaves that they accept any client who throws money at them. If you tend to do this, you'd better take a closer look at your own values and beliefs.

The problem is that many of your prospects...

...are not terribly serious about working with you. They expect you to put up a dog and pony show and push you around for reducing your fees.

...fail to view you as a professional partly because of the way you conduct your business. They perceive you as a salesperson not service professional.

The problem is that Service Slaves hang in for dear life with any client as long as money can be earned. They should ditch these clients faster than greased lightning but, instead, but they hope and pray.

These prospects are collecting information and gathering your valuable advice, but have no intention to retain you and make a fair investment in your expertise.

The other problem is that Service Slaves are so busy doing the work and chasing new sales that they have no time left to position themselves as experts in their fields. They are perceived as peddlers, and treated on price like potatoes.

They know a few age-old facts:

• Peddlers chase, hunt, hound and wrestle

• Peddlers meet anyone anywhere

• Peddlers take only 10 minutes over a cup of coffee

• Peddlers build rapport

• Peddles argue, convince and persuade (a.k.a. handle objections)

• Peddlers try to close on the spot

All in all, they act like peddlers, that is, service slaves.

And we all know the end result: Peddlers are hated and thrown out of more offices than you can shake a stick at. I don't mean that literally, but a proposal that is not responded to by the buyer is as bad as being thrown out of an office.

You are either a well-positioned Service Professional sought out by great prospects, or an ill-positioned Service Slave pounding the pavement peddling your stuff.

When your prospects perceive you as a Service Professional, not a Service Slave, they start treating you with respect, they come to your office to meet you and won't even try to haggle on tour fees.

Just imagine calling your dentist, requesting an appointment at your home in your favourite rocking chair, but then refusing to open your mouth when the dentist is about to start working on your teeth.

It may sound silly, but this is exactly how most service professionals are treated.

Do you have the courage to put a pretty strong request to your prospects? Can you resist the temptation when prospects are pushing you to "soften up"? Do you have the spine, guts and balls to ask your prospects to "open their mouths" at the very first meeting?

Now Let's Compare How Service Professionals and Service Slaves Sell Their Services

Service labourers sell pretty much like used car sales people, after all they sell time chunks to perform manual labour. They focus on products, like consulting, coaching, training, market research, sales workshop, etc.

• Focusing on tasks and deliverables.

• Travelling anytime anywhere to meet prospective clients

• Wasting time on rapport building through small talk and chit-chat.

• Convincing everyone that they need what you offer

• Not being willing to walk away from inappropriate prospects and projects

• Wasting time on explaining credentials and the firm's reputation.

• Asking some disturbing questions to find pain, then agitating it as much as possible to close the deal.

• Matching pain with tasks and products. Dwindling sales = Sales workshop. High customer attrition = CRM software.

• Overcoming objections and moving towards the close.

• Doing whatever it takes, including stroking the prospect's fear, shame, guilt and/or greed glands, to close the sale.

• Relationship is based on tasks and performance of the service. I work for you, and I will perform these tasks and create these deliverables for you.

This may be a fine approach to sell commodity service, but will never establish trust-based relationships

In Contrast to The Service Slaves, Here Is the Service Professional's Approach

• Accepts only clients who match their "Ideal Client" profile

• Focusing on objectives and outcomes. Process of collaboration and quality of relationship

• Asking prospects (only ones that fit the "Ideal Client" profile) to come to your office. Why? Because neither lawyers, nor medical professionals do house calls. Why should you? You are not a professional visitor

• Eliminating small talk and rapport, and opening the discussion with a meaningful and deep conversation.

• Politely disqualifying everyone who refuses to co-operate with you in your interview process.

• Never talking about your qualifications and credentials. Let people establish their own perceptions of you through your process.

• Insisting that prospects bring all of their relevant documents and a cheque for the first payment to the fist meeting. No documents, no cheque, no meeting.

• Starting asking deep and uncomfortable questions, and start prioritising their objectives. Starting building trust, not rapport.

• Using reality and core values to motivate prospects to move into action. If their own core values cannot inspire prospects to take action, then it shows you care more about their success than they do, thus you should politely end the meeting and abandon the prospect once and for all.

• Asking only once to take action, and politely disengaging if there is any objection. It shows lack of commitment.

• Closing is a natural part of the process, coming from the prospect not from you.

• Relationship is based on the process of collaboration and the transparency of the relationship. I work with you, and we create the projected results together.

Now you may say that you ask an awful lot from people to conform to your process.

Exactly. You ask them all this in their best interest. Can you imagine telling your doctor that you have changed your mind and you want him to perform your heart surgery in your home on your dining table with your favourite bread knife? How would you feel if your surgeon agreed?

People achieve certain results in their businesses and lives by adhering to certain processes. We call them habits. So, by asking them to conform to your process, you ask them to move beyond the limitation of their processes. That alone is a great value.

Remember you are in the service business. The more clients you have, the less service you can offer to each one. Prospecting for new business eats up both a part of time you are supposed to serve existing clients and some of your personal and family time.

How would you like to work with a select group of clients whom you can schedule fairly loosely, so you can have a fulfilling and meaningful personal life too?

How would you like to reduce your workload while increase your margins?

The relationship between income and free time is another differentiating factor between Service Slaves and Service Professionals. As the years go by, if you are a service professional, both your income and free time are going up. Otherwise as you are getting more and better established, you are getting busier and busier. Yes, your income is going up, but so does your level of busy-ness. And I dare to bet some vital parts of my anatomy that your margins are going down.

Sadly, most service professionals suffer from the workhorse syndrome. They achieve more by pulling heavier loads every year. That is, as the years go by, most service professionals get busier and busier, working harder and harder to usually earn just marginally higher income than a year before.

Some of them are highly successful financially. They just have a couple of marriages, heart attacks and nervous breakdowns behind them, carry an extra 30-50lbs around their waists, an extra 30-50 beats per minute on the heart rates and a 10-15 -year shortage on their lives. They miss a couple of family anniversaries, some vacations with their spouses and some school events with their kids.

They don't even have their own lives. Their existence – no, it is not a life – is dictated to them by their clients, calendars, mobile phones and emails.

Sadly, for service slaves the only way to be successful is to be a workaholic.

Now You May Ask about the Payoffs Of Being a Value-Based Service Professional?

• Fulfilling your deepest core values

• Earning higher personal income

• Enjoying more time off with your friends and family

• Enjoying better physical health

• Reaching your spiritual fulfilment

• Becoming a better parent and/or spouse

• Being highly respected both in your industry and target market

• Having a better sense of achievement and pride

• Leading a significant life (expressing yourself who you truly are) not just an impressive lifestyle (impressing others with what you have and do)

So, consider which one you want to operate as, but heed this: Somewhere out there, there is a service professional who is not as smart as you, not as experienced as you, not as educated as you and working in a worse economy, is having a better year than you.

Why?

Because s/he has chosen to be a Service Professional not a Service Slave. And s/he has the spine, guts and balls to act as one.

How about you?