When Sales Expectations Aren’t Communicated

The president of an architectural design firm wanted to know how to hold the professionals in his firm more accountable for bringing in business. While this is not an unusual question, one has to dig a little deeper to uncover the real issue. The professionals in most service firms rarely see themselves as salespeople, rarely believe they are expected to generate business and therein lies the problem. Presidents wonder how to get more out of them while they don’t even know that they’re expected to perform in that function. So before they can be held accountable, they have to be told about your expectations. And guess what? They probably won’t like it.

If you are the president of such a firm, your best best is to evaluate the professionals in the firm with the purpose of learning who would be suitable for doing some business development, as well as the type of help they’ll need in order to be successful. Then, you can communicate your expectations only to those professionals who are well suited to performing this kind of work. OMG’s Evaluation of a Professional Service Firm does just that and identifies any future rainmakers in the firm. In addition, the evaluation identifies those who, while not suitable for bringing in new business, could be utilized in some other area of business development.