There is a lot of advice now available from reputedly successful professionals on how and why they achieved success. 

The ability to diagnose problems and find solutions is often shown to be of secondary importance.  In describing success skills, the authors use such terms as bedside manner, communication skills, ability to work under pressure, ability to handle people, sensitivity to others, tolerance for the professional life and strong personal drive. 

The message is very clear.  Authors emphasise the overriding importance of interpersonal skills as well as a tolerance for the professional lifestyle and an inner drive and persistence.  These may conflict a little with the job specification first presented to prospective professionals.  Success in professional practice (as in anything) is a combination of three things: organisation, skills and attitude.  The professionals that we have known and have trained over many years, have usually been successful (or not) through the effects of all three factors. 

Increasingly, professional practice is a continual hunt for new business and a farming of existing business.  One difficulty that practices may face is that they do not employ marketing people or outside agencies.  Because of this, a lot of marketing activities are not undertaken. 

It is difficult to sell to people when they do not know you exist, when they do not receive your invitations or proposals.  Even the biggest practices are often remiss in their record systems and particularly in monitoring sales performance.  Internal training departments may lack the necessary authority to change this. 

Many firms do not have a co-ordinated and authoritative training structure.  Others do not have training at all.  While many firms are willing to accept that they cannot possibly be doing everything right, they are nevertheless often unwilling to accurately detail and quantify what they are doing wrong. 

It is difficult to get firms to accept this, particularly if they have experienced the kind of success that many did throughout the '80s.  Chris Argyris at Harvard has also shown through his 1991 research how difficult it can be, particularly for smart people, to acknowledge that they may be failing at something.  He found that professionals were the group which found this most difficult. 

If firms wish to increase their sales success rate, there are really only two ways of doing it.  The first is to increase only two ways of doing it.  The first is to increase the number of prospects and thus play the numbers game.  The second is to improve effectiveness in the process of selling.  Both require skills which are not technical. 

Professionals have usually spent a great deal of time, effort and money in developing technical skills.  But they often neglect their sales and interpersonal skills.  Research with four of the Big Six accountancy / consultancy firms revealed that these firms often provided a wide range of personal skills courses.  A typical selection would include selling skills, presentation skills, time management, stress management, interviewing skills and client relationship initiatives.  In one part of the research which was predominantly with accountants, tax advisers and some management consultants, the participants were spending on average 10 to 20 days a year in technical training initiatives - yet no one in that part of the study had more than two days per year of total personal development training. 

Management consultancy divisions within these firms may argue that they provide more training than this but the largest of these firms may have more than 1,000 consultants.  If a firm were to run, for example, a three-day selling skills course every week, it would be over two years before all had attended.  Many major consultancies would perhaps only run a sales course once a quarter. 

The calculations are easy to make and the situation is compounded when professionals are withdrawn from a sales training course, perhaps a week before it is due to run, because of client demands. 

Professionals have often invested in their own technical training.  This may have included university courses, evening courses and the purchase of significant numbers of books.   In the study, which involves managers, senior managers and partners with many years of professional activity were asked when each participant had last purchased a book which was concerned with sales or personal development along the lines of the courses described: 62 per cent had never bought a book.  A further 22 per cent could not remember purchasing a book within the last year.  Those who had purchased a book, could often not recall having read it. 

Professionals may argue that they are lacking in sales-related skills or that they are not provided with enough of the kind of training described but, in another study at least, they did not appear to be rushing to do anything about it themselves.  In fairness, many of the participants were not unduly concerned about this, which says a lot about their attitude to sales activity.  It might thus be pertinent to now look at the third area of success, that of attitude. 

The research has revealed some problems of attitude which are evidenced by many professional advisers.  To put it simply, most are not very enthusiastic about selling.  Most professional advisers are also very willing to admit that they are not very good at selling.  Their first line of defence in this is that the organisation they belong to does not support the sales activity by, for example, giving them too much other work to do.  Some will argue that they have extensive management responsibilities and that the clients' requirements always come first. 

Another argument used to justify sales inhibition is a lack of sales skills training.  There is an element of truth in this but when the necessary training has been provided and sales activity has not flourished, a third argument is often put forward.  This is a lack of the correct personality for selling - advisers will argue that they are not the "sales type". 

There was a tendency amongst accountancy and tax people towards reactive behaviour whereas management consultants were slightly more proactive.  There is no value judgement in this.  Proactivity is not better than reactivity.  The nature of many professional occupations is, in fact, reactive and individuals who are more reactive by nature will be comfortable operating within them.  Sales development, however, requires greater proactivity and at a level higher perhaps than many of the consultants profiled. 

All groups showed a tendency towards independent behaviour and this raises the question of just how much professional advisers like to work together rather than doing their own thing.  Accountants were often much more procedural whereas management consultants were often attracted to change and to options.  The consultants often had less interest in detail and specific information, preferring a much more general overview of things, whereas the accountants and tax advisers often needed a great deal of information before making a decision. 

Many professional advisers showed a strong internal tendency - that is, a security that what they thought was right must be so.  This also reveals itself in an unwillingness to consider other points of view.  Many were very task centred, preferring the work and the resolution of technical problems to pleasing the people involved. 

Many of the advisers were motivated by the interest of the work itself rather than the amount of money that they might make as a result of doing the work.  For many, money was considered to be rather unimportant.  Many of the participants were not really interested in helping other people, preferring to pursue their own interests, tasks and ambitions.  There was, however, an interesting difference between management consultants and other professional advisers in that whereas the accountants and tax advisers were often influenced by avoiding unpleasant situations, the consultants were often much more motivated by what they could acquire or gain from a situation, often in the form of learning or new experience. 

Many of the accountants and tax advisers revealed a dislike of major change.  Many management consultants differed in that travel, new situations and new challenges were often attractive.  These consultants were in danger of becoming bored more readily if the task remained too stable. 

It should be stated that the participants in the research were often well suited to the technical aspects of the jobs that they had been hired to do.  Unfortunately, the nature of the job had now changed and included a much stronger sales and business development element.  For many participants the real job still continued to be the technical analysis and problem-solving aspects and sales activity clearly did not coincide with this. 

Sales activity, by its very nature, differs greatly from the technical aspects of consultancy.  Sales can often be physically, socially and psychologically separating, requiring great flexibility and innovation.  Sales may involve the playing of multiple roles, some of which reduce the importance and status of the individual.  Great persistence and self motivation are required and uncertainty and conflict are rife.  The results of sales activity can often take a long time to become apparent. 

Sales activity can, therefore, be disturbing to many.  Participants in the research, even the professionals who sought major change, revealed some deep concerns about the subject.  They disliked the idea of manipulating people and forcing things onto them.  Participants felt that to be involved in sales activity was to be equated with a common salesman, lacking status.  Many others reported feelings of apprehension and even danger associated with a sales situation. 

What all of this clearly reflects is deep sales reluctance.  There are many kinds of sales reluctance, each with its own cause.  For example, a fear of failure is a very strong inhibitor for professionals who often have a history of success.  The idea that selling is dishonest and immoral may be based on actual experience but often seems to be a stereotypical approach in which a low-status activity must be associated with low-status people.  Many regarded selling as a politically dangerous activity, fearing criticism from clients, colleagues and superiors.  The fear of rejection was a widespread concern.  Also included was the lack of belief in the service or the firm itself.  Sometimes this was reflected in a lack of belief in the worth of the individual and an underlying assumption that the client has more power and is more important. 
 

Of course, despite all of the inhibitions described, some individuals within every firm show themselves to be very good at getting business.  Participants (who incidentally did not number themselves, on the whole, in this band of superior performers) were asked to describe someone whom they knew to be good at selling within their firm.  A most interesting phenomenon occurred.  The first positive comment (such as talks well, confident, gregarious, knowledgeable and so on) was often followed by a secondary negative, critical comment - such as "she's very knowledgeable, but of course it's bluff" or "he always has ready answers - but of course it's not always true".  It was as if they were saying that to good at selling was a negative rather than a positive attribute. 

Professionals are faced with a greater task than the identification and solution of technical problems.  Professionals are dealing with human beings and thus must bring to the client interaction a whole range of interpersonal skills. 

The attitudes and beliefs which many professional advisers have with regard to the sales process and to selling can be a serious inhibitor for business development.  Many internal training courses do not address this problem and some may even reinforce it.  Those employed in major professional practices may have the luxury of an existing body of clients and an existing volume of work but their future success may depend increasingly on their ability to come to terms with their reluctance to sell.  For those needing to create and develop their practice, overcoming these inhibitions is even more important.