Monthly Archives: April 2016

TNF #031: Did you bring some cookies?

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Welcome Professionals…

…yesterday, I have been a judge in the jury of Business@School. This is a pro-bono initiative from the Boston Consulting Group, teaching highschool kids at the age of 14 about business. Three groups of students presented their business business plan for a new commercial idea they had worked out. An interesting and fun event. The striking experience I want to share with you relates to the cookies.

One group had the idea of founding a cookie gift service. They would prepare a jar with all cookie ingredients and a recipe that can be purchased as a gift and will be delivered to the recipient. Now comes the interesting element: At the end of the presentation they presented one jar with the ingredients and one jar with the freshly made cookies. They offered a cookie to each of the jury members. What a difference this made!

Up to this point, it had just been a usual business case presentation. The moment we tasted the cookies, the relationship between the jury and the presenting team was taken to a new level. The presentation received a new dimension, a sensual attachment.

The same was true earlier this week, when I met the partner of an IT consultancy. Instead of describing his product portfolio, he pulled out a little booklet that was so small, he was carrying it in his suit pocket all the time. I immediately had a deeper connection to his offering than before.

We usually present our concepts and talk about them the consulting-way. We shall think of means to add a bit more flavour and sensual product experience to it. It will make a great difference!

Enjoy your cookies!

Malte

Thursday Night Flight is brought to you by Malte Müller Professionals. Sharing best practices for top management consultants on topics like communication, client handling, problem solving, appearance, and fitness. Check out www.mm-professionals.com for more material and free resources!

TNF #030: Just do it!

Welcome Professionals…

…This blog remains free of commercials and I hope I am not getting into trouble when using a branded tagline such as: “Just do it!”

This edition today is dedicated to a common phenomenon called “procrastination”. That is a noble description for avoidance of doing a task which needs to be accomplished.

It is a very familiar problem to me. My mind forms excuses, why it is not the right time to perform this task right now or why I have to get something else out of the way first in order to do what I originally planned. In my view, even the word “procrastination” is just another excuse.

With all the struggling going on, I always come to the same conclusion: Just do it!

Let’s assume the task really needs to be accomplished and there is no other way to delegate, outsource or eliminate this task, than there is no other way than just doing it. Waiting, postponing, procrastinating usually only makes this task less desireable and increases the pressure. There is certainly a strong link to Parkinson’s law (see this edition 25 for further details).

When something needs to be done, I schedule it on my calendar. If it is on my calendar, I just do it. Simple as that.

What is your way? Let me know. Just do it!

Malte

Thursday Night Flight is brought to you by Malte Müller Professionals. Sharing best practices for top management consultants on topics like communication, client handling, problem solving, appearance, and fitness. Check out www.mm-professionals.com for more material and free resources!

TNF #029: Showing interest

Welcome Professionals…

…who is the most important person in the room? – Sure, it is our client!

The client deserves our full attention and we want to show our interest into our client. Many times, we get carried away by the interesting results of our analysis, the interesting product we have to offer, the interest in our own agenda.

Much more importantly, we need to understand what the interest of our client is, need to understand the client’s agenda and present the interesting facts and findings through our client’s perspective.

Even if we think we understood our client already, we need to show that we actually care. We must not stop asking questions, asking for our client’s view, asking for a judgement, asking how our client feels about this idea or what he/she would prefer as a next step.

Only if we show this interest we can hope that our client also takes interest in us and what we have to offer.

Just a reminder,

Malte

Thursday Night Flight is brought to you by Malte Müller Professionals. Sharing best practices for top management consultants on topics like communication, client handling, problem solving, appearance, and fitness. Check out www.mm-professionals.com for more material and free resources!

TNF #028: Dig your well before you’re thirsty

Welcome Professionals…

…imagine an unknown person, a stranger, who approaches you the first time with a product you do not know, that you may never have heard of. Will you buy? Most likely not. You might ask, what a ridiculous question. What a setup for failure you might say.

Yet, it happens all the time.

In my profession as executive search consultant I get unsolicited requests by email, phone and social networks all the time, many per day. Which is completely fine because I am even asking for it. The misconception is for some candidates to believe that I will immediately drop everything I am doing in order to promote their CV to my key contacts although I do not even know them, yet. Some of the candidates get a bit more pushy, few of them get angry if they do not get what they expect.

Why am I telling this? Because I made the same foolish assumptions. I met target clients for the first time, jumped into the meeting, told them – unsolicited – about my credentials and expected them to buy on the spot.

It takes a lot of time to build a brand, a reputation, and finally a relationship to the individual that will become our client. So we better start digging our well before we become thirsty!

Dig deep!

Malte

Thursday Night Flight is brought to you by Malte Müller Professionals. Sharing best practices for top management consultants on topics like communication, client handling, problem solving, appearance, and fitness. Check out www.mm-professionals.com for more material and free resources!