Dear Juniper: Out with clients

Out with clients

I am now in my fifth year in investment banking, where I have been working in one of the execution teams. My appraisals describe me as being hard-working, accurate under pressure, and with good technical skills. I have recently been given a higher profile and that brings me into contact with clients. The feedback I am getting on this is not good: "uninspiring", "not breeding confidence" and "a poor presenter" are some of the descriptions that I recall. In our business, moving on from execution is seen as the way to progress and I feel that unless I sort this out I will be stuck in the back room forever. Am I right to worry about this and if so what should I do? Yours, Dick

Dear Dick

You would only need to worry if you lacked the information necessary to start addressing the problem you describe. However, you seem to have rather candid feedback: your communication style is impairing your credibility in this higher profile role.

What should you do about it? Ask for coaching on client presentations and find a role model or mentor you can learn from. Try to focus more on the relationship side of the contact and not the technical issue you are meeting the client to resolve. Coming from your background in execution it is not surprising that you are still task- and delivery-focused.

The new skill for you to learn is how to build client trust and confidence.

Showing that you have understood their needs and putting across the solutions from their perspective (rather than revelling in the technical aspects) will help.

Client management is like dating. If you want someone to warm to you, then warm them up first.

Juniper

Work meetings have become wretched

When I was a junior salesperson, I remember criticising my boss for spending the whole day in meetings, being inaccessible to ordinary team members, spending too little time with clients and being too remote to lead the team properly. Recently I have become a section head and I can feel myself going the same way. No matter how hard I try, there is always someone wanting to tie me up in a meeting: research, IT, investment banking, cross-functional liaisons, you name it and it's in my diary. The consequence is that I am not servicing my own clients properly and I am not spending enough quality time with my team. Any advice is welcome. Yours, Frances

Dear Frances

Meetings seem to come with the territory of taking on more management responsibility. It can be hard to know how to deal with the increased demand to be present at, if not taking a point of view at, so many of them.

My advice is not to feel that you have to always show up. Delegate the meetings that you can and be prepared to miss a few of the ones that you can't. You can't be all things to everyone.

Being smart enough to pick your maximum points of impact with your team, your clients and the other groups who need your presence and expertise is the key to not getting bogged down in the weeds of the section head role.

Juniper

Cruising

Once I used to come into work raring to go. The high octane of being on a trading floor, peer pressure, the hunt for business and good client feedback and, I guess, fear of failure, kept me on a high for most of my 12 years in the market. But lately I have a different feeling. I just don't care any more and I am cruising. I am doing the bare minimum not to get found out and just making the easy calls. Is this a mid-career crisis and what should I do about it? Yours, Sales trader, aged 34

Dear 34-year-old

Twelve years is a long time to spend in one role and I wonder if that could be at the heart of your worries.

Why has your organisation not spotted that you are cruising, nor asked you to take on a broader or more challenging role?

It could be that they have pigeonholed you in the first thing that made you stand out - in which case ask yourself whether you could develop wider skills and interests or whether you are the type of person best suited to a narrower role. Either way can work.

Many people who have worked with clients for a long time find that youthful enthusiasm and energy eventually fade. The successful survivors, however, learn to use the improved judgment and perspective that experience brings to provide a different but more rounded form of job satisfaction. Maybe you are simply in transition from salesman to statesman.

Alternatively you might indeed be overdue for some kind of management role. In that case, stop faking it and start a more mature conversation about being ready to move on to something else.

If that isn't possible in your existing company then start making a different kind of call.

Either way, stop cruising.

Juniper