The Trusted Advisor

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Additional The Trusted Advisor Information

In today's fast-paced networked economy, professionals must work harder than ever to maintain and improve their business skills and knowledge. But technical mastery of your discipline is not enough, assert world-renowned professional advisors David H. Maister, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford. The key to professional success, they argue, is the ability to earn the trust and confidence of clients. The creation of trust is what earns the right to influence clients; trust is also at the root of client satisfaction and loyalty. The workings of trust are even more critical in the new economy than in the old.

Maister, Green, and Galford enrich our understanding of trust -- yet they have also written a deeply practical book. Using their model of "The Trust Equation," they dissect the rational and emotional components of trustworthiness. With precision and clarity, they detail five distinct steps you must take to create a trust-based relationship. Each step -- engage, listen, frame, envision, and commit -- is richly described in distinct chapters. The book is peppered with pragmatic "top ten" lists aimed at improving advisors' effectiveness that can be put to use instantly. It also includes a trust self-diagnostic in the appendix.

This immensely readable book will be welcomed by the inexperienced advisor and the most seasoned expert alike. The authors use anecdotes, experiences, and examples -- successes and mistakes, their own and others' -- to great effect. Though they use the professional services advisor/client paradigm throughout the book, their prescriptions have resonance for other trust-reliant situations -- selling, customer relationship management, and internal staff functions like HR and information technology.

The result is a tour de force -- brilliant, penetrating, unique. It is essential reading for anyone who must advise, negotiate, or manage complex relationships with others.

What Customers Say About The Trusted Advisor:

Written explicitly for professional-service firms, this book insists that success comes only when you gain trust of your clients. Dave Peterson (Founder and Chairman of North Highland) makes that book required reading for all employees. My first day at management consutling company North Highland I was assigned to read "True Professionalism" by David Maister. It even lays out a mathematical formula (one of which I was highly skeptical--at first) for measuring the trust you have developed with the client. I have been in love with David Maister's thought ever since. Simply put, David is the finest writer on professional services I have ever read, period. If this book resonates with you, I strongly recommend checking out David Maister's podcasts. He has dozens on iTunes, for every conceivable subject a professional services group can encounter.

Great foundation for building trust when selling consultative services. The book is technical to a point - the authors have created a mathematical formula for trust and reference it often. But they've also broken down every chapter into lists (or even multiple lists) that are reprinted in the final section for easy, quick reference.

This book is an excellent exposition on values and perceptions between clients and salesmen. I recommend it to all in any sales position. The information included is worth many years of experience.

The product is defective and I can't get it to load in any of my cd players. I wish the seller had tested it before it was represented as "like new". I would return it if I had the return information but, alas. Live and learn.

This book is right on target. It would have explained much about the success I had with clients as well as the failures that I suffered. I have found this simple equation to be most useful in gauging the strength of relationships built over the years.

From the outset the authors hook the reader by establishing the three basic skills that a trusted advisor must have: (1) earning trust; (2) giving advice effectively; and (3) building relationships. Those who have difficulty maintaining long term solid relationships with friends or clients would do well to check their self-orientation. Anyone who desires to develop lasting relationships with clients will want to read this book.

It also explains how frustratingly easy it is to lose the trust we've built up. And it gets better as the book progresses. The concept of building trust is brought home in a succinct equation: T = (C + R + I)/S where T is trust, C is credibility, R is reliability, I is intimacy and S is self-orientation.

It is highly likely, if you're honest with yourself, that you are pretty much motivated by your own self-interest and that will come through to clients and friends - regardless of the words you speak or protestations to the contrary.I wish I had come across this book (and the follow-on book by Charles Green, Trust-based Selling) years ago. This book will move the successful mentor/coach from the level of conscious incompetent to conscious competent and on to the ultimate goal of unconscious competent.