Want to be attractive to clients? Remember, people buy people first

It was the late eighties, Malcolm McLaren provided the opera house soundtrack (Aria on Air) to Saatchi and Saatchi's seminal 'Picasso Face' advert for British Airways – the metamorphosis of an uninterested flag carrier into a global brand with a new service based consciousness.

BA's 'global' advert was only part of the story: at the same time the airline blazed a trail in branded, universal training programmes with 'Putting People First' – which saw every employee attend the same one day course on the new, almost American idea of person to person quality communication.

Even back then, BA was acknowledging that optimised return from brand marketing investment would only be achieved if the customer experience reality of the brand matched or exceeded expectations (and if the creative worked, those expectations would of course be higher still). So, BA backed up the brand activity with strategic and sustained investment in the principle that the point of interaction is where brand value is realised, or lost.

Putting People First acted as a culture-shifting catalyst. BA emerged as a leading global brand airline: its people were not just trained in the high principles of delivering good service, but most cleverly, it majored as much on the even greater importance of effective engagement at the moment things go wrong – on service recovery as a turnaround opportunity to establish an even greater customer connection.

So far, so eighties – but what's the relevance to business today, and also, to the skills required for effective client entertainment? Well, this was among the early examples of 'living the brand'; of brand marketing truly integrating all the way through to the daily actions and behaviours of the customer facing teams to deliver a consistent and on brand experience. In the 25 years since, the world has been busy: the internet was born, dots boomed, credit crunched, media got social, yet still, now, we hear about speaking to your customers, engaging them, like it is a new thing.

While today most larger companies probably have training programmes with objectives along the same lines, fewer smaller companies are likely to, and very few either larger or smaller companies focus much attention on the skills required of their people to deliver a consistent brand experience, for instance, at social events. So, it's probably all down to you. Well, actually, of course it is all down to you in terms of how well you engage your audience at social events. And consistency applies to your own personal brand, as much as it does to your firm's own brand.

Putting People First might sound like a selfless focus on the other person, but really, it's more about being the most buyable version of you, ensuring your clients want to do business with you and that the people you meet in professional social situations enjoy the interaction with you and are interested in developing the professional relationship, extending your network.

There is another factor today: social media activity. Apart from your firm's activity, your own social media activity is a big part of 'brand you' that must also be brought to life with consistency in real world meets. Yes, not every person working in media or marketing is active on Twitter or LinkedIn, sharing business issue insights or contributing to the debate. However, most leaders already are and certainly anyone aspiring towards being a future leader probably now has no choice but to develop their professional social media presence.

Consistency and effectiveness covers the entire ecosystem of interactions with your professional audience: clients, potential clients and those already in your network, plus those you would like to be. Social business skills today includes our all dialogue: on the phone, via email, at meetings as well as the quality of interaction on social media, as much as it does our personal performance when we meet people in real world, social business situations. What, all that expectation and with none, or not much, specific training? Just common sense then?

Well, those leaving it all down to common sense are not likely those leading us now or in future. No doubt we have all seen otherwise successful and intelligent individuals crash and burn in one way or another in professional social situations.

From the starting point that how we are rated by clients and industry peers is the sum total of our interactions with them, next week, we get practical with the simple advice that could make the biggest difference in terms of being our most buyable self. See you then.

Until then, check out the Twenty Rather Good Shouts for client dining courtesy of Mr. Sykes Modern Concierge.