So You Want to Be a Trusted Advisor?

This post was written as part of the IBM for Midsize Business program, which provides midsize businesses with the tools, expertise and solutions they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

1. Are you willing to tell the truth, even when it may cost you your opportunity?
2. Are you willing to share your very best ideas, even before you have a commitment from your client or prospect to move forward?
3. Are you willing to tell your client or prospect that they are personally the root cause of their own problems?
4. Are you willing and able to build consensus inside your client’s organization, dealing with the obstacles, the challenges, and the dissenters? Are you willing to find a way?
5. Are you willing to talk about the investment necessary to producing the results your client really wants, even knowing that they want to pay less?
6. Are you willing to show your client the largest, most value creating solution they need, even though you know it is going to frighten them?
7. Are you willing to learn their business? Are you willing to learn their industry?
8. Are you willing to devote yourself to gaining the business acumen and situational knowledge necessary to giving the advice that makes you a trusted advisor?
9. Are you willing to show your client where and they are at risk?
10. Are you willing to be relentlessly proactive, never resting on your laurels, always exercising your resourcefulness in generating new, value creating initiatives?
11. Are you willing to be held to a standard high above anything you’ve imagined before now? Are you willing to be held to the same standard your client would hold one of their own team members to?
12. Are you willing to be accountable for results?