As "doer-sellers," professional services partners are responsible for not just delivering services but also the entire business-development process. As "rainmakers," they must build awareness of their expertise in the market to generate demand, identify and close new client business, deliver the work to the client, and then renew and expand the relationship over time. But there is a growing problem with this long-standing practice: Clients are much less loyal to firms and partners than they once were. Competition for business among professional services firms is intensifying, which has cast in sharp relief the troubling gap in the ability of high performers and core performers to bring in work. In this article, the authors identify five statistically determined profiles that professional services partners fall into, only one of which is correlated with positive performance, and they lay out the three key behaviors of a successful business-development approach: (1) building connected networks of colleagues and clients, (2) creating value through collaboration, and (3) committing to a proactive and consistent business-development routine.

Customer service jobs are notoriously joyless, and callers' experiences with reps can be just as unsatisfying. But T-Mobile has a new operating model that's making both employees and customers happier. There are no rows of service agents robotically responding to random calls as quickly as possible. Instead, T-Mobile relies on colocated, collaborative teams of reps who manage specific accounts in a given locale, with a focus on autonomous problem solving. Reps get more-comprehensive training, managers get more time for coaching, and team members are evaluated on group performance as well as individual performance. Additionally, teams are authorized and expected to manage their own P&L statements. The results are impressive: In three years, T-Mobile has dramatically reduced its customer churn rate, cost to serve, and employee attrition and absenteeism. Its Net Promoter Score is way up too. Other companies might likewise benefit from similar efforts to rethink standard industry practices.

Why are consumers increasingly dissatisfied with the quality of help they get from customer service departments? The authors' surveys and interviews with contact center personnel worldwide suggest that companies don't hire the right people as frontline reps, nor do they equip them to handle the increasingly complex challenges that come with the job. Every rep can be classified as one of seven types, say the authors. Supportive "Empathizers" constitute the largest group, and managers prefer them. But take-charge "Controllers," who make up only 15% of all reps, actually do best at solving customers' problems. To expand their numbers, companies need a fresh approach to hiring--one that involves crafting job postings and screening applicants differently. Companies should also revamp their training practices, using new curricula and on-the-job coaching to help all types of reps learn to act more like Controllers. Another key step is building a culture that values and rewards Controller behavior. That might mean evaluating reps on their ability to use good judgment rather than follow a script, and soliciting their ideas to improve the organization.

Sales leaders have long fixated on process discipline, monitoring reps' conformance to "optimal" behaviors and their performance of specified activities. Recently, however, this sales machine has stalled. The approaches that once led to predictable progress in a sale do not work with today's customers, who are empowered with more information than ever before. The new environment favors creative and adaptable sellers who challenge customers with disruptive insights into their business--and offer unexpected solutions. Such "insight selling" gives reps latitude to discover what the customer has already concluded about its needs and the available solutions, determine who the decision makers are, look for signals that the customer is receptive to a new insight about its business, and then figure out how best to proceed. A study of 2,500 B2B sales professionals found that most organizations, despite faltering sales performance, still have a climate that emphasizes compliance rather than judgment. To create a judgment-oriented sales climate, managers must serve as connectors within and beyond their teams, providing a continual flow of information that supports reps as they exercise their judgment on individual deals. These managers must also focus on the long term, monitoring customers' behaviors and directing reps' creativity and critical thinking to the most promising opportunities. And they need to hire professionals--not necessarily those with sales backgrounds--who can thrive in the new climate.

In recent decades sales reps have become adept at discovering customers' needs and selling them "solutions." This worked because customers didn't know how to solve their own problems. But the world of B2B selling has changed: Companies today can readily define their own solutions and force suppliers into a price-driven bake-off. There's some good news, though, according to the authors, all directors at Corporate Executive Board. A select group of reps are flourishing in this environment--and lessons from the playbook they've devised can help other reps and organizations boost their performance. These star reps look for different sorts of organizations, targeting ones with emerging rather than established demand. Instead of waiting for the customer to identify a problem the supplier can solve, they engage early on and offer provocative ideas about what the customer should do. They seek out a different set of stakeholders, preferring skeptical change agents over friendly informants, and they coach those change agents on how to buy rather than quizzing them about their company's purchasing process. High-performing reps are still selling solutions--but more broadly, they're selling insights. And in this new world, that makes the difference between a pitch that goes nowhere and one that secures the customer's business.

The notion that companies must go above and beyond in their customer service activities is so entrenched that managers rarely examine it. But a study of more than 75,000 people interacting with contact center representatives or using self-service channels found that over-the-top efforts make little difference: All customers really want is a simple, quick solution to their problem. The Corporate Executive Board's Dixon and colleagues describe five loyalty-building tactics that every company should adopt: Reduce the need for repeat calls by anticipating and dealing with related downstream issues; arm reps to address the emotional side of customer interactions; minimize the need for customers to switch service channels; elicit and use feedback from disgruntled or struggling customers; and focus on problem solving, not speed. The authors also introduce the Customer Effort Score and show that it is a better predictor of loyalty than customer satisfaction measures or the Net Promoter Score. And they make available to readers a related diagnostic tool, the Customer Effort Audit. They conclude that we are reaching a tipping point that may presage the end of the telephone as the main channel for service interactions-and that managers therefore have an opportunity to rebuild their service organizations and put reducing customer effort firmly at the core, where it belongs.