“If you don’t have expertise, I don’t need you.”   A banker friend shared this with me after his conversation with the CEO of a $15 million company, one of the bank’s clients. They  were talking about why the CEO would agree to meet with some vendors and not others. “If you don’t have expertise, I don’t need you,” he responded.

I was prompted to think of this again while chatting with American friends who now live in France. We were discussing food (of course) and our friends described the experience of going to their village butcher shop.

“Our butcher is respected like a chef. He expects to guide our menu planning.  So, we don’t go in and tell him how many kilograms of whatever meat we need or look for pre-cut options. That’s the American model.  In France, he’ll ask us,  ‘How many people are you serving and how are you going to prepare the meat?’ And then, he will  select, weigh, and prepare the  cut specifically for us. It’s a conversation. We create the meal together.”

Reflecting deep cultural differences between American and French views of food, food preparation, and dining, the village butcher is expected to know cuts, sourcing, cooking methods, seasonality, and preparation of meat.  There’s a sense that the butcher knows far more than we do about meat.

So, when our clients or prospects or referral sources think of us, what expertise would lead them to the same conclusion – “This person knows far more than I do about ___” –  and to think of us as guides with whom they could co-create solutions through conversation.

Just for grins, because I work in the banking industry, I fed ChatGPT information about a hypothetical small business – financial information, operational information, back-office transaction information, etc. – and asked it, “What are the most important banking services we should be using and why?”  The four-page response pointed to a half-dozen specific recommendations, reasons why those recommendations are important, issues to consider, and questions to ask a bank representative. Brilliant!

So… in this case, if you were the business owner,  what would you do next? Would you follow the American model (tell a banker how many pounds of which products you want) or the French (look for someone who could co-create solutions with you).

And, if you chose the French model: What expertise would a banker (or any of us, in our respective fields) have to have in order to be considered a “co-creator” beyond a ChatGPT solution?

Nick Miller is President of Clarity Advantage based in Concord, MA. He assists banks and credit unions to generate more and more profitable relationships, faster, with business clients, their owners, and their employees through better sales strategies and execution. Additional articles on Clarity’s web site.