“Professional” means exhibiting, communicating, and delivering excellent results, exercising great skill and knowing how to do your job.
It means showing up dressed sharply in a perfectly fitting suit and tie, if that’s what’s expected; it means being organized, efficient and displaying an air of competence.
Corporate means institutional. Corporate means showing your customers the face of a building instead of the face of a person. On the surface, corporate seems impressive because it’s imposing and large.
But it always engenders distrust. It’s always characterized by “I’m sorry, but that’s against our policy”… “Operations says that we cannot rectify that problem at this time”… “ACME Corporation is the world’s largest international producer of ISO9000 certified, best of breed, robust and scalable e-commerce solutions.”
Corporations are made up of people, and usually those people are hiding behind the façade, masking their insecurities and making up excuses that their customers are somewhat conditioned to accept. When I use the word Corporate, I’m talking about bureaucracy and Byzantine complexity. Stuff that repels customers.
But you can be professional without being corporate. You can be organized, competent, efficient and informed, you can dress sharply and make a great impression, but still be personal. You can extend your warm, fleshy palm and shake their hand instead of giving them a robotic arm.
The key is to be personal and professional at the same time. Both of those things work for you.
Corporate will always work against you.
One of the big mistakes that growing companies make is shedding the personal in favor of the Big Corporate Image, thinking that people will be impressed by it.
Nobody’s impressed except the execs playing golf.
You know what impresses people?
Having their disputes resolved by empathetic customer service people. Having access to the president when something’s going way wrong – and getting a listening, caring ear. Getting performance and guarantees instead of stalls and excuses.
Photo by: Ronald Sarayudej cc by-sa
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About the Author
Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.
He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.
One Comment on “Professional vs. Corporate”
Personal goals affect how an employee performs. While they can serve as motivation to be more productive and more successful, they can also cause conflicts between staff or between work and home. Businesses are most successful when personal goals are aligned with corporate goals. This can be difficult to do at times, but it is possible. Most of the time, personal goals should still be work-related, such as achieving a sales volume, working a number of hours, organizing a specific project, or improving specific skills. Finding common ground between these personal goals and your organizational priorities can be hugely productive.