It is often the people who have analytical skills, the detail orientated people who do not have marketing skills to create hype and excitement around their services or products who are essential in business executions.

We often cannot tell the difference between the dishonest operators, the poor performers and the doers. Take for instance an unwieldy professional in the managed services industry who extracts as much time and revenue from their clients as possible with very little added value. We may say that this is unsustainable because the client has a choice on whether to continue with the provider. However an unwieldy motor mechanic can tell me I have a damaged cam belt and I would not be the wiser. In the legal, auditing and medical professions, this is not accepted and there are severe repercussions for a dishonest practitioner. But not so for most professions. I am not declaring that most service practitioners are dishonest, I am saying that there are plenty of poor providers. Their projects and tasks are almost always overdue and incomplete.

So how does the poor DOer take the brunt, let’s call him Pat. Well Pat takes on a previously dysfunctional task, Pat has to state that the project is in a mess, and the costs for completion are now way higher than anticipated. Pat is the bearer of bad news.The reaction should be one of relief, finally we have a capable person, giving us an honest position, we can deal with the facts. This is often not the case, the response in a typical corporate environment is to rather find someone who convinces us to take the project to the next level. A sales man arrives to rescue the project.

I recently came across a rumor being spread from a service provider of a respectable software company. The targeted person had been previously employed by my company, Sarah (names changed) was a specialist in her field, a master on this specific product. The service provider had a knack of getting involved in projects, taking excess time to complete and not accomplishing their clients goals. On several failed projects, Sarah was called in to sort out the issues and successfully put the implementations back on track. This created resentment from the service provider and eventually the provider spread rumors which hurt Sarah’s reputation. As a product specialist, ones reputation is critical in making a living. I told Sarah of the rumors and Sarah approached the software company to admonish the service provider.

As kids we are taught to carry out tasks without boasting, we are told that our tasks will be praised for the amount of effort we put in and rewarded accordingly. This sounds true, but this is not the manner in which the business world operates. Businesses invest substantially in public relations to amplify their message of how wonderful they are. So too should employees not be afraid to ask for increases and tell their employers why they deserve an increase.A major part of receiving rewards lie in the ability to communicate your efforts and skills, whether this is actual or perceived.

The importance of doing cannot be underestimated, although without marketing yourself, your product or services, one cannot expect a commitment from a client or management team. On a recent project I was stationed , I focused most of my time on marketing rather than execution to convince the executives on the preferred way forward.

It is for this reason that good implementers, need to gain skills as good marketers.

We ALL need to make sure that when we DO we also TALK.