Carrie Jones has ignored the recession.

Her upstart DC-based boutique public relations firm has grown at a breakneck pace since she opened the doors of Jones Public Affairs in May of 2007. From the humble beginnings of a two-person shop, she now leads a burgeoning team of eight industrious creatives to a high profile K Street address to accommodate accelerating organic growth.

She’s applied her experience at public relations industry giants Ogilvy and Edelman to land impressive clients such as, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Melanoma Research Foundation and The Partnership for Safe Medicines, and Jones’s firm is poised to double their impressive revenue numbers in 2009.

Why did she put her team through the Trust Centered Selling program? In this interview, Carrie shares her thoughts about selling, trust, and professional development for service professionals.

M.S. Why did you decide to have staff training on Trust Centered Selling?

C.J. As a PR agency, we often focus on business development – and an important part of that is building a rapport with our clients. Many PR practitioners don’t consider themselves in the sales business, but that is a mistake. We all sell something. In the PR world we sell our ability to take a client initiative and turn it into a message that gets them results. There are a lot of good PR firms out there with great ideas and streamlined business processes that never get selected. Why? Because they focus on their expertise and take the relationship for granted. And trust is at the core of any successful business relationship.

M.S. Why do you believe that PR practitioners have reluctance to “selling?”

C.J. PR professionals love what we do. We’ve paid the price and become expert technicians in our field, but “sales” isn’t part of our vocabulary. I think, in large part, it’s because of the perception that selling translates to learning canned scripts that sound phony and disingenuous.

Trust Centered Selling is different. In fact, Mark started by acknowledging the reluctance people have in our world toward selling. That put us at ease. “Be authentic”, “Name it and claim it”, “Create Client Value,” were course mantras that reframed the entire concept of selling.

M.S. Some organizations push training to the backburner, given the recession and budget priorities. What was your rationale for providing training for your team and why did you decide to conduct the training now?

C.J. We’ve had tremendous growth despite a difficult market. Yet, in order to continue to meet our objectives, we can’t rest on our laurels and we need every member of our account team equipped to sell our services – they all have at least some level of interaction with the client. The business case for a course on trust centered selling is more strategic than tactical and we can’t simply focus on where we are now.

M.S. Undoubtedly, professional service firms and other business leaders believe they operate with trust. So how did the Trust Centered Selling program impact how your team views trust now that they’ve completed the training?

C.J. I feel like the Jones PA team operated with trust even before the training. Yet, it’s entirely different when you put a spotlight on it. We engaged in role plays, impromptu exercises, experiential learning, and customized case studies. The real-life scenarios exposed some exciting opportunities to grow our revenues and increase our profits.

M.S. The course covered a variety of areas, ranging from trust principles, trust components, creating client value, making that first phone call, etc. What topics resonated most with your team members and why?

C.J. I liked all of them and the interactive format. We are going to take the value driver creation process to the next level and incorporate it into proposal writing and major account presentations. To directly impact our bottom line, Mark is providing ongoing coaching to our business development team using real prospects and applying the skills to enhance learning retention. We’re protecting our investment in the training.

M.S. What would you say to a business leader or HR director tasked with staff training who is trying to cost-justify this course?

C.J. I get that budgets are being squeezed. Having said that, when raises, promotions, and bonuses are being frozen or slashed, training like this sends a message of “we are still willing to invest in your future.” Even better news, this is business development training; if we could just win one major opportunity as a result of it, we’d easily see a tenfold return. I already see the staff implementing what we learned.

39,000 fans witnessed a bizarre and unexpected series of events unfold at the Billy Joel/Elton John Face to Face Tour Concert in Washington, DC Saturday night.

After the first two songs, the stage went silent.

Good or bad, live performances, where the risks of hiccups abound, can shape others perception of us. This glitch, of major rock and roll proportions, revealed a dichotomy in personalities between these two legendary stars.

Let me rewind.

My daughter, now reaching those ever-increasing independent teenage years, asked me to go to the Billy Joel/Elton John concert. As the melody of Cats in the Cradle played in my head, I didn’t blink.

The night was filled with anticipation; we settled in our seats at the newly constructed Nationals Park. Here’s how the events unfolded:

7:30 PM – Scheduled start time – huddled masses finding their seats.

7:53 PM – Two black grand pianos emerge from beneath the stage like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

7:54 PM – The crowd roars as Billy Joel enters stage-left, followed by another roar as Elton John enters stage-right. The two hug at center stage and retreat to their pianos.

8:05 PM – After trading verses of Your Song and Just the Way You Are, the two welcome the audience. During the second song, however, Elton barked out orders, off-mic, in the general direction of his crew.

8:06 PM – Houston, we have a problem. After tapping out the first two bars of Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me, Elton suddenly stops. His face contorted and agitated, he lashes, “You know what, this is (blanking) ridiculous, I can’t play like this.” Billy Joel, who no doubt heard him light up the crew’s headsets between songs, let the rest of us in on the secret, “He’s having a little problem with his foot pedal, … it’s sticking” he said with a conciliatory smile.

While four crew members dashed to John’s piano to free the pedal, Joel smiled and filled the time with his own impromptu version of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.

8:07 PM Joel turns back to John, “How we doin’?” John, now in full wrath mode – did not acknowledge him. Joel then smiled and turned to the increasingly tense crowd, “Hey, at least it’s not freakin’ raining!” This released some tension from those of us who felt like we walked in on a father about to unleash a good whooppin’ on his son.

8:09 PM – Without skipping a beat, Joel went back to his tap dancing music with a few bars Yankee Doodle Dandy. Then, in another attempt to work the crowd, he snickers, “You’ve just witnessed an authentic rock n’ roll (screw up)! You don’t see too many of those anymore.” The sellout crowd lets out another nervous laugh.

8:10 PM – All eyes are on the stage as the drama unfolds. Next, straight from his Long Island, blue collar roots, Joel throws his jacket on the Rocket Man’s piano, and dives under it on his back in an attempt to free the stuck pedal.

8:11 PM – No luck. Joel retreats to his piano.

8:12 PM – Joel extends an entirely unselfish gesture, “Want to switch pianos?” To which Elton John offers a non-response followed by another, “this is (blanking) ridiculous.”

He then gets up from his piano bench and exits the stage.

Classic hissy fit.

Now what?

As he John makes his unceremonious exit, Billy Joel calms the bewildered masses, “You know what? Let’s just go ahead with just my guys.” So, “The Entertainer” called an audible and pulled his band’s fire alarm.

8:16 PM – After a three-minute flurry of on stage activity that appeared as if the stage manager pressed the fast forward button, Billy Joel and his band stepped up like pros and dove into his band’s first song, ironically enough, Angry Young Man.

9:09 PM – After flip-flopping the order, now it was John’s turn. The Baltimore Sun reporter wrote, “… the crowd held its collective breath that the piano’s surgery was a success.” It was.

9:15 PM – After his first song back, Elton John addresses the audience regarding his child-like self-indulgent behavior with more of a statement than an apology, “Sorry for what happened earlier. The pedal was stuck and it was as if all the notes were the same. Thanks to Billy Joel and his band for being so gracious and professional.”

Mark Slatin Interviews with former W.R. Grace CFO Robert Tarola

Recently I had a chance to talk with Robert Tarola, a fellow instructor at the Business Learning Institute and former Chief Financial Officer of W. R. Grace and MedStar Health, Inc., both of which are multi-billion dollar businesses with complex multi-national operations. Prior to those posts, he served as a partner for Price Waterhouse LLP.

Now Bob addresses business and professional challenges for accountants, auditors, attorneys, governance bodies, and finance professionals as the President of Georgetown-based, Right Advisory LLC and serves on the Board of TeleTech Holdings(NASDAQ: TTEC) and the public mutual funds sponsored by Legg Mason.

Generating windfalls just because you can has a direct causal effect to the erosion of trust. It’s a luring temptation. Now they’re facing a backlash from clients. What he had to say about the perception of auditing firms may surprise you.

MS: We’ve seen what some would call “knee-jerk” legislation in response to the ethical breakdowns in corporate America. Dating back to Sarbanes Oxley and a slew of legislation in the pipeline aimed at avoiding another financial market crisis. How effective has it been?

RT: It is impossible to “audit in” or “regulate in” total quality. That said, from a CFO’s perspective, SOX has helped companies better control and understand their business – although CEOs will never admit to it. However, even with SOX in place, the financial control system broke down to the point of collapse. Unfortunately, for every good control there is someone scheming to beat it? Consequently, regulation has to be based on a Reagan era “trust but verify” model. Regulation should be directed at requiring public companies to build trust, not just profits. Transparency and verification should be absolute – a no excuses environment when it comes to trust.

MS: The accounting field in particular benefited by the complex rules that came down from regulatory agencies. What’s the state of the industry now?

RT: Ironically, the auditing firms garnered the most financial benefit from SOX – going from being “part of the problem” to being the “sole arbiters” of accounting and controls. This created a perceived wind fall for such firms. They are now in a state of back peddling.

Their audit relationships are strained over passed tactics and high fees. Their transaction work has virtually dried up with the economic crisis. And their business model, based largely on hierarchy and silos, is costly. In order to re-establish trust and confidence, the audit firms need to embrace a larger role toward facilitating the formation and allocation of global capital – by becoming the auditors of the financial system, not just companies within it.

MS: From the client’s lens, how big a deal is restoring trust with their accounting and financial services firms?

RT: Trust is a two-way street. CFOs respect the need for auditors to maintain independence in fact and spirit, and to be professionally skeptical. However, the firms need to recognize that, in their business, relationships are with both their clients and individuals within clients. An approach that solidifies both, and renders them enduring, will more likely be mutually beneficial in the long run.

MS: You currently sit on the board of directors for two different corporations. What’s on the mind of business leaders from what you’re hearing?
RT: In a term – enterprise risk management (ERM). Almost no company can claim to be doing it well given the surprises of the past year. As a former CFO and current board member, my view is that it is futile to try to identify every possible risk event. A more top-down, board-directed process that first sets the corporate risk appetite and then assess risk mitigation and financing plans, all from an enterprise perspective, is more likely to address all corporate objectives.

MS: On another note, you attended the studio taping of the Trust Centered Selling Webcast Series scheduled for broadcast in August. How is it different and why might CPA firms and other business leaders want to consider bringing it to their team?

RT: As a newly minted entrepreneur, I have quickly observed how hard it is to build a book of business. It takes time, dedication and commitment. It does so because winning new business is mostly based on trust – either directly of the buyer or from one’s referral network.

This course provides helpful tools and techniques for building trust-based business relationships. I am already putting them to use in my business, and recommend them to CPA and other professional services firms.