CHAPTER AT A GLANCE

If you want to be a successful professional, you need to have commercial awareness. It wasn't always so. When I started out (as a young lawyer) it was enough to know the law and how it affected corporate clients. After all, the law was the difficult bit.

But that isn't good enough any more.

If you want to be an accountant, actuary, architect, advertising executive, banker, barrister, broker, engineer, fund manager, HR professional, ITC specialist, legal executive, management consultant, marketing adviser, patent attorney, property surveyor, PR expert, quantity surveyor, solicitor, tax adviser - whatever it may be - you need to master your own discipline and, on top of that, you need to be commercially aware.

And the sooner you start doing that, the better. It's crucial to becoming a successful professional. This book helps you achieve it.

What commercial awareness is

Ask anyone who works in professional life what they mean by 'commercial awareness' and they will give you a different answer. I've asked a load of them and the following is a pretty good smorgasbord of what commercial awareness encompasses:

• A basic understanding of business - how companies are organised and the issues that affect them, from globalisation and channels to market to supply chain management, knowledge management, customer value management, data mining, ERP, offshoring and outsourcing
• An overview of finance - the importance of cashflow, the difference between debt and equity, how companies fund themselves, and an overview of the financial markets and the role of banks
• A grasp of what motivates and drives the people in organisations - their functions and roles
• Use of the language of business - how to communicate in the way clients want
• Insight into some of the common management models that people are taught on MBAs, especially in the field of strategy
• Recognition of the need to market yourself and build your own professional network - how to go about building professional relationships and a personal reputation

What's in this book...

At heart, commercial awareness is about being able to talk to clients, finding out what they want, why they want it, what they will do with it and what they are prepared to pay, and then delivering it in the way they want. To do that you need to understand how organisations work, the issues they face and the role of people within them. So this book does that and then helps you focus on how to deliver the service clients want.

In short, this book is a rag-bag of stuff, most of it gleaned over the 25 years I've spent working in a commercial context as a lawyer, management consultant, marketing director, MBA teacher and financial journalist, working as an employee, employer and entrepreneur.

If you know these things before you attend your first meeting with a corporate client, you will be fully prepared to make a good impression and start to build a professional relationship that will launch a career filled with demanding clients, stimulating work, interesting colleagues and (let's not beat about the bush) loads of dosh - all of which will make you a sexy proposition to a future spouse or partner. You will be valued, people will seek your views, your voice will be heard, your opinion will matter and your life will make a difference. You'll become a top dog.

And if there's more to a successful professional career than that, I'm a monkey.