Providers of professional services come in many roles and titles, but the truth is, professional service clients exercise a brutal taxonomy -- to them, any given provider fits one of two categories: expert or salesman. Now, we’ve all met so-called “experts” who were little more than very clever salesmen, and we’ve all worked with salesmen who’ve surprised us with genuinely helpful expertise. But again, it’s our clients' perspective that counts, and in their minds, the distinction is simple: Salesmen are people who chase after us, hungry for work; experts are people we actively seek out, money in hand.

Obviously, we want to be experts. While ordinary service providers spend inordinate amounts of time prospecting, experts enjoy the enviable task of cherry-picking the opportunities that come to them. But there's a huge gap between how we'd like to be seen and how our prospects and clients see us. To close the gap, we have to "walk the walk and talk the talk" -- we must fulfill the expectations that clients have of experts. Here's how:

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