FP&A professionals know their trade very well when it comes to the technical skills used to plan, forecast, and execute the strategy of a company. However, to truly influence the strategic directions they need to be able to influence their stakeholders. This is best done by forming a partnership with them through Business Partnering. To do this, certain skills and tools are needed that are not common to FP&A professionals. Sure, many of them know how to present numbers or discuss the implications of their forecast but can they communicate well with their stakeholders? Do they know how to build trust? And do they meet their stakeholders face-to-face or do they stick to emails? To build a true partnership you need to know the communication style of your stakeholders and how to make them trust you. How do you that then?

The Partnering Tools

To be clear, you cannot build a partnership with anyone without meeting with them in person. That goes for your personal life, your professional life and the life of an FP&A professional. To build your partnership you need to think about how to meet your stakeholders. You probably have formal meetings with them where you can try to make an impression but often you won’t be the only attendee, hence, it will give you very limited time to form the partnership. You need other interactions to stand a fighting chance of creating a meaningful partnership. Those could be but not limited to.

• A regular 1-1 with your stakeholder to talk about how (s)he sees your deliverables and what you can do to help even more
• Casual conversations at the coffee machine or in the elevator going up and down. Granted it’s difficult to plan these but at least you can have a plan for what to do when they happen
• Ad-hoc meetings where you bring new and interesting insights to your stakeholders that positively surprise them

Next up, when you’ve got yourself some good encounters with your stakeholders is to know how to communicate with them. Some people like it short and sweet so you need to know your 30 seconds’ pitch. Others like to talk about what goes on in their personal life like their last holiday or what they did over the weekend. The third kind of people wants you to go through your whole thought process before they will either accept or reject what you have to say. Naturally, you have a preference yourself as well but if you don’t know the preference of your stakeholders you will go wrong more than half the time. Once you know the communication style of your stakeholders you need to build trust. This is simple yet difficult to do consistently. You deliver what you say you deliver. Never overpromise and underdeliver. You deliver when you say you deliver. Don’t miss deadlines. You care about your stakeholders and find ways of connecting with them on a personal level. If it’s strictly business they probably won’t trust you. Finally, you make it about your stakeholder and not about yourself. Deliver on these and you have yourself a partnership.

Now it’s time to create your action plan for how to build a partnership with your most important stakeholders.

• Think back on the previous interactions you’ve had with them to figure out if you need to create more interactions in the future or just use the ones you have better.
• Analyze your interactions with your stakeholders to figure out what style of communication the use a) the short and sweet, b) the personal one or c) the one where they need to know your every reasoning for making your proposal
• Consider how you have delivered on your promises to your stakeholders in the past. Do they think you’re credible and reliable? Are you always making it about business and little about anything else? And are you making it about solving your stakeholders’ problems or more about shining yourself? Getting this last point right will make or break a successful partnership.

It’s as easy as 1-2-3

In conclusion, you first you figure out where and how to meet with your stakeholder. Second, you identify their style of communication. Finally, you build trust through delivering on your promises and getting to know your stakeholder. Follow this simple recipe and you will be much more effective as an FP&A professional to influence the strategic agenda of your company.

The article was first published in Prevero Blog.