By Harris Murray

While dealing with someone, if you are spending too much time planning in detail so that basic things can get done. And if you don't put in this much effort, work does not get done, you are dealing with an unprofessional and incompetent person. If you think this is how professionals are – you are mistaken. A professional will take pride in doing good work and serving the customer. Someone who makes it difficult to do business with is not a professional but he is out to maximize the income at the cost of their customers. If they are not serving the customer, then they are pursuing a hobby, not a profession.

A professional will do work that is difficult for others but easy for them. A professional will figure out the routine activities and figure out a system /method to do that very accurately and quickly. Once a great artist drew a beautiful portrait of a woman in 15 minutes and charged certain amount. The lady pointed out that the amount is too high since it took only 15 minutes to do the portrait. The artist replied, "Madam, It took me 15 years of effort to be able to do this in 15 minutes".

Unprofessional behavior is probably one of the biggest reasons for business failure. An unprofessional can only do business when he is in a monopoly situation or there is acute shortage of people. Both these situations are unlikely to last for long in a typical work life of a person. Even among the blue-collar workforce, such as the Detroit Auto Industry workers, if the focus is on financial benefits at the cost of satisfying a customer, they have to face hard and difficult times. A business exists by a primary cause of serving a customer. When an unprofessional employee shortchanges the customer often, the business has to pay the penalty.

An unprofessional exhibits other key characteristics. They are not knowledgeable in their area or they advise something but the facts are different. In the later case, they knowingly cause you harm. This is the 'expertise' side of unprofessionalism.

Another aspect is the attitude part which is – 'I don't care for you the customer. First let me take care of all my needs and then I will think about you.' This has already been covered in detail earlier. An attitude is a deep-rooted behavior that is difficult to change. Another aspect of unprofessionalism is to antagonize/harass a customer who is disengaging their service. When a customer wants to part ways, it means he does not believe that the person is adding value. Whatever the reason maybe, any disengagement hints- things are not going in the right direction!

It is important to recognize these negative behaviors while dealing with service providers as early as possible. Especially, figuring out ahead if a person or service provider is unprofessional can greatly save time, frustration, and money later.

Many unprofessional people look attractive, talk and dress well and have fancy offices. Don't mistake appearances for professionalism, as some professionals may not look and dress well besides they may be very modest and simple. However, they could actually turnout to be very competent in their area of expertise and genuinely care for their customers' well being.