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www.Yourfutureclients.com
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FREE Yourfutureclients.com Newsletter From time to time, we publish a FREE newsletter covering some of the topics that concern our clients. The purpose of this publication is to point out some practical aspects of customer/client service and relationship. The content of this newsletter is based on real-world experience and from the insider perspective of a corporate buyer. The purpose is to help you connect with your existing and future clients/customers. You can subscribe to this newsletter FREE by clicking here. You can also subscribe to our blog by clicking on this link: Subscribe to PowerPoint without Bullet Points! by Email September 2006 Issue Here is an excerpt form Norman's book on making presentation before your future clients: The art of active listeningThis is a technique used by many seasoned and successful sales professionals. They listen to their customers first and summarize what they have heard. This approach gives the client a chance to correct any misunderstanding or misconception. It also reinforces the idea that they are listening and paying attention to the client’s needs. Nothing irritates a client more than being ignored by his consultant. Active listening is also helpful when a client raises an objection to either the cost or technical approach. By engaging in a dialog early, you are positioning yourself to eliminate these objections as they arise. Always listen to the client’s problems. If you are talking, you are not listening. In his book “The Professional Service Firm 50”, Tom Peters talks about the 2:1 ear to mouth ratio. You have two ears and one mouth. You should spend at least twice as much time using your ears than your mouth. He also tells owners of professional firms to pay special attention to those few employees who are quiet. These are the ones with big ears. They are often the ones who listen to their future clients’ problems and come up with exceptional insights on how to solve those problems. Their ears and brains are often engaged – but not their mouths. Ask yourself these questions:
Looking for High Quality InformationOur present day perception of the world is very much shaped by our past. What we have experienced in our past defines who we are and how we see the world around us. It provides us with a road map to the future. In other words, our view of the world is often shaped by what we experienced in the past. It is extremely likely that you and your future clients share totally different past experiences and therefore have completely different road maps and views of the world. The following illustrates this point: A Harvard Business School professor divided his class into two groups. He gave the two groups two different drawings and asked each group to look at its own set of drawing intensely for 30 seconds. These were the two drawings.
Neither group was allowed to look at the other’s drawing.
The professor then showed the entire class a third drawing and asked each group to describe it. The first group of students said the third drawing was an old woman with a hooked nose and scarf over her head. The second group was adamant that it showed a young lady wearing a necklace with her face turned sideways. The two groups got into a heated argument. Each was equally sure that the other group was wrong and quite possibly insane. It was not until the professor asked each group to show the other group exactly where the necklace and hooked nose were located that the students began to understand the other side’s perspective. Both groups of students were equally correct in their perception of the third drawing. The way each group viewed the third drawing was very much influenced by its exposure to the other drawings earlier. Because they had different experiences in the past, they came to two diametrically opposite views of the world. The argument was resolved only after each side explained its own past experience and was made aware of the other side’s. The resolution came only after each side was given higher quality information. The trick for you as a consultant is to share your road map with your client so that you are both on the same journey – at least for the duration of your project. Here is a very good example of how to obtain higher quality information from your future clients in a meeting: Client: Thanks for coming. I have a real big problem. Consultant: Oh…specifically what kind of problems are you having? Client: We have problems with our hazardous waste disposal practice. Client: What was the problem with your hazardous waste disposal practice? Client: I got called into the General Manager’s office and got chewed out by my boss. He was very upset. Consultant: Sorry to hear that. What was he upset about? Client: His office just received a Notice of Violation from the county. Consultant: What was the nature of the violation? Client: Well – apparently the county inspector was at one of our plants last month and he did a dumpster dive. Consultant: A dumpster dive? What was he looking for? Client: He found a number of half empty aerosol spray cans in the dumpster. Consultant: Hmmm…..I think I know where this is heading. What specifically was the nature of the citation? Client: Illegal disposal of hazardous waste. He found a number of spray cans that were still pressurized and therefore considered to be reactive. Consultant: Yes…that’s true. Any waste that is reactive must be disposed of as hazardous waste. You half empty spray cans are reactive. How many spray cans does your company throw out a day? Client: I would think about 30 cans per location per day. Consultant: How many locations do you have? Client: A total of six locations. Consultant: How many of these cans do you estimate are truly empty – I mean – not pressurized? Client: Gosh…I have no way of knowing short of testing every spray can that is being tossed out. So let’s see what the consultant found out from this series of questions. The meeting started out with the client saying he had a “real big problem”. That statement is of the lowest quality. It did not give the consultant any information to work with. A “real big problem” could mean many different things to many people. By asking the right questions, the consultant was able to determine that his client’s organization threw out about 180 aerosol spray cans a day and that some of them were empty and others were not. The consultant also knew that the county inspector would make a point of jumping into the dumpster to look for the pressurized cans. So now the consultant has sufficient high quality information on which to formulate recommendations to this client. There are several options available to the client in this case. One – he can assign someone the specific responsibility of checking out every single one of the 180 empty cans a day and separate out those that are still pressurized and dispose of them as reactive hazardous waste. Two – he can make a management decision to dispose of all spray cans as hazardous waste regarding of the residual pressure in them. Or the third option would be to train his employees to properly identify each can prior to disposal and place it in either two separate bins – one for pressurized cans and the other for non-pressurized cans. All of these three options have advantages and draw backs. But they would all achieve the desired outcome of complying with waste disposal regulations and avoiding being cited by the county. For other FREE articles, click here.  |
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