Change Your Commuincation, Change Your Life

Never has it been more important to be deliberate in your business and your customer relationship management. 

Why do we lose clients and referral partners?

1% die, 3% move out of the area, 5% leave for better technology, 9% look for a better price, 14% are actually upset or angry over an issue they feel was never resolved, (they will tell over a dozen people on average and never tell you), and 68% felt a feeling of indifference from you or your company (they won't tell you or anyone else they will just go to another company).  The opposite of a great experience is not being upset over a single issue or even multiple issues it's the feeling that no one cares.

We all want to provide the best possible service to our clients and give them an excellent experience so why don't we?

The 2 biggest mistakes a business person can make is not knowing where their business is coming from and not maintaining effective and frequent communication.  The most important word in the previous sentence is effective.  We all have blackberry's, blue tooth, and red eyes. The fact is we have so much data coming at us at any given moment that we feel we are being the most productive when we can be on the phone with a client, sending an email, responding to an instant message and running debt ratios on a file all at the same time, (I'm just as guilty as you are). In reality we are short changing ourselves and worse yet our clients.

Why do we behave this way?  The only reason I keep coming up with is fear.  We're afraid we aren't going to get enough done or we are going to miss out on something or we are going to upset someone.  The thing about fear is 100% of the time it's about what is going to happen in the future.  We're not afraid of what happened yesterday or last week or last year because we already pushed through it.  FEAR: False Evidence Appearing Real, 90% of the things we get worked up over never happen or when they do we find out it was nothing to be afraid of in the first place.  I came up with an acronym of my own for us business persons FEAR Fools Easily Accept Rejection.  In some cases when they have only been rejected in their own mind.

Now I want to talk to about some tools that will help you not just in your business, but also in any relationship where communication is important (how many is that?).

Relationships are measured and defined by the perceived value of the quality and quantity of contact between the parties.  It is our job to increase the quality and quantity of interaction.  Quality questions and deliberate listening creates quality relationships. Question so artfully that you can get your client to give the answers you need. When you say it the client doubts it. If they say it, it's true.  A few questions you can ask are, "what was the best customer experience you have ever had with any company and what made it that way?"  "What can I do to ensure that you will say great job and I will earn your loyalty as a client?" When you are asking the questions you are in control.  What does a Hershey bar look like?  Are you seeing a Hershey Bar? The subconscious mind cannot hear a question without answering it.   As you are experimenting with this, here are a couple of important ideas.  Ask open ended questions (questions that can't be answered with a yes or a no).  This makes it easier for you to respond with more follow-up questions.  Keep in mind you will never get the real answer right away.  Once they have responded and stopped talking, count 5 seconds before you ask another question.  Just Listen!  Most people are uncomfortable with a silence, and they will start to talk again this is when you will really hear what they are thinking.  This works outstanding with children, by the way. 

Now we're going to look at some tools to help you with your new communication skills.  First, you need get yourself a digital recorder so that you can record your side of the conversation.  Listening to this will show you how you are doing and where you can improve.  Next, if you ever don't have a question when you are speaking to someone you can always grab onto the parachute of HELP!  There is no one you will talk to, including children that will not answer your questions for help.  Help could be on any topic.  Examples of help questions are, "what is your client thinking or what are they most concerned about?" Try these approaches because when you are really listening to people you'll be surprised what you will hear.  A couple of other great tools to help you with your questioning is the acronyms FORD.  FORD stands for Family, Occupation, Recreation and Dreams.  Ask questions from one topic to the next, and most importantly listen.  You may be the only person in years that has asked them anything about their dreams. 

Here are some technologies to save you time and help you in developing relationships.  Don't make the mistake of letting these take the place of real communication but they will help.  All of these websites also have something else in common they either have free trial periods so you can try them out before you spend a dime or they are free altogether. 

Scroogle.org will save you more time than you can imagine on your internet searches.  Basically it does a Google search but scrapes all of the advertising and pay per click web links.  Give it a try but be sure to use scroogle.org and not scroogle.com as scroogle.com is nothing you will want to see. 

Constantcontact.com is a website that has hundreds of newsletter templates and also includes an email database function that will sync with your outlook.  2 things with this, one, it will track every newsletter sent, whether it is opened, forwarded or just deleted and gives everyone the option to be removed from the list (required by the spam act). It also forces you to write your own newsletter.  Never make more then 3 points. One, something personal about you (if people want mortgage info they can go to google).  Two, something to help them in their lives (what causes you to worry).  Three, a touching story about someone you helped, (one of the transactions that makes you really feel like you helped someone). 

Gutenberg.org is an amazing site. Remember once again it's a .org (you have to love these they are the free ones) and it has all the books and articles that have expired copy wrights.  You can search, read and forward entire books and articles.  Sending someone a book or article about something they are interested in is a great way show people you have really been listening.

In closing I want you to remember a couple things. We have the best jobs in the world. We get to choose who we work with.  We are in complete control of the relationship we have with them.  We get to change their lives for the better.  The better we become at our jobs the better we become at life.  Things are tough right now but know this, you reading this article and working to improve yourself and your business puts you in the top 20% of business persons in the country, you already made it to the top 20% by reading this don't stop now.  Follow through, change the way you communicate and change your life, practice on your closest relationships first then try it out on the new ones.