Category Archives: CLIENT RETENTION

One Tiny Word, A Range of Powerful Choices

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IF is a tiny word with great communication power…

When IF is used properly to improve communication effectiveness!

But IF is not always the best word to use, however, we use it a lot.

For some people, IF is a sloppy habit like saying “yu know?” or “umm.”

To make your point, IF can be the wrong word to include.

Making your point demands certainty about what your point is. There’s no IFs about that. There may be the positivity of a “when” involved, but there’s no room for IFs. “If we can…” has no power, but “When we can…” is powerful commitment.

And yet, when you use IF with deliberate intent to reveal the choices involved in your point, it is the only word to use.

In 1895, British Nobel-Prize-Winning writer Rudyard Kipling wrote the astonishing and thought-provoking poem, If. There’s no better example of how powerful IF can be in the right context WHEN you think…

 

If

by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men [sic] doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;
If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

(Visionary Readability: The Google-AI response to this poem is “The text contains 3 instances where 3 or more consecutive sentences start with the same word [If}. Try to mix things up!”)

Here’s an example of how to fit thoughts from long ago, like the poem If, into today’s first-time-in-history, high-pressure goings-on to make your point:

“IF” Buyers Can Keep Their Heads…

Place to Think: Where Does The Time Go?

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Do you need a Place to Think so you can ramp up and provide the best—innovative, practical, customized, successful—solutions for your clients?

A Place to Think may be a physical spot—a special chair, a room, an outdoor haven. Or, try a digital or an online place to pause the chaos and kick your brain into “innovation gear.”

You may need hours there to work out the problem or opportunity at hand—the Challenge. Or, you may flash in and out if your Place to Think in less than an hour with an innovative nugget..

It’s not time that is crucial. It’s your ability to pay attention and to concentrate on the issue at hand. That’s why saying “I don’t have the time to think” does not make any real sense. Mentally, you can use even small amounts of time very productively if you pay attention and concentrate.

This concentration taps into your conscious and unconscious knowledge reservoirs for those flashes of inspiration and clear thinking we covet. A physical or digital Place to Think may make it easier to develop productive problem solving and opportunity evaluating skills.

This post may be Your Place.

Or, it will show you where to look for or how to create a digital Place that works for your brain. A Place that helps your brain let go of the background clutter. Somewhere to shed the load of must-dos and provide context for fresh thinking. A Place to enable you to tap into “I never noticed/realized that before” awareness for innovation.

Are you great at what you’re paid to do? Is “I can’t think of any other way” linked to the speed at which you expect to be brilliant and find a solution? Does this make your problem solving the quickest possible search for a solution or do you expediently latch on to a solution you’ve used for another client? Or does solving a client’s problem genuinely involve full contemplation of the best solution for that client?

Your Experiment

Swans' Place to Think

Adult swans teach their 4 cygnets by example

While you watch the video below, consider how long you usually invest in opening your mind to “see” the client’s challenge. Do you examine its entirety—the complete problem and the full opportunity—before you apply the usual solutions or excuses?

Without music or other distractions, watch the swans. Relax into the key question of the challenge (problem or opportunity) you are confronting for a client. Repeat the key question without trying to solve it. Let your conscious and unconscious open up and let the ideas flow in…

The video is not about the swans. Nor is it about how they teach their fuzzy grey cygnets the essentials of life like preening to keep life-saving oils on their feathers. Watching the video is about how you use your time.

Give your attention to the video to “see” how much can be accomplished in a few minutes. Investing your attention and concentrate can expand time. Use a longer video if you find this approach works.

(FYI: The two adult swans repeat the precise preening movements several times a day for months to teach the cygnets. Swans must preen several times a day to stay dry while living in water, cold water.)

Rather than repeat the same solutions you automatically apply, think about the question you answer for clients. Revisit your Place to Think to practice investing full attention. Practice concentration to master innovative variations or new solutions to client challenges—problems or opportunities.

Align: Add Value By Raising Your Standards

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Add genuine professional value to your services and products by raising your standards—your measure of quality and excellence—to align with and exceed those of prospects, clients, and competitors.

When the goal is to add value for prospects or clients, too often the communication go-tos are digital marketing and hyped-up technology.

If flash and hype are what your clients value, what solves their problems, and what they’ll spend more on, go for it.

[ What’s Your Point? Book Excerpt: Chapter 10.1 Raising My Standards (2022). © 2021 PJ Wade, TheCatalyst.com ]

Most prospects and clients want to see themselves in your services and products. That’s how they perceive value.

Pay attention to how target prospects and clients express their beliefs on quality and professionalism.

Select standards and a work ethic that reflect and exceed target expectations.

A good measure of your success with this? How you behave—your professional standards—when you believe no one is watching or would find out.

Unless your standards are crystal clear to you, how can you meet and exceed them?

It’s not how you feel about your standards. It’s whether they align with and exceed target prospect and client standards and expectations.

How would you characterize the standards of quality and excellence by which you work and live? The standards that define your brand?
Are they average?
Above average?
High?
Exemplary?
Top of the field?

Who set your standards? Did you design them to meet the expectations of your selected target market? Your standards evolve from your upbringing, education, and personal life? Your profession’s Code of Ethics and Standards of Business Practice (however they’re named) are incorporated in your professional or business standards. Your personal standards for working with and for others must be what is most valuable to prospects and clients.

The key issue is who do your levels of quality or excellence revolve around, empathize with, and focus on. You? Your target prospects and clients?

  • The professional standards you adopt to deliver services, products, and advice should meet and exceed target needs and expectations. Their standards should be reflected in your service and product provision.
  • Your application of industry standards should be well-above average.
  • Your personal standards, which evolve over your life, speak to what matters to you. For target prospects and clients to value and respect you—and you them—their standards must align with yours, and vice versa.

You can tell people your standards are high, but do your actions consistently prove this? However you label your standards, it’s the quality category targets place your standards in that matters. Do you know when prospects and clients feel your standards and, therefore, your brand need improvement?

  • Ask most professionals and business owners about their business standards and they’ll tell you their standards are high, very high. I know because I’ve interviewed hundreds and hundreds of professionals, entrepreneurs, executives, business owners, and advisors. No one identified their standards as less than “high.”
  • Ask clients with first-hand experience of your products and services what could be improved and they’ll have a lot of suggestions. Clients always insist they’d share these ideas with the professionals if they asked. I’ve interviewed hundreds and hundreds of your clients and asked them what could be done to improve the services and returns they receive. They have willingly told me about you.

The challenge lies in recognizing exactly how your standards and, therefore, your brand evolves—what you are doing, not doing…. That’s the invisibility of the box. Unless you regularly hire the right professionals to critique all aspects of your business communication, you have decided—consciously or unconsciously—to take on this evaluation yourself. Is that a wise decision?

Which standards of respect for others do you commit to?

  • Are you receptive and respectful when a prospect or client makes a suggestion to you? Or, do you, consciously or unconsciously, shift to a defensive “don’t tell me how to do my job” stance or persist with an “it’s all about me” attitude?
  • Many prospects and clients will deliberately test professionals to see how responsive and respectful they are. If they appear cold or patronizing, clients back off and may not bother sharing insight, returning, or referring. Then, both clients and professionals are losers.
  • Raising your level of excellence is essentially competing with yourself since you know you can always improve. However, if ego gets in the way and you feel you’ve already beaten the competition, complacency may override constructive curiosity and your standards may suffer as well as your clients and business.

A small thing to you, can be a symptom of a below-standard attitude to others. You may be unaware of this, but it is probably evident to prospects, clients, and competitors:

  • If you don’t listen to a client, why should they listen to you? Even if they stay with you, will they follow your suggestions, give you all their business, or refer you?
  • If you don’t respect a client’s opinion, why should they respect yours? Clients who don’t believe that their hired professionals also respect them, may not be as open about their concerns, the extent of their needs, and their commitment to you.
  • If service, advice, and product standards are based on you at your best, what happens when stress, illness, family issues, or time pressures interfere and you are not at your best?
  • If you are not from the same generation as your target market, ageism or prejudice against or toward age, may be a disrupting factor. The “too young to know” and “too old to know” cross-generation reactions associated with ageism can accentuate differences of opinion and value systems. These reactions may be compounded by cultural differences and language challenges:
    • Not listening to an idea may be an ageist brush-off or may be perceived as such even if it is not.
    • Offering suggestions may be ageist criticism or may be perceived as such.

Mediocrity creeps in through insecurity, sloppiness, poor time management, bad habits, sensitivity to criticism, inflated ego, stress, weak powers of observation, and in too many other ways.

Without constructive persistence guiding you toward the best path forward, you will always slip back into old habits and follow established ruts or ingrained patterns of behavior. That is, you may slide backwards or go nowhere in spite of good intentions unless you continually and deliberately renew your determination to move forward and raise your standards.

How do I know my standards of quality and excellence are aligned with and exceed those of my chosen target markets?

For more on improving professional value: Disruption: Get Out of Your Own Way!

© Copyright 2021. PJ Wade, TheCatalyst.com. All rights reserved.

Decision Barriers to Avoid (+ exercise)

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Are you decisive or do Decision Barriers get in the way?

How aware are you of how you make decisions?

Do you make decisions differently in the midst of a pandemic than you did before Covid 19 descended on the world?

Before the pandemic, did you make decisions differently when they were your decisions about your life than you did when the decisions concerned your clients and their lives or businesses? What has changed now?

Or has the pandemic kept you from much contact with clients and prospects, so you feel out of practice?

What do you want to improve about your decision making now and post covid?

Your normal approach before the pandemic…What did you say to clients and how did you compensate clients when you overlooked key selection factors or, in hindsight, didn’t choose the best approach to problem solving for them? Or did you stay silent and hope clients didn’t notice?

Your approach in the future…how do you intend to react to the issues in the previous question post pandemic?

The following excerpt from “What’s Your Point?” (to be published in 2021) Chapter 6 “What is Communication?” is an opportunity to take a close look at your decision making process.

Exercise: Action NOW Me — Anticipate Decision Barriers

Answer the following questions quickly and in writing (to engage your brain full on) for the most useful results.

  • Am I so focused on helping others make decisions that I forget to question how well I make decisions which affect my income and reputation?
  • What was behind my hesitation in the last tough decision I made?
  • Are the hesitation triggers involved in my other past difficult choices listed below?

Don’t be surprised if you can check off more than one barrier to that decision making. Simple decisions aren’t simple, after all.

Hesitation Triggers & Barriers

  • Procrastination
  • Lack of commitment to possible outcomes
  • Ignoring steps in the creative process
  • Undue pressure and arbitrary deadlines
  • Out-dated thinking, ingrained habits, and biases
  • Impatience
  • Fear, conscious and unconscious
  • Overconfidence
  • Personal agenda
  • Financial pressure
  • _____________ (What has experience revealed to me?)
  1. If I improve my decision making approach, can I think of three ways that will enable me to help clients with theirs?
  2. List three improvements to my support of client decision-making concerns which will be reflected in my bottom line.
  3. Identify three ways increased decisiveness will help me engage with prospects and clients more effectively.
  4. Select five ideas for marketing, business development, product design, or service delivery that are inspired by Hesitation Triggers & Barriers.

Do you understand that the more conscious you are of your decision-making habits, the easier it is to anticipate barriers and to achieve success for all concerned?

Re-visit this exercise in the future when faced with significant decisions to make. Compare what you did previously or “normally” with how you now anticipate decision barriers.

Additional resource: Here’s an example of how to help clients by showing them how to deal with hesitancy and negative aspects of decisiveness in the context of your work together. This article is written to help real estate buyers and the real estate professionals who serve them address this topic —”Buyers: Hesitant or Decisive?“

PJ “To facilitate decision making, concentrate on shifting or transforming uninformed thinking into a constructive mindset. With the assistance of your professional expertise, guide prospects and clients so they pivot to an informed point of view.”

© 2020 PJ Wade The Catalyst  “What’s Your Point?” (2021)

Uncertainty Is Certain AND Manageable

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Suddenly uncertainty descended on us.

Across the globe, individuals from all backgrounds and cultures watched their world and way of life—and possibly their desired future—crumble under the threat of COVID-19 virus.

During the short time the 2020 Pandemic has been with us, we watched in shock as most, if not all, of the certainty of our lives was dismantled or vanished in our efforts to halt the viral force over which we have little control. Jobs lost, education curtailed, businesses trashed, professionals shut down, dreams dashed, hard-won triumphs negated, lives lost….

The war against the invisible virus redefined almost every aspect of society, the economy, and our lives in a few weeks. This reset continues.

The “new normal”—if there even was a “normal” in the first place—is living with uncertainty on a scale never considered possible nor experienced by many people—except perhaps those who’ve lived through a war or an invasion.

Your clients are dealing with all of this uncertainty, plus the loss of your supportive business offerings and possibly your presence. Compounded by their own personal losses and re-directions, this is suddenly overwhelming on almost every level from emotional to financial, from medical to social. Add to all this, the threat of illness, death, or carrying the virus to contaminate others. That’s an exhausting load of negative or destructive uncertainty.

How can you help prospects and clients manage this level of unexpected destructive uncertainty?

Obviously, any relevant constructive solutions you can contribute, depending on your field of expertise and type of products and services, will be valuable and valued.

Uncertainty in itself is not evil. Nor is this hovering unknown an “it” but rather a “them.”

Uncertainty can be either negative or positive and anything in between:

1. In uncertainty’s most negative extreme, uncertainty can be a powerful undermining force or destructive uncertainty, as described above.

2. In the most positive state, uncertainty is constructive uncertainty and can be a terrific motivator and  driving inspiration:

  • Anticipation associated with uncertainty believed to be good, great, or magnificent, is a thrill and an energizer. For instance, looking forward to a special celebration or an amazing opportunity.
  • Anticipation of completion of a hard-won goal, like earning a university degree or successfully launching a start-up, is linked to the exhilaration of the compellingly-unknown and positively-imagined future ahead. That is, the future may hold graduation followed by a great career or ramped-up business growth and acclaim.
  • Anticipation associated with the exhilarating uncertainty of each individual’s path from childhood to adulthood—growing up—is the joie de vive, the thrill of living.
  • Anticipation of a better way, a better life, a better outcome…is at the heart of optimism, enthusiasm, and hope.

Before the virus, the future that lay ahead full of positive contemplation, dreams, and hopes. Now??

Uncertainty, where we fear the outcome, is hard to live with. Consciously, accurately, and constructively redefining destructive uncertainty to reveal related and less-stressful constructive uncertainty opens thinking to neutral or positive alternative outcomes.

Use your professional communication skills and expertise to assist prospects and clients. Help them adopt new perspectives and take constructive action, even if that action is as simple as staying separated during the Pandemic.

As a professional, how do you make your constructive point to clients coping with uncertainty?

Hollow “it’ll turn out alright” statements, groundless optimism, platitudes, aspirations, and parroted phrases may sound good to you, but without practical substance you lose credibility quickly and may be annoying. This saccharin, patronizing “just think positive” approach is like a mental sugar high which may be followed by a mental crash that could intensify desperation.

Dig into your professional expertise and, armed with facts, share the range of opportunity and possibilities visible to you and relevant to clients as their future relates to your offerings, experience, and analysis.

Five Starting Points for the Transformation to Constructive Uncertainty

1. Call on proven, effective communication tools—yours, newly-acquired skills, hired expertise—to provide personalized, clear explanations to consistently make your point with clients.
For instance, using a relevant metaphor that clients can easily relate to, can put the uncertainty in perspective. Make clear how the uncertainty can or will be reduced to enable them to begin to see the choices they have. These can be built on by increasing clients’ awareness of the actual issues at hand. For instance, you are not a powerless leaf blowing in the wind without control or intention. You are a rational, decisive person who can make choices about how to react, what you’ll fight for, and what you let go of as merely a distraction. Hope will grow out of despair if you open your mind to possibilities. That describes your clients, too.

2. Everybody seems touched by the Pandemic, but learn exactly what each of your clients really fear.
Unidentified, unspecified fear is overwhelming. What exactly is each individual afraid of? A common fear like the virus, will materialize very differently for each individual. Fear of which process, outcome, or consequences keeps them awake at night, intrudes on decision making, or paralyzes them with worry? Waiting to see whether the fear of infection or death becomes reality can be torture for non-medical clients. Your expertise may not cover any of those issues, but you know how to locate credible individuals who can raise awareness and reduce unfounded fear. After respectfully listening to clients explain what fears they have, decide what you can do to increase awareness and choice or arrange for another professional to do so. Online communication makes this easier than ever before.

3. Help clients clarify exactly what they might lose.
This may also involve other professionals whose expertise covers important issues raised by clients, but which are outside your expertise. Your experience may involve problem solving to arrive at financial solutions to minimize loss and stress. Or you may help alleviate the distraction of holding on to negative experiences and repeatedly dredging up emotional pain instead of letting go and moving on. Stick to what you know and find the best qualified people to explain other issues. Use humor with caution.

4. Normal was always the wrong word.
In the midst of the Pandemic, people often say, ” I want things to return to normal.” The illusion that normal is best for everybody persists. What others label as normal represents their standard, not yours, nor necessarily the best for anybody. Normal has often been based in the past, driven by bias, grounded in opinion, laden with agendas, or merely a gross generalization with little real value, however:

  • Liberation from “normal” leaves us all free to find a new purpose, standard, perspective, belief…whatever your target clients prefer to ground their lives or businesses on.
  • Instead of feeling society must dictate to you what’s right to do or not do, we may be free to set aside standards like “normal” and decide for ourselves what we want to do and why.
  • Our very diverse, multigeneration populations may finally shake off dated, even old-fashioned, limitations placed on many aspects of life, many of them carry-overs from the 19th- and 20th centuries.

5. There’s no going back, just forward! Onward & Upward are the directions that really matter!
Across the globe, we share societal and economic despair at what is lost and disrupted, but the intensity and critical details vary with individuals and families and their context. If the virus has changed or even destroyed most or all that mattered to you or that you worked for, what’s next? Your choice.
The virus cracked open our “normal” global society. What is it opening up for you?

  • Have you taken the time away from Netflix to think, genuinely think, about what aspects of your life you really miss and which you’re enjoying a break from?
  • What work were you doing because you made a commitment or had not taken the time to see what else was out there? What were you doing for the money and little else?

We are all certain “the impossible” has happened whether individuals point to the Pandemic, the global shutdown, or both. What wonderful outcome did you considered impossible in your life or your future before the virus? And in your new future…?

“Perhaps you could now move to make that impossibility happen? For instance, we’ve been slow to genuinely adopt the credibility of working outside a traditional office setting. Too many—even those who “talk tech”—seem to ignore this practical application for the mind-boggling array of collaborative and other remote-access technology. After the Pandemic fades, there may be no going back to the cubical.” said PJ Wade, The Catalyst

Additional resources:

1. For more on addressing your empathy for clients’ changing perspectives on their present choices and futures, explore our communication example based on the role of “home.” This type of approach is designed to assist relevant professionals express how they remain valuable to those they served without pitching, selling, or marketing…

“The strategic frontline for the war against the COVID-19 virus is our homes, therefore, we can all make a significant difference in how this war plays out. PJ Wade explains how the service of “STAYING HOME” buys time for the hard-working medical community and protects everybody.”… NOW: BV (Before Virus) & AV (After Virus)

2. For more ideas on the next step forward, visit these posts:

3. To explore on PJ’s work as The Catalyst, visit www.TheCatalyst.com

Innovation: Six KickStarting Points

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Innovation—which represents an invigorating kickstart—can begin from any one of Six KickStarting Points:

KickStart #1. Who?

You. Yes, you.

Rely on innovation to come from others and you won’t be receptive when an opportunity appears to you.

  • Know a lot about a subject or service? Your in-depth understanding may allow you to shift parameters or factors around for a new take on the norm. Go as far as exploring the ridiculous, impossible, or outrageous and the new mix may lead to innovation.
  • Know little about a topic or trend? Your clean-slate perspective, combined with your professional-grade comprehension of other topics, may reveal “cracks and crevices” where new ideas could take hold and flourish.

If you’ve always been a “just the facts” professional, remember, it’s never too late to innovate.

KickStart #2. Where?

Innovation may come to you from across the country, the other side of the ocean, or over the net, but the seeds of inspiration lie, often overlooked, close at hand:

  • With your prospects: Their lack of experience with you and your services, leaves them free to have high expectations and to welcome the impossible. Instead of quickly dismissing their ideas or firmly setting them straight on how things have always been done, stop and listen. Consider what they share with you and delve into how to apply their fresh perspectives.
  • With your clients: Their experience with you and your advice, has them coming back for more, but exactly, “Why?” If they’ll answer that question honestly and candidly, you may discover how and why they see things differently from you. This insight, combined with revelations of what they misunderstand or what they understand better than you do, can feed innovation on many levels from product design and branding to goal achievement—yours and theirs.

KickStart #3. What?

Does innovation need to be disruptive to make an impact? No, nor “brand new” or “unique.” Innovation may be large or small, a “lightning bolt” or a tweak, dead-on invention or fruitful mistake. When innovation is effective, it starts a chain reaction or avalanche of ideas, new behaviors, reactions…that trigger new products, expand markets, grow ventures, and expedite goal achievement.

KickStart #4. When?

Always. Stay curious and alert wherever you are and whatever’s going on. Ideas will come to you and further thought will build them into practical innovation.

  • When are you at your most creative and curious? What environments get your creative “juices” flowing? Conferences or symposiums where there’s deliberate mixing of old ideas and fresh new ones? Or is your spirit awakened by experiences widely different from work—travel, sports, museums, music….
  • Don’t just follow old patterns like restricting the search for new ideas to the start of the new year or September’s carry-over fresh start from back-to-school days. Incorporate the search for innovation opportunities into every month, week, and day until it’s your signature habit to continually explore possibilities. Innovation’s the one thing you must make time for to grow your business, earn credibility, deserve trust, and stay ahead of competition.

KickStart #5. Why?

One of the most effective creative approaches for searching out innovation is the one I call “WHY 5.” Ask “Why?” five times and answer thoroughly each time.

  1.  Ask “Why?” and thoughtfully answer this question.
  2. Then ask, “Why?” regarding this first answer.
  3. Take that thoughtful response and ask “Why?” about that answer. By the third response to your “Why?” questions, you’re beginning to dig down and reveal how much surrounding this element of service delivery or another aspect of your business is habit, mediocrity, or “we’ve always done it that way” inertia.
  4. Ask “Why?” again and you may find yourself in unexplored territory.
  5. By the last “Why?” evaluation of your fifth answer, new ideas abound.

If you don’t get this KickStart reaction, you’re not genuinely digging deep to answer each “why.” There’s no benefit without this work.

KickStart #6. How?

How will all this apply to you? What is unique about the context of your work and that of your target clients? The Five Innovation Realities shared in my article, “Ready for Essential Innovation?” will help you evaluate context, meet challenges ahead, and achieve your goals. Discover how in perspectives on innovation common to sales professionals—in this example, real estate and financial professionals—which have implications for all professional communicators or wannabes.

For more on another step forward, check out these posts:

For more on PJ’s work as The Catalyst, visit www.TheCatalyst.com

Supercharge Communication: 3. Facilitate Decisively

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Supercharge Communication by continually perfecting and investing in EVERYTHING that you need to be effective at and are already good at…facilitate decision making to supercharge effective communication.

The following excerpts from Chapter 6 in “What’s Your Point?” explain why continually perfecting the art of decision making is a valuable, even essential, investment in effective communication for professional advisors and persuaders.

#1. Confident Decision Making

Effective communication is vital to sharing ideas, building knowledge, and making decisions. At its best, effective communication results in fruitful collaboration and confident decision making.

Experience has proven to you that facilitating confidently-made decisions benefits prospects and clients. And you! You’ll also establish value in your offerings to both groups.

Professional expertise should facilitate effective communication and negotiation to ensure that desired results are achieved or exceeded for clients. This should be true for every consumer transaction, business deal, meeting, interpersonal workplace interaction, professional consultation, and offering of products and services, whatever the medium, content, or context.

The prospect and client procedures you’ve employed to build your business and client base can be improved on by analysis of how decision making is facilitated. It’s that simple when there are no hidden, under-handed, compromised, dishonest, or criminal intentions involved.

#2. The core evaluation question is, “How can what the professional sees as relatively-simple decisions appear complex to clients?”

Your success is linked to how well and how consistently your communication, in all media, addresses this question when prospects and clients are selecting, choosing, evaluating, buying, selling, investing….

Professionals, executives, entrepreneurs, and advisors must have above-average skill and knowledge in decision making relevant to delivery of their advice, services, and products. This will include the perfected capacity to interview, facilitate, negotiate, and analyze.

Success for clients often rests with how effectively and credibly the professional communicates to create comprehension in each client’s mind.

“Why?”-questions are inherent to and embedded invisibly and otherwise in most procedures and decisions that require professional advice or intervention.

From financial and medical advice to purchasing and education details, consumers and business-to-business decision makers seek out knowledge, skills, and guidance to enable them to confidently make decisions that matter. The more quickly and completely they understand the whys associated with a specific set of choices, the more quickly and completely they can confidently make a final decision that is their best choice.

Professional communication expertise identifies and explains these issues to simplify and clarify what exactly must be chosen or avoided, and why. This reveals precisely what acceptance involves.

Professionals who do not understand what their clients do not understand, often say: “It’s a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision. You want it or you don’t. You do it or you don’t.” But it is not that simple to the client or would they hesitate?

Clients who are overwhelmed or distracted by details correctly and incorrectly related to a decision—even one described as simple by a professional—believe it is not a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision, and hesitate to act. They may feel they have more questions than answers and resent being made to feel inadequate. Pressure cancels out trust.

How do you assist prospects and clients in becoming confident about their decision making? What has proven to be your most useful tool in this process? How good are you at personally making decisions with confidence, especially under pressure?

#3. Mastering the Complexity of Simple Decisions

The significant professional purpose in communicating is to make good decisions easy and comfortable to make, and to help others—prospects and clients—confidently commit.

Professionals, advisors, executives, and entrepreneurs are decisive by nature, training, and goal-setting. It’s not surprising that many often think they are great decision-makers. Some even believe that making decisions quickly is a sign of decisiveness, which it isn’t necessarily.

Commonly, after a few years on the job, most professionals feel they have learned all there is about the decision making process. They believe it’s just content, in the form of product specifications, office procedures, and client “hot topics,” that change, not the decision-making process. Professionals who truly understand how ill-prepared most prospects and clients are to make decisions, understand how the professional can help. These professionals realize their value is linked to clients’ confidently-made decisions.

The more professionals understand about the process of deciding, the more useful they are to those that rely on guidance to make up their minds and end second guessing. This is true whether you sell goods, services, or both to individual clients, businesses, or organizations.

The first time you went through one of your profession’s or organization’s decision-making procedures with a prospect or client, it required a lot of concentration, thinking, remembering, and analysis on your part to genuinely engage and serve. Prospects are going through your process for the first time, so remember what that felt like.

Each subsequent training session and actual sale seemed to require less conscious thought from you, even though details varied with each prospect and client. If the professional is selling services or products, particularly when standard, frequently-repeated procedures are used, the prospect or client may be at an even greater disadvantage.

After years of experience, many prospect and client service procedures are second nature to you. They can be carried out almost effortless, and you may feel they do not even require your full attention. Some professionals have gone through the process so often without giving the prospect or client individual attention, that the professional feels they could fill out the form alone. That is not necessarily a valuable progression for prospects and clients, or for the professional.

Conscious effort is required to observe opportunity for improvement, and to identify weaknesses or redundancies in procedures and processes. Have you reached the stage where you can work on auto-pilot? How is that constructive progress? What are you missing that clients, who are not jaded by repetition as you are, and competitors, anxious for opportunity, would value or could contribute?

#4. The following discussion relates to guided persuasion, presented as friendly helping and caring concern. This is not a discussion of high-pressure tactics or heavy-handed selling, which have no place in professional communication.

  • Do answers to the following questions represent information that is readily available to you, or that is largely unknown to you?
  • How many decisions are there for prospects to make from the first prospecting contact until the transaction is finalized and follow-up is complete?
  • Do you have a flow chart or similar outline of this process to share with prospects and clients? If not, how does that foster continuous improvement to the clients’ benefit?
  • How many decisions do you make in managing this process?
  • How is each procedure documented, analyzed, and checked for compliance with legal and ethical standards to protect the interests of the prospect and client?
  • How frequently and thoroughly is each decision-making procedure reviewed and revised?

Your goal in this evaluation should be to identify aspects of decision making—clients’ and yours—that make deciding seem simple with experience and complex without, or without trustworthy professional advice.

© 2019 PJ Wade, TheCatalyst.com. Except from “What’s Your Point?: Cut The Crap, Hit The Mark & Stick!” (print book publication: 2020)

⇒ Example of how real estate professionals could supercharge communication.

Supercharge Communication: 2. Interview Inventively

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Professional advisors and persuaders are surrounded by overlooked or ignored communication opportunity. One common missed opportunity involves not interviewing inventively.

Among the under-utilitzed communication techniques at professionals’ disposal are INTERVIEWING & KEY QUESTIONING. These powerful information-gathering tools involve interview questioning with the selective use of closed and open strategic questions.

That’s were the “inventively” comes in.

Supercharge Communication by continually perfecting and investing in EVERYTHING that you need to be effective at and are already good at…interview inventively and key question creatively to supercharge effective communication.

The following excerpts from Chapter 13 in “What’s Your Point” explain why continually perfecting the art of interviewing inventively is a valuable, essential investment in effective communication for professional advisors and persuaders.

#1. Questions to Open Minds and Hearts

Do you know how to ask questions to generate answers you may not have expected or realized you need?

Often, when we are sure we know all the answers, we ask questions based on our assumptions, not what individual prospects and clients want to know.

Whether you’re discussing a referral, convincing a potential client to work with you, deciding how best to help a client, or investigating a client’s negative response to advice, are you skilled enough to ask mind-opening questions?

How do you trigger client responses that provide information essential to helping the client, even if they don’t understand exactly what you need to know?

Sometimes, when interviewing clients, you are probing for opinions, observations, and concerns that prospects or clients may be unaware of themselves. What is your reaction when you encounter issues and perspectives you have not come across before? What about topics you would not normally think of inquiring about? Use your experiences to help prospects and clients understand how to help themselves.

QUIZ: Quickly identify which of the eight questions—four in the introductory paragraphs above and four in the bullet list below—are open and which are closed questions.

To unearth choices and potential pitfalls for others, professional-grade interviewing and questioning skills are essential:

  • Do your professional interviewing or information-gathering techniques need upgrading?
  • For instance, how do you deliberately use open-ended questions when gathering information?
  • Do you use closed questions when short factual answers like yes or no will move the interview along to the next significant section?
  • How do you create an effective series of open and closed questions?

Quiz Answer: The eight questions are, in order: closed, closed, open, open, closed, open, closed, open.

#2. Improving your communication powers is easier than you expect.

However, this transformation does require moving to conscious, deliberate expression in every medium.

As suggested throughout “What’s Your Point?,” this involves shifting to focused, strategic communication where results matter every time. In all cases, the more you know about your target and about your goals in talking to or emailing them, the more effective the interview and the more useful the results.

Professional advisors and persuaders have many communication tools at their disposal. They just may not realize this without training. One of the most powerful information-gathering techniques—interviewing—involves the selective use of closed and open strategic questions. Combined with listening loudly—active, respectful, engaging attentiveness—communication gets supercharged.

Do you find that there can be a lot of talking or emailing when you communicate, but not many decisions that people stick to? Your failing as an interviewer may be the weak link.

Can you automatically and seamlessly switch from open to closed questions as required? If not, you may benefit from training and practice to be a fully-professional interviewer and an effective facilitator.

#3. Strategic Question Review

(1) Closed questions elicit yes, no, or one-word “just the facts” responses.

  • Professionals who are in a hurry, or disinterested, often fall naturally into asking closed questions to gather only the facts they need for their decision making.
  • They may also intend to avoid listening to more information that they want. This just falls short of actually cutting prospects or clients off.
  • Some professionals ask a series of yes-or-no closed questions to qualify prospects. This almost one-way communication can seem abrupt and unfriendly.
  • Closed questions can change the subject, politely or otherwise, quicken the pace, or relay a sense of urgency.
  • The exact wording of closed questions is important to learn precisely what is essential. It is also necessary to avoid responses that dodge an issue.
  • In emails, these questions illicit short responses. These may reveal little about how the responder feels or what they understand.

(2) Open questions trigger information downloading, generate opinions, and unleash knowledge.

  • Thereby shifting the interviewer’s role to one of listener.
  • Open questions, which begin with what, how or why, require detailed responses or descriptions from the prospect or client.
  • To clarify a crucial issue, ask similar, but slightly different, open questions at a few stages of the interview. You may uncover differing answers that surprise even the client.
  • As with all skills, practice pays off. Have a set of open questions ready to ask when you meet with prospects and clients.
  • In emails, when you need detail, make sure you ask an open question, perhaps even two.
  • By mixing closed and open questions, the interview can become an engaging conversation or a lively collaboration.

#4. Learn as much as you can about prospects and clients before the interview.

This preparation makes your queries more natural, more logical, and more fruitful. Those being interviewed will relax and be more receptive when they understand your client-centric purpose.

Your intent must not be to take advantage, but to create the best services and achieve the best returns for prospects and clients:

  • Before you ask anything, disclose all conflicts of interest and fiduciary responsibilities to prospects or clients.
  • Explain how you’ll protect their rights, privacy, and interests during the interview. Also during the entire extreme-excellence service delivery process. This will make them feel at ease and well-served.
  • In advance, ask their permission to ask questions, so they genuinely are in control of the discussion.
  • Remind them that, just because you ask a question, they do not have to answer unless they want to—no explanation necessary.

Are you always ready for anything and never at a loss for the right question?
If not, why not?

© 2019 PJ Wade, TheCatalyst.com. Except from “What’s Your Point?: Cut The Crap, Hit The Mark & Stick!” (print book publication: 2020)

⇒ Example of how real estate professionals could supercharge communication.

 

Supercharge Communication : 1. Listen Loudly

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Supercharge Communication by continually perfecting and investing in EVERYTHING that you need to be effective at and are already good at…listen loudly to supercharge effective communication.

The following excerpts from Chapter 13 in “What’s Your Point” explain why continually perfecting the art of listening is a valuable, essential investment in effective communication for professional advisors and persuaders.

#1. How do you add value?

When your marketing, advertising, or branding message resonates with prospects and clients, they’ll accept it as true because you seem to understand them and their challenges. Once they meet you face-to-face or one-on-one online, will they remain sure you “get them?” Will they see you actively and respectfully paying attention to earn trust? Will it be evident to prospects and clients that you will adapt to their needs and all the other demands on their time, effort, money, and intelligence?

#2. Listening is not silent talking.

  • Listening is not silently criticizing what’s being said, making mental jokes, or thinking about how you’d say it better than the speaker who is sharing with you.
  • Listening is not waiting until it is your turn to talk and, in the meantime, concentrating on perfecting catchy phrasing or showing off in other ways.
  • Active listening is also not guessing what will be said and interrupting to finish sentences or provide a solution before the prospect or client explains what really concerns them and why.
  • Listening is not about you.

#3. How do differences matter?

Effective active listening always concentrates on how someone or their problem is different. This individualization is crucial to personal or customized service. Avoid lumping individuals into a general category. When you do, you’re giving them standard service which can not completely suit their needs. In fact, this is really substandard service since it is probably less than your pitch says you deliver.

Too often we listen for similarities. We search for ways to label an individual or group, or pigeon hole a need. In the multigeneration workplace, ageism in both directions (“too young” or “too old”) is rampant. Beware of your biases. Generational biases—yours and/or your clients’—compounded by stereotypes and ageism, can distort what is heard, that is, transforming it into what somebody who “looks that age” would mean.

For example, boomer is a general term for a very diverse group identified merely by their dates of birth. Boomer parents can have boomer children—it’s that diverse. However, references to boomers usually make them (almost 85 million in North America) seem like clones. Each boomer is unique. The group is a rich mosaic of diversity on many levels. The same diversity is true for millennials. If your target includes boomers or millennials, do you communicate with them, and about them, in ways that reflect this diversity?

#4. Why does what you do matter?

What is essential to earn the right to hear what prospects and clients want to share and more? They must quickly and relevantly see value in having you listen to them. When you meet a prospective client for the first time, you should be prepared to succinctly explain what you do.

In plain, jargon-free language, a Professional Benefits Strategy (PBS) sincerely expresses how you and your services solve relevant problems for target clients, from their perspective.

A PBS, memorably and relevantly, reveals where your value lies. The same care and clarity of communication and intent—achievable focus—should be evident at every meeting, every contact, not just the first. The thoughtful analysis that produces an effective introduction can also be applied to content for marketing, client retention, product/service development, business expansion….

#5. What does Active Listening—Listen Loudly—involve?

Active or effective listening combines respectful listening with accurate collection of data and impressions for future reference, placing privacy first.

(1) Active listening, coupled with attentive silence, reflect genuine interest and respect, and always represent powerful elements of your value to clients. While you listen to (or read) what prospects and clients want to communicate, your receptive attention—undistracted silence and no interruptions—is a vital ingredient in successful sharing. By listening intently, you learn exactly how they define the problem and its impact. Never underestimate the value of your attentive silence. Remember, no salesperson ever listened their way out of a deal.

(2) Combine active listening with professional interviewing techniques.  For example, strategic questioning—the deliberate use of questions to build rapport, gather information, and guide conversation—helps discover how to exceed expectations for each client. These details, including any client misconceptions, reveal which solutions may be most effective. The information and insight gathered reveal how to adapt products and services to client needs. This effort combines to create value-enriched extreme service excellence.

(3) Keep track of what you’ve heard or learned. Your procedures for recording client information and related data should emphasize:

  • Accurate comprehensive needs assessment
  • Reduced ambiguity for clients
  • Limited jargon and technical terminology
  • Appropriate documentation of decisions
  • Compliance with privacy regulations and legislation Above-industry standards for record-keeping and client education.

Summary:

Listen loudly! Client contact may involve phone conversations, meetings, texting, and online contact, but it must always highlight listening. Be engaged, enthusiastic, interested, and committed to remembering what you learn. Ask relevant questions, then listen attentively.

© 2019 PJ Wade, TheCatalyst.com. Except from “What’s Your Point?: Cut The Crap, Hit The Mark & Stick!” (print book publication: 2020)

⇒ Example of how real estate professionals could supercharge communication.

Achievable Focus Essential to Success

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Achievable focus takes the “almost” out of your push for success in any context.

Have you gotten so close to achieving an important goal—you can almost taste success—only to find success slips through your fingers?

Therefore, your targeted opportunity suddenly vanishes or a focused competitor swoops in and you’re out. The prospect stays a prospect; the deal does not become a deal; your projected income is zero.

You can want something—a new client account, a new job, a new business, or a second shot at anything—very badly or urgently, but your need alone may not be enough to achieve what you want.

Desire may get you close, but if your focus is even slightly off center or your concentration lapses, success may slip through your fingers.

The truly discouraging truth is that lose your focus and “your success” can slip right into a observant competitor’s hands.

To “focus” means to strategically direct and intensively concentrate your attention, activity, resources, and what is necessary for a goal—“your point.”

As an achievement strategist, key skills lie in achieving and applying what I call Achievable Focus for clients. To me, the distinction between “focus” and “achievable focus” is the difference between “almost successful” and “completely successful,” or almost making your point and making it with a memorable bang for target clients.

No magic or secrets here.

This is well within the skills of an experienced professional, like you.

Focus is not an achievement asset if you lack clarity.

Achievable focus will elude you…

#1. …if you are not completely clear what your point is to achieve your goal.

#2. …if you do not “cut the crap” that has been holding you back and will continue to do so until you let go of the past and commit to moving Onward & Upward, the only directions that really matter!

#3. …if you do not know “Who your WHO is?” so that you can concentrate your focus on the ideal target client for your business efforts.

#4. …if you do not commit to a success that includes having your WHO stick with you, not just open an email offer, download a click magnet, attend an event, or click on your marketing ploy.

Add the preceding four focus elements together and you have created powerful achievable focus. You know what you want to achieve, why, and for whom, so success is crystal clear and your achievement strategies and focus are equally clear.

Weakness or lack of focus with any one element makes success elusive. For instance, #2 Cut The Crap above includes:

  • Stop making excuses
  • Stop blaming others
  • Stop obsessing on why you haven’t been successful so far
  • Drop that and all unproductive baggage that is holding you back.

I’m not expecting you to do all the above immediately, collectively, consistently, and permanently. The first step is becoming aware of your ingrained bad habits and counter-productive patterns of behavior in the context of one goal. We all have room for improvement whether we realize if or not.

As an experienced professional, you can make a serious commitment to suspend your crap as part of shifting to achievable focus. This will focus everything on the main point that you’ve chosen as your top priority.

For instance, the path to achievable focus lies in answering these questions honestly—to yourself, no one else:

  • What are my favorite excuses for not making my best effort?
  • Who is holding me back from success?
  • What “failure reruns” do I dredge up to explain why it’s not my fault things did not work out?
  • What are the top three roadblocks to my success? For example, screen obsession, multitasking, or mental clutter

May I share an example that was directed to real estate and financial professionals? The intent was to help their clients achieve a common and compelling goal—one you may have, too. In helping their prospects make decisions about their goals, the professionals may achieve successful client relationships: Five “Grass Greener?” Challenges in Paradise [article to be posted soon]

Tip #1: Achievable Focus: If the above effort seems too much based on what you want to achieve, you’ve picked the wrong goal or point to start with. Fix that lack of focus first.

Achievable focus achieves success.

Source: “What’s Your Point?: Cut The Carp, Hit The Mark & Stick!” by PJ Wade. Print book coming soon.

© Copyright 2019  PJ Wade The Catalyst   All rights reserved.