Happy Clients
The online newsletter for those who want to keep their best clients,
from Jeff Simon Consulting, the Client Retention Specialists.
In this issue: Bring more of the information you have in hindsight to foresight. Better information leads to better decisions.
Ever make a decision you wish you could do over? Do you wish the information from hindsight were available in foresight? It can be. If you avoid just one of these pitfalls, you will dramatically improve the information you have pre-decision.
Imagine how good your decisions could be with better information. You could amicably settle more conflicts. Uncover your client’s motivation or needs. Detect misinformation or deception.
This is the first of a two part series. Three of the seven pitfalls are highlighted in this article. The last four will come in the next issue.
Are These Information Gathering Pitfalls Costing You Good Clients? Part 1
Growing up, I was a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, the detective from the Arthur Conan Doyle novels. I loved how he could piece together different clues and find a pattern that would solve a mystery.
Wouldn’t it be great if you had the ability to solve the mystery of your clients’ needs like Holmes, to see the clues, to always have the answers?
While you may not have the vast repository of Holmes knowledge, or have a fictitious life penned by the writer, Doyle, you do have the capacity to unravel the mysteries of your client’s behavior.
You have some combination of intuition or discernment that can be utilized to help you understand the world you, and your clients, work in. However if you are like most people, most of the time, this information comes below your level of awareness. This raises the risk of making underdeveloped decisions.
Actions from Reflex Rather Than Purpose
Much of what interferes with your ability to see clearly comes from a set of programmed responses. You have experienced a history that has left impressions. Your experiences and your responses to them develop coordinated motor pathways within your neuromuscular system.
This is similar to the process of learning a new skill. For example, when you were a child you probably learned how to tie your own shoes. Your learning followed a process from naiveté to competence. Now, you can tie your shoes without thought. You have developed a coordinated motor pathway: your brain sends a signal through your nervous system to your muscles that perform the action.
Coordinated motor pathways promote actions and responses out of reflex, without thought. Sometimes, this reflex can work in your favor. If you are warming your hands by a fire and an ember flies in your direction, you are likely to jump back. Sometimes, this reflex can work in your disfavor. When someone raises his or her voice in anger, you may react defensively.
Some of these reflexes can interfere with your ability to see information clearly.
In this article, the first of two, we will review the first three information —gathering pitfalls. Avoiding these pitfalls will help you bring these automatic responses into your present intentional awareness and control.
Avoiding these pitfalls will help you make decisions based more on objective information and observations rather than impulse.
1. Baggage
Baggage reflects your history with failed expectations or emotional distress. When you encounter distress, your immediate reaction comes from the primitive, non-rational portion of your brain. Since this primitive core is primarily responsible for keeping you alive and safe there are only two responses: fight or flight.
Since this primitive core is always on the lookout for threat and danger, fight or flight responses produce coordinated motor pathways. The next time you experience an emotional event that your primitive core recognizes as similar, your coordinated motor pathway will lead you to react similarly.
Commonly, this can manifests in current behavior. Your reactions to people and situations might be grounded in your interaction with your parents or other influential adults. Your responses to authority are likely to be based on your rearing. How you negotiate failure is at least partly attributable to how your failures were treated in the past.
In order to overcome baggage, you need to differentiate past from current experiences. This requires intentionality with behavior and a conscious review of emotional reactions.
Build smaller categories. Do your responses to failure, for example, resemble past responses? If so, determine if your response is productive. Does it help you meet your ultimate goals? If not, identify the differentiation between your past and present.
2. Distraction
Distraction is an easy pitfall for anyone. There is much to distract you: home, work, life balance, friends, clients, relationships, entertainment, fun, etc. Distraction leaves you missing clues because of misdirected attention. Attending requires present orientation.
You can call your attention to the present with active listening skills. Acknowledge what you hear. Validate the feelings and perceptions behind the words. Clarify any misunderstandings. Summarize the main points.
Even if your role in the present requires you to observe, rather than participate, you can mentally take the same steps without giving voice to your responses. This will help you stay present and glean more information.
3. Living in Your Perceptions
If you have any meaningful success retaining good clients, you will recognize that your client’s perception is their reality. However if you want to see the clues that will help you make better decisions, you have to hold yourself to a higher standard.
Living in your perception is easy, at least in the short term. The bad decisions that will result will make it hard for you in the long-term. Testing your perceptions requires effort. The effort is worth it when checking your perceptions hones your discernment or intuition.
There are two steps to a perception check. The first is comparing your perceptions with observable phenomena. If you experience your client as offended, ask, tactfully. You can also make observations about changes in their behavior.
The second step is to compare your perceptions with the observable results of your test. Identify where you were correct and where you were mistaken. Be mindful of your mistakes for the future. Identify patterns in your success or failures. Learn the lessons that these patterns offer you.
Better Information Leads to Better Decisions
I’ll leave you with these three pitfalls for now. In the next issue, we will cover the remaining four. If you can avoid just one of these pitfalls, your discernment and intuition accuracy will improve substantially.
Retaining good clients requires you to see what is real: real in the physical world and real for your clients. Better information will help you make better decisions.
Happy Client Retaining!
Jeff Simon
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© 2004-2006 Jeff Simon Consulting. All Rights Reserved. Wouldn't you love to peer into your client's head and know what they are thinking and feeling? Could you have better success at keeping and choosing your best clients if you could decode their behavior? Check out the Happy Clients Newsletter at: www.happyclientsnewsletter.com.
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