One of the 13 decisions I made early on in my life was to never blame anyone for anything. Ever. That means taking 100% responsibility for EVERYTHING. Even if someone “wrongs” me, it was my fault for not setting better expectations, not creating a situation where I had as much control as I should have, or simply choosing to rely on the wrong person.

While nothing I’m saying is really controversial, most people have a silent objection. That silent objection is articulated something like this: “But that means I’m letting the person who was ‘wrong’ off the hook, which is NOT FAIR.”

Not true at all. I discuss how this affects your relationship with clients and prospects in this week’s blog post and short video, which you can watch below or just scroll down and keep reading.

This problem is this. When you blame others,

YOU GIVE THEM CONTROL.

If you view it from the standpoint of ‘how can I handle this differently next time,’ you are in control. If you are blaming someone else, you’ve given them control and you are the helpless victim. Let’s look at how this applies to building relationships with clients and prospects.

I follow this thought process in everything I do, and particularly with clients and prospects. Despite the many great reasons above for never blaming anyone, there are some really good reasons to keep this in mind when dealing with clients and prospects.

1)Any time someone feels “blamed”, right or wrong, it is sending the relationship downhill.

2)When you start blaming clients and prospects, you are losing control of your business.

3)When you are constantly looking for how YOU can do things better, you are constantly improving your business.

Never Blame

I had a situation the other day with one of my highest paying clients. We had a meeting on the calendar and

Building Relationships Its All Your Fault

the time on my calendar was two hours later than he believed the meeting was. This ended up being a time zone misunderstanding, however, nobody at my company did anything “wrong.” We did not provide any incorrect information and we did do an adequate amount of confirmation and validation. However, I did apologize and indicate that I will provide additional clarity next time. Now, we provide more time zone detail in our confirmations. Stronger business processes.

Keep Control

If there is one thing I could communicate to the world, it would be that when you blame others, you are simply giving away your control to them. If you blame clients and prospects for things that don’t go the way you want, you’ve given THEM control of your business and removed your control. I’ve seen too many entrepreneurs get caught in that trap. Never go there.

Constantly Improve

When you are looking at how YOU can improve a situation, you are keeping control of it and making everything in your business better and of higher quality. If you are putting things in place that actually prevent or deal with the “bad things” that clients or prospects do, you are building a business that is rock solid and stronger than your competitors’.

What Can I Do About It?

1. Just change the way you think about everything to be view every situation from the standpoint of “how could have handled this situation differently?” Just thinking that way empowers you in a huge way.
2. When there is a situation where something didn’t go the way you both expected, find a way to respond and use language that clearly outlines what happened and what YOU are going to do to fix it. This shows that you take responsibility and that you really CARE about your clients’ success and are willing to take action.
3. Every time something doesn’t go the way you want it to, make it a learning experience, and incorporate the learnings into your processes and procedures. This builds your business and makes everything you do higher quality.

As a side note, this mentality is very freeing. It opens you up to be calmer, more successful and in control of your business. Apply it to your life, too.

Let me know what you think. Comment below and let me know what changes you could make that would put you more in control of your business?

Image Credit: Photo by Ruthson Zimmerman on Unsplash

As we continue to discuss how to effectively build relationships with Clients and Prospects (and really everyone you talk to), let’s talk about always keeping a positive tone.

Using a positive tone keeps you in the forefront of people’s minds as someone they WANT to talk to because you are always showing them something positive – ie. That they want or like.

I see people mess this up all the time, usually by using language that unintentionally puts people on the defensive because it accusing or jabbing at them somehow. They don’t even realize they are doing it and I’m going to talk about how to avoid it.

I made a video about this, which you can watch below, or you can just scroll down and keep reading.

Let’s discuss a few examples. These particularly irritate me.

“You lost me.”

Have you ever heard this? When someone doesn’t understand what someone else is saying, they say, “you lost me.” Communication is a two way street. It almost always requires some back and forth in order for both parties to understand each other. When you say, “You lost me,” whether you mean to or not, you’ve just communicated to the person you are speaking to and trying to build rapport with that they have done their job poorly and they need to try again. Why send that message? Use it as an opportunity to better understand the person and their perspective.

Instead try something like this:

“Mike, I don’t understand this point. Could you help me understand this better?”

Now, you have opened the channels of communication for both of you to begin a dialogue and better understand each other! Now we’re building relationships.

Just don’t use language that makes it seem like there is something “wrong.” There really is very little “right” or “wrong”. It’s a giant gray area. Instead, use what appears as a disagreement to better understand the persons perspective, concerns, wants and needs. If this is a prospect, understanding how they think about their situation will be invaluable in your ability to provide value to them and ultimately, sell stuff to them!

Let’s look at another example. The word “but.” I completely eliminated this word from my vocabulary a long

Talking to Clients and Prospects Your Tone

time ago. The way we use “but” is almost always negative in it’s tone. Here are two examples that state the same thing but one says it in a much more positive and uplifting way.

“That looks great Gary, but you need to make the margins wider.”

Versus

“That looks great Gary, and making the margins wider would make it even better.”

The first statement created a problem, the second statement created an opportunity. Two totally different ways to handle the exact same situation that also has two very different outcomes.

Side Note: Once you understand how these things work, you may still use them, but differently. You will actually use them when you have lost control and are TRYING to make it a conflict situation!

Here’s the big objection that many will have with this.

“But Jeff, I don’t want to appear weak or look like I don’t understand something.”

Get over it.

You don’t know or understand everything! Nobody expects you to and asking questions doesn’t make you look weak or ignorant. The most brilliant minds are as brilliant as they are because they asked so many questions and have such a diverse understanding and perspective.

So, when communicating with clients and prospects, remember these three things, to turn each conversation into an opportunity to build a relationship:

1)The language you use is either building up or tearing down your relationship. Choose your words carefully.

2)Every conversation is an opportunity to learn more about the client or prospect you are talking to, so never disagree, only seek to understand.

3)Nobody is no right or wrong. It’s your job to get to the heart of each party’s perspective and understanding of the situation.

Image Credit: Photo by Priscilla Du Preez on Unsplash

Throughout my corporate career, the thing I heard most often was, “Jeff, you have such good relationships with everyone you work with.” And I did. I had outstanding relationships with customers, peers, management, employees, stakeholders and just about everyone I came in contact with. I did not realize how extremely valuable that skill (developing relationships) would be in marketing. So, I thought I’d write a series of blog posts about the topic of building relationships, and I’m going to start with how to TALK TO people in a way that builds relationships.

Click below to watch a short video on the topic or just scroll down and keep reading.

Most importantly, talk to everyone from THEIR perspective. When you talk to kids, you refer to their parents, as mom or dad. You say, “Mommy will be home soon.” or “Can I talk to your dad?”

You don’t refer to the kids parents by their name, or your relationship with them, you refer to them from the child’s perspective. We do this to ensure they know exactly who you are talking about. We use their language. Kids have a lot to teach us about the world, and this is no exception. W learn from kids, in this case that people understand better when we are talking to them from THEIR perspective.

My first corporate job was an interesting one and I learned a lot about relationships. I collected money from health care providers who were paid in error by the insurance companies that I represented. What that means is that I would call health care providers and convince them to resubmit the bill to Medicare and refund the money to my company. They were not legally required to do this rebilling, so I had no choice but to develop a relationship with them so they would want to do this for me. This also frequently meant that they would have to accept less money for the services rendered because the Medicare rate was less than what had already been paid by the insurance company.

What I quickly identified was that we (the insurance industry) had a VERY different vocabulary than the health care providers I was contacting. The most notable was what we called the person who received the services. We called them the “beneficiary” (‘bene’ for short), but the providers called them the “patient.” So, I started referring to the “bene” as the “patient” and saw that something as little as that made me sound less like a “jerk from the insurance company” (which is basically what I was).

That’s just one of many examples of how talking to the providers in their language was beneficial. The industry is complicated and there were numerous opportunities to use sensitivity their language as a method to increase my influence.

This is exactly how to approach marketing and talking to clients and prospects. Always approach the conversation from their perspective.

How to Talk to Clients and Prospects

Do they want a coach? NO
Do they want a training program? NO
Do they want to attend your event? NO
Do they want a 6 part CD series? NO

They want something REAL, like

• A better love life.
• Better behaved kids
• Less Stress in their business
• A lifestyle that allows them to have more Freedom (my favorite).

Those are the terms in which you must talk to your clients and prospects.

You want to sell them a 6-part CD series.

BUT

They want a better love life.

Sell the better love life, not the 6-part CD series. Just like the beneficiary vs. the patient.

Always get right down to these two questions:

• Who are you talking to?
• What do they want?

I’m obsessive about this. I keep notes with specific words I hear, so that I can use those same words to talk to clients and prospects. The more I can talk their language, the better I can serve them and as a result influence their buying decisions. Since I offer amazing products and services, I can rest easy that influencing them to consume my information is the best for them.

Image Credit: Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash