Copyright
2005 Dr. Michael Bisconti
Business is first and foremost about people. The goal of business is to make a living through meeting the needs of people. Well, what needs do we need to meet? People have many needs. Normally, we focus first on the service or product we are trying to sell when we think of meeting the needs of people. This is a mistake. Our initial focus should be on the person. We should seek to discover and then either meet or help to meet their greatest need.
A client calls you on the phone and asks
you what your rates are. You notice
that they sound depressed. Your first
concern should be to lift their spirits, not to quote them your rates. You need to be more concerned about the
client’s state of mind than about their need for information. In this situation, you should communicate to
the client your awareness of their state of mind. If you have rapport with the client, you can say, “Having a bad
day?” If this is a new client and you
only have a glimmer of rapport, you should say, “Forgive me for asking but it
sounds like you are having a bad day?”
Note that this is not the time for jokes and frivolity. Humor at a time when the client’s morale is
low will drive them away and alienate them.
There is something more fundamental than
merely the psychology of people to be thinking about here. Yes, you can just learn the psychology and
practice this psychology and be successful in your dealings with clients. However, your success, even if significant,
will be limited. There is something more
important than psychology and that is…personal attitude. You need to possess a real attitude of
readiness to meet the needs of the client.
You must really care about the client.
If you put psychology before your heartfelt attitude, chances are that
you will, sooner or later, let your poor attitude peek through your façade of
caring about the client. The client
will notice this AND THE CLIENT WILL NOT FORGET.
The development of a caring attitude is
not something that can be learned from a book or a night class at a junior
college. A caring attitude requires the
intervention of something greater than ourselves.