Cold relationships, critical questions and clients who never asked for the meeting. Here are ten tips to help you build trust and bring the client with you – even when the meeting is tough.
Storytelling isn’t just a technique for making your messages stick. It is a fundamentally different way of engaging, where you speak from the heart to the heart of your audience. Remember that even the most analytical, data-driven person has a heart – you just need to choose the right moment.
When you are asked what makes your organisation special, answer with examples and short stories rather than abstract phrases like ‘We always go the extra mile’. Tell them about the time you actually did.
When you communicate effectively, you engage with clients as if they were the hero of a story. You need a picture of what they look like at their best. The first step is understanding their goals and values. Read more: Make your audience the hero.
Sometimes it makes sense simply to ask: ‘What is your goal?’ or ‘What is the key to solving this problem?’ At other times you need a more indirect, step-by-step approach, for example by asking about defining moments. If you can get clients to share their concerns – or better still, their stories – you are much closer to their goals and values.
Communication isn’t only about saying the right things; it is also about understanding what your audience wants to hear. Pay attention to where they are coming from and tailor your message to the situation. You have one mouth but two ears.
There are basically two kinds of client meetings: those where the client needs you and may even have asked for the meeting – and those where you are the one pushing the agenda. Rhetorically, they are very different challenges. The problem is that we often prepare as if they were the same.
For difficult meetings and cold relationships, we recommend the 4 As: acknowledge (achievements and obstacles), ask (probing questions), adapt (to the other person’s view of the world) and answer (with a response that fits the situation). Read more: The 4 As of objection handling.
Difficult meetings are also about earning trust. Do you come across as competent? Do you care about your stakeholders’ goals? Do you do what you say and deliver what you promised? Here you can use the ‘trust equation’ from The Trusted Advisor (Maister, Green and Galford, 2000): credibility, reliability and intimacy build trust – while too much focus on yourself tears it down again.
Sound familiar? We sit down in a meeting, think we understand the problem – and jump straight to conclusions. Very often we are wrong. Stay with the problem a little longer, not just to understand it better but to understand what the client wants instead. Use exploratory questions such as: ‘What would your most important stakeholders expect of you if you solved this problem really well?’
Try to see the meeting from the client’s side of the table. Instead of describing your offer in terms of product features (inside out), give the client a picture of the value they will get (outside in).
Would your team like to get better at difficult client meetings? We train storytelling, questioning techniques and objection handling using your own cases – tailored to your industry. Book a no-obligation meeting.
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