By Anna Gross

We all dream about “perfect” clients: easy to deal with, easy to negotiate with and easy to sign a contract with. Unfortunately, the reality is often a bit more complicated than that. Actually, there are numerous contracts for billions of dollars and euros lost annually around the world due to the poor communication with clients. Imagine, how much additional profit could have been made if we were able to strike deals with all the difficult and demanding clients? The first step towards better communication with any client is our understanding of the potential pitfalls.

Our dream and reality

We all dream about it: straightforward negotiations with a perfect client. A perfect client is someone who understands us practically instantly, in any situation, even when we express our thoughts a little bit poorly. 

It doesn’t always happen this way, does it?

As a rule, we take our time to prepare a neat presentation before we meet our potential client: we memorize the key points, search necessary statistics and arrange colourful slides. Yet, often, our clients are not inclined to admire our sophisticated narratives. What they do instead, they interrupt us after a few introductory phrases and ‘threaten’ to ruin our coherent presentation by their not-always-entirely-relevant questions. This is the moment when we realise that we are dealing with a not-so-nice client. Our perception of the entire situation may transform rapidly. We may begin questioning the entire endeavour or worrying about our chances to strike a deal. As a result, invisible tension hangs in the air, threatening our ability to find a way to the client’s heart and understanding.

Panic against your closing rate 

Let’s imagine the following situation. A certain salesperson, let’s call him John, had this subconscious fear of being asked too many specific questions so he could lose control over the process of negotiations. These ideas alone drawn him into panic and threatened to disconnect him from a potential client, every time a client would ask to specify something. John would instantly and subconsciously label such a client too peculiar, too invasive or simply not a nice person. After having analysed the situation, we have discovered that 65% of the clients were unconsciously labeled by him this way. Just imagine the potential loss of opportunities and money for his company!

When managers come to Gross Leadership with similar problems, we try to discover and understand why John or another person felt the way he did. We then eliminate the trigger and reframe the mindset, converting it towards a freer and more open setting. After such profound work is done, managers are able to boost their confidence, increase their closing rate and even succeed in striking deals with those clients whom they previously perceived as being unreasonably difficult.

Can we read people's minds? 

Often we do not know what our loved ones have on their mind, let alone clients we have just met for the first time. We know practically nothing about them, with the exception of a few professional references. While we are discussing any potential deal with clients, only 20% of their reactions are directly caused by our words and actions. The rest of their reactions are determined by the variety of stimuli, including their family circumstances, a missed bus or an unpleasant encounter with a stranger on the way to work this morning. In other words, our clients may have something totally different on their minds when they listen and react to our words than what we believe they should.

The tags we are using

The tags, by which we label people around us, may lead to the very surprising consequences. Judging people by their voices, clothes and looks may lead us away from the core realisation that our real client is just in front of us. 

The situation may get even worse if we prejudge our client in advance. For example, we can look at a client and unconsciously conclude that they remind one of our school teachers, with whom we had some unpleasant experiences in the past. Alternatively, clients may remind one of our relatives, in front of whom we always feel shy and quiet. At the moment as this, it is very important to comprehend our true feelings, and to understand clearly why we feel the way we do about this particular  client. 

Gross Leadership approach

In Gross Leadership, we apply high-intelligence methods that help us to analyze the patterns and memories from your past and to ensure that they will not overwhelm your present abilities to communicate with potential clients. This is very important, as our ability to approach our clients without any labels or associations from our own past, can help us greatly to win over our clients’ confidence and boost our direct sales.

And what do you think? Do you agree that some past memories and experiences can cloud our judgements of people we meet at present? Do you manage to take such memories under control during your meetings with new clients? 

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“All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players…”

(W. Shakespeare, As You Like It)

We believe that each and every one of us is not only a leading actor but first and foremost a writer of our own destiny. Overwhelmed by life events, we may unintentionally forget that we are the sole playwrights of our own lives. We may even unwittingly drop or lose the thread of our unfolding life story. Then, we start questioning ourselves and let others do the writing for us. Doesn’t this happen to all of us occasionally? The best thing we can do is to resume the leadership as soon as we can: only we should write the play of our life! 

With the renewed confidence and new skills, we design new perspectives. Coaching and training are the best instruments we use to achieve this goal.