How to communicate with clients effectively

When we think about communicating with clients effectively it’s really good start with a marker so you know how you’re doing at moment.

So – if you were to ask yourself between zero and ten, where zero is you are not getting the results you want from communication and ten is you’re getting totally the results that you want with your communication, what figure would you give yourself?

I’m probably going to give myself an eight as there’s always room for improvement in my communication with my clients.

It’s all about being aware of your communication and in this week’s Prescription for Success Video I’m going to give you some tips on how you can communicate with your clients more effectively. Watch the video and think about how you communicate and how you could improve on your score.

Being aware of your communication

When you are communicating do you actually listen to what you say and do you consider the result that comes back to you? Are you setting your intention when you talk to a client or a potential client?

Whenever I go networking or talk to a potential client, I’ve always got this positive intention that both parties are going to get what they want from the conversation even if that’s not them becoming a client. So I’ve always got that positive intention.

I also have this thought –  the meaning of my communication is the result I get. This is quite a difficult or different one for people to think about because usually, people will say, “Oh they didn’t want to buy and blame the other person”. However, it is actually your communication to them that gives you the results that you want.

Everyone’s got a different model of the world and therefore different values, beliefs, experiences, and memories, and operate at an internal level quite differently. Then the person with the most flexible communication is the most likely person to get the result that they want by noticing other people’s model of the world.

Language

You can have non-verbal communication and verbal communication. There are lots of techniques that I teach on courses and use with clients which are about chunking up and finding out why people do what they do and about negotiating and influencing. And also chunking down and recovering the details that people have left out so that you and they can understand where the problem is specifically.

Values

Not all people’s values are going to be the same as yours. I always remember when I bought an Audi, I went into the showroom and the person said “Oh its got alloy wheels, its really comfortable, it does so many miles to the gallon..” etc etc. Whereas, all I was interested in was it was bright red and had a soft top and went fast down the motorway and people went wow. So the salesman didn’t tick my values at all.

One of the questions that I always ask clients or potential clients is “what’s important to you about x” – whatever it is that we’re talking about.  If you do this it enables you to understand their values, what’s important to them and you can use this to gain rapport, and get the results that you want.

There are many other specific techniques that you can use to communicate better with your clients and coming on NLP courses will help you to learn those techniques and use them with people.  What people find when they come on courses is that their communication changes and they find that other people are actually responding to them in a different way including their spouses, partners, and even children.

So if you want more success in any part of your life or in your business then have a think about coming on a NLP course.

Later on this year, I’m going to also be running a communication course so if you’re interested in that even if you’ve done some courses with me before and you know some basics then just contact me I’ll put you on the waiting list to come on that two-day course.  Alternatively,  there’s a link here for the NLP Practitioner course. I look forward to communicating with you in whatever way is important to you and look forward to doing that soon.

Until next week,

Dr Bridget – helping you be an effective communicator!