Tag: client work

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Be Kind by MAGIC – Connecting with Clients

Connecting with Clients

Being Kind is your business super-power.

How do you Be Kind in Business? By applying the MAGIC formula:

Moving
Attuning
Giving
Inspiring
Connecting

It applies to:

Yourself
Your clients
Your team
Your prospects 
—

Connecting with clients. 

Connecting is at the end of my MAGIC acronym. But that is just because it is the last letter in the word magic! It could come first, but the spelling would be wrong.

Connecting affects all the other aspects that we have talked about so far. The key to working with clients or anybody else is relationships. And there is no relationship without connection.

I suggest that it will pay dividends for you to reflect on:

  • the levels at which are connecting with your clients,
  • how often you are connecting with your clients, and
  • how you are connecting with your clients.

How Deep?

All of us have relationships at different levels.

Jesus had three friends, Peter, James and John, who were the closest to him. Then he had the circle of 12 apostles and then a wider circle of several hundred disciples.

Each of us will have a small number of close friends and family, then our circle of people we know quite well. And then a much larger number of acquaintances. A lot of these might be Facebook friends or LinkedIn connections.

Imagine concentric circles. In reality, there will be many more than three circles, because you will have a unique level of connection with each person.

At what level are you connecting with your clients?

Obviously, the level of connection with your clients will grow as you get to know them better. It is a good thing to strive for. The more connection you build, the greater the level of trust and the greater the extent to which you will be able to help them.

You can be intentional about deepening your connections.

How to Win Friends…

Dale Carnegie’s seminal book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” (#ad) is brilliant on this. If you haven’t read it, make it the next book you read. I left it for far too long before I read it, just because I thought the title sounded manipulative. I was missing out on gold.

Carnegie makes the powerful observation that people that love talking about themselves – it is always their favourite subject!

Make a habit of regularly asking your clients questions about themselves. Make sure you remember what they say for next time. Take notes if necessary. I use Evernote.

The most comfortable place to build connections is around things that you have in common, perhaps interests or hobbies, maybe aspects of your work, possibly shared likes and dislikes. You might also have shared connections and friends.

But you can also ask them about non-shared stuff. Unusual hobbies they have that you don’t, but you can show an interest. Alternatively, exciting pieces of work they have done that you can ask them about.

Taboo Subjects?

Other subjects can enter in as your relationship grows. Some of them will require a sensitive and gradual approach. For example, asking about family. But, if they bring it up first and mention their partner, children, etc. then you can refer back to them later.

Other topics might be spirituality and religion. For some, this is a complete no-no, but for others, it will deepen the connection markedly. You might find you have to talk in “code” for a bit to establish that you’re on the same page. 

Similarly, with politics, some people love talking about it, others don’t. It can either strengthen your connection or divide you. You may think it’s not worth the risk and that it is best to avoid this altogether but, again, in some cases, it could really strengthen your bond.

Too Much, Too Little? Find the Goldilocks Frequency

Think about how often you are connecting with your clients. What frequency is appropriate? You don’t want to annoy them and pester them, but you also want them to know that you haven’t forgotten them.

It’s finding a balance – not too often, not too little. 

And How?

Think about the ways that you are connecting. What is the most appropriate method for each time you connect?

You will probably discover that each client has a favoured method of connection. Even so, there will be times when you use a different channel, depending on what you are trying to communicate.

Think about the most appropriate way of connecting with your clients on each occasion – a phone call, Zoom call, email, face to face meeting, social media message, etc.

Connect and Build

Every time you physically or virtually connect with your clients, make sure you establish an emotional connection as well. Aim to build your relationship with them a little further.

Connecting is key.

—

Download my free eBook “Be Kind to Yourself” and learn how to:

  • Adapt to new ways of working
  • Harness the power of habits
  • Optimise the use of space in your home
  • Use clothes to boost productivity
  • Focus on what matters
  • Plan for the future amidst uncertainty
Be Kind to Yourself – Free eBook
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Be Kind by MAGIC – Inspire your Clients

Inspire your clients

Being Kind is your business super-power.

How do you Be Kind in Business? By applying the MAGIC formula:

Moving
Attuning
Giving
Inspiring
Connecting

It applies to:

Yourself
Your clients
Your team
Your prospects

—

Emotions are a much more powerful driver than logic. Inspire your clients and you could be the catalyst of life-changing action.

You can inspire your clients in several ways:

  • Help them to see their achievements in a different light,
  • Help them to describe themselves differently,
  • Help them to imagine possible future scenarios, and
  • Help them to set goals to achieve greater things.

But What You Actually Did Was…

Sometimes what we do feels very ordinary, but looks extraordinary to people who are looking on. You can help your clients to see their achievements as something special.

Help your clients to identify defining achievements. This may well involve working with them to reframe what they have already done, to look back at their work and personal lives and realise what they have accomplished. And then re-label it. This can be very affirming and inspiring.

They suddenly realise that they are something that they didn’t realise they were – for example, a facilitator, manager or mentor.

Maybe they have successfully raised four children as a mother? The time, resource and people management lessons and experience from this are significant and all-too-often go unacknowledged.

Did You Realise That You Are Actually A…?

When you enable your client to reframe their past experience, it could inspire them to explore previously unconsidered future roles. Maybe your client has not yet realised that they could legitimately describe themselves as a coach, a mentor, a manager, or some other role?

Look together at what they have done and explore together whether they could describe themselves differently. And once they have started describing themselves differently to themselves, they can be inspired to describe themselves in that way to others as well.

Encourage them to take up a daily mantra or affirmation which they say to themselves first thing in the morning, e.g. “I am a successful manager of people and resources. My work enables others to work together well and ensures that time and materials are used most effectively.”

Repeating this to themselves will shift their self-image and inspire them to see what could happen next.

What Could Be?

Help your clients to imagine possible future scenarios.

You can be brave for them, and imagine a possible future reality which they may be too nervous to imagine for themselves. Whereas they might think it is impossible at the moment, you can ask them the questions, “Why not?”, “Could you possibly do it?”, “What would have to be necessary for you to achieve that?” You may also have ideas that they have never thought of. Help them to create an image of them achieving it, so they can picture it in their mind.

Then encourage your client to identify obstacles. Some may be real, but most are probably perceived and imaginary. Some may be real but possible to overcome, maybe with a little training or some outside help. Again, ask “Why not?” and enable them to picture the obstacles disappearing or being overcome.

Goal!

Inspire your clients by aiding them to set challenging goals.

Michael Hyatt is excellent on this. He identifies three areas in which we can set goals:

  • our comfort zone, goals which are too easy to achieve and therefore don’t stretch us;
  • the delusional zone, goals which are too difficult, and we will never attain them, and thus get discouraged; 
  • and then there is our discomfort zone, the sweet spot for our goals. Projects that will stretch us slightly, but we can get there. We will be challenged and learn things along the way, and grow as a result.

Inspire your clients to set goals in the discomfort zone.

What About Accountants and Lawyers?

You might think that professionals like accountancy and the legal profession have little room for inspiration. But why not?

Identify pain points for your clients, and then show them how you could help them overcome them. Suggest what life could be like for them after they have worked with you. This will inspire them to go ahead and to keep going when things get tough.


Inspiration is potent. It is a real driver. Be kind to your clients, inspire them.

—

Download my free eBook “Be Kind to Yourself” and learn how to:

  • Adapt to new ways of working
  • Harness the power of habits
  • Optimise the use of space in your home
  • Use clothes to boost productivity
  • Focus on what matters
  • Plan for the future amidst uncertainty
Be Kind to Yourself – Free eBook
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Be Kind by MAGIC -Attuning to Your Clients

Being Kind is your business super-power.

How do you Be Kind in Business? By applying the MAGIC formula:

Moving
Attuning
Giving
Inspiring
Connecting

It applies to:

Yourself
Your clients
Your team
Your prospects 
—

Attuning to your clients is all about understanding them, and then modifying how you serve them as a result.

There are three steps to attuning:

Look and Listen

First, you have to look and listen. Observe your client, ask them questions, find out about them and their situation. Spend some time on this; ask the follow-up questions. Note both what they answer and how they answer. Do any questions make them excited, any make them uncomfortable?

Understand

Next, you need to understand what you have found out.

  • Who are they? Get a take on your client’s personality. Maybe a tool such as DiSC , MBTI  or the Enneagram would be helpful here? You won’t be able to do a full analysis, but you should get some interesting pointers and insights. This will help you to work out how much to affirm and encourage, balanced against how much you can challenge them without frightening them.
  • Where are they? You have to understand their situation. What are their problems? Could you help them solve them? Can you see the issue from another angle and reframe it? Or maybe you can see that their perceived problem is not the real problem in the first place? Perhaps the answer they think they want is not actually the answer that they need?
  • What makes them tick? This is probably the most essential aspect in understanding your client. What are their core values, what is important to them? They may well be different to yours, but you need to understand them so that you do not slip up and offend them, or appear to be driving them in a direction which seems wrong to them.

Modify

Finally, once you have understood your client, you can work out how best to serve them. You can decide how you will modify both the style of your presentation and the content of what you provide. In other words, what you say and how you say it.

  • What?
    Think about the most appropriate content for the person or audience in question.
  • How?
    What is the best way to present it? Will they respond best to didactic teaching or participation, to words or pictures, to visual or audio? Or maybe a mixture? And what tone and language will work best? Formal or informal? Lively and bouncy or more restrained? 

Tricks and Schtick

When I’m performing magic, the way I perform the tricks will vary depending on my audience. Often I may use the same tricks but presented very differently. For example, I have a rope trick that I perform at both children’s parties and corporate drinks receptions: same mechanics, very different presentations. And, of course, there are also some tricks which only work in kids’ parties and some that only work in corporate settings.

It is the same when applying my MAGIC formula to help teams and individuals to improve their working relationships. I present it in a slightly different way to a nonprofit manager’s audience than I will, to the leadership of a bank. It’s the same fundamental material, but with a slightly different approach.

How can you modify your offering to those you serve to make it a better fit for each one?

Think about how you can attune to your clients.

Remember:

Observe, Understand, and then Modify.

—

—Download my free eBook “Be Kind to Yourself” and learn how to:

  • Adapt to new ways of working
  • Harness the power of habits
  • Optimise the use of space in your home
  • Use clothes to boost productivity
  • Focus on what matters
  • Plan for the future amidst uncertainty
Be Kind to Yourself – Free eBook
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Be Kind by MAGIC – Moving Your Clients

Being Kind is your business super-power.

How do you Be Kind in Business? By applying the MAGIC formula:

Moving
Attuning
Giving
Inspiring
Connecting

It applies to:

Yourself
Your clients
Your team
Your prospects 
—

Moving Your Clients

If you work with clients, you can significantly enhance your offering to them by thinking about how you move them.

How do you move them educationally, moving them from not knowing something to knowing?

How do you help them to see things from a new perspective, moving them from one viewpoint to another viewpoint?

And how do you engage their feelings, moving them emotionally, providing them with an impetus to take action?

Be a Favourite Teacher

You can serve your clients by moving them from one state of knowledge to another. In other words, you can tell them something they didn’t know that will be useful to them.

Maybe it is something about the law? Perhaps a new software tool, services they may be able to access, or some other resources that may be useful to them.

Nifty Shifty

Magicians always have to be careful about angles. If you watch a trick from the wrong place, sometimes you can see things that you weren’t meant to! Seeing things from the best angle is very important for the magic to work.

Working with clients, helping them to see something from another perspective can be very useful. Can you help them to shift to see things from another point of view? To re-frame things, see them from a distance, take an outsider’s view?

Maybe they have intellectual or emotional doubts that are stopping them progressing?  Sometimes those doubts are based on real barriers, but very often, the obstacles are just imagined or perceived. The doubts are like little gremlins sitting on the shoulders that need punching in the nose. Can you help them to shift their viewpoint, so they can sort out the real from the imagined?

Imagine How You Will Feel When…

What emotions can you engage in your clients?

Can you excite them about potential, about what they can imagine happening, but also about what they can’t yet imagine happening? The excitement can motivate them to begin exploring new territory.

Can you help them to flip nervousness about the future, into excitement about adventure?

Can you get them to reflect on the changes they have seen and the progress they have made so that they feel satisfaction and pride?

Maybe there’s even space for inducing a little fear about the consequences of inaction?

Even if you are a lawyer, accountant or in some other seemingly unemotional occupation, there is still scope to engage the emotions of your clients. Paint an imaginative picture of how someone’s life will be better as a result of your involvement. Let them see the potential for change and feel the related emotions.

Moving is a fundamental characteristic of living things. Make sure that you and your clients are moving.

How can you move your clients today?

—

Download my free eBook “Be Kind to Yourself” and learn how to:

  • Adapt to new ways of working
  • Harness the power of habits
  • Optimise the use of space in your home
  • Use clothes to boost productivity
  • Focus on what matters
  • Plan for the future amidst uncertainty
Be Kind to Yourself – Free eBook