Communication Skills, Listening Skills & Presentations Skill Tips

The keys to listening to your customers and understanding their needs.

To succeed in your business you need to listen to your customers or clients. This is basic and important. When a task or contract is outlined before the work starts it is imperative that both parties understand the job. Sounds easy, but it’s not always so.

After working for a few years at a major food company in California where part of my responsibilities involved developing cook books and trying out recipes in their test kitchens, I certainly knew my way around a kitchen.

Later, after I opened my own business, I was interviewed and hired to begin a large contract to develop a series of injection-molded plastic utensils for doing common tasks in the kitchen.

I listened carefully (or so I thought) during the initial briefing and left the meeting with an idea of the assignment that I thought was what the client wanted. I believed our task was to discover new uses for common kitchen utensils, making jobs in the kitchen more efficient and creating new plastic utensils.

Without further speaking to my client, we began the project and worked for months developing about a hundred designs, which we believed a cook would find useful. We actually made models of some of the brightest of our ideas.

During that time there was no dialog with the client. I thought I knew what he wanted and he gave us free reign.

Presentation day arrived and along with the models we had charts and drawings of the new ideas all ready for the client.

The day turned out to be a disaster. The client told me that we had done a “terrible job” because we didn’t understand his request! The company was looking for new, clever products and not simply remakes of old metal ones as I had thought. The company sold products through home parties and wanted products that would be instantly appealing and irresistible to guests at the home parties and would fit into their current product line of kitchen and storage products.

My client left us to re-do the job we had spent months working on. Of course he didn’t pay his bill because the products were not what he wanted. Luckily we were given another chance to complete the job. That is not always the case.

It took us a couple of months to design and model the additions to his product line. It turned out that he was satisfied at the end of the project. For me and my company it was a lasting lesson.

It’s easy to get an idea in your head at a meeting and be completely off base with what your clients are requesting. That’s why it’s nice to bring another person with you if possible so you can both hear what the job entails.

Another basic is to immediately verify the assignment in writing after a meeting. It doesn’t have to be formal. Just write up your understanding of the details and make sure that you agree on what the job entails.

We also learned to discuss the requests of our potential clients and to work closely with them to be doubly sure that the work will satisfy their true need.

These basics have paid off!

Article – Copyright 2000 Stanley I. Mason. Syndicated by ParadigmTSA

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