Thought Bubble - How to Dig Deeper With Your Clients

VIDEO:
AUTHOR: Robert Craven

How to get more out of the relationship with your clients. How to connect with them more. How to help them understand the value that you add. Listen to this video short from Robert and learn some top tips to help you dig deeper with your clients.

Transcription:

Robert Craven  00:08 

I'd like to talk about how to dig deeper with clients to dig deeper and get more out of them to be able to help them more to get them to understand that the value add isn't simply, digit monkeys banging away on a keyboard making stuff happen. So I think there's three reasons why we often shortchange our relationship with clients. The first one is we talk about symptoms. Second one, we talk about insights. Third thing is we kind of use the kind of concept of sabotage. So let me explain what I mean.  

Robert Craven  00:41 

So, when we work with with agency clients, we talk about symptoms, we talk about symptoms, not causes, you've got to go beyond talking about symptoms to talk about causes reasons for the problems, this is the brand or the product, the time of year, you can't just say: Oh, the results are bad, you've got to talk a lot more about about the causes rather than symptoms. Secondly, there's always a tendency to talk about insights. Oh, so when we curate this, we realise that this is what's happened. You're going to stop talking about insights and talk far more about behaviours, what behaviours have caused those insights. What is it that people are doing that's causing the insights similar to the the causes and symptoms piece.  

Robert Craven  01:24 

And thirdly, when we talk to clients, we spend most of our time talking to their saboteur that you know you have good person bad person talking to you. You have the monkey on the shoulder you have the saboteur, but also the wise the wise voice. Most people spend most their time operating in saboteur mode, the hyper creative hyper performing hypercritical, hyper that, that that bits a bit of defensive piece, which is trying to avoid what's going on, that's not constructive. When we're the clients, they spend this their times being hyper critical, hyper rational, or, and we spend our time being a pleaser, or whatever that whatever the definition of you have the little saboteur voice in your head saying you're not good enough, you could do better. This is what you need to do to make it happen. We need they need to stop using that voice and start using let's just call it the sage voice the voice, which is about how can we make stuff happen? How can we improve? How can we innovate? How can we move on to the next in a better way? What can we learn from it. So these three things systems insight, saboteur, this applies. This is why consulting and coaching and mentoring is, is often often doesn't work because often, the kind of consultants and coaches you come across will want to talk about symptoms of what's wrong in your agency that will give you insights into what's going on. And they're almost feed your your your saboteur the hypercritical hyper judgmental person in you, protecting you and saving you.  

Robert Craven  03:07 

So when in coaching and consulting and mentoring, and when someone's helping you in your agency. You want them to not just be talking about symptoms, but actually digging deep and looking at the causes for those symptoms. You want them not just to be providing insights, but you want them to be be scraping away to understand what behaviours have courses in times and therefore what behaviours actually need to change. And finally, use recognise it with you as an agency owner. The saboteur is constantly protecting things, it's constantly protecting you by giving him this kind of voice in your in your ear, when in fact, if you were more constructive, more innovative, more creative, more looking for what would work rather than constantly being hyper, rational, hyper, performance driven, hyper pleasing, you'd actually get much further so for you in terms of whoever's advising you in your agency, but more importantly for for your agency clients. Try not just to talk about symptoms, but actually talk about causes. Try not to just give people insights, when in fact you can talk about the behaviour that's caused the insights and try not to just feed their saboteur you by using your saboteur to talk to their saboteur by actually using your your Sage voice. What is the potential? What can we achieve? What have we learned? What are we going to do next? So I just think these three ways of looking at the world will change how you get advised in your agency, but more importantly, we'll change how you can advise and work with your clients. Thank you very much for listening.