Are clients reaching out to you about making hard calls? Mine are. Because their businesses are in trouble. And future sustainability appears uncertain. Thus you serve them in ways which may make you both uncomfortable.
Because making hard calls involves having “those” conversations, together. Conversations grounded in mutual trust and respect because of the relationship preceding their request for your input. Thus, you both move one millimeter beyond what is professionally comfortable, today. So everyone gets to where they really need to go, tomorrow.
Consider that by better serving your own clients in this manner, you catalyze them to better serve their own clients.
Your Word becomes Your Bond when Making Hard Calls.
- Are you still chasing yesterday’s priorities which best serve your own professional needs first? Do you just focus on making your numbers, fulfilling your own KPIs?
- Do you feel these decisions perpetuate less-than-optimal business habits and a week-to-week business mindset fueled by a hand-to-mouth cash flow model?
Or do you re-prioritize creating remarkable and enduring business outcomes rather than tactical ones? As you move one millimeter beyond the comfort of yesterday’s business tactics, you prioritize making your word your bond. Not just for “some clients” but for all clients.
Because when your word becomes your bond to clients, you never have to remember what you say to one client or another client. You always respond in the same respectful, thoughtful, strategically collaborative and always provocative manner.
Thus your professionalism builds one of the greatest client experiences of all: trust. Consequently, you lead your clients one millimeter beyond what is comfortable today. And subsequently inspire them to better lead their own businesses forward, as well.
Helping Clients make Hard Calls involves Building Trust.
Throughout the chaos of 2020, many clients reach out to me for suggestions. For input, strategy, direction. Because the proverbial “poop” has hit their business’s fan. Clients evaporate often because those clients do not run their own houses productively and profitably. Or existing clients lengthen re-orders and procrastinate on pre-orders. Then again, projects are derailed because of mergers and acquisitions which inject new personnel into established workplace cultures. And perceived inequities between knowledge and manual workers exacerbate existing cultural resentment rather than synergy.
My professional mantra is “Depending on where we sit around the table we all hear stories differently. Shouldn’t our differences become our strengths and opportunities to better serve each other, first? So we better serve our clients, together.”
Making Hard Calls leverages Telling Your Own Stories about Your Own Hard Calls.
These stories are not pretty fairy tales where you and your solution are the heroes and everyone lives happily ever-after. Rather, these are the stories clients really want and need to hear. Where things do not go perfectly, as-scripted or designed. Not about epic crises, but about discovering and serving through vulnerabilities. Thus, you both transform, instead of transact, business outcomes on behalf of better serving your own clients.
Your clients are waiting to hear your stories so they are better able to make their own hard calls. Isn’t it time you started to discover your own stories, about making your own hard calls?
Contact me today at in**@ba*************.com. Start telling your trust-based, purpose-driven story: today, tomorrow, and moving forward.
Babette Ten Haken translates across unprofitable and unproductive communication and collaboration disconnects between the business-operations continuum. She is a card-carrying STEM professional and left-brain thinker specializing in cross-functional leadership, new product development and professional innovation. Her One Millimeter Mindset™ virtual and in-person speaking programs get individuals, teams and organizations to where they need to go, together: one millimeter at a time. Optimize strategic business and human capital value in your organizations. Build trust to retain employees and clients co-invested in each other’s success. Her playbook of cross-functional tools, Do YOU Mean Business? is available on Amazon.com. Contact Babette here.
Image source: Adobe Stock
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