BRX Pro Tip: How to Prevent Miscommunication
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BRX Pro Tip: How to Prevent Miscommunication
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, miscommunication is one of those things that can rear its ugly head more often than you might imagine. How do you prevent miscommunication?
Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] Well, I think it’s so important to really pay attention to miscommunication, especially as we deal remotely with more and more of the people around us, whether it’s team members, whether it’s clients, whether it’s prospects. You have to get clarity every step of the way and you have to kind of overdo it when it comes to clarity. If there is even just a whiff of a misunderstanding, it’s important to really go back and ask what they mean, what are they trying to accomplish.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:45] Something that just happened to us the other day is we had a client ask us for access to our dashboard. They send an email, one sentence, “Can I have access to your dashboard?” So, we as a team are now on a fire drill going, “Oh. What should we give them? Should we give them access to the backend?” And we’re all going under all these assumptions of what they meant by dashboard. And we spent time asking each other what can we do, how can we give it to them, how do we give them access to this but not that. And then, at some point we said, “You know what? Why don’t we just call and see exactly what she means?”
Lee Kantor: [00:01:22] So, we scheduled the call, and within five minutes we realized she didn’t want really access to our dashboard. That’s the language we use to mean the backend of our website. To her, the dashboard meant just the archives of all the shows, and all she wanted to do was have access to the content with the transcripts. And we were in our heads imagining her wanting stats, or her wanting to edit posts, and all this other stuff that was just our own hallucination. And in actuality she wanted something that was public that she could have just Googled and found, but she didn’t know how to ask for it.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:02] And after a five minute call, we realized what you want, gave her the URL, and she left happy and we didn’t have to do anything else other than just get clarity on what she was really trying to accomplish and give her the means to accomplish it.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:17] So, overcorrect when it comes to communications, get clarity, make sure that you’re kind of speaking from the same song sheet and understand what they’re trying to accomplish and how best for you to help them accomplish that. And don’t assume you know what they mean, because a lot of times what they’re saying isn’t what you’re thinking that they want.
BRX Pro Tip: How Well Do You Know the People Who Matter to You Most?
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BRX Pro Tip: How Well Do You Know the People Who Matter to You Most?
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, here’s an important question that I think we should all be asking ourselves, how well do you know the people who matter to you most?
Lee Kantor: [00:00:15] Yeah. I think this is the heart of any professional service business, is, you have to know your clients and you have to know a lot more about them than you probably know about them right now. So, some of the questions you should be asking yourself about your clients are, Do you know what keeps them up at night? You know, that’s obvious. Do you know what groups they’re members of? Do you know who buys what they sell? Do you know who their ideal client is? Do you know who they respect and look up to? Do you know who they aspire to be? Do you know what they’re afraid of?
Lee Kantor: [00:00:52] The more you know about what drives your clients, the better it is for you so you can help them more. And remember, if you can help make their dreams come true by kind of basic math, then that will help you make your own dreams come true. So, I would be really getting in the weeds when it comes to your clients and really understand, you know, what they’re afraid of, what they need more of, what will get them high fiving you. The more you know about them, the better you can serve them. And the better you can serve them, the longer you will keep them and the bigger your practice will grow.
BRX Pro Tip: Prune the Least Profitable
BRX Pro Tip: Strengths Over Weaknesses
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BRX Pro Tip: Strengths Over Weaknesses
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, when it comes to incremental or even quantum improvement, your thinking is it’s better to focus on strengths over weaknesses, yeah?
Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] Yeah. I’m a big believer in maximizing your strengths rather than just focusing on maximizing your weaknesses and making your weaknesses go away. Now, I don’t think that you should ignore your weaknesses. I think you should invest some time in shoring up your weaknesses. But I find that you will be much more fulfilled and you’ll be much better served if you can make your strengths even stronger.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:43] I think that if you have some natural proclivities to a certain strength or whatever it is, whether it’s your curiosity, or whatever it is you’re thinking about when it comes to the value you’re providing for people, I think it’s better to become deeper, stronger about whatever that is, rather than try to shore up all of the weaknesses or perceived weaknesses you think that you have.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:09] So, what that means is become a true subject matter expert in whatever interests you and serves your clients. Because if you’re really interested and excited about this, you’re going to be inclined to go deeper into these areas because you already like it and you’re already curious about it. So, that makes you that much more valuable to the people who are interested in that as well.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:30] But if you have a weakness that is holding you back, you should definitely kind of shore it up. But I wouldn’t be spending an inordinate amount of time just focusing in on weakness, weakness, weakness. I would, you know, spend maybe 20 percent of your time or less than 20 percent of your time working on your weaknesses and 80 percent of your time making your strengths stronger, rather than 80 percent of the time trying to improve your weaknesses and 20 percent of the time trying to just keep your strengths going.
Lee Kantor: [00:02:01] So, invest time on your strengths, become the best at that, and that’s going to help you differentiate yourself from all the other service providers in the area that you serve.
BRX Pro Tip: Success and Failure Are Not Binary
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BRX Pro Tip: Success and Failure Are Not Binary
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, I like success better than failure. It seems to be a lot more fun. But the truth of the matter is, at least in business, success and failure really are not binary.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:18] No, of course not. In most cases, there’s a spectrum of success. You may not get the ultimate prize, but you could still be winning. You may not go all the way out of business, but you could be trending that way. So, the key to all of this is to just keep trying.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Like we had someone, Katy Galli, who used to work for us that said, “Keep moving forward.” That’s what you have to be doing every day. You can’t be paralyzed by inaction. And I think that people want to wait, a lot of the times, to see what’s what. And you just don’t have time to wait because it’s moving. The ground is moving beneath your feet. So, you cannot just wait things out. You’ve got to kind of do something.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:01] Business realities are always a moving target. There’s a saying, “People plan and the universe laughs.” Next time you’re uncertain, instead of waiting, try something. Try something crazy. What do you have to lose? And especially if things are trending in the wrong direction for you, take some shots. You don’t have anything to lose, but you have to take action.
BRX Pro Tip: Help Your Client Aim Higher
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BRX Pro Tip: Help Your Client Aim Higher
Stone Payton: [00:00:00] And we are back with Business RadioX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, a lot of responsibilities, a lot of obligation for those of us, not just in the Business RadioX business, but for all of us who are out there genuinely trying to serve our market, and our community, and our profession. But I think it’s incumbent upon us. I think we should be helping our client aim higher.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:26] Yeah. And not only do you have to deliver a service that helped your client make more money or save some time, you have to really, almost, be more ambitious than your client. Push them to be better than they think is possible. You know, be their biggest cheerleader, support them, really root for them, do what you can to help them aim higher, push them to be bolder.
Lee Kantor: [00:00:50] If you can do this, if you can really encourage and support them taking kind of bold chances and risks that can help them catapult their business to new levels that they didn’t even dream possible, then you have a chance to have a customer for life. And that’s what we’re all trying to do.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:08] Every person in professional services would much rather have fewer clients that is perfectly aligned, a perfect fit that you really love working with, that you’re helping achieve enormous things and make great impact in order to grow their practice.
Lee Kantor: [00:01:25] So, if you’re in professional services, if you can help your client be more ambitious, be bigger, have greater impact, then you have a chance to make a customer for life. And it’ll help you in your practice. It will help you grow your practice and help you get better clients.
