You know the expression: “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink”? For the record, that applies to clients too, as strange as it may sound.
Take a moment and think about all the times you’ve sat down with clients and reviewed your findings with them. Maybe you presented all the information you’ve collected through your various resources and channels and now you want to share with them their options. However many or little choices are available to them, you want them to beware of what lays before them. And on top of that, you have a couple of recommendations to make. After all, serving their best interests, serves yours. As much as we would like our clients to readily agree with us, jump right on board and go with the recommendations we’ve suggested, that’s not always the case. And we know this. We expect it. So we dig in our tool set and pull out our finessing skills and persuade them. We’re always selling, whether we like being the salesperson or not, we are constantly selling ourselves, our business products or our ideas. All of which, in time, builds our reputation. And in this case, we’re selling our point, trying to get across our recommendation so that both parties are satisfied with the outcome. But, that might not be enough.
How do we best illustrate our recommendation and show it’s in our client’s best interest? How we supply them with enough viable and reputable data that supports our recommendation so they can make a better choice? How do we ensure that no matter what decision our clients make, it doesn’t have lingering financial blow back?
How much do we safeguard our clients from costly and ineffectual decisions?
Sometimes…we don’t. That is the simple and honest answer. Sometimes, we just have to let them ride out because at the end of the day, it’s still their call. Perhaps, they’ll get lucky and their decision will have proved positive. Perhaps not. Sometimes, no matter how much we want to see the success of clients attained, we have also have to let them hit a few brick walls. We’re not going to throw them in their way, obviously, but there’s only so much we can do for a client. Should their decision prove unfavorable for business, we’ll remain sympathetic while professional and try to re-steer them into the clear. After all, when that decision falls through the crack, more likely than not, they’ll return to us for our services to get them back on track. How much sense would it make if we start throwing ”I told you so” in their faces?
The best we can do is lead our client to water. Provide the best service possible, walk them through the process, give progress reports, share any setbacks that are relevant and how they were overcome, and as long as we continue to strive to do our absolute best, success will be both ours and our client’s.
[*picture source: freedigitalphotos.net]
