“As a former entertainer, I thought the best thing I could hear after giving a talk or presentation was for someone to tell me I was great. And then one day someone came up to me and told me how grateful they were.” - Ike Krieger, Principal at Krieger-Sokol Consulting, Developers of Contrary Marketing
That spun my head around after I heard Ike share this with me and the twenty people in one of the incredible “Contrary Marketing” workshops that he and partner Andrew Sokol conduct in Los Angeles.
Even though I wasn’t in the entertainment business, I could relate to wanting people to think I was great after I spoke to them in a group or even met them one on one. What I realized is that I was much more focused on impressing people (as a reaction to not feeling very impressive inside) than I was on helping them.
My inner embarrassment and even shame was palpable. Fortunately, I have reached a point in life where I berate myself less after such discoveries and instead learn to do and be better.
I think what I learned can help you as well.
I have heard it said by many charismatic keynote speakers that “we are all in the sales.” That may have been true up until we were all hoisted by own petards with the financial meltdown of the past year and a half. I think the truth is that “we are all in service.”
If you accept and embrace that, I would advise you approach every meeting with every prospective or current customer or client with the mindset, “What needs to happen for them to feel grateful after our meeting?” Unless you are specifically there to entertain them (as in a motivational keynote), then the answer is that they would leave meeting with you feeling satisfied and thinking: “You got my situation, you got my take on my situation, you got me and you provided me with a solution, service or product that will best help me accomplish what is most important, critical and urgent to me.”
For example, since I am in the interpersonal solution business, I have discovered that people will be most grateful to me if after a keynote, workshop or during our meeting the most important, critical and urgent problems and opportunities that involve getting through to people become clarified and they leave with a prescriptive solution that is implementable by them and their people (i.e. they don’t have to be a rocket scientist or a “shrink” to do it).
The next time you speak or meet with a prospective or current client or customer, what needs to happen so they will be most grateful to you? Address that and you will really be impressive.
Read about Krieger-Sokol’s Contrary Marketing and how to turn marketing into making you money instead of costing you money
Visit Mark Goulston's web site
Check out "Just Listen"
