Listen
and learn - before opening your mouth and offering advice, listen to what the needs are of your client or customer. Find out what their needs are, what pains them, their goals, what other areas of their business that could be a way of generating buzz for them. This will not be readily obvious if we are doing all the yakking. Once you have all of this, and confirmed you understand it correctly, then... you can begin to construct a client
focused strategy that will have success.
I was in the airport recently, and I was listening to conversations amongst friends and families traveling together. I noticed we all do two things very well, 1) Interrupting others, and 2) Shifting the conversation back to ourselves. Sad. This area of active listening is one that we really need to work on to do it well, and frankly, we need to do better. Even online, via email, tweets, text or chat, we many times jump to conclusions or 'cut off' the other person because we think we have the answer, solution, or we just want to hurry and point the discussion back to us.
If we are doing this with those we know, how are you treating you clients? Are you really finding their point of need? Remember, even though as consultants who have been hired to give our expert opinions, we still have to be good listeners. We have two ears but only one mouth for a reason....
@TimMoore