This may be hard for male readers to understand, but when a woman moves, finding a skilled hairdresser is a critical, top-of-the-to-do-list task. When I moved to northern Wisconsin, I asked for recommendations, made appointments with several of those people, and chose one to be my official haircutter. Over the years that she cut and styled my hair, I never had a bad hair day. When I’d men-tion that I knew someone who was moving into town, or someone who wanted a new look, she’d hand me a card that offered 10 per-cent off their first visit. I counted. Over the ten years I went to this hairdresser I brought her twelve customers—all of whom visited her at least once a month. (You do the math.)
On the day that I had a hair emergency and she couldn’t fit me into her schedule, I started thinking. How come she was rewarding the new customers I was recruiting for her and I wasn’t getting any reward? Why wasn’t I worthy of even some consideration for an emergency appointment? It was the beginning of the end of our client/hairdresser relationship. (Have you ever noticed how quickly resentment can build?) It didn’t take me very long to find someone else who solved my bad-hair-day situation. The next month, as my possible replacement hairdresser cut my hair, I mentioned it was my birthday that week. “Oh,” she said. “You’re in luck. I give my clients a 50 percent discount on their birthdays.” Guess who has been cut-ting my hair for the last ten years.
Showing that you’re grateful doesn’t always involve giving something of monetary value. Businesses that express their grati-tude do so in many ways. They use their customer’s names—all the time. They keep track of preferences and make suggestions that
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solve problems. They send cards on days without a holiday attached.
They make eye contact and listen. They anticipate. They’re creative.
They fall in love with their customers and show it.
How do you reward your clients? Often, in an attempt to build new business, we forget to value the business and clients we already have. Asking how to show gratitude is key to avoiding that trap. Not only will you hear about ways to say thank you,you’ll discover which thank yousare most meaningful for your customers.
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❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ WHAT DID YOU LEARN? ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚
Learning when and how to ask questions of your customers is where you begin because asking questions of your customers is a good habit for leaders to develop. Spending time listening to your cus-tomers is an even better one. In many organizations, people go to great lengths to keep their leaders insulated from the customer.
Nothing should be further from the reality for a leader who wants to deserve the title of leader.
Keeping close to a cross section of your customers is a key activ-ity of a leader. Quick phone calls, meals with key customers, and face-to-face meetings with major clients are just a few of the ways
customer-focused leaders stay in contact with the people who make their businesses possible. Not doing these things feels way too risky for them. Contrary to the old saying, “No news isn’t good news … it’s just no news.”
Leaders know better than to face the future with no news. Crafting your questions before you connect with your customers is the best habit of all.
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The real questions are the ones that intrude upon your consciousness whether you like it or not.
—Ingrid Bengis, American writer
TE AM FL Y
Team-Fly®
❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ CHAPTER TWO WORKSHEET ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚ ❚
1.Which of the questions in this chapter would you have the most difficulty asking? Why?
2.What strategies do you use to stay personally close to your cus-tomers?
3.What other questions would you like to ask your customers?
4.How could you ask these questions?
5.What questions do your customers ask you?
6.How did you answer them?
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7.What is the one thing you want to remember most from this chapter?
OTHER NOTES
SO FAR, you’ve been considering asking questions of yourself and your customers. Important work to be sure, but as a leader, you also need to focus your attention on the people you lead. Asking questions of them is the core of this book.
The easiest and best place to focus your early questions for your employees is around the business. It’s amazing how many well-educated, fairly successful employees know a lot about their area of responsibility and virtually nothing about what goes on in the department down the hall. IT people
questions leaders need to ask employees about the business
chapter
3
don’t understand the salespeoples’ challenges. Marketing types take mental vacations when profit and loss statements are discussed. The packer in the shipping department doesn’t even realize the company has a research department.
One of my favorite questions to ask a new client is “Do you give tours of your organization to outside groups?” When the answer is yes, I follow it up with “Is that tour, in greater depth, part of your new employee orientation program?” We’re not even going
to talk about the number of people who stare blankly at the men-tion of an employee orientamen-tion program, but a yes to the second question is fairly uncommon. That being the case, I can only assume that there are many people working in organizations with-out a clear understanding of the business they’re in. That feels risky to me. What’s a leader to do? Asking the questions in this chapter is a logical place to start.
You’ll ask these questions for two reasons. First, to understand the depth (or shallowness) of the knowledge people have about your organization as a whole. Second, to provide you with an opportu-nity to impart knowledge, correct misinformation, and encourage exploration—in other words, to adopt the role of teacher for a while. Teaching, in the non-classroom sense, is a major part of a
Leaders, by their openness to questioning, give followers the confidence to pursue their dreams.
—Andrew Finlayson, American author and journalist
leader’s job, and these questions will provide you with the opening to play that role.
Caution: Teaching does not mean lecturing. Asking an employee one of these questions, getting a vague or confused answer, and proceeding to deliver an on-the-spot lecture in an authoritative tone will not get you the results you desire. Teaching means think-ing about and deliverthink-ing the information that the student needs in a way that will be meaningful to them. The answers to these ques-tions may start a brief dialogue, a one-on-one walk through a department with narration, or an invitation to a representative from another department to a team meeting for an old-fashioned show-and-tell. The purpose of these questions is to help you discover what needs to happen next.
If this is your first real step into being a leader who asks ques-tions, go back and read A Warningat the beginning of this book.
There are a few things you need to think about before you burst out of your office looking for a poor unsuspecting employee to question.
That section will help you remember what they are.
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