Not long after we established Vertigo blogs, Susan posted a great series on soft skills that should complement your technical skills. I thought I’d add one specific to client communication.
The Most Important Seven Words In Client Communication: “Let Me Make Sure I Understand You”
We all know that listening is important. But that’s not what I’m talking about—I’m talking about showing that you’re listening. When you’re talking with a client, it’s the single most effective way to make the meeting productive, move past issues, and get to a resolution everyone’s happy about:
- Client: “[supporting info] we want a reporting system for our existing database [supporting info]"
- You: “So, let me make sure I understand you. You’d like a reporting system for your existing database?”
- Client: “Exactly.”
Does this sound redundant? Perhaps, but if you don’t do it:
- The client doesn’t know you understood what they said,
- You don’t know you understood what they said,
- And maybe, just maybe, the client didn’t mean what they said.
Confirming what you heard is the first step toward the solution. Too often people fail to acknowledge this in their race to start actually fixing a problem. In doing so you risk building the wrong solution. Or, even worse, you build the right solution to the wrong problem.
I’ve been in hundreds of meetings and probably thousands of phone calls with clients at Vertigo, and this comes in handy almost all the time. Now, I don’t reiterate back verbatim exactly what they said, I often paraphrase and try to state it more simply. And you've got to follow it up with a value-add response. But if it’s an important point, I try to make sure I do it.
The most handy use is when you find yourself talking across your client--you're both trying to make your point at the same time. Stop, listen, and repeat. You’ll find it makes a world of difference.