Be Interested In People

You can tell if you are speaking to someone that really cares about what it is that you do. If you sound like you barely slept and you are reading robotically from a script the person on the other end of the phone is likely to reply in kind.

If you don’t care about what they do, how are you going to help them? Rolling up to the sales cycle with the idea of I have the very thing that you want before you have even done an ounce of discovery is the proverbial putting the cart before the horse, and as with that horse and cart muddle up, you aren’t really going to get anywhere.

When someone comes on the line and you can tell they are just rolling through a pitch that they are reading from a script, they only are able to think in terms of what their script tells them to do, and they probably miss a million opportunities that a more on-point and free-thinking individual could seize on. Phone etiquette is also sacrificed on the altar of expediency, where the social lubricant of manners might make a future prospect of the person you briefly contacted.

The same is true of pretty much any interaction that you engage in — everyone has had that kind of experience where you walk into a shop and you feel like you are disturbing the person behind the counter. Walk into a different shop and feel like the person in the shop is engaged and wants to make sure that you have a good experience, and you are more likely to want to come back, to recommend the shop to others, and to buy something in the first place.

The kind of company that is this bad in the initial stages of a contact is unlikely to be much better after you have bought services from them, and their willingness to contact you is likewise going to be mediated through scripts and rules that quota the contacts. The products are lowest common denominator, as is the service, as is the care factor — they don’t care if they lose a customer because there is always an influx of people who care as little about themselves or what they are buying because no one has treated them well when it comes to making sure they are looked after and have the right product.

Companies that don’t care, with clients that don’t care, with customers who come to a website they don’t care about either. There is a lack of interest from the outset. When you find a company that is demonstrably interested in you isn’t the care more real? Aren’t the products better? Because it is out of the norm, don’t you find yourself telling people about it?

If you are interested and you care about the people you work with it communicates.