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Are These Information Gathering Pitfalls Costing You Good Clients?

Growing up, I was a big fan of Sherlock Holmes, the detective from the Arthur Conan Doyle novels. I loved how he could piece together different clues and find a pattern that would solve a mystery.

Wouldn’t it be great if you had the ability to solve the mystery of your clients’ needs like Holmes, to see the clues, to always have the answers?

While you may not have the vast repository of Holmes knowledge, or have a fictitious life penned by the writer, Doyle, you do have the capacity to unravel the mysteries of your client’s behavior.

You have some combination of intuition or discernment that can be utilized to help you understand the world you, and your clients, work in. However if you are like most people, most of the time, this information comes below your level of awareness. This raises the risk of making underdeveloped decisions.

Actions from Reflex Rather Than Purpose

Much of what interferes with your ability to see clearly comes from a set of programmed responses. You have experienced a history that has left impressions. Your experiences and your responses to them develop coordinated motor pathways within your neuromuscular system.

This is similar to the process of learning a new skill. For example, when you were a child you probably learned how to tie your own shoes. Your learning followed a process from naiveté to competence. Now, you can tie your shoes without thought. You have developed a coordinated motor pathway: your brain sends a signal through your nervous system to your muscles that perform the action.

Coordinated motor pathways promote actions and responses out of reflex, without thought. Sometimes, this reflex can work in your favor. If you are warming your hands by a fire and an ember flies in your direction, you are likely to jump back. Sometimes, this reflex can work in your disfavor. When someone raises his or her voice in anger, you may react defensively.

Some of these reflexes can interfere with your ability to see information clearly.

Avoiding these pitfalls will help you bring these automatic responses into your present intentional awareness and control.

Make Decisions on Objective Information not Impulse.

1. Baggage

Baggage reflects your history with failed expectations or emotional distress. When you encounter distress, your immediate reaction comes from the primitive, non-rational portion of your brain. Since this primitive core is primarily responsible for keeping you alive and safe there are only two responses: fight or flight.

Since this primitive core is always on the lookout for threat and danger, fight or flight responses produce coordinated motor pathways. The next time you experience an emotional event that your primitive core recognizes as similar, your coordinated motor pathway will lead you to react similarly.

Commonly, this can manifests in current behavior. Your reactions to people and situations might be grounded in your interaction with your parents or other influential adults. Your responses to authority are likely to be based on your rearing. How you negotiate failure is at least partly attributable to how your failures were treated in the past.

In order to overcome baggage, you need to differentiate past from current experiences. This requires intentionality with behavior and a conscious review of emotional reactions.

Build smaller categories. Do your responses to failure, for example, resemble past responses? If so, determine if your response is productive. Does it help you meet your ultimate goals? If not, identify the differentiation between your past and present.

2. Distraction

Distraction is an easy pitfall for anyone. There is much to distract you: home, work, life balance, friends, clients, relationships, entertainment, fun, etc. Distraction leaves you missing clues because of misdirected attention. Attending requires present orientation.

You can call your attention to the present with active listening skills. Acknowledge what you hear. Validate the feelings and perceptions behind the words. Clarify any misunderstandings. Summarize the main points.

Even if your role in the present requires you to observe, rather than participate, you can mentally take the same steps without giving voice to your responses. This will help you stay present and glean more information.

3. Living in Your Perceptions

If you have any meaningful success retaining good clients, you will recognize that your client’s perception is their reality. However if you want to see the clues that will help you make better decisions, you have to hold yourself to a higher standard.

Living in your perception is easy, at least in the short term. The bad decisions that will result will make it hard for you in the long-term. Testing your perceptions requires effort. The effort is worth it when checking your perceptions hones your discernment or intuition.

There are two steps to a perception check. The first is comparing your perceptions with observable phenomena. If you experience your client as offended, ask, tactfully. You can also make observations about changes in their behavior.

The second step is to compare your perceptions with the observable results of your test. Identify where you were correct and where you were mistaken. Be mindful of your mistakes for the future. Identify patterns in your success or failures. Learn the lessons that these patterns offer you.

4. Be Aware of your Own Biases

You have developed habits, behaviors, and preferences throughout your lifetime. In part, these are based on experience. New experiences and new stimuli challenge you to adjust how you see the world.

This is similar to the first pitfall, baggage. However, the development of bias is subtler, less reliant on emotional distress. Each of us is predisposed to certain leanings based on experiences and attitudes. Attitudes and experiences filter information. To be accurate in your information gathering, you need to understand how your filters influence you.

As an example, research indicates that you are likely to spend more money grocery shopping if you are hungry.

Another example, I once had a workmate who recognized that she started smoking a cigarette every morning on her way to work when she came to a specific overpass.

Your political leanings, ethnic origins, religious orientation all contribute filters to your information processing.

Take a step back from your behavior from time to time. Perform a little self-diagnosis and recognize where your triggers are. When you begin to recognize your automatic impulses, you begin to gain a measure of intentionality in your behavior.

5. Disavowing What You Feel

Some feelings and sensory experiences come with a measure of discomfort. They may be doubts that conflict with your ego or best wishes. Sensory experiences might manifest as a feeling in your gut, or stray thoughts in your head.

Being a creature of comfort like most humans, you may disavow or ignore these sensations. You may feel the need to be focused and decisive. Decisive actions are good and preferable to inaction.

However, ignoring signals your body is sending you might be a mistake. Whatever their source or form, these signals might be trying to call your attention to important information.

When we interact with others, we receive significant amounts of information. In order to avoid mental overload, we tend to focus on a specific range of information. While we may consciously focus on certain aspects, our subconscious picks up all manner of clues.

Your body may react to these clues in a manner that you find uncomfortable. Resist the impulse to dismiss them.

For instance, you may be negotiating with a new client account that could be lucrative. But, your gut is telling you something. Could you be experiencing some deception? It’s important to uncover what your gut is telling you.

If action is required, attempt to review your sensations at your first opportunity. Become aware of your discomfort. Learn to understand where it comes from, and why. Your experiences might be attributable to history. This is good to know. But, you might be picking up important signals.

Checking these experiences against observable phenomena is an excellent way to determine their accuracy and help you fine tune how to interpret the cues your own body sends you.

6. Attribution Error

Attribution error is a common perceptual bias. It suggests that when assessing the behavior of another, you will often presume the cause is attributable to character. For instance, when a stranger next to you is talking loudly on their cell phone, your perception will be that they are inconsiderate or insensitive.

When assessing your own behavior, you will presume the cause is circumstance. If you are the one on the phone, you may be the one raising your voice. Reasoning that you are just trying to be heard.

Truthfully, neither extreme is correct. The only way to accurately assess the motivation of another is to collect evidence.

7. Self-Deception

Self-deception is the most insidious cause of your ability to not see clearly. Self-deception is an ego defense reflex that happens when your actions differ with your conscience.

Each of us has a guiding compass, a conscience, that tells us right from wrong. If you follow your conscience, your actions are more true, your motivations more pure, your assessments more accurate.

When you choose to act against your conscience, to protect your ego, you justify your actions by colluding against your better self.

For an outstanding discussion on self-deception, I encourage you to read Leadership and Self Deception by the Arbinger Institute.

To avoid acting out of self-deception, always check your conscience.

Better Information Leads to Better Decisions

If you can avoid just one of these pitfalls, your discernment and intuition accuracy will improve substantially. If you can avoid all seven, you will see what is real.

Retaining good clients requires you to see what is real: real in the physical world and real for your clients. Better information will help you make better decisions.

Happy Client Retaining,

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© 2004-2007 Jeff Simon Consulting. All Rights Reserved. Wouldn't you love to peer into your client's head and know what they are thinking and feeling? Could you have better success at keeping and choosing your best clients if you could decode their behavior? Check out the Happy Clients Newsletter at: www.happyclientsnewsletter.com.

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