The title comes from a phrase used by one of my favourite people: Bruce Richardson.
I’ve been banging on for months about reaching out to clients, thinking that if only we could communicate effectively then maybe we’d stand a better chance of building better businesses. That’s only a part of the story. It wasn’t until I read Alastair Harris’s comment to my SaaS – Achilles Heel post that I realised how much we’ve yet to learn. Alastair said:
As an accountant I have a view of accounting software that is very different from business people, and different again from software houses. It is often frustrating from the accountants viewpoint, but must be more so from the developers! I would liken it to the car salesman who works hard to impress his prospect with the advanced engineering features, only to find the buying decision is based on the number of cup holders, or even the quality of the coffee in the showroom!
How true. This raises some interesting questions.
- What does it take to put yourself in someone else’s shoes? I often think you need experience about what they’re going through to have that sort of insight. That isn’t always possible and yet we spend inordinate amounts of time telling clients about the mechanics of say credit control without having a clue what it’s like to live with the consequences. How good for instance are we at asking clients about whether they’re able to call customers up to get paid?
- How much do we really know about our clients and their needs? Much of the time, I find practitioners second guessing based on the so-called expert’s view of what they perceive as being good for clients. Which sounds like the doctor prescribing regular doses of castor oil.
- What skills are needed to not just listen but interpret effectively so that we deliver to client needs? There’s enough said about listening and holding conversations around the blogs to fill the British Library. Even so, I’m not convinced we really understand what it takes to turn those fine words into action. What for instance do we do when there is more than one possible interpretation – as Alastair implies?
Before someone out there accuses me of drifting off into some sort of psycho-babble-pop-cultural BS there are a couple of practical examples that spring to mind.
What’s our normal reaction when clients walk through the door with great ideas that need funding? I’ll bet the first thought is: ‘How can this go wrong?’ and then proceed to tell the client about all the risks they’re getting into without acknowledging their enthusiasm. We treat them like uneducated children, forgetting that clients know more about entrepreneurship than most of us will ever know.
When we recommend a particular accounting software, who are we trying to please? I’d bet that 9/10 times, we’re thinking about it from our perspective. Intuitively we know that most software is for accountants and not business people. It is because of that we hesitate to take time training clients in its use and even then struggle to get the message across in an acceptable manner. We don’t spend the time to figure out what clients need because it’s hard work and takes us into the unknown. That means we rarely, if ever beat up the developers to deliver what clients need alongside our own needs. I’ve been doing a bit of that this week and I can tell you it’s hard.
Do we understand the meaning of compromise? I don’t think so. Very often, I find practitioners either in appeasement mode or dictating the course. Both positions are utterly cringeworthy. I believe that if we’re to have any hope of truly serving client needs, then we need to rethink our attitudes and challenge our belief systems. Recognise that as Alastair implies, we live in different worlds that somehow need to mesh and not collide.
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