Feverfew current newsletter

How to find out what people want by Deborah Goodall

Hello again and welcome to my spring newsletter.

Like you, perhaps, I spent some time in the first quarter of this year reflecting on the work I do and looking for ways to improve my business offering. For me that means 'getting closer' to what clients are experiencing in order to find out about their most pressing needs and challenges. I'm then in a better position to identify how my skills and service can help.

Whatever your business propostion, in the healthcare or bioscience marketplaces, you probably need to find ways of engaging creatively with customers and stakeholders to best shape how your product or service is used and what you say about it.

Seek out the hot buttons

To do this successfully you will need to find the 'hot buttons' - the key criteria and values that must be met in a given situation for someone to want to work with you, say yes to your idea or buy from you.

Criteria are what each person needs to become interested or excited by something and, conversely, what would turn them off. They change with the context; whereas values are often deeply held beliefs we live our lives by.

To take a simple example; if I was buying a washing machine, I might say:

'I want a quick wash cycle; immediate availability; a digital display showing remaining wash time and low environmental impact.'

The first few items are my criteria - some more important than others - and the last relates to my values; something I live my life by: 'I believe it is important to do all we can to preserve the environment in our daily living.'

It relates to more than just washing machines. However, it also means that I won't buy the washing machine if this feature is absent and I would pay more for a machine that included this feature as well as all the others.

In another business example - I have a marketing manager friend who, when working with external agencies, describes his key criteria as 'depth of care'. When I ask him what he means by 'depth of care', he reels off a list of particular behaviours he expects to see from his consultants in certain situations. If he doesn't see those behaviours - then it's not working for him.

It is important to know what your proposition (product, service, values) absolutely must do for someone for them to buy in to you, buy from you or stay loyal to you.

Being able to fulful key criteria and relate to others' values is a very strong indicator for:

Successful working relationships
Selling effectively
Being able to attract influential people/groups to support your case
Retaining clients

You can find key criteria and values in several ways: Broadly this involves imagining what would be important to someone in particular circumstances and listening hard to what they say. Topics that people repeatedly come back to, or stories thay are proud of telling you, yield information about what they value. Over time - if you are looking - it is relatively easy to glean people's values. But to gather this sort of information quickly and in first meetings, you may need to learn some simple tools that allow you to ask and make this a natural part of a brief conversation.

This is what I and a number of colleagues have been doing recently - in order to help you do the same - asking observing, learning and trialling.

Some of the techniques we used to find this out – about how you ask and what you look for to get the best information - now form part of our offering to you.

In our work we are seeking to help you take on board new ideas that make an immediate difference in the way you communicate. Over the last year, we've piloted some different approaches and had some particular successes. We can now report on what helps you adapt and improve your communication.

The key things you say you want and, indeed respond to, are:

Consultancy to help focus communications effort where it will have most impact and is combined with practical help to fill skills gaps.
Training that is highly relevant to your role and connects with your work priorities of the time
Short bursts of new material – little and often
Further practice and support
Coaching and telephone coaching – a real success story

Our learning has been to take all this on board and to continue to listen out for your criteria and to be clear on outcomes. Here are some examples of what we now offer:

Providing a client service:
- relationship, strategic counsel and creativity

Taking healthcare stories to the media

Presenting, pitching and personal impact

Progress through coaching

Expert communications counsel - industry

How we learn and adopt new ideas to improve

New habits or skills take on average between 6 and 20 repeats depending on their complexity before they become second nature to us.
We need to believe that changing our approach will get us the results we want - so consultancy and personal development need to address beliefs to help people to engage.
We progress through stages when adopting new ideas and we have different preferences for how we learn best. Change management and training should be designed to account for this. Have you noticed whether you simply like to listen - lecture style - or whether you learn best by immediately linking a new topic to a task? Or perhaps you need to do the skill, see it in action or reflect upon if for a while.

Want to share this material with others?

Yes, you can!....forward this newsletter to your friends and colleagues. If you know someone who would benefit from reading this, go ahead and spread the word! They can opt to receive future copies by visiting my website.

Deborah Goodall

Business coach and
Communications consultant
www.feverfew.co.uk

Newsletter - Spring '07

How to find out what people want

Seek out the hot buttons

Know what your proposition

absolutely must do for someone to buy in to you

What we have been doing to help you

How we typically learn or adopt new ideas