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Date
As I said in
my last post, customers' perceptions are their reality--and if you're going to make the sale, you need to deal with their reality not yours. This poses a number of challenges for technically oriented people (i.e., project managers) focused on "the facts."
The first challenge is recognizing that if you want someone to take on your ideas and work to help you, you have to get them to accept your ideas. This is a sales process. Even the terms we use to describe the transfer of the ideas are sales-based. You have to "sell the idea" to get "buy-in."
The second challenge is recognizing perceptions are highly unlikely to change quickly. You can deal with this in one of two ways:
- Accept that the perception is real and deal with it by providing a direct solution (even if it's not really needed)
- Differentiate yourself from the perception by separating yourself from the general stereotype
Pretend your type of business is plagued by a reputation for overcharging customers and
arriving late for appointments. You can differentiate your business by guaranteeing a time, offering a US$10 discount for every 5 minutes you're late and proposing to quote a fixed price before starting work. This solution is partly differentiation and partly working within the reality of the perception by offering a benefit (the discount) if the perception holds true.
The difficulty with managing perceptions is that most people don't advertise their views openly.
The only way to unearth another person's perceptions is through a combination of observation, active listening and careful questioning -- in that order. This takes time and effort and needs to be focused on the stakeholders who matter.
At the
PMI Asia Pacific Congress in February I will deliver a paper called, "Beyond Reporting--The Communication Strategy" that builds on this idea. I will discuss more on this idea in upcoming posts.
Posted
by
Lynda Bourne
on: December 21, 2009 12:23 PM |
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