You Can’t Educate If You Can’t Engage

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Your prospective clients come to you to learn about solutions to their problems and how you can help.  The only way for you to convey that information and education is to engage them.  And to do that, you need to be interesting.

The problem is that most of us are not interesting when it comes to our practices.  That is to say, we’re interesting to ourselves and our colleagues but not so much to our prospective clients.  They don’t understand dischargeability issues and exemption schemes.  They aren’t particular interested in hanging paragraphs and 910 car claims.  Talk about that stuff and you’ll see their eyes glaze over; soon enough, they’ll be in dreamland.

Your audience is just that – an audience.  They need to be engaged with stories told in an easy-to-chew manner, complete with a cold glass of milk to wash it all down at the end.  They want to know about the woman who didn’t disclose the bank account she kept for her daughter and failed to disclose on her bankruptcy papers.  They want to know about the man who got to keep his car and pay less than the original balance of the loan because the car was 10 years old (never mind why he still had a loan on it).

When you engage you can educate, give information, and alert clients to potential problems.  You can get them thinking about their own issues so they can ask useful follow-up questions.  You can get a conversation started that will be fruitful for both of you.

If the prospective client is bored, however, they’re not listening closely.  They aren’t getting all the information they need, and they aren’t going to be able to make an informed decision about whether to hire you.

That might not bug you right now, but consider the client who calls over and over with the same questions that were clearly answered during the initial consultation.  Had you been more interesting, the client would have been engaged in the conversation.  That would have led to the client listening to you more intently, and understanding more clearly.  In the event that they didn’t understand something, the client would have asked you a question.

So the next time someone talks with you – be it in person, by phone or otherwise – remember that you’ll never get through to them unless you engage them in a way that is interesting and creative.

What’s your secret?  How do you get people to listen to you when you need them to do so?

Photo courtesy of twenty questions.

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