Happy Sunday Everyone:
I had a client leave me a voicemail last week and was very upset. Erica had provided two very different set of numbers to him in a period of 2 months, this impacted his ability to qualify, he didn’t think it had been communicated in a way that was acceptable, and wanted to talk to me ASAP. It wasn’t offensive but it wasn’t flattering toward Erica either.
Many of you know Erica. She started off as my assistant 12 years ago and is now my full-blown business partner. People say, “they’re 1 in 100”. I view Erica as 1 in 10,000. I realized a few years in she represented some of my strengths, but more importantly, many of my weaknesses. Her operational awareness, her ability to find a solution for just about anyone who wants to buy a home, and her ability to sell, makes her unique. Throw into it the ultimate team player, I figured I could have her be my partner, or I could find myself competing against her in years to come. She even calls Kim when I’m midway home to give her a warning when I’m coming in hot.
Our team has rules we live by; we’ve created them over the years. I’ll not name them all here but two that are relevant:
- “It’s not about being right, it’s about the client feeling great.” This is always assuming the client isn’t abusive.
- “A client’s perception is our reality, period.”
My initial reaction when I heard the voicemail was to go into full defense mode, how they’re wrong, why we’re right, and then proving it to them. Then I calm down, consider our rules, and think clearly. First call I made was to Erica to understand her perspective and the chain of events. Erica being Erica views this as a total fail on her part but open enough to review our process and consider where she could have gone wrong. In going through the play by play with me, we both agreed, she didn’t do anything wrong, and in fact did everything right. She called the client to go through the numbers, client didn’t answer, then followed up w/ software we use to show the numbers with an audio recording explaining, as well as an email bulleting out the exact numbers. This is our process.
I called the client back, he wanted to rereview his frustration with me, I listened. I then simply said, “your perception is our reality, period, and I apologize for any and all frustration this has caused you”. I then told him I had reviewed everything Erica had sent him prior to calling him back, and the good news is there was a miscommunication, that the numbers were exactly as they had always been. I didn’t say it was his error, I simply said it was miscommunication. By the time we hung up he said “wow, I feel like I owe Erica an apology”. It crossed my mind to agree with him (truly),but instead suggested that wasn’t necessary. We maintained a good client by swallowing our pride a bit (Erica more than me in this case) and focusing on the end game.
It’s fun to be on the right side of exercising some emotional self-control, to run the play how we discuss we should, and have it work out in the end. Plus, those 2 rules can be applied to anything. Do you know what Kim would pay for me to have the constant mindset of “it’s not about being right, it’s about Kim feeling great”, or “Kim’s perception is my reality”, it works on just about anything. I’m not suggesting we all need to walk around appeasing people in everything we do but if your end game is to be right all the time, it’s going to be a lonely existence. If you reverse the lens in everything you do, you’re going to have better relationships. In the end, it’s just being more empathetic. Be more empathetic and less concerned about being right and good things happen.
Enjoy your Sunday!