My husband and I have been blessed with many wonderful
customers over our 25+ years owning and operating a
residential construction business. In fact, I could count
on one hand the challenging ones.
One customer in particular caused me many sleepless nights
and more than a little stress for a few weeks. The
relationship started out on a positive note, but quickly
turned south when it became clear that their expectations
and ours could never meet at a place of compromise.
If you own a small business, you will likely run across
some customers who try your patience and may even cause
emotional turmoil and undue stress. Here are 7 tips, from
a Soulpreneur's perspective, to help when you encounter
disgruntled customers.
1. Keep Your Cool. When you're upset, don't make rash
decisions. Remove yourself from the situation, if
possible, so you can look at it with fresh eyes. Time and
distance can give you time to think about the interaction
from all points of view.
2. Everyone is unique and different. Understand and accept
that personalities will clash from time-to-time, and it's a
normal part of doing business. If you understand it's
normal, you can learn techniques to help you handle them
without getting excessively defensive and taking it
personally. Customer conflicts happen to the best of us.
3. Customers are human too. You don't know what's going on
in their lives. Maybe their dog just got run over, or they
just got fired. With intuitive listening you can hear what
they may not be saying. Observe their tone of voice, body
language, and the key words they use to get clues about
what may be going on in their life. Try putting yourself
in their shoes for a while. Empathy can go a long way
towards resolving the issue at hand.
4. What are you learning that you can use in the future?
We learn with every customer interaction, good or bad, what
we can do differently in the future. In every experience
are the seeds for a new way of looking at life - and the
potential for doing it better in the future. This becomes
clearer once you're past the emotional aspect of the
interaction. Again, time and distance will give you a new
perspective on the situation.
5. Where are you placing your trust? Are you stuck on
looking at the challenging customers you've had in the
past, or are you able to trust in the basic goodness of
most people and focus on the ones you want now? If you
keep your mind on the type of customers you want, you're
placing your trust in the ability of the Universe to
deliver them to you.
6. Visualize and affirm what you want. Your thoughts send
magnetic signals that bring back to you what you think
about, in the same way tuning into a radio station picks up
that station's frequency in the ethers. Make sure you're
tuning your thoughts into the frequency of the specific
type of customers you want - customer's that are prosperous
and easy to serve. I have a 3x5 index card on my
refrigerator that says, "Wonderful, prosperous customers
call us daily wanting our quality construction services."
7. Trust in yourself. You can't always trust in other
people, but you can always trust in your inner guidance.
If you're meeting with a prospective customer and get that
feeling of dread in the pit your stomach, it may be a
warning that it would be better to refer the person to
someone who is better suited to their personality. Always
listen to your feelings.
Turning challenging customers into great, easy
to-do-business-with customers is not usually an easy task.
Sometimes it's better, as we found out, to let them go as
quickly as possible, learn from the experience, and focus
on bringing the customers you really want to your business.
Then you can focus on meeting, or exceeding, their
expectations and getting those valuable referrals.
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Would you like to learn more about how building a
soul-based business can create a thriving business that
feeds your spirit and bank account? Visit my website at
http://www.soulpreneursuccessstrategies.com to check out my
free "Creating Money" ebook, free articles, and Soulpreneur
Coaching Services.
Sandy Reed, the Soulpreneur's Coach, is a business coach,
writer, ex-corporate manager, and co-owns her own
successful home-based business.
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