Understanding what a client is really asking

When you deal with clients – either selling a job or managing a project – you have to be able to answer the question behind the question.

This means you have to be able to answer the questions the clients don't even ask, but really want to know.

It may sound like magic or mind reading, and yet there's very little that's mystical about it. It just involves noticing who the client is and how they are in the world, and tailoring your communication to meet their unspoken needs. This article sets out some of the ways to discover what those needs are.

You know the idea – a patient may go see their doctor to ask for painkillers for a recurring sharp pain that radiates down the left arm. A good doctor will check out the other symptoms of a heart attack. The bad doctor gives the client what they want – a painkiller – and then sends them home.

To get behind questions, we can take something from the mass of research done on how people learn. Why is learning relevant to consulting? It's relevant because it deals with how people understand and absorb information – and in consulting, communicating information is a big part of the business. Communicating any idea is a lot more successful if we tailor our communication to the recipient's learning style.

Here's an example. Bernice McCarthy's research on learning styles suggests that people learn (and teach) in different ways. She summarises these as:

• the Why learner – needs a relevant motivation or reason for learning or doing something
• the What learner – focuses on data and provides their own motivation for learning or doing
• the How learner – focuses on putting things into practice, on procedure, for learning and doing
• the What If learner – takes motivation, content and process as given, and engages with the consequences or implications of what they're learning or doing

Now, let's look at a hypothetical Why style client. People with this learning style preference need to understand the motivation for learning (or doing, or understanding) something – if they have a good enough reason, then they will sit through quite a lot to get there.

To get this type of client to buy in to change, to buy into a model, or to just buy your services, you have to work out what they see as a good enough reason. Working out motivation can be tricky, and I talk about it in more detail in the motivation section below.

What happens if a BPR consultant is dealing with a Why client, and the consultant's preferred learning style is What? To explain a restructure the consultant relies on lots of data, quoting new department responsibilities and reporting lines. The client doesn't get it, and asks, "Explain this restructure to me again". The consultant does, again relying on data. And the next day the same question recurs, in another guise, because the consultant isn't answering the real question – Why do I need to restructure – what will it give me? The question the consultant is answering is "What is the nature of this restructure?"

So Why-type clients could be asking a lot of questions like "Could you explain it to me again, this idea of restructuring". The clients themselves won't know that they need to know why they need to restructure – if only consultants answered the questions clients really wanted answered, we'd all have happy clients. Unfortunately, it requires the consultant to know how people understand things and to do some second-guessing about their clients.

Recurrent misunderstandings like this are common when a consultant of one learning style is working with a client of another. It's isn't confined to Why-What learners.

All this means if a consultant can't understand their client's thinking process, then the consultant may give away their methodology by explaining its detail unnecessarily. Or they'd be constantly justifying their methodology. Or they'd spend time re-phrasing presentations and re-hashing data to prove something to the client that they don't really need to.

But when the consultant is an expert in handling people as well as in their topic of information technology or strategy or finance or marketing, that's when the client is happy before, during and after the project, real change happens, and repeat business comes your way.

Be aware with motivation that there are two ways to motivate. It's easiest to describe them in the terms that churches have been using for centuries – the heaven option, and the hell option. These two styles are also called the carrot and the stick. In NLP, they are labelled "move towards" and "move away".

Moving towards a positive goal motivation
Some people get out of bed in the morning because the alarm clock has gone off and they want to do something before they get to work. These people are motivated by the promise of "heaven". They are motivated to exercise because they want to get slim – or they want to improve their work processes because they can know it can be better. They initiate change projects so they'll look good in front of the management team, or because they want people to have more challenging jobs, or to stay ahead of the competition. These are the "move towards" motivated. They are motivated by what could be, how wonderful life could be and how much easier.

Moving away from negative consequence motivation
If you are at the other end of the motivation spectrum, then you'd be more motivated by the fire and brimstone of hell, which you'll get to if you don't step in line. These are Away From motivated. They get out of bed because if they don't they won't be able to do what they need to do. They are more motivated by the possibility that things will get worse, than by the possibility that things could get better. As clients, these people improve work processes because if they don't they may look bad in front of the management team, or because people will lose their jobs or the company will go bust if they don't act. They are more motivated by the negative consequences of not doing things, than by the positive consequences of doing them.

The tricky thing is that we tend to motivate others in the way we want to be motivated. This is fine when their motivation strategy is similar to yours. It can be a difficulty when it isn't.

When working with clients, identify their motivation strategy. Ask them how they motivate their staff, or how they motivate themselves to do things they need to.

If they "move towards the positive", then think of the carrot dangling in front of the donkey. What can you promise them will happen if they do this intervention? What can you promise them that you can do for them, rather than any of your competition? What are the benefits of using you to do the work?

On the other hand, if they "move away from the negative", then tell them about clients you knew who delayed doing the project until it was too late. Talk about recent failures in the media who didn't take heed of the warning signals. Words like warning, premonition, and avoiding problems work for this type of client. Think of the stick which makes the donkey move when it doesn't want to. That's what these clients need (but don't hit them with it, just list the consequences of not doing so!). Tell them what things they will avoid if they use you rather than your competitors, without necessarily running down your competitors. List the reasons why using you will avoid more problems than if you do them.

Jane understood the move away and move towards motivation strategy, and found them really simple to use when there was only one client to work with. When it got to working with a board presentation, with 6 - 8 people in the audience, and very little time to get to know the individuals, let alone to check out their individual motivation strategies, she decided she's have to get smarter.

In her presentation to the board of a major client, she took time to set the outcomes of the project as positive. She described them moving towards the board's inspiring vision, and moving away from the fate of some of their competitors in the recent past - with share prices plummeting, take-overs imminent and general mayhem. The graphs from her analysis showed what happened on the factory floor when the client did things right, and projected what could happen when they stuffed up. She showed both sides of the equation.

She completed her presentation with these words. "I know that other consultants will present to you over the next few days. I would ask you, as they present, to recognise the consequences of not checking out their pedigree. Here are some referees for my consultancy, who will be happy to vouch for the success of the projects I have done with them. When you check out my own experience, both theoretical and practical, you will see how effective I can be, and how much I can work with you to reach your vision". She then displayed the names of her referees, all three of whom she knew were personally known to some of the board members.

Cindy Tonkin can help you improve how you work with clients. Coaching by phone, email or in person. Public Training in Sydney.

Email Cindy for information.

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