Like other parts of listening, understanding and capturing your client’s message requires skills. Mental and physical skills.

In our last episode of The Presentation Lounge, we looked at how to keep a state of mental neutrality. In this episode, we’ll explore how to interact with your client - and be sure you know what they want.

I know you already have the knack for presenting to your clients. But to do what top presenters do, you need to develop new skills.

The skills of listening, interacting and taking notes while your client speaks. The skill of making sense of priorities, even when your client is ‘all over the map.’ The skill of organizing your client’s main ideas and capturing their message briefly.

The skill of feeding these main points back to them so it is accurate, brief and clear.

Use these 3 tips to make it easier to capture the key message your client wants to convey:

Tip One. Take Clear Notes
Write down your client’s main points. Organize them in order of priority. Fill in details under the main headings. Jot down summary notes to use when you need to play back to your client.

Tip Two: Look for Big Picture
Your client is most likely immersed in detail. They are overflowing with statistics and data about their problem and their business. You have to look for the big picture. You don’t want to get lost in the woods and miss the big idea.

Tip Three: Ask New Questions
To capture your client’s key message, you need a variety of questions. Your questions will likely fall into three categories: building, clarifying, and confirming.

Building questions follow up on the ideas of your client. Clarifying questions aim at details and focus.
Confirming questions help you build understanding and avoid dangerous detours.

As you do this, you can interact with the client. Make sure you ‘have it right.’ Extract their key points. Get verbal agreement. Notice non-verbal confirmation. Take steps to confirm that you have heard accurately and completely.

All these steps show that you care about your client and are committed to finding the best solution. You are making their needs and priorities most important.

If you think about it, this is the cornerstone of a trusting relationship with your clients. You are listening with an open mind - and you are actively interacting to confirm you understand.

This is how elite sales professionals guarantee outstanding results.

Tagged as: Aim, Big Idea, Big Picture, Clarifying Questions, Focus, Headings, Interact, Jot Down, Knack, Map, Mental Neutrality, Priorities, Priority, Statistics, Variety, Verbal Agreement, Verbal Confirmation