Improve Your Client Communications

Solid communication with clients is one of the keys to a successful, long-term working relationship. When communications are strained, everything feels difficult. Sometimes, it’s not easy to know what the trouble is, and you might be tempted to place blame on the other person. Whatever the cause, with just a few adjustments, you can get most client relationships back on track and the communication flowing smoothly once again.

In this episode of the RocketGirl Show, we're going to talk about how to improve your client communication.

TRANSCRIPT 

I'm Belinda Sandor, also known as RocketGirl. Today we're going to talk about improving client communication.

When you're a Virtual Assistant, how we communicate with clients is very important and sometimes when communication is not going well, it's easy to blame the other person. But today I want to give you some tips on how to make sure that you're doing the best ever job at communicating. Here are four things that I want to talk about.

The first one is I want you to watch your language and what I mean by that is let's say you're in a conversation and you're talking to your client and they say, "I'd like to produce a webinar or an event." And all of a sudden you start talking about sales pages, download pages, all kinds of jargon, and they are just glazing over. They have no idea what you're talking about, so you want to make sure that you are using everyday kind of language to explain something. So instead of a thank you page, you can say, "Let's design a page that the person who signs up sees after they sign up. We call that a thank you page." So you can really explain it and you want to make sure that you're not making any assumptions, right? You're not making any assumptions about what they know because they might be shy about telling you and you'll just leave them in the dust. So language is important. Okay.

The speed of your speech. Now, I talk fast. I am absolutely a fast talker. Sometimes I need to slow down the speed of my speech so that my client can digest what I'm saying. When it's an exciting project, I talk even faster. So really think about slowing down the speed of your speech. And it might sound like right now it sounds like I'm speaking very slowly. Probably I'm not. Probably. I'm speaking at a normal rate of speech for someone to understand me. So be sure to slow down the speed of your speech. Okay.

Now the next thing is I want you to reread all your communications. After I write an email to a client about a project, I reread it and I try to fill in more words. So, for example, I might say the word it or the thing or something very vague and it's much better instead of it. You can write the email we send out. Don't assume that they can fill the words in that are in your head. So be sure to reread all written communications and try to make it as descriptive as possible. Think about it. You could say, click the button at the top of your screen, or you could say, well, let me rephrase that- Click the submit button. Or you could say, click the submit button in the lower left-hand portion of your screen. It's blue, like, see the difference there? So make sure you're doing that.

And then the last thing I want to talk about today is I want you to ask yourself if it's time to stop talking. Okay, now all of you know that I'm a big stop talking fan. You know, we have #stoptalking. So think about when you're describing something. Do they need to know more? Do you need to go deeper? A client could say, "can you help me organize my calendar?" And you can say, "yes, I would be happy to", or you could say "I did that a few years ago with someone and it's been a while but I think I could figure out how to do that." "And what platform are you using?" And just go on and on. You just want to stop talking? Yes, I'd be happy to do that. Okay, you might have questions but think about when is the right time to ask them and how many do you really need the answer to because again we want to make sure that we're being clear, direct, and not overwhelming our clients.

So when there's a strain and communication know that your client feels a too. So make sure that you take your time and really think about how you're showing up how you're communicating with your client to make that a stronger relationship. Awesome.

Okay, now if you are watching on YouTube, I'd love for you to click the subscribe button right now so you'll be notified every time we go live and I want to invite you over to my free online classroom. It's called The Virtual Assistant Connection. You just type The Virtual Assistant Connection in the search bar at the top of Facebook and then click the join button. Come on in. We have a community of almost 19000 actually over 19000 members. I'd love to welcome you. We have an amazing amount of trainings, and videos, communication, and most important a lovely community. I'd love to have you join us.

So until next time, I'm Belinda Sandor, also known as RocketGirl, signing off. Bye.