If you want to achieve great results understanding the values of
others makes a huge difference to you meeting their needs and if in
business your bottom line. Yesterday I ran a very enjoyable
workshop for a group of GP Trainers on mentoring and NLP. It does
not matter what profession you are in, we are all dealing with
people and the more understanding we can have of human behaviour
the more effectively we can influence them to achieve the right
results for both parties.
A key question that proved thought provoking for use with patients
and in mentoring GP's is one we should all have in our toolbox.
This is 'What is important to you'? Why? Because people have values
which represent what is important to them relating to work, career,
suppliers, service, health etc. By asking this question, listening
and prioritising the answers we receive some very helpful
information. Recently a client said to me 'that is amazing you have
summarised exactly what I need'. All I had done was tailored my
response based on their answers to this simple question.
But can it deliver tangible financial results? This question has
generated clients several £m's of new business and in January
this included one retaining a £0.75m contract. When called by
one of their clients to say 'I am moving the business away from
you' instead of telling them why they should not move it away they
remembered our collaborative selling workshop. They asked the
question' What is important to you about your supplier'? The client
responded and then said 'I can't leave you for a bit more
commission can I? Because I have just described my ideal supplier
and actually it is now clear to me that is you!'