A friend who has a special skill in baking decided not to go after her passion because she feels she does not have the ability to communicate properly, I know very well that she is not too good when it comes to effective communication, she only feels comfortable around very few people which includes her Mum, and myself. She happens to be an only child and communicating with anyone outside her Mum and myself is always a No for her, sometimes when we are together, and she is supposed to talk to someone, she usually looks for a way to push the responsibility to me.
I learnt some years ago that conversation could be handled in three different ways:
- The first way is to, avoid the conversation totally.
- The second way is to, face the conversation and handle it appropriately.
- The third one is to, face the conversation and end up with a terrible result in handling them.
Walking away from conversations you are not interested in may seem like a cool thing to do, but if you try that as a business person to your customer or your potential customer, it is very disastrous I tell you. I understand that there are might be various reasons why you just want to walk out of those conversations and because I agree with you, I will want to think in your direction for a moment.
- Maybe you are bored and the conversation is becoming unnecessarily long and annoying.
- You might have had a very stressful day and someone just brings up that annoying topic.
- You may be extremely tired, and you were on your way to get a good sleep.
With either of these annoying problems, the first thing to remember is that, the person you are about to have a conversation with, does not know anything going on in your head or mind, there are only going to dwell upon your reaction and this means you cannot afford to screw things up.
Never give a customer the impression of a bad attitude, it is one of the habits to learn and maintain while handling customer relationships, never give a customer an impression of how long or how annoying the conversation is, after picking up the important points in the conversation, you could politely tell the customer about the way you feel at the moment, which is how tired you are and why you need to retire to get a good rest, I guess every good thinking person should also understand that and give you space to rest.
Walk on your emotions, sometimes you may be down and not just in the right frame of mind to speak, you know trying to talk at that point may make you say the wrong things, it is very necessary to know when to speak and when to remain silent.
It is a good idea for entrepreneurs to always improve on their communication skills and customer relations, there is never an amount of knowledge that is either enough or that is wasted, so it is good to continue improving.