Dealing with and using feedback

Yesterday I was on LinkedIn and a girl on there who I follow had put out a video that had weird sound quality. This person produces videos for other companies and should really know better than to put out her own video with strange sound. Ironically the theme of the video is about producing high quality videos for your brand.

I commented on the video to say the sound quality was weird. She responded in quite a negative way giving a weak justification for it, then inviting me to upload my own video so I can be judged. Someone else commented quite a rude remark about the sound quality, soon after the post was taken down and she had blocked me.I live quite a public life to promote my business and work. I also have run large Meetup groups and other events where I actively encouraged feedback which could be public or anonymous. By having honest and real feedback I was able to create a Meetup Group that would go on to be the highest rated in Europe.

In the self-development world there is a notion of “How not to give a **** about what other people think of you” which in my opinion is just thick. This kind of attitude creates horrible people who are rude, arrogant and have the inability to grow and develop. You should care about what people think of you and your service, but I make sure I put feedback through a few filters.

Whenever I get criticism/negative feedback/complaints etc, I think about the following:

• Who is giving me this feedback?
• Why are they giving it, whose benefit is it for?
• What can I take from it?

Who is this person? Are they doing better than me in what I am trying to achieve? Do they actually spend any money with me? Are they an authority in this subject. Generally the person who are giving feedback are not in a position to do so. If they are a client, then that is fair enough, however this is often due to miscommunication and lack of preparation on my part.

Why are they giving it? Feedback is often for the benefit of the sender, not the recipient. Once when I was running an event, a chap came up to me and said he didn’t like the way I was sending out emails to promote the meetups. At the time he was running a monthly event with 10-12 attendees. I was running 3 sold out events per week for 60 at each. I did what I had to do, I thanked him. He was happy that he had got one over on me, I carried on what I was doing. We both won that day.

What can I take from it? Feedback is vital to grow your business and reputation. When I first got into Hypnotherapy I shadowed several Hypnotherapists in Manchester and I asked them how often they follow up with their clients? Most of them said they didn’t. One said to me that if they contacted their clients and the results hadn’t stuck, then they might want a refund. This is bizarre to me, surely something not working is worse as they will tell people. If I had contacted them to find out why I could do something about it.

I have developed my IEMT Practitioner Training over many years. I started off running it from a pub function room to mainly the people who came to my meetup group. It was only when someone emailed me to say that they were put off due to the location that I moved it to a therapy centre. He was a Psychotherapist and he didn’t consider a pub to be a suitable venue for a therapy training. As soon as I moved venue, I started to attract a high quality of attendee.

Other feedback included:

• That people were overwhelmed by the amount of content on the course and in the manual. Now I send the manual, videos and a prep pack a week in advance so people can prepare fully for the training.
• That there wasn’t enough time to practice. Now at least 40-50% of the course is dedicated to attendees using the skills.
• People felt lost afterwards. Now I host a monthly coaching session and weekly Q&A’s and have active WhatsApp groups and a FB community.
• People were not able to pay all at once, so I introduced interest free payment plans.
• That the course was too complex, so I broke everything down into step-by-step modules and create session flow charts.

I am very confident in the service I provide and I am always open to feedback and making it better. I am currently in the process of digitising the entire course and creating membership areas for all the past coaching sessions. These were the requests of past attendees.

All in all, feedback is great. If you are scared to get feedback about your service then you know deep down that what you are providing isn’t high enough quality. Feedback can be brutal, it can hurt and often it is just rude. Remember, that only take advice from those who are in a position to deliver it, if it is in your best interest and not theirs, and you can actually take action on it.

Please feel free to read my own extensive feedback on Trustpilot https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/iemtacademy.com

Enjoy the rest of your weekend

Matt