Helping Clients Learn Through Parables

In the simplest of terms there are three stages at which it is important to educate clients.

Prospective Clients: At this point, your potential clients may, or may not, have recognized that:

1. they have an issue that can be resolved; and

2. you can help them address and resolve their issue.

Regardless of whether or not potential clients have recognized they have a resolvable issue: the purpose of your client education is to help them understand that when they are ready to address their issue, you are the right person to help them.

Active Clients: Very often, clients who are receiving the benefits of our service, do not always recognize the value that they are also receiving. As a result, the risk is that they undervalue your help or worse dismiss it as something anyone could do.

At this stage, effective education will help clients understand and appreciate the value of the benefits that they are receiving.

Relationship Maintenance: Post-engagement education helps clients remember the value that they received from your service. Not only will this encourage clients to return for repeat business, it will also increase their willingness to recommend you to others and refer others to you.

Given the importance of client education, what is the best way to help clients learn what you want them to know?

Life Is Like a Cup of Coffee

Parables can also play an important role in your story.

A parable is a figure of speech, which presents a short story, typically with a moral lesson at the end.

Here is an example of a parable:

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups — porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite — telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice-looking expensive cups have been taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive, and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups. And then you began eyeing each other’s cups.

Now consider this: Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of life we live.

Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee. Savor the coffee, not the cups! The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything. Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly.

The Benefits of Parables

From educational perspective, telling a story is much more effective than simply preaching or lecturing the lesson.

Which is more memorable and longer lasting: the 269-word story about coffee cups …or the 16-word statement: The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything.

But don’t just take my word for it.

Think about your own life experiences: you too will find little parables that can help tell the story of the attractive character you really are.

This content is based upon Lesson 6 of the video course How Personal Branding Generates More New Business

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