The Importance of Stating Your Intention

People are inherently distrusting of other people that they do not know very well, generally speaking, and have not validated as credible. Furthermore, people are even distrusting of people they know and love, until those people’s claims have been validated.

If you are in business and dealing with customers, this may be simply because, as Jerry Seinfeld says, “Strangers have a bad reputation.”

If you are collaborating with co-workers, friends and partners and meeting resistance, this could be because they have had bad experiences in the past with other people close to them who mistreated them. They are now psychologically hung up on those past events.

One harmful mistake that I see a lot of people making in the business world, especially in B2B relationships, is not stating their intention upfront. Instead, a company representative will immediately start gathering the information they think they need to make something happen.

This could happen during prospecting, recruiting people into a company, forging a partnership, developing future leaders or company team members, or in a sales process with a customer.

What happens when somebody with unknown intentions starts asking you a bunch of questions, some of them a bit personal and/or revealing? You likely become a little bit defensive, a bit closed off, and auspicious of what web you are being weaved into.

If you are a salesperson and prospecting with a new customer in a company you have not done business with, and you start asking 20 questions without letting them know what you want, the buyer will not hesitate to flat out avoid answering your questions, give you ‘non-answers’, or, worse, lie and/or misrepresent themselves and their company.

Who’s fault is that? Is it the customer’s? Or is it because of the salesperson who forced them into an uncomfortable interaction, where the customer had to either be untruthful or else lose face? Many customers are more likely to misrepresent themselves than lose valuable face.

If instead you let people know exactly what you want and why you are doing it, their reaction tends to be very different. By laying your cards on the table, people relax and open up communication. By taking other people out of mystery with what you want, they may even make an effort to help you, especially if your intentions can actually help them. Now they can actually know what those intentions are and collaborate with you intelligently. Otherwise, it’s just an interrogation exercise with an unwilling captive.

What could you do to be more transparent and open about your intentions with your customers, partners and other relationships, and how many more opportunities could that open up for you? 

Yrs. truly,

Dave Escamilla