THE MOST IMPORTANT THING YOU CAN DO IS TO LISTEN TO YOUR CLIENT!!! I MEAN REALLY LISTEN TO THEM!!!

PART I OF II...

So many of us are in the service business and our jobs are to accomplish the goals that the client wants or think they want. In the last article I wrote, it was more like a novel, I mentioned how important it was to listen to your client because THE CLIENT ALWAYS COMES FIRST!!! But too many of us are too interested in what we want to tell the client and what we want to SELL to the client and how much we are going to make from dealing with the transaction that we never really hear the client.

We are so interested in thinking about what we want to say that the clients’ words are just noise to us. I’ve seen it in meetings before more than just a few times that the professional is so absorbed in his or her own thoughts that he or she is not listening to what the client is saying. And that is important because our jobs are to accomplish the goals of the client.

Communication is difficult enough and not listening to them just complicates the process.

The first time you ask the client what he or she wants you are going to get an answer. The client will, in most cases, be lying to you and to themselves because they probably don’t know what they want, or they cannot express what they want in words. Years ago, when my children were very young, my wife and I took a class in “Active Listening”. The class could be used in dealing with our children or it could be used in business listening to our clients.

A story that exemplifies the concept of listening in the proper way happened to me, also, a long time ago. I keep saying a long time ago because I am 75 years old and have been working in accounting and real estate since 1965 and I am a very young, very active, very passionate, very knowledgeable, and very experienced professional.

I had a client who could not have been a better client or person. She was a lady in her forties who had a very responsible position. She worked for this small hamburger company, called McDonald's, and she was responsible for the marketing of the franchisees from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean. She lived in Southern California in a city named Long Beach. Long Beach had a system of canals like Venice, Italy and she built a home on one of these waterways. It was a beautiful house that cost her a lot of money to build.

My name is Paul Levine, and I am a Commercial Realtor, a Real Estate Advisor and I was a Practicing Certified Public Accountant for over 50 years, but I am now retired from accounting. But I still take continuing income tax education classes given to CPAs, not realtors, to keep up with the income tax laws because it’s also my job to work with your CPA and save you income taxes. You can call me at (818) 298 – 4000 after 10 AM Pacific Time Monday through Friday and on the weekends if necessary. You can also send an email to me at [email protected] and I will always try to get back to you in a timely manner.