What Makes A Great Client?
Today I am going to speak about what makes a great client because I have been so lucky to work with quite of few of them lately. I bring this up because I realize that there are many people who read these posts who are indeed in the service of helping others with their own abilities and yet, sometimes get to believe that so long as someone is breathing and willing to pay their fee, that they ought to be signed on. This most certainly is NOT the case at all. So, I am going to share with you what allows you to know that you have your ideal client in the examples that I am going to give to you to demonstrate what you need to be looking for other than a person's willingness to pay your fee during your free consultation call - this is the reason to take the time for the free consultation call!
I had a session with one of my clients last week. The first thing to appreciate was that he was on time and ready to go. The second thing was that he was open to speaking about the issues that came up for him during the week - the frustrating situation with his mom, and the manner in which he used the techniques that I gave him to better deal with her. It worked well enough to allow him some emotional space instead of getting all caught up in her projections onto him - this was something that was a huge shift for him because, well, one needs to have these tools to stop being triggered. He ended the session by letting me know that he always feels better after our sessions. This is certainly one of the main objectives that I have for all of my clients - to leave each session feeling much 'lighter and brighter' than when it began.
I had another session with a female client of mine who again was right on time. She needed to get her computer set up so that I could see her as she wasn't quite ready for the session but was available to let me know that she was on the other side of the connection. Always, a good start. Second, we went through her last week and she was feeling very good about the different frames that we had worked on in terms of her being able to calmly though assertively state her needs. This was something that she wasn't doing before which led to all sorts of mind-reading of a negative sort as to what the other person was feeling about her. Interestingly enough most of her mind reads she found had nothing to do with the reality - the reason we must speak up before we allow our minds to come up with all sorts of fiction leading us to feel uncomfortable for no reason at all. So, that was great to hear.
Next, we spoke of what the next steps were for her to create her future the way she wants it. This was her whole reason for employing me - for her to overcome the emotional issues that were getting in the way of her really moving forward with her business. So, I did Tad James's technique of putting one's goal right into one's timeline. When we were done with that fun technique she said that there was another piece that she would like me to do next week to put another goal in her future after she does the homework I gave her. She is to write out what she would like her business to be in terms of hours worked, type of clients, time off, integrating time with her family and her husband (for couples' time), and the time off that she would like during the year to do what she would like to do with her husband, her family, and for herself. That is a fun exercise to do - mapping out one's future desired life. What a great goal to put in her future...
What I want you to realize is that you need to have clients who respect your time. It is on them to let you know if they cannot make the appointment well in advance so that it can be rescheduled as occurred the previous week with the client above simply because there was a contractor that was coming to the house and the fact that her kids were going to be present. She wanted it to work out, but it was just not going to - so the thought was in the right place - life happens and we practitioners need to be able and willing to roll with it. I am totally against harsh rules with appointments have found that many times when my clients rescheduled it actually worked out better for me allowing me to take part in something that was going on that I did not know about before the appointment was made. Admittedly, there have been times when I have asked my clients to reschedule for events or personal things that I needed to take care of as well. So, let's be reasonable instead of having these false beliefs that we are perfect beings and realizing where we need to be accountable to others as well for the services they render to us.
Notice that each of my clients brought up the things that occurred over the week so that we could check-in and see how the 'homework' was completed when it came to the interactions that needed to be done anyway. They each gave me the feedback and from there we were able to go on to the next segment of work along their trajectory of both healing and building their business. The first client has a business that he is growing so that part of his life is just fine - it is his personal life that needed to be addressed. In the second case, it was both areas of life as she and her husband are in transition regarding both of their careers along with a move to a different area of the country - this is a lot for her and her family to acclimate to all at once.
Bad clients are those who are never on time for their appointments or reschedule endlessly. The worst is the 'no call, no shows.' They are a total waste of time and emotional energy and demonstrating that they are not ready to do the work for whatever reasons, rationalizations, or excuses they are able to make.
My job before even hiring the client is to do my best to make sure that my prospective clients are 'at cause' for the results that they are getting in their lives and therefore 'at cause' for the shifts and changes for the better that they can make through our work together. I usually give them an 'ordeal' to do before I even set up the first appointment and take any money for them to demonstrate that they are willing to do what I am telling them to do. Because if they are unwilling to do it before we begin, the likelihood of them following through after they pay is already a foregone conclusion. This is one of the techniques that Tad James used for all of his prospective clients to 'get them at cause for their own results.' I also let all my prospective clients know that there most definitely will be homework to do based on what comes up during the session. Their unconscious mind will tell us exactly what needs to be handled next, and some of it may feel very emotionally difficult to be done and it still needs to be done - the hard conversations that one has put off for example. If they are unwilling to do the homework, they would be doing us both a favor to pass on this opportunity.
Because this is the fact of doing deep inner work - there will be some very uncomfortable pieces that will need to be accomplished in order to move on with one's life in a much healthier and productive manner in the great majority of my client base. I let them know upfront that my work is about quick transformation so there is no place for endless whining about their circumstances. They get to tell me their story exactly once and then the work to clear all the negative events and limiting beliefs is done. Once all that is cleared out we have a very nice baseline to create their future the way they want it - because there is now nothing emotional holding them back. However, for this to work, one has to have a compelling future that is more important to them than holding onto the secondary gain that their problem has hung around to give them. Because there ALWAYS is a secondary gain - we in NLP call it the 'purpose' of the problem which is different than the 'cause' of the problem which relates to the very first negative event that had the client's unconscious mind create the now no longer necessary protection from the time of the first negative event.
You see, in about 95-97% of my client base, the problems can be rid of fairly quickly compared to the conventional mental health style of delivery because we are able to access that part of the mind that created all the negative thoughts, limiting beliefs, and harmful behaviors through the use of hypnosis and NLP (really just another form of hypnosis since we are bypassing the reasoning, rationalizing, judgment creating part of the mind -the prefrontal cortex and heading right into the emotional mind, that of the amygdala where there is no reasoning, rationalization, or judgment making the work oh so much easier and quicker to do.
But, there is another level that many hypnotists and NLP practitioners never work with which is too bad, and that is the higher consciousness because it is in the higher consciousness, where we are able to get the protective mechanism of the unconscious mind out of the way to do the deep more emotionally difficult work even more quickly.
Because, one who is done being sick or being stuck wants to regain their life as soon as possible - and it is these folks who are my clients - the ones who are sick of speaking about the same old crap repeatedly, maybe understanding why things happened the way they did, yet still unable to get rid of the problem and are NOW excited to know that the way has been found.
Learning: When one is in practice helping others there are things that one has to have in place to make sure that there is a great fit between you and your prospect or you may hire on a client (and you are hiring them on because you need to be screening out those who are not a good fit for your scope of care or your practitioner personality). Great clients are those who are excited to work with you and truly want to be done with whatever is causing them distress enough to hire you in the first place.
A commitment needs to make for themselves with themselves to do the work to its conclusion or there is no need for them to sign up in the first place which is why I have programs for my clients - I never really know how long it will take a certain client to complete the program, but I do have a base of knowledge in what the 'norm' is for certain problems had been in practice for almost 2 decades at this point. This is something one learns over time. And frankly, there will be times when a client clears their stuff really quickly and other times when it takes longer than average and that is fine - it all balances out in the end. The main thing is to know why the prospective client is either a great fit or a bad fit for you and to make your decision based on that information alone. Or you may find yourself hating the work you are doing, feeling used and abused by your clients and all they were doing was being themselves. We need to ALWAYS REMEMBER that the only one who is responsible for the clients in our practices are we the practitioner - the healer.
If you are a healer or a person who would like to learn how to integrate hypnosis and NLP into your work, by all means, direct message me and tell me a bit about what is going on. Give me a few dates, times, and your time zone so we can set up a free 45-minute Chaos to Clarity Conversation. As you can see from the post, I am not here to sell you anything at all. But, I am here for you to sell yourself if you are the 'right fit' for the work that I do. There's a huge difference between those two things. I look forward to meeting you and seeing what majick we can create together to create your future the way you want it.