You Are My Sunshine - who is your ideal customer?

This Week's Edition

• Introduction
• The Article - who is your Ideal Customer?
• Tactic of the Week - How to handle criticism
• Non sequitur of the week - a one off additional and pretty irrelevant whinge

Introduction

Excuse my language, but bloody La Ni?a (* see Non Sequitur of the week below)

It's raining - still - here in Sydney thanks to a La Ni?a event that seems to have lasted for months. Because it has. It's been so wet that Susan (my wife) and I went to Queensland for 8 days but even there it was damp, if warm.

The newsletter is a bit different this week. I'd planned to write about Ideal Customer Profiles followed by a short Tactic of the Week. But I wrote myself down a corridoor about Ideal Customers (trying to be too clever) so I'm throwing that bit away and starting again.

In addition Tactic of the Week turned out be rather long - although very useful (in my opinion). It's about how to handle criticism.

Please don't criticise me for this :-)

If you enjoy this can you please "like" it & share it on LinkedIn so other people can see it and (hopefully) subscribe. And as always I'll respond to any comments or questions.

PS The photo was taken near Hart Village in County Durham.

The Article - who is your Ideal Customer?

This is a very important topic. So important I want to get it right. And I screwed up writing it so I'm going to start again.

It will be here next week, I promise. Meanwile (drum roll)...

Tactic of the week - How to handle criticism

If you're in sales, or if you're a manager, or a senior executive - in fact if you're alive - people are going to criticise you. How you handle that criticism can make a major difference in sales, in business & in life.

Our first instinct when we're criticised is instinctive. Duh! We see criticism as a threat and unless we have a strategy to handle criticism we tend to react the same way as we do when we're physically threatened, We automatically go into one of the four "F"s - automatic responses from our reptilian brain, which hasn't changed much since we were threatened by sabre toothed tigers. .

The four "F"s.

You've heard of the fight and flight responses of course - but there are actually four "F" responses we use when we're threatened.

Fight - hit back hard. This is many people's instinctive response. It might work if you're being threatened by a sabre tooth tiger (but probably won't) but it is much less effective when the person criticising/threatening you is a customer, prospect or your boss.

Flight - run away. Good for tigers but less so when we need to resolve a situation.

Freeze - some people just freeze when threatened. They literally can't move, think or know what to do. If you freeze & play dead when a grizzly is approaching this can be useful. Less so in the middle of a conversation. As opposed to "pause" when you take time to consider your response - see below.

Fawn - is when we roll over submissively and admit defeat - like a puppy when it's threatened by a bigger dog. This is less recognised as an instinctive reaction but it's quite common. The problem with this in sales or business (or life) it that it locks us into being submissive. That's not a good role in sales or business. Or life.

Most of us have an unconscious preference for one or more of those automatic reactions.

So what DO we do?

If someone criticises you, the first thing to do is to break your instinctive pattern. By understanding the four responses above and recognising what your automatic pattern is you can begin to respond rather than react.

The first thing to do is Pause. This is different to freezing in that you use the time to think about your response. This is very easy to do when you're responding to a written criticism in an email or text. It takes a bit more practice in a conversation but it's still possible, especially if you become comfortable with silence (which will be in a later tactic of the week).

Then ask yourself a question - Is this criticism valid? Sometimes people criticise us and we deserve it. At least, I know I do.

If it is a valid criticism we have a few choices. We can:

Ignore it - perhaps you don't care. If someone says to me "Steve, you're short, bald, ugly & obnoxious" that's probably pretty valid. But if I have no regard for that person's opinion, or if they're even shorter & uglier, I may just let it wash over me.

Own it - There's a great scene in the movie "Pride", which is about the gay community in London supporting South Wales miners during the UK miners' strike in the 80s (excellent movie, I highly recommend it). It goes like this.

Bromley: "They called us perverts."

Mark: "Bromley, it's time for an important part of your education. Hands up, in this room, if you've ever been called a name like that."

[all the guys raise their hands]?

Mark: "Now, there is a long and honorable tradition in the gay community & it's stood us in good stead for a very long time. When somebody calls you a name.... am I right Jonathan?

Jonathon: "Dead right."

Mark: "You take it and own it."

When I say I'm short, bald, ugly & obnoxious I'm owning those things. Which means anyone who tries to get to me by using them against me has no chance of upsetting me.

Apologise - There's a third possibility. Someone criticises you, you think about it and decide that they're right to criticise you and that you're in the wrong. You care about it and you care about them.

So apologise. But do it sincerely and properly. Don't do the politician's non-apology "I'm sorry if anyone is offended." That's a cowardly cop-out. Make it meaningful and from the heart.

A little while ago I tweeted something I thought was supportive of someone who was in the public eye and I tagged her. Her response was "What!!!".

I realised my attempt at humorous support had backfired and could easily be taken the wrong way. So I quickly apologised. I tweeted "I'm so sorry. I'd intended to support you but having looked at it again I can see you may be offended and the tweet could be misconstrued. I apologise unreservedly and I will delete the tweet immediately." Which I did and she graciously accepted my apology.

The interesting thing is that people aren't used to receiving genuine and unreserved apologies and you'll get a lot of kudos when you give one.

When I managed a team of support people and a help desk, if a customer complained because someone made a mistake I took responsibility for it. A few times my boss would ask "whose fault was it" and my response was always "It was my fault. It's my team, my fault and I'll fix it."

He never pursued it further. When you take responsibility and admit fault it often takes the wind out of people's sails because it's so unusual.

What if it isn't a valid criticism? What if the criticism is plain wrong. Again you have choices.

Steps 1 & 2 are the same - pause and ask yourself "is this valid?" If the answer is no, then the question is why are they criticising you? Do they know it's wrong and they're just trying to get the upper hand or upset you? Or are they working off their mistaken assumptions? Or something else.

At this stage you may not have enough information - so ask. By doing that you're turning a potential confrontation into a conversation. If you're in sales, this is a kind of discovery conversation - you're trying to discover the reason they're criticising you incorrectly/unfairly.

One way I do this is to ask "I'm not sure that's correct, can I ask why you believe that?"

Of course, if you don't care what they think or if you want to annoy them you can do it very elegantly. I'm reasonably active on Twitter & I get abused by quite a few trolls. My response to being called names is usually to say "thank you". It really upsets them. And usually shuts them up.

What NOT to do when you're criticised

Don't:

• React without thinking
• Hit back (if you care about the relationship)
• Make excuses
• Give mealy mouthed apologies
• Respond to an email or text without thinking long and hard and asking yourself "what will the other person think or do when they read this?"

This process works. It works well. Does it mean I don't react badly when I'm criticised?

No, not always. I'm human. (Although that has been questioned)

But 90% of the time I handle criticism elegantly and without being upset or getting others upset.

Non sequitur of the week

The little squiggle on the ? of La Ni?a means you pronounce it as "ny". So La Ni?a is pronounced "La Ninya", not "La Neena". Just as jalape?o is pronounced "Ha-la-penyo"

This reminds me of another thing, so this is a double non sequitur.

I've lost count of the number ot times I've been corrected when I pronounce the word Mo?t - as in Mo?t & Chandon.

Just because Freddy Mercury sang about "Mo-ey" in "Killer Queen" doesn't mean that's how you pronounce it. In fact Mo?t is a Dutch name - the champagne house was founded by Claude Mo?t in 1683. The two little dots on the "e" are an indication.

The correct pronunciation of Mo?t is "Mo-wett". If you go to the Mo?t & Chandon cellars at 20 Ave de Champagne, Epernay, they will tell you it's like grass - you don't Mo-ey the lawn, you Mow-ett.

And yet people who think they know French keep correcting me. Grrr.

So if you ever buy me a glass of champagne - and I hope you will one day - don't correct my pronunciation. Although I prefer Veuve or Mumm.