Training Workshop

Client Relations

Presented by:

Elaine Oxamendi Vicet&

Rosette Chisholm Salazar

Introductory Activity

• Do you know who’s in or on your team?

• Who are our clients?

• How well do you know the people you work with?

• Does it matter?

Understanding Client Relations

Client relations is the art of managing a business relationship with key stakeholders. It creates a win-win for those who have much to lose and everything to gain.

• What do you have to gain?

• What do you have to lose?

How do we build relationships ?

• Penetration…creating in roads, making yourself vulnerable. Simply getting to know someone. (activity… say something about yourself that they would not know)

• Retention…maintaining that which matters. Understanding that we all matter.

• New relationships…Forgo, forget it. Too hard.

Understanding Communication&

Building Client Relationships

Know what you want to say

Know to whom it is said

Know how you would like that thing, said to you

B.T.IP.

What or who is a B.T.IP?

How do I build anything or even broker conversation or communicate?

Building Effective Client Relationships Through

Effective Communication Communication is any process in which people share information,

ideas, and feelings. It uses:• verbal communication, word choice• written form• body language• personal mannerisms• and style – anything that adds meaning to a message.

• Feelings… often misunderstood. Mood & culture driven. How we feel impacts how we communicate.

Effective Communication

Communicating effectively, more broadly,

stems from an overall understanding that people are simultaneously different and similar.

Listening

• Hearing is one’s physical ability to perceive sounds;

• Listening …the process of receiving, constructing meaning from and responding to spoken and/or nonverbal messages

Let us listen…what do hear? Shh! Quiet…what do

you hear?

Activities

• The numbers game

• Right foot, right hand

Japanese symbol for ‘to listen’

Improving Listening • Control Distractions

• Perceptions aren’t real

• Ask Questions

• Suspend Prejudgements

• Paraphrase

Activity

It is easier to say unpleasant things but we feel better when we say nice things.

Try saying something nice.

Tunnel of Empowerment!

Disconfirming responses

• Impervious Response : One speaker fails to acknowledge, even minimally, another speaker’s communicative attempt

• Interrupting response: One speaker cuts another speaker short while the other is still speaking.

• Irrelevant response: Speaker responds in a way that seems unrelated to what the other has been saying or introduces a new topic

Confirming Responses

• Direct Acknowledgement: Speaker acknowledges another person’s communication and reacts to it directly and verbally.

• Supportive Response: A speaker expresses understanding of another person or tries to reassure or make the other feel better.

• Clarifying Response: A speaker tries to clarify another person’s message or feelings, by requesting more info, encouraging other to say more, repeating to confirm understanding

How?

Discussion, how does confirming or disconfirming interfere with building a good client relationship or effective communicating?

Colour Me

Building client relationships takes a certain understanding:• Understanding the subject• Understanding why we doing what we do• Understanding how we fit. ‘The big picture’• Caring (I appreciate your feelings)• Sharing (we matter, everyone matters )• Working as a team. (I add value, I am not just a cog)

Colour me…”let’s do this!”

Building a Communication Plan

Let us talk about it.

What should it look like?

What should be included in it?

Who should be in charge of making it work?

The Communication Plan (CP)

A communication plan has:Objectives: It tells us what is to be accomplished.

Provides us with strategies:It provides the how for accomplishing the stated examples.

It flows and it is transparent.

Communication Plan (CP)• What works well and what doesn’t, with your current way of

communicating? And how does it affect your client relationship?

• Define audiences, those who are affected. What is unique or common to them?

• Define objectives, what should we be working towards?

• What resources do we have to satisfy the objectives?

• What is the schedule and who is aware of it?

• How am I or the CP to be evaluated?

• Should my performance review be adversely or positively affected based on my communication and client relationships?

Communication Plan cont’d

Your audiences:What form will communication take, formal or informal? What is appropriate language, format? Important is the, ‘to whom’ the message is to addressed.Create a schedule:How and when should the objectives be accomplished.Evaluation:How and who will measure the outcomes.

Let us make it relevant.

Putting The Pieces Together

Let us figure out the puzzle.

Discussion.

Client Relationships

Let us note key points to making it a successful experience.

Making Small StepsEach Day• Know yourself.

• Feelings are important.

• Don’t pre judge. You wouldn’t like it!

• Understand the ground rules.

• Know what and why what is being said, is being said.

• Listening = thinking + processing - biases

• Client Relationship. = M + U+ AC(me + you + appropriate communication)

The End