Fostering Your Confidence: How to Shine in Client Conversations and Professional Interactions

A professional in his or her own field can either make you taken care of or incompetent depending on their approach. How often have you been to the dentist, the doctor, or the mechanic only to be asked a series of questions that are assumed to be inherently known by all?

“Oh, you rinse after brushing? You really need to let the toothpaste sit on your teeth for at least thirty minutes.”

“You let your dog chew on real sticks? It’s a good thing you came in. You could have easily killed him.”

“You haven’t changed your transmission fluid? You do know you’re supposed to do that every 30,000 miles right?”

Questions posed like this are some of the most frustrating nuances to me. No, I’m sorry that I (an average individual) did not know this vital piece of information specific to your field of expertise. Personally, when a professional makes an attempt to belittle and not educate, I take it as a cue that they’re not the person that I want to work with because no trust can be built. It’s always going to be assumed that I have to trust this person’s word blindly because if I did this particular thing wrong what else is it that I’m doing wrong? Though I’ve been pretty competent in distancing myself from these types of professionals I still run into friends, family, and connections that continue to have this experience on a regular basis.

Although a rude professional can make you feel incredibly uncomfortable with your lack of knowledge the inverse is also true.

A good professional can make you feel incredibly comfortable with their wealth of knowledge. Have you ever had a professional in whatever field they’re providing make you feel like everything’s going to be okay? Your mechanic tells you “Well it could be one of your pistons that’s causing that misfire, but it’d be better if we looked at your spark plugs first just to make sure it’s not just a minor issue.” You feel confident that they’re really looking out for you. Although they could have easily made some passive comment about pressure testing your engine every so often, they didn’t. Instead, they educated you, considered your budget, treated you like a person, and provided a potential solution.

This is the type of person you want to work with, but far too often the client-professional relationship is skewed in a way to makes you feel forced to be a client instead of one based on an agreement of mutual respect. In this article, I would like to shed some light on ways that we can improve our confidence in these interactions both as professionals and as clients.

THE CLIENT-PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIP

Before we get into the meat of the article, I think it’s important to define the client-professional relationship. Simply put, the client-professional relationship is the agreed-upon relationship entered into by a field professional and prospective client. All business is built on this relationship. So let’s define it:

The client’s responsibility is to decide if the professional’s ability, the client’s trust in this professional, and any other relevant factors match what the client is willing to pay for these services.

The professional’s responsibility is to ensure that they have made themselves appropriately accessible to the client, matched their fees to their current professional ability, and assessed if the client’s need is one that the professional can competently meet.

Where we see this relationship get into trouble is when one party attempts to skew the role of the other. The client attempts to decide what fees the professional should be charging. The professional attempts to override the client’s trust. The client-professional relationship must maintain balance and respect.

Both the client and the professional have a part in deciding whether or not they move forward with services. It is not solely the role of one or the other to rule the relationship.

AS A CLIENT & PROFESSIONAL

I used to be a crippling people pleasing. If I’m honest, I can still fall into these habits when working with clients because I want them to be happy with their design and feel encouraged when the job is complete. However, Kiersten told me something years ago that helped set me free in this area.

“If you’re not free to say, ‘no’, then you’re never truly free to say, ‘yes’.”

In other words, I learned that if I say “yes” to every opportunity to get involved in something, my energy is spread thin across too many areas. Whereas, if I can make a practice of saying “no” I ensure that the quality of my work with my clients doesn’t suffer. In branding, you identify who your audience and clientele is and with that, “who they are not”.

A prime example is t-shirt pressing. I have a press and I’ve used it several times, but I hate doing it for clients. It’s just one of those things I’ve had to say “no” to, but the silver lining in my “no” is that I am able to design the t-shirts (which I love) for my clients and outsource the printing to another friend’s business here locally. My “no” to the task of t-shirt printing hasn’t hindered my ability to support my clients; it’s actually provided an opportunity to support another small business owner.

As professionals, we have to understand that there are going to be people and tasks that simply aren’t “ours”.

The sooner that we can come to terms with that the sooner we can grow the quality of services for the clients that are “ours”.

Likewise, as clients if you get that same feeling in the pit of your stomach that says this provider isn’t who you should work with, take a minute and make note of it. Try and assess if this feeling is legitimate about this provider or if this is based on your negative experiences with providers in this field. Regardless of the reason it’s only through self-reflection that we’ll grow to understand our insecurities as clients and build habits and confidence around advocating for ourselves.

One of the things I learned when working in the mental health field was that every client has a right to choose their provider. It was a legal requirement to inform clients about their rights. It’s disappointing to me, to see the amount of stress my personal friends and family as well as my clients have endured without understanding this simple principle.

It is the first step of the client to choose their providers. It is the final step of the professionals to assess if their client is the right fit.

IT’S YOUR CHOICE

At the end of the day, if you’re a client that’s not happy with a service you’re receiving or if you’re a provider who is stressed because of a client that is impossible to please, the hard truth is that you are responsible for 50% of the stress. It was your choice to move forward with the next step and now, it’s your choice to decide if you want to continue moving forward. I understand that this is not a blanket reality for all situations, but speaking generally from my own experience and the experiences of my friends and clients, you’re a powerful person who gets a choice in who they work with.

At Banks Graphic Design, we place a heavy emphasis on ensuring that trust is built first with our clients because we know how incredible it is to work with someone you can depend on. If you have any design needs we’d love to see if we can help you out. Feel free to click the button below to learn more about working with us!