Re: emotional laborers
My $0.02...I’ve made a living in the commercial/institutional construction industry for the past 30 years or so, essentially listening to my clients and offering advice...when needed. I learn as much as I can about their life/business goals and aspirations, learn about their families and seek to find out what’s important to them. I take their calls at odd hours of the day, I hop in a plane when it makes sense and I’ve learned that when someone is frazzled, you better be prepared to unfrazzle them, or at least let them know that you’ll work on a plan to unfrazzle. Picking up the phone helps too, as I’ve come to appreciate that the phone does more than take great photos.
Yeah, I’m an engineer and I deal with other engineers, architects, a myriad of consultants and our staff, we design and construct their buildings, find sites for them, deal with planning, zoning and building permits, go to the mat with underperforming vendors and contractors and do just about everything other than change their oil. But at the end of the day, the personal relationship with the individual takes us through the tough times and allows us to soar even higher through the good times. An overwhelming percentage (85% over the past ten years) of our work comes from repeat client relationships and the new work relies heavily on those past/current client relationships as references.
If you want to be in a service industry imho, open your ears, be prepared to listen and show that your client means something to you beyond a source of income. There are awesome firms out there in all industries and competition is fierce. If you don’t take the time to listen, learn and genuinely care, get in line and become a commodity.
rw saunders
hey, how lucky can one man get.
Bookmarks