Three Steps to Winning:
Ask, Listen and Hear.
I think I have discovered why the Australians generally beat us in nearly everything.
As chairman of a company that licenses automotive workshops to test vehicle emissions, I was recently
approached by two Australians, who have come to NZ to promote a customer loyalty programme. I had two
meetings with them and was impressed by their programme. I also discovered the two Australians were
very passionate about their product and excelled at explaining its benefits. In other words, they were
a couple of fast talking Aussies.
To the second meeting, I took one of my fellow directors, himself the owner of an automotive workshop.
Although he saw the value the programme offered, he was certain the owners of automotive workshops would
focus on its cost not on the benefits. I had to agree with him and so I emailed the Australians our
decision.
I was not surprised to see an email from them in my inbox a couple of days later because the Aussies
struck me as being a tenacious pair who would not give up easily so I braced myself as I opened the
email. What I read blew me away.
We are very sorry to hear your decision, said the email, but we understand your viewpoint. The email
then went on to ask, “Was there anything in the way we presented our offer, or anything we said
that put you off? Can you see anyway we could improve the way we deal with prospective customers such
as yourselves?” And here is the really impressive bit: “I was raised in a Greek family and
taught to respect my elders and to learn from them. I can assure you that any feedback you can give
us will be taken seriously.”
When is the last time a supplier said they wanted to hear your views about their products or service
because they had been taught by their parents to respect and learn from other people’s viewpoints?
Like me, you will have received countless invitations to provide feedback which you later discovered
were not driven by a genuine desire to learn how to improve because later you got a letter thanking
you for your comments and explaining why they do what they do – in other words, why they are right
and you are wrong. You will have been contacted by market research firms who clearly have been instructed
by their client to record only feedback that corresponds to questions the client would like answered
and who cannot accept the message you really want to send.
The Aussies’ invitation to critique their performance appeared to me to be genuine because:
(a) I was personally invited to provide feedback by the businessperson I had dealt with. It was a
personalised communication, not a pro forma one.
(b) The invitation came after they had failed to achieve their goals. It was not as sales pitch. It
appeared to be a serious attempt to improve.
(c) It was driven by a personal belief (you should respect your elders and learn from them), not just
a business theory.
.
Although I think we would all benefit if we learned from their example, I was not totally convinced
this Aussie really wanted to learn how to do it better. But since I am never shy about giving people
advice, I replied. After thanking him for the invitation, I asked him to please give his parents my
congratulations for having done a superb job of raising their son. Then I told him that our decision
had nothing to do with the way they presented themselves and their product but if they wanted my feedback,
it was that they were very good at talking and not so good at listening. I hit ‘send’ and
waited for the reply that would demonstrate, once again, I had been fooled into thinking a business
wanted to hear what its customers really thought.
It did not take long for an email to come back to me: “Thank you very much for your frank and
honest evaluation/appraisal. Your comments will ring in our ears like church bells on a Sunday morning.”
What a wonderful sentence, “Your comments will ring in our ears like church bells on a Sunday
morning.” More importantly, what a wonderful attitude. No polite but cool ‘thank you for
the feedback.’ No lame explanation for why they presented as they did. No counter attack, which
is what happens most frequently. Just a simple statement that said we asked, we listened and we heard!
Perhaps that is why the Aussies excel. They really do want to win, even if it means hearing some unpleasant
truths.
By the way, there was one more sentence in the email: “I wish everybody I dealt with could be
this ‘Fair Dinkum’ as yourself.” Could it be that we are as reluctant to give feedback
as we are unwilling to hear it? And, could this explain why many business leaders think they are delivering
great customer service when, in fact, their customers are outraged?
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