Words Make Customer Relationships

Have you considered how you talk about your clients internally and how that impacts how you manage them? Of course, you have purpose and mission statements hanging up in the reception area with very warm words. That isn't what I am talking about. I am talking about the conversations you have in the board room, at water coolers, and on lunch breaks—the stories you and your people tell each other when no one is looking.

It is these rather than nice mission statements that determine the culture of the business.

Appreciative Inquiry is a concept in change management used by some of the largest organizations in the world. One of its principles is that Words Make Worlds. So how do you talk about your clients?

Common ways of talking about clients

Sales Lead Organisations

I have often heard toxic ways of talking about clients because I come from a Sales environment. Thank goodness this is dying out, but clients are talked about as "Sales" or "Contracts" that must be won. Not clients or even less people. People are referred to as "Red Flags" to be avoided.

That leads to a culture of "us and them," which dehumanizes "them," who can be legitimately manipulated if only you have the magic technique or are persistent enough—7 No's to yes for example.

The result is a CRM System with a Sales Process that the business has decided meets their way of working. The "Sales" or "Contracts" must comply with this process, which will determine how likely they are to be "Closed" in a Sales Funnel. If the salesperson does their job, they will Close the "Sale" when the business wants it closed.

Market Lead Organisations

Here, potential clients are thought of as "Leads." They are people who are just too stupid to know that they need the products and services that the business wants to sell them. Leads have no other needs or interests and don't have lives, or needs other than the ones we know they should have.

In a more sophisticated setting, the organization may talk about these "Leads" making up a market segment based on demographics, which inevitably means the "Leads" must benefit from the products and services in ways that it decides they should. Often, in my experience, that is wishful thinking.

So, the CRM system is developed as a marketing database with data points linked to an email system. Because these "Leads" have no other legitimate interests, they can be mailed over and over with marketing messages that most are just too dumb to respond to.

Product Lead Organisations

The business talks about "Users" or even "Accounts." The point of users is that they should buy the products that the business wants to produce because it maximizes its profits. If there are not enough "Users," then the job of marketing is to generate more Leads, which the Salespeople will convert into enough Users to meet the business's output targets.

In these organisations, the CRM System is usually subservient to the Production and Accounting Systems, which calculate the number of users necessary.

Uncommon ways of talking about clients.

The words people in businesses use to talk about clients and the stories they tell determine the relationships they can build with them. If they use dehumanizing words like "Sale," "Lead," and "User," they cannot have a personal human relationship with them.

But what if the words they used and the stories they told were about human beings instead of "Sales", "Leads", and "Users". What would that mean, and what type of CRM System might be needed to manage these Human Relationships?

During my career, I have also had the privilege of working for small businesses and running two of my own. Small businesses are very close to their clients, so they can't "Other" them as "Leads," "Sales," and "Users." That is why they need a CRM System that supports these much richer Human relationships that stretch across the whole client journey as a partnership.

Marketing needs to be more permissions-based and inbound instead of outbound. That means listening to what potential clients are saying about what they need and respect the fact that they are human beings with lives.

Sales must be focused on supporting potential clients to buy e.g., building a process that tracks their buying process to build trust.

Production has to be focused on partnering with clients to co-create products that meet their needs in a profitable way for the business.

But all this is driven by rehumanizing the way we talk about clients and prospects as human beings like us.