And How Would You Like Me To Proceed?

One of my buds got a referral from a client. She got all excited, wanted to learn more, called and offered to take the referrer to lunch, coffee, whatever.

The response was like she passed gas in church.

The referrer just wanted her to call up the new person and sell her something. The fix was in.

Later she called me, concerned she hadn’t handled it as well as she wanted, wanted to know how to respond better.

I said, “And how would you like me to proceed?”

She said she wanted me to tell her what she should say, she was concerned about a referral fees, and didn’t want to upset her existing client.

I said, “And how would you like me to proceed?”

She said she wanted to behave better, but she didn’t have that much experience with this kind of referral, and...

I said, “What you want to say next time is, ‘And how would you like me to proceed?’ That should bring out more of the conditions for satisfaction. What you don’t want to do is make assumptions when you don’t know what is going on.”

Now, how do I get your comments defining the value of this post for you?