chances are, you're worse at communicating than you think

Summary

if you want to be a good leader or business owner, you have to be an effective communicator. and most of us are worse at it than we think. two places it breaks, with customers and with the team.

1. story to set the table. Emily and I are getting a plumbing quote on a real estate project. the plumber is a brutal communicator. takes weeks to reply. the work itself will be fine. but if he’d just emailed back, “got it, ten days for the quote, slammed with three other jobs,” my frustration would be zero. he didn’t, so we’re chasing texts and calls just to confirm he got the email.

2. that’s the universal rule. frustration is an unmet expectation. if you communicate the reality up front, even bad reality, people are usually fine. silence is what kills you.

3. customer side, the highest-leverage moment is post purchase. they just bought. they’re at peak excitement and it can only come down from there if you don’t communicate. fix that with a welcome email that fires within 60 seconds. who you are, what they bought, when they get it, where to access it, why it matters, how to use it. the five Ws plus the how. this is business 101. set it up in Mailchimp, ConvertKit, Drip, whatever you have. or send it manually if you have to.

4. team side, you can sit through an hour meeting and communicate nothing. people look attentive and walk out with three different interpretations of what you said. Emily and I have lived this in real estate meetings. use a framework. start with purpose, what’s the point. then importance, what difference does this make. then ideal outcome, what does done look like. then success criteria, three to five bullets that have to be true when this is finished.

5. and check it. have them repeat back what they heard. in the military I had people 18 to 20 years old reporting to me. asking “can you tell me what you heard” was the only way to know if it landed. you don’t be a jerk about it. you say “thanks, you got close, here are a few tweaks to your understanding so we’re aligned.” if you’re not communicating effectively, try harder.

Transcript

the plumber who won’t reply

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. Are you an effective communicator? That’s my question for you today. Because I think if you want to be a good leader, you want to be a good business owner, you need to be an effective communicator. So what’s up?

My name is Jerred Moon. This is the Better Human Business podcast. And I just finished a long run. On these runs, I like to just see where my mind goes. I used to listen to a podcast or music or something like that. But I stopped that a while back, just to give my brain a little bit more space for thinking.

And what I’ve been thinking about a lot this week is communication. And communication in two different realms. And that’s communication to your team, in more of a leadership capacity, how to communicate effectively, and then also how to communicate to a customer. Because when you are communicating to your customers effectively, you can eliminate a lot of frustration or unmet expectations if you can just communicate, even if things aren’t going to be perfect.

And I’ll explain that in a second. Another thing, a reason this was on my mind is because Emily and I, my wife, we are also in real estate. We have some real estate investments. And we were recently trying to get a plumbing quote. And this person has just been a horrible communicator. And to be honest, this isn’t really a complaint.

This is kind of part for the course in this industry with any contractors and construction, real estate, all this stuff. Other than like a realtor, like most of the people who need to do the work are pretty poor communicators. And most of the time, it’s because they have too much work. They have too much going on.

frustration equals unmet expectation

They haven’t developed a system or process or whatever. And so that’s fine. But what’s funny is I just realized, since we’re not time sensitive on this project, like if this person would just communicate with me that things are going to be slow, I wouldn’t even care. Because I know this is ultimately the person I want to work with.

But if they were just like, hey, thanks for giving me everything that you said that you wanted. I’m going to get a quote together. But it’s going to take me about a week or 10 days or whatever. For some people, that might be like a deal breaker. But like I said, since I know I want to work with this person, if they can just set that expectation almost right away, I send an email, they email me back the next day.

And they’re like, hey, thanks. I got it. Received. Email received. I at least know I sent it to the right email address, right? Email received. And I will get back to you in X amount of time because I have three other jobs. If they would just say something like that, my frustration level would be basically zero.

But because I don’t get any of that communication, we have to like try and text and call and like, hey, did we send it to the right email address? Because it’s been 10 days. We haven’t heard anything that just increases the level of frustration. And I’m sure you’re not doing that in your business, but it’s just an example of how easily frustrations could be avoided if you just communicate, even if you’re having to communicate what is not the ideal circumstance for the customer or for your team.

If you just communicate the truth and you get in front of it fast, people are much, you know, much greater likelihood of them being okay with whatever the case is, whatever the circumstance. And so here’s how we can kind of apply that in our, in our business and with our team. So it’s pretty, pretty simple.

Like the, the biggest thing that you need to do, you know, there’s marketing communication, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about customer communication. So let’s start there. The biggest thing that you need to do is post-purchase communication. Because if you sell something, I don’t, I mean, I don’t care if you sell something online or you sell something over the phone or you sell something in person, whatever it is, the second someone decides to buy, the communication post-purchase is the most important thing that you can do.

Because the, they are at the pinnacle, at the very top, they have decided to work with you. They’re at their highest level of excitement and it can really honestly only come down from there if you don’t meet the expectations they have. And so a simple way to do this is some sort of welcome email. Again, this doesn’t matter if you’re online, you’re selling physical products, you’re, you’re in person.

post purchase welcome emails

Once this person buys, you can have an automated welcome email that explains your process, access to anything if they need access to anything, login information, whatever it is. Because I know we’ve all been there, especially buying things online where you buy something, they’re processed a little bit clunky, you get an email, like a registration email to join something and it’s like 45 minutes later and they tell you like, you might get a confirmation email that says it’s coming in 48 hours and nothing ever comes.

These are bad experiences and it just, it starts to whittle away at you never having a repeat buyer with this person. And then also they’re, the chance of them, you know, referring you, all that stuff’s going away. So the first thing I highly recommend is just a welcome email or a series of emails post-purchase.

The first one should fire immediately. They should have that email in their inbox within 60 seconds. You can do this with any email service provider, MailChimp, ConvertKit, Drip, doesn’t matter. So easy to do. Even if you just send this manually, you know, send the email so they know you have the welcome email in place.

That’s, this should be business 101. And even like I said, if you are, if you have services and even if you sold it to them, like you’re the one who took their credit card, still have an email that goes out thanking them and explaining what it’s now going to be like to work with your company. And if it’s a product, an immediate email like, hey, got your order, we’re working on it.

Here’s like some other stuff we’ve done, blah, blah, blah. Awesome welcome emails. Very, very important in any business and pretty, you know, pretty simple standard stuff here. I think we all know the basics of communication in a welcome email. First, who, what, when, where, why, and how, that’s it.

So who you are, you know, what they purchased, when will it be available? Where do they access it? You know why it’s important and how do they use it? Like all these kinds of things. You can just actually write out all those, the five W’s and the how, right? And just answer all those questions and boom, you have a welcome email.

the team meeting framework

It’s pretty simple. And just execute that. So definitely have that in your customer, your customer process. The second thing is with your team, okay? So this is where I see people stumble because you, people can have an hour long meeting, which is communicating, right? You’re communicating, but you’re not actually saying anything to your employees or your team.

And that’s because you think people are sitting there just a hundred percent focused on your every word when in reality they are not. They might even look like they are attentive and they are dialed in and they know what the hell you’re saying, but they might not understand you. This is another, I had another example of this last week and it was another real estate thing.

Emily and I were sitting down at a meeting and I remember he said one thing and Emily and I both just kind of like nodded our heads and then we moved on. The meeting was over and I asked her about that moment and she’s like, well, I interpret it as this. And I was like, well, I interpret it as, as this, which is something different than what she thought.

And I was like, well, I wonder what he meant. And we were all very engaged in the meeting, but he didn’t properly communicate it in a way which we all understood it. Right. And so there are ways that we can get better at this. And with your team, you need to be able to communicate clearly with your team.

And so the best framework I’ve found for doing that is one, if you, if you go into a meeting, there has to be like a reason you’re meeting about something, right? So if you’re introducing a new project, first state the purpose, what’s the purpose of, of what we’re doing, what we’re talking about, what’s the, what’s the overall, uh, you know, what do you want to accomplish?

Okay. First thing, purpose. Second thing, importance. So what’s the biggest difference this thing will make? So if you have the project start with purpose, what do you want to accomplish? Try and answer that question. Try and explain it to them. Importance. What’s the biggest difference this will make in the business, um, in your day to day, whatever it is.

have them repeat it back

Next is ideal outcome. So what does the completed project look like? Be very clear about this. What does the completed project look like? That’s the ideal outcome. So you have purpose, importance, ideal outcome. And then from there. Success criteria. And this can be anywhere from three to five little bullet points.

But like what has to be true when this project is finished? So when this project is finished, X, Y, Z, all these things are true. Now this is a very organized way to communicate with your team in a meeting and you can write all these things out on a whiteboard or over zoom or whatever to make sure everyone understands what you’re talking about.

Again, because you might think that you’re sitting there and everyone’s listening and paying attention, but they’re truly not. And if you ever feel like they’re not, or you want to test it, a simple thing. I used to do this in the military all the time. This was more because of the, who I was working with.

It was a lot of people like, you know, 18 to 20 years old. I mean, that was the bulk of the people underneath me. And so I would always just have them repeat back what they think I said. And you would be so funny to hear some of the responses sometimes because you would tell who wasn’t paying attention, who was paying attention, or it could be that someone was completely paying attention.

But the way you speak, maybe it’s too intellectual, maybe it’s too fast, whatever it is. They didn’t quite grasp it. So when they try to repeat back what you, what they think that you said or what they think that you meant, it comes across in a different way. And you don’t want to be a jerk at this point, but you’re like, Hey, thanks for taking a stab at that.

Like you got pretty close, but I’m glad I asked the question because here are a few tweaks to your understanding versus what I actually need done. So that is how you can communicate with your customers is have great welcome emails, make sure post-purchase, they’re taken care of. And then every step of the way throughout, and then with your team, just making sure that they know the purpose, the importance, the ideal outcome, and all the success criteria, have them repeat it back to you.

If you have any doubt that they understand it, the more effective you can be in your communication, the better leader you will be and the better, the more satisfied customers you will have. So if you’re not communicating effectively, try harder.