Facing the customer in Business meet & discussions

A major activity of a Business analyst or a project manager is to handle the requirements of the customer. As a project manager and business analyst of my organization I was made to meet my client KVB (Karur vysya bank) early this month for requirement gathering and feasibility study. I carried this activity for almost five days at the client site.

I would say not that this meet was a total success to my ends. But the things happened to me in these five days has been tremendous learning opportunity. Few majors stuff that I learnt during this meet was Persuasive speaking, keen listening skill, and more & more patience and persistence.

My task was to get the requirements from the customer, and it was I started the game. In the discussion happened, the way the customer held his perception about my product was good indeed. As we drilled down the discussion it was hell coming on my way. The discussion ended with conclusion and with many issues unresolved. This made my mind think the reason for the unresolving of issues.

The reason I listed down myself are my inability to persuasive the customer on few points and my ability to grasp the entire perception of my customer. Let me highlight what persuasive is all about Persuasive Communications

To make wide scale changes and convince a lot of people to have a certain attitude about something is very difficult. This is the problem that professionals have when trying to get others to share their view. One way that mass change can be orchestrated is through the use of persuasive communication. Persuasive communication is a speech, television ad, or some kind of communication that advocates a particular side of an issue. Many persuasive communications fail to change attitudes while some are successful. There are an infinite number of tactics that can be used when making an argument.

Another major thing in meets is the patience in listening, which really helps in building up great relationship with the customer. This lack of patience will surely put the person in trouble irrespective of the side he belongs to, maybe a customer or the vendor.

The bottom line is, it’s up to us to keep it to a minimum. Keep in mind that customers are judging your every word and action, all while building expectations. If you fall short in their expectations in comparison to your competition, your competition may earn the loss by default.