Why you need to poke the bear

“Is there anything else we should discuss?”

You’re just wrapping up what you think is a successful customer meeting. However, you have this bad feeling in your gut that is telling you that something isn’t right and you know it isn’t from your lunch. You start to recall other signs that may affirm this belief. You remember seeing a sarcastic remark from the customer in one of their recent support interactions and you know that their business may not be doing as well right now. Instead of inquiring into these items you say:

“Ok, well if there isn’t anything else we can call it a meeting.”

As you close out the meeting you know that you probably just made a terrible mistake. And just to make you feel bad, I can tell you that you probably did. You let them off easy. You didn’t dig into a potential problem. Even worse, you didn’t seize on an opportunity to deepen your client relationship.

Poke the bear

The reason that many meetings end this way is that most people don’t like conflict. It makes us feel uncomfortable. We could get a response that we don’t like. What people don’t realize is that your customer is probably feeling that same level of discomfort and it’s easier for them to not share with you how they are really feeling. They are busy and are thinking about the next task or meeting. The problem is that feelings of discontent fester and if you aren’t the one that will poke the bear, the bear will eventually get fed up and you will have customers churning.

There is gold in there - you just need to mine for it

One of my favorite authors on leadership, Patrick Lencioni, used the term “mining for conflict” as it relates to making internal meetings more interesting. The idea is to surface sensitive issues at meetings so that the people present can work through them together. While it’s not easy to have these conversations, people will be grateful that you cared enough about them to ask the hard questions. As a customer success professional, you can be a miner of conflict with your customers as well. It usually takes your customer relationship to another level as you are being more transparent and vulnerable with each other. I’ll go through some of the ways you can do this with your own customers.

How to be a miner of conflict

Uncovering areas of conflict during meetings involves the following steps:

* Establish trust. Before you jump into a challenging discussion, you should try to create an atmosphere where there is mutual trust. This can include using active listening techniques and being empathetic. Using “reflections” is a great way to do this. Before getting ready to rumble as Brené Brown likes to call it, you need to have a level of intimacy that will prevent your clients from trying to duck the hard-hitting questions that are flying their way.

* Ask tough questions. You should come into meetings prepared with a few tough questions that will help you determine where you stand or will help to expose deep-rooted issues. For example, to test if a client will renew, ask them: “If your manager asked you if you would renew with us, how would you answer that?”. You should also have your radar up during the meeting and look for signs that your customer has more to say than they are letting on. Lastly, keep an eye out for facial expressions that show frustration.

* Ask follow-up questions and dig in. Don’t let the client off the hook when they start to reveal their challenges. Ask follow-up questions when you are looking for additional details and dig in your claws. You can ask for specific examples and then schedule follow-up meetings if needed to better understand their issues. Try and get to the root problems rather than just focusing on what is above the ground. You also want to have clear next steps to address the problem.

Most customer success professionals will find these steps challenging and shy away from them. My suggestion is that you role-play this to become more comfortable with being uncomfortable. You can then use something like Gong to go over how you did on actual customer calls and determine if you had your hard hat on and were mining or you were just skimming the surface.

Your challenge: Make your meetings more engaging and improve your client relationships at the same time by being a miner of conflict. Look for signs of frustration and come prepared with some tough questions. Poke the bear.

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PS: A little Neil Young for your day. Mine for that gold!

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