Practice Development Articles
A Positive Approach to Marketing
Becoming the New "Best Thing" in Your Clients’ Lives
By: Sherri Petro
Too often practitioners feel marketing advice is provided in the context of solving a problem. Here Sherri
Petro, our marketing specialist, shows how practitioners can approach marketing by building on the things their
clients like.
If I said to you, “Tell me about the best experience you’ve ever had with a service provider... something so memorable that you still remember the positive feelings you experienced to this day,” what story, feelings and images come to mind? Perhaps
- You were in dire straights and someone stepped in to deftly assist.
- You did business with a provider you could count on regardless of the situation.
- Someone went the extra mile without considering her own personal sacrifice.
Everyone has had a “best experience” -- including your clients. Wouldn’t it be fitting to know how they define that experience so you can recreate the positive effect for them?
Positive and Negatives
Starting from the positive unleashes a certain energy you can’t find when you ask questions from a deficit. David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva of Case Western Reserve pioneered the development of business methods for approaching situations from an optimistic perspective. The term they coined for this technique is “appreciative inquiry,” and it began its wider currency with the publication of their paper, “Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life,” in 1987.
The Appreciate Inquiry approach has yielded such success that it has gone beyond organizational analysis as an acceptable and powerful tool in many business and political settings. How can you leverage this technique as you interact with clients?
Building Instead of Tearing Down
We often think about solving a problem by examining gaps and needs and taking apart negative experiences piece by piece. This experience does not build – it deconstructs. The mind is simply not as conducive to create, innovate and dream of new possibilities when operating in the negative. We lose an opportunity. Working with clients from their most upbeat experiences creates an energy and excitement as they recount what worked.
Consider this and use a coworker – not a client – for practice! Ask about a most positive experience and watch the smile on the face, the tone in the voice and the fluid energy in the gestures. They are open. Ask them later about a negative experience and watch the differences. No smile, hard voice tone and gestures that can be called “defiant,” perhaps? Negative experiences can be draining and tend to shut people down.
As you talk to a client, how much more would you prefer them to be animated and excited? It makes more sense to have them open to your possibilities than operating from the closed position. Approach the client from the positive.
Value Creation
A client’s best experience creates energy and enthusiasm in the client – who doesn’t mind reliving a positive experience? The client’s enthusiasm allows the client to provide useful details about the experience, and it helps the practitioner to listen well. Such conversations are likely to yield wonderful clues as to the client’s values and expectations.
Operating from the positive is powerful and can help you transform your business. Getting good word of mouth is based upon delivering value. If you know what to provide and deliver it, you have the key to a successful long-term relationship. You are branded as helpful, upbeat and a do-er. This reputation feeds the needs for client retention and referrals.
Three Keys
What’s a practical approach to appreciative inquiry so you can overcome a learned reliance on a problem-solving model? Here are three keys to the process.
- Ask about a situation in a way which elicits a positive energetic response. By reframing the way you ask the familiar needs-based questions, you can earn the upbeat response.
- Listen more than you talk. We need to practice creatively listening to what the client is saying versus jumping in. Too often we tend to want to respond to everything right away. But here what you have to say is not so important. Who, after all, knows their excellent experience better than the client? Allow the client to answer, and be sure to note their key words, so that you can work on how to deliver what they value the most as you craft a service experience.
- Deliver the value you have identified. Because you understand your practice, you will be the best one to determine how to incorporate the value identified above into the experience you are able to provide.
You now have the three keys to the kingdom. Use them.
Conclusion
With positive appreciative inquiry, you can unleash your client’s ideas and energy. By asking and listening carefully to their description of their pinnacle business experiences, you can learn what they value and expect. Building from this shared vision, you can then look at your practice and determine how to bring it closer to the needs of your clients. (It’s not enough just to know what clients value, you must then deliver it.)
Use this positive approach and become the new best experience in your clients’ lives.
More Information
- Appreciative Inquiry Commons. From Case Western Reserve University, this site includes the latest research and case studies relating to the appreciative inquiry approach.
Last Updated: 08/20/2004
