I wanted to say. I asked if he would send the translation to me
via email. He made a decision that it would be more helpful for
me if he were to record the translation so that I could hear the
words instead. In his heart he was being helpful, but auditory is
not my preferred choice for learning a passage like this. I
wanted to see the written word, having already learned some of
the pronunciation.It can be tempting to make choices about presenting material
in ways that fit our own preferred ways of thinking rather than
in ways that suit the preferences of our customers. We often
think that we know best in terms of what our customers
“should” have. And we make unconscious as well as conscious
choices about the people with whom we choose to do
business, depending on how well they skilfully match our
needs. In the instance I quote what happened led to learning
for us both, but in business making the wrong choice might
cost you the work.
In the choices we make about how to present ourselves to
our customers, the margin for error has become significantly
smaller. The way we use the internet is a good example of this.
If you haven’t grabbed your potential clients’ interest by
relating to the way they think within six seconds of their
logging on to your web pages, research shows that they will not
wait to make sense of what you are saying—they will move on.
In this chapter I illustrate some fundamental needs. There
are hundreds, even thousands of needs and it is your skill in
detecting not only those I have explained here but the unique
ones you can discover for yourself that will determine your
success in working with, dealing with, communicating with, and
living with other people. If you do not yet know how to do this,
you need to do your homework fast. If other business people
do not overtake you, technology most certainly will!
So let’s consider some of these patterns in thinking and
communicating that affect how we present ourselves so that
others can relate to what we are doing and saying, and so that
we can relate to them in a language and style they understand.36 NLP AT WORK