The clade of lizards known as chameleons is well known for their specialised cells, collectively called chromatophores, that lie in layers under their transparent outer skin that can rapidly relocate their pigments to influence the colour of the chameleon.
Humans are not chameleons. One of the hardest activities you will find as a salesperson is seeing something from the client’s perspective—simply because it is not your perspective. It would be great if all customers were like Steve Austin cyborg dolls, and they had a hole in the back of their heads that allowed you to look through and see the world from their perspective.
One of the biggest challenges I face in my main organisation is the fact that the life situation of most of our technicians is at the opposite end of the spectrum from our average client. Our average technician is in his early twenties, single, living at home, and has an income that is mostly disposable. Our average client is a businessman aged between 40 and 55 who is married with children, and despite the fact that he is quite profitable, he has some major financial pressures with banks and paying employees.
Many years ago, a client was changing over from a semi-permanent ISDN line that connected a remote site to the main site (costing $800 per month) to a new, faster, and cheaper ADSL line. The telecommunications company in question removed the ISDN capping on a certain day, but the ADSL line was delayed for a day. Our young technician was about to ring the client and tell him that he was going to have no remote site connectivity for a day. The fee for uncapped ISDN for a day was $200, so our tech assumed that the client would rather have no connection than pay a “ridiculous” amount of money.
Our young tech was looking at it through his eyes. To him, $200 was a lot of money. I suggested we ring the client to ask what he wanted to do. The tech was surprised when the client said that $200 was nothing compared to the loss of productivity for a day. He told the young tech to go ahead. For this client, $200 was much better than six staff with no connectivity for a day.