George Bernard Shaw once said: “The single biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
Or put another way, seeing something from your customer’s point of view is not the same as seeing it from your point of view.
At the start of any discussion your two perspectives might be close, they might be far apart, but they are almost guaranteed to not be the same.
The best way to close the gap is to ask great questions and listen closely to the answers. Ask as many follow up questions as you need. Keep your questions simple, open and ask them one at a time.
Mastering this means you’ll see things as they are, not as you’d like them to be or as you assumed they were. In other words you’ll be making sure communication has taken place.
