There are countless self help and psychology books and courses that will teach you the importance of making a good impression. How you dress, your body language and your handshake (to name a few) and these are all important. Examples of messages or signals that you are giving, consciously or subconsciously, to the customer or prospect, in order to improve your chances of being successful.
Let me ask you to consider the other side of the equation. If you are giving information, how is this being received, if indeed it is being received at all!
When you have an exchange in a language you are unfamiliar with, no matter how intently you listen, how keen you are to understand, in many cases you come away from the encounter feeling underwhelmed and without the information you needed. You simply did not get what was being said. In this case because it was in a different language.
People, who even though they share the same language, often have a particular way of thinking. When asked to describe a situation people will transmit information in a certain way, more often than not, the way in which they also want to receive it. People will often say how a situation looked , it was a pictureof devastation and they couldn’t see how people could act that way. The words in this sentence are all visual indicating that someone is thinking in pictures.
It felt as if the walls were closing in, it had a touch of the unusual about it and I couldn’t understand how I would feel in those circumstances. Clearly this is someone who transmits and receives information in feelings.
As difficult as it is to understand a foreign language, it is equally difficult to understand information given in a way that doesn’t match the way you think. This becomes even more important when you are asking people to consider something they had not previously considered, naturally leading to them having to make a decision.
As subtle and potentially limited as this sounds, it can be incredibly practical and features in many more obvious ways than you may imagined.
How often have your e mails gone unanswered, your voice messages never returned and even your brochures (glossy and expensive) have merely been ignored or your presentation fall on seemingly deaf ears!!. Consider this; did you actually qualify in what format or style your prospect or customer wanted to receive your information ? at what time did they want to receive your information and once received what were they expected to do with it.
Do you know in what way they want to communicate? Did you take the time to qualify them ?
If you are multilingual, and have a conversation with a person or a group it is perfectly natural to ask would they prefer to talk in English or Spanish, so that everyone understood what was being said, and what this meant to them.
If you can learn to incorporate this emotional intelligence into your everyday communication you may very well find a far more positive response now your communicating in the right way for the customer or prospect to receive and understand it.