Can You Teach Soft Skills?

Business Brain, episode 494 for Casual Friday, October 20, 2023. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain. We are, for those of you who are listening for the first time, the show where we take an idea or three each episode. We analyze it, we dissect it, we pull it apart. The goal being to train our business brains together so that we can each keep on living those charmed lives. Sponsors for this episode include fastmail.com businessbrain. That's where you go to get 10% off your first year. We'll talk more in depth about why you're gonna go do that in a little bit. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton in Lafayette, California.

Happy Friday, Dave.

Happy Friday indeed. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crazy Friday. Yeah, it's Casual Friday. I'm pretty casual today.

What do we got going on today?

Robert has a not so casual question for us. He says, it seems like every time I turn around, another client is asking for more of my services for less money. I recently doubled my prices to help combat inflation and the increasing demand for more services. It's smart. It's like everybody else is. The prices are going up everywhere. Might as well go up with you. Uh, he says, I figured it's always easier to drop a price if needed, but I rarely do. But how do I stave off these increasing customer expectations? What a great question. You want to start with this one? I've got some thoughts too, but yeah, Yeah.

I think the first suggestion I would make to Robert is to kind of flip this idea on its head. Is that change the framework of, hey, this is a problem, these increased expectations and turn it into an opportunity. You know, we recently did an episode where we talked about having three different products or service tiers. You know, the whistle, which gets you lots of attention. Maybe it's priced low for some introductory thing. The workhorse, which is the daily, you know what, people just buy from you all the time. And the whale, which is, man, if you really want the best of the best, you get that. And there's only a small, you know, portion of your customers that are going to want to do that. But, you know, if you have a menu for them to choose from, you can push them into like, hey, great, we love that you want this experience, or these, these are your expectations. This is the tier that you follow when you, you're, you are going to be into our diamond tier or whatever you want to call it, right? And this is it. And they'll go, oh, some of them will go, hey, that's great. That's exactly what I want. I want, you know, instant contact. I want this, that and the other thing. And, but most of them go, oh wow, you know, I know I can't afford that. But then you bring it back down to the workhorse and go, great. Well, here's how we operate. This is the price point, this is what you can expect. And managing those expectations before you engage, have any kind of engagement with the customer, that's the secret. So they know exactly up front what they're going to get. And if they're demanding more for less, I would argue that that's not your customer.

I agree. I mean, I never hold it against people who ask for more or ask for a lower price. I do the same thing. I get it, it's totally fine. And so I think, I think all of this starts with a conversation, right? I mean, what you discussed here is same thing, but when somebody asks for more, now you're having a conversation, right? They've asked for more or they've asked to pay less or maybe both. Right. But you're fostering this idea of a partnership with your customer, not a legal partnership, right. A figurative one where you understand what they're bringing to the table, what you're bringing to the table, and you're going to work to have a, an outcome that is a non zero sum game, right. Where you are all winning. They, they're paying you for your time, you're providing them value that for their business is worth more than they are paying you and everything works. But yeah, when somebody asks me, you know, can we do this for, you know, can we get a lower price on these podcast ads, I would say, yeah, you know, I appreciate you asking, I would do the same thing. Right, so you've already acknowledged them, you've already moved to the same side of the table. And then I say, look, you know, we price our things, we don't price things with a built in buffer here. We price things very fairly. They are matched within the industry, oftentimes even perhaps a little more aggressive than the industry given the amount of service that you get from us. Right. So now like at the same time, I'm saying we're just like the industry, except we're better, we're different. Right. Like in one breath I get to say both of those things. Yep. Yeah, we're matched with the industry, you know, except with all the service you get from us. And, and then it's, and then it's like. And so therefore this is the price and you're just walking. I would do the same thing. Here's what we do. This is the price. And at that point, it's up to them whether they want to push again. Well, yeah, I understand all those things, but I still want to pay you less. Okay, well, at that point, you're not in a partnership anymore. You've got someone that's looking for a zero sum game. They want to, in order for them to win, you need to lose. And that's the point where they are not your customer. Right. You know, if they, but if they do come back and, and say, I do understand all that, here's the reality from our standpoint, here's why the work that we need done is only worth, you know, 1.1x to us instead of 2x to us. @ that point, now you're actually having a conversation and there is that partnership. And I'm using air quotes here, but where you say, okay, I get it. My normal service, even the workhorse is more than you need. So maybe we go down to the whistle, right? And we just, I'll do less and you pay me what you think you're supposed to pay me. Whatever that number is. Here's what I can do for that number while still leaving myself time to work with other clients. And now they get to pick.

I like it.

Yeah.

And you can maybe, perhaps there's, there's things in your quote or whatever that you can eliminate that are not going to impact the level of service or things. So I think, just thinking about it as an opportunity, I would say if your customers want more, particular customers want more, you should find a way to give it to them. But you need to be sure you're compensated for it.

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Yeah, I think that, yeah, I answered this. It's a great question, you know, can anyone become good at being a manager? And I said no, because some soft skills are, you either have them or you don't. And so I've just seen it over time where I've tried to get like technicians to move into managerial positions or. And super great people that are very skilled at certain things. So you, you want to get more out of them, but shifting them out of, you know, this, their technical role or analytical role, you know, moving into leadership role, managerial role is entirely different animal. And I, I don't. You can teach some of it, but if you're not. And I, I use these, you know, a friendly, optimistic, a good listener. You have empathy, you have a good sense of humor. I think you need all of those things at some level to become a good manager.

Don't you think you can learn some of those, though? I'm going to push back a little bit on this.

Yeah, some of them. But can you teach somebody to be friendly? I don't know.

I think actually that's one I think you can teach.

Okay, that's good.

Well, in that I had to learn. I mentioned on Wednesday's episode, you know, social anxiety is not something that is foreign to me. I am an introvert. I recharge my social batteries alone. Right. Whereas people who are extroverts recharge their social batteries with other people, and that's fine. There's nothing wrong with either of those things. But I also, in addition to being an introvert, started out very shy and therefore was not seen as friendly. It wasn't that I didn't want to be friendly. It was that I did not know how to be. And I wasn't outgoing, and I didn't know how to do it. And I'm still not as a default. I am not outgoing, but I've learned how to act like I am. And then once I am, then make it.

Till you make it.

Yeah, well, kind of. I mean, I learned, you know, and I learned that, okay, if I just throw myself out there, most of the time, it works out, you know, and sometimes it fails miserably and whatever, and that's fine. But I can be upbeat and chipper and friendly. But it was definitely something that I had to learn that I could do. Now, was it a skill I already had and I had to learn how to highlight it? Maybe that's. That's a fair argument. Right? But. But it was not something that was a default for me to exercise.

So, yeah, I think it's really valid. I think you can teach some of these things. Trying to think about thinking back when I had managers that would just be so frustrated. Maybe a lot of it is. Maybe some of it's accountability, where you have to. You have to be accountable for the problem even if you're not causing it.

Right.

Where if you're solving issues with your staff, somehow you have to own it. Like, okay, this is a problem. I've either hired the wrong person, or I put the team together incorrectly, or there's a certain way, a certain framework of looking at it that I think allows you to dive into the problem without appointing blame or.

Yes.

Just taking that accountability on yourself. I don't know. I mean, maybe you can teach it. I think you certainly can teach people to become better managers, better leaders. Absolutely. But I think there's just some people that would be better off in a different role.

Oh, for sure. I mean, you're. You're sort of alluding to the Peter principle here. Right.

Where part of it is.

Yeah. People are. Are, you know, promoted to their level of. Highest level of incompetence. Right. So, yeah, because you see somebody who's skilled and you think, oh, I want to promote them, and then you suddenly realize, well, I've promoted them out of the job they were good at into a job they're terrible at.

I've Done it.

Yeah. I've seen, I've, I've been on both sides of it. I've done it to other people and I've had it done to me. It's arguable that I'm in that position right now. You know, what do I know about what do I do? Like yeah, let's try to make it up. But I think, I think one of the skills that is difficult, perhaps impossible to teach but certainly difficult is empathy. I think people and maybe it is teachable but I don't think that, I.

Don'T know that's a hard one. I also think it's very difficult to teach somebody to have a sense of humor and because humor really connects people.

Right? Yeah.

When you can joke about situations, when.

You can joke about yourself, that's the real key. Yeah, yeah.

Self effacing humor is so powerful and, and then you can kind of bridge the connect because the big, just so much about leadership and managing is connecting with people and, and I certainly am not, I'm not saying I have all these skills because I've failed at it miserably many times.

Same.

So it's just a good dial, a good discussion to have. And if, if you can't luckily then how do you teach empathy? How do you teach people to be friendly? That, that would be the question I would ask. You know our audience is okay, I had, you know, maybe there's just these things were missing or what are the tips to overcome these things that I think can't be teachable.

All right, this is a. Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, sorry.

Feedback BusinessBrain Show. Help educate me because this business brain is a. It's all of us, right?

Yeah.

We're trying to fine tune one another.

So I'm going to read these five things that you've identified so that everybody knows what we're looking to learn. How do we train people to be friendly, optimistic, good listeners, empathic and have a sense of humor? So let us know. Feedbackusinessbrain show. We really, really want to like this. If we can figure this out, we'll share it all back with you. Like we're learning this together. And I mean what a great way to lead a charmed life. If we can teach people these things, man, that's the key.