One of the main parts of my job is to develop relationships with the decision-makers of the customers we serve. Forming actual relationships with clients so that we can talk candidly and openly about problems that they may be experiencing.
I’ve developed good relationships with many of my clients, but it’s fascinating to navigate personality differences. I talked some about that in my post the other day. Different people have to be communicated with differently.
Something I love though is when I am able to develop relationships with clients that I think would be great friends in real life if we lived closer together.
Today I had a call with our largest customer. Perhaps the best client/friend that I’ve made through the company. It’s been crazy to realize that people who are high up in these seemingly huge healthcare corporations are just other humans. One of them just took his family for a several week vacation in India. No sweat.
It’s amazing being able to get on calls with some of these extremely important people and be throwing jokes half the time. These guys are 15+ years older than me, but the age isn’t a barrier.
In our call today, as we were talking about custom links to use in a campaign in order to get patients to schedule appointments. We were all proposing ideas for how we could make it most successful and one of the clients says “What if we used the letter d, period, then the word pain, another period, and then the word me? Would that work?
The rest of us on the call think through what on earth he’s talking about trying to figure out why this would be a good link…then someone says it out loud “D Pain Me.”
The rest of the people gruntingly laugh as he adds “In fact, I’m going to buy that domain now so I can use it later.”
This guy who made the joke is no kidding one of the smartest guys I’ve ever met. Constantly coming up with new ideas to improve their practice and make them one of the most successful organizations in the country at what they do, and here he was cracking jokes.
There isn’t a large point to this post except a reminder that everyone is just human. Whether they’re the “richest” or the “poorest” they’re all human. And to live a truly joy-filled life, they all have the same spiritual, emotional, and physical needs.
A quote I’ll never forget:
“There are no primitive people, only primitive cultures.” – Paul Teasdale