Amiga, Let's Talk
Amiga, Let's Talk
Empowering Women: Mastering Difficult Business Conversations
Can women navigate difficult conversations in business with the same confidence as their male counterparts? Join me, Damaris Ramirez, on "Amigas, Let's Talk," as we tackle this provocative question head-on. This episode is packed with actionable insights and strategies to help you handle challenging discussions about pay, benefits, poor performance, and more—without compromising your authenticity or values. Together, we'll explore how transparency, empathy, and strategic communication can empower you to boost your leadership skills, gain respect, and influence your professional environment.
We'll also dive into effective customer communication techniques to handle pricing objections and manage complaints like a pro. Learn how flexible payment options, tiered pricing, and emphasizing your expertise can justify your costs while keeping your prices steady. Plus, discover the transformative power of active listening, sincere apologies, and prompt resolutions in maintaining customer loyalty. To enhance your understanding even further, we recommend Leigh Caldwell's "The Psychology of Price" and Stephen Covey's "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People." So grab your coffee or tea, and let's talk about mastering these essential conversations with confidence and grace.
Hello and welcome to Amigas, let's Talk, the show where we discuss life and business and everything in between. I am your host, damaris Ramirez, and every week we will bring you stories and insights, hopefully to inspire you to think differently. My goal is that every woman lives her best life. So, amiga, grab a cup of coffee or tea and let's talk. Amiga, today we're going to talk about navigating difficult conversations and how we can improve our communication skills. And as women, we have to learn to be better at handling difficult conversations, either in our life or in our business, and we can do it by first facing that. And we can do it by first facing that.
Speaker 1:We're not good at it because we're facing socialization and gender norms, like, we love to prioritize harmony and we love to avoid confrontation, and a lot of times, that also makes difficult conversations challenging for us. We're a lot of times afraid of the negative perception that it might bring. We may fear that we might be seen as aggressive or unlikable. A lot of times also, we have concerns about how it's going to affect our relationships. We worry about addressing issues directly and instead we don't want to harm our relationships or we don't want it to lead into any conflict. And, lastly, I think one of the issues that we have is that we lack assertiveness training, and I say this because, compared to men, women usually receive less training in school or even encouragement in life in assertiveness skills and unfortunately, those are crucial for us to navigate difficult conversations effectively. But it's okay, we can learn, we can change. But it's okay, we can learn, we can change, we can become our own advocates and we can learn to be better. And I think it's important because we have to improve so that we have more career advancement or business advancement. So we have to master handling these difficult conversations and I thought that would be a good topic for today, and not only is that going to improve our confidence, it's also going to add to our leadership skills and, at the end of the day, it's essential for us to gain respect and influence, whether that's in your workplace or in your business.
Speaker 1:So I specifically wanted to cover a couple of topics today, and those are going to be how do we have difficult conversations when we're discussing pay and benefits with our team members or employees? How do we address poor performance? How do we have the difficult conversations when we're negotiating with our suppliers? How do we discuss pricing with a client without lowering the price. And then the last one I threw in that I thought it's worth discussing is let's talk about how do we manage customer complaints. So let's get right into it. Let's get right into it.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we have to have difficult conversations about pay and benefits. Where our employees are team members, whether that's in a large company or a small business, sometimes there's budget constraints and you're not able to increase their pay or give them a bonus. So one of the things you want to do is you want to acknowledge the employee's contributions and explain the financial realities of the business. You want to express the commitment that you have to your employee and how, because of that, you want to potentially find alternative ways to show your appreciation. So some of the things that you could do if your budget is tight is you can offer them additional responsibilities. You can offer them professional development trainings. You might be able to find some free ones or low cost ones. You could even offer flexible working arrangements so that they feel that they have better work-life balance. You need to emphasize that their growth and satisfaction are your number one priority, that you want to assure them that in the future, you're willing to revisit the conversation about their pay and benefits as the company's financial situation improves. You have to be transparent, you have to show empathy and the conversations have to be strategic with your employees, but at the same time, you want to be open about your business and its goals. You can say things like well, thank you for your dedication and hard work at our company. At this time, due to budget constraints, we're unable to make changes to your pay and benefits, but we appreciate you and your understanding of the situation and your ongoing contributions to this team, and then express those alternative ways that I mentioned before, so that they feel that you hear them, but yet you're also offering some solutions. At my small business, a couple of years ago, I was able to offer to one of my employees that I wanted to design some stickers and design a bag for my students to carry all their medical coding books, and my employee was able to use the company resources and time and spend the time designing the stickers and bags, and I think what happened was that the initiative of letting this person do that it didn't only rejuvenate their creativity and motivation, but at the end of the day, it led to an innovative idea for my business and, honestly, the stickers in the bags. They're still a big hit today and that's because of the work that that one person did.
Speaker 1:It's difficult sometimes to address poor performance with a team member, but in a small business, the team member a lot of times feels like family, so you don't want to have the conversation, but as an owner, you have to address poor performance, even if it's a family member or a close friend. What you want to do is you want to balance empathy and professionalism. So you do that by having steps that you're going to follow. For example, you want to schedule a meeting. You want to have it during time that there are no interruptions. You want to do it privately. You want to have the discussion by starting out with a positive note and you can do that by acknowledging that employee strengths and contributions. And you could say something like I want to start by acknowledging your dedication and your hard work that you have shown. And you could be specific. You can say a task or a project. Or you could say I really appreciate your positive attitude and how you consistently support my business, especially during that busy time, and what this is going to do it's going to help you set a positive tone at the beginning of the conversation before then you get into the areas where you would want improvement.
Speaker 1:But when you do get into the areas of improvement, you want to be very specific as to what are these areas where there has been poor performance. So you might want to prepare ahead of time and have them written down so that you don't get nervous and you can remember them. And then you want to set some expectations as to you know, this was poor performance and this is what my expectation is of how I would like it to improve and what is the expectation of what your product or service should be and what you're expecting your customers to get. And then, after that, what you want to do is you want to together develop an action plan, Make sure that it's clear that it to the employee, so they have something, a takeaway that they can follow, so that they also have a chance of being successful with their improvement. And then the other thing you want to do is, before you end the conversation, is you want to let them know that you're going to have follow-up and monitoring, and for the follow-up I would suggest that you set up a date and time in the future where you can meet. The goal will be that they've improved and that that meeting is really a conversation about success of you. Know you're doing great. I'm so happy that we were able to have a conversation and figure this all out and then maybe at that time you can offer additional work or something, a takeaway, where they feel like, okay, you know I improved and now we can move forward. But the most important thing is that you do show clear expectations while at the same time showing that you care For me.
Speaker 1:An example is that a few years ago I was preparing for a boot camp course and I had developed a binder that had different tabs and one of my team members needed to put it together and it was a lot of binders, so they had to assemble my binder. But when I took a little peek because I always like to do a little bit of quality check I noticed that the pages were in the wrong order. Things were not even matching with the tabs and, honestly, in the beginning I was a little furious. But instead of having a stern talk, I decided to instead take the attitude of just having a little humor about it. So I placed a little sticky on the outside of one of the binders and put it on this person's desk and it said please check the pages for all the binders. And then, right next to the sticky note, I placed a pack of chocolate chip cookies. And then I put a sticky note on that and I wrote the words brain fuel. So when my employee got back to their desk and saw my note and then saw the little pack of cookies, they were chuckling and I think they appreciated my lighthearted approach to saying, hey, you did something wrong, and they quickly fixed my binders, you know, making sure that they were perfect.
Speaker 1:For my course, my belief is that we're all human. I make mistakes, we all make mistakes and you know we have to accept feedback because that's only going to make us better, and the reality is that we all can give feedback in a nice, professional and kind way. We have to learn to negotiate with suppliers. This is an area that's tough for me, that I work on all the time, and we have to negotiate. That's going to give us better terms. We have to negotiate that's going to give us better terms, and the reality is that it doesn't hurt to ask. We have to develop the skill of confidence, of assertiveness, and in this particular space of having difficult conversations with our suppliers, the key is that you're prepared. You need to mentally be specific with what is the quantity that you want, what is the quality, what is your expected delivery schedule. You want to conduct market research and look at price trends so that you know, once you do set or agree to a price, that you're getting the best offer.
Speaker 1:And so a good way to start a conversation when you're negotiating with a supplier is to establish a positive and a collaborative tone during the conversation. So, for example, I would say thank you for meeting with me today. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss how we can strengthen our partnership and ensure that we have a mutual benefit, and the reason I say that is because I want to let the supplier know that I am interested in getting the best deal and that it's not just one side, it's not just about them selling me something that I'm expecting that they also identify. You know what is the benefit of me staying with them or me getting a product from them? It opens the door for me to have a positive and a productive discussion while I'm trying to improve the terms of the deal or explore cost-saving opportunities. And so after I say that, then I try to follow up and the follow-up is really just to follow up and the follow-up is really just basically validating my statement. So I say I've done some research on the market and the rates and I'm here because I've worked with you before. If that's the case, I'll say that, and so I want to continue to work with you. But I believe that there might be an opportunity for us to discuss how, you know, we can adjust the pricing further. So basically, I'm letting them know that I did my homework and, in a nice way, that I could go somewhere else if they're not willing to give me, you know, a good deal.
Speaker 1:And I always like to follow the quote by the American romance novel author, nora Roberts. She always says if you don't ask, the answer is always going to be no. So you want to ask and you want to try to get the best deal always. Also, another book that I want to recommend to you that might be good in this area and I'm always trying to, as I said in the beginning of this topic, trying to improve with negotiating with my suppliers is a book by Linda Babcock and Sarah Lashever, and their book is called Women Don't Ask, and in Linda and Sarah's book they explore how we avoid negotiating for what we want, whether that's in negotiating our salary or a promotion or some other opportunities, and that we do that because of social and cultural conditioning. And I enjoyed the book because I like that it offered insights and strategies for empowering women to overcome these barriers and how we should positively advocate for ourselves, whether that's in professional or in our personal lives. So go check it out.
Speaker 1:I think probably the number one difficult conversation that I find startups have is discussing their pricing, whether that's for their service or product, without lowering their price, without ending up having to give everything at a discount, and it's really important to communicate the value of your product or service effectively. So let's talk about some strategies and possibly some phrases you can use when you're addressing this issue. So the first strategy I would say for discussing your pricing is that you need to make sure that you're always emphasizing the value and benefit of your product, so you're going to focus on the unique benefits of your project or service. You're going to focus on highlighting you know what is the long-term saving or the advantages of someone getting your service or product. You can use statements like our service includes these specific features right, list them one, two, three, whatever they may be, and then you want to follow that with which ensure again that this and this and this happens. So you're saying what you're providing and what's going to be the benefit. The next thing you want to do is, in your statements, address the customer's pain points so you could say, with our product or with our service, you're going to be able to save or improve, right, save time or money or improve in this area in the long run because of you taking advantage of our service or product. So it's really important that the unique benefits are identified.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I do is another strategy is that, instead of lowering the price, I offer flexible payment options. So that's something anybody can do, especially if you're doing a service. I offer it in all of my courses, in all of my bootcamps, because they're a little pricey and I just think that just allows more people to be able to benefit from my service. So you want to be able to suggest different payment plans or maybe even different financing options. So you could, you know, do PayPal or Venmo, or maybe link up with a finance company, whatever that is that you could do for the customer financially is going to be greatly appreciated. You can also provide tiered pricing and maybe have different levels of your service so that maybe one person can't afford to get the entire practice package but they can purchase one portion of it. So when addressing these flexible payment options or packages, maybe you can say as your comeback statement, if they're saying that you know they want you to lower the price, you can say we offer flexible payment plans so that we can make it easier for you to manage your budget. Or you could say you can choose from our different service packages, so that way you can pick whatever or whichever is the best one that meets your needs. So you want to be able to have these sentences available so that you get used to having a comeback to these obstacles or barriers that your customers are facing.
Speaker 1:And the other thing you can do with the price is don't forget to showcase what the quality of your product is or the expertise that you provide. So you want to emphasize the materials. You want to emphasize the expertise of your team specifically, right, you can even compare your offerings to some of your competitors. That way you can highlight how yours is superior to theirs. And as far as sentences, you could say our team has over 15 to 20 years experience in delivering exceptional service of the highest quality. Or you may be able to say we use high quality materials that ensure durability and effectiveness, which is what our pricing reflects. So nobody wants bad quality. Everybody wants to get the best product and the best deal. So you just have to remind them of what is it that you're offering, and you want to discuss it confidently, right and without lowering the price. So, using these strategies and these sentences, you can effectively communicate the worth of your product or service to you know, all the potential clients. So a good book to help you in this area that I could recommend to you is is a book called the Psychology of Price how to Use Price to Increase Demand, profit and Customer Satisfaction and this book is written by Leigh Caldwell, and this book I like because it goes into the psychological aspects of pricing and how to use them to your advantage. So if you're the kind of person that needs a little science behind it, then this is going to be the book for you.
Speaker 1:Okay, amiga, the last topic I want to discuss today related to having difficult conversations is how do you manage customer complaints, and if you have a small business, this is important. If you work in a corporation, this is important. So it's important that you actively listen, that you're empathetic, that you are good at problem solving, and Stephen Covey says in his book the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People a satisfied customer is the best business strategy of all. Seek first to understand and then to be understood. And this is so true and this is why I usually follow four steps to handle my customer complaints, which I don't have many, but in every business there's always going to be something that maybe falls through the cracks, and what's important is that you have a plan on how to address it and to correct it immediately. So the first thing is obviously to listen actively, and you want to listen.
Speaker 1:And then you want to say to the customer something like thank you for bringing this to my attention. Something like thank you for bringing this to my attention. I understand your frustration and I want to make sure and assure you that we are listening carefully to your concerns. And you need to start there, because you want to acknowledge that you hear them. Then, right after, that is where you're going to apologize. Okay, remember, the customer's always right. So you're going to apologize sincerely for the issue or the inconvenience, and you do that by saying something like we sincerely apologize for the inconvenience that this has caused you. Your satisfaction is important to me and we're committed to resolving this issue as quickly as possible. And we're committed to resolving this issue as quickly as possible. And notice I did include important to me because you want to personalize it to that person, to that customer that you personally, the person taking the complaint or receiving it, is taking it very seriously.
Speaker 1:And then the next thing you want to do is you want to try to resolve the complaint promptly and effectively. So you want to express that in a way that the customer understands that that's what you're doing. So you can say something like you know, my goal is that we work together to find a solution that meets your expectations. I personally am going to ensure that I address this matter comprehensively and effectively, and this again not only personalizes it but reiterates that you're here to help them feel better about you finding a solution, that you're going to do whatever you can to meet their expectations, because you don't want to lose them as a customer. This is the area also where you're going to get all the details. So, while you're talking about resolving the complaint properly and effectively, the only way you're going to do that is if you're making sure that you're getting all the information from the customer or the client as to why they're not satisfied. And then, lastly, you want to follow up. You want to follow up to ensure that your customer satisfaction is met and that you can also maintain loyalty from this customer. So here you can say something like at the end of this conversation you could say after we resolve this issue, I definitely am going to follow up with you to make sure that everything is to your satisfaction, because your feedback is very valuable to us and it helps us improve our service and our business. And, again, every step of the way, we're acknowledging, reiterating, letting them know that they matter.
Speaker 1:And one of the things I highly suggest you do is that you keep a running list of your complaints. Hopefully they're less than a page, right? You know, depending on the size of your company, that's how big your complaints are going to be. The more, the bigger your company gets, the more complaints you're going to get. That's just how life goes. So write it down and you want cause you don't want it to fall through the cracks. You want to make sure that you've taken down the date of the complaint, who is the customer, their contact information, who has been assigned to of the complaint, who is the customer, their contact information, who has been assigned to resolve the issue. Have a column that identifies when the follow-up was done after, to make sure that you can maintain customer loyalty.
Speaker 1:So it's just a good way to have a process of how to address your complaint, and you want to try to, you know, address the issues as soon as possible. Here you have it. These are some examples of how I handle difficult conversations and some communication techniques that you might be able to use also, and so don't forget to tune in next week where I'll be talking about the power of emails and newsletters in your business. Thank you for making Amiga's let's Talk part of your day. We hope you enjoyed listening to today's episode and be sure to hit the subscribe button to get notified when we release the next one, and if you know someone who would enjoy the show, please share it with them. I would really appreciate it. Thanks for listening, and remember to smile, listen and be patient today. Until next time, bye.