Matt describes what he sees as the three traits of clients who get the most out of the training. The traits are: 1. A history of serial problem solving, 2. A frustration coming from one of life’s slaps in the face, and 3. The fear of god (an external force that makes them want to solve the problem that #2 brought to the forefront).

Episode transcript:

Alper Rozanes
You’re listening to the White Rabbit conversations on the art of presenting in a rather noisy world. Your hosts are Matt Krauss and Alper are scientists. Matt helps leaders of international companies speak, write and present with confidence. Alper is a communications trainer and a startup investor with a diverse portfolio of companies in Barcelona. If you like this podcast, please share it with friends and colleagues. Now on to Matt and Alper for today’s conversation.

Alper Rozanes
Matt, this week I want to pick your brain on something you and I have been talking about ideal traits of the client. You give me some examples, but I want to I want to dig deeper. What you mean by that? How do you define the ideal client in the line of work that you do?

Matt Krause
Yeah, well, I’ve got three. And I briefly described them to you before the episode. I’ll describe them again here.

Matt Krause
The first one, I when I made my list, there were three. And initially, my list went consistency, frustration and fear of God, those three. And then I thought, Okay, well, let’s define that a little bit more, because I got confused by consistency. And I thought, well, what does that really mean? So I drilled down into consistency a little bit, and I thought, well, you know, actually better than consistency… Because the reason that I moved away from consistency was because a lot of people think consistency means that you’re staying with the same company for a long time, you know, I’ve been working with this company for 20 or 30 years, and that that’s the definition of consistency.

Matt Krause
And I thought, no, that is not what I’m looking for at all. And so consistency is not the right word. So let’s keep looking. And I landed on a phrase, the history of serial problem solving. So so that would be the first trait, is a history of serial problem solving. And should I go into what I mean by that?

Alper Rozanes
Yeah, what do you mean? What do you mean by that?

Matt Krause
What I mean by that is that this client has shown that their approach to life or at least, their approach to their professional life, is to solve problem number one, and then solve problem number two, and then solve problem number three. And you can accomplish that because at first I was thinking, well, you need to have some years at a company and then I was like, well, actually, no, you don’t in order to do that.

Alper Rozanes
You can start solving them from day one.

Matt Krause
Yeah, you know, even let’s say that you have, you’ve worked for, you know, 10 different companies, and you’ve worked for them all for two years. Maybe you’re going into Company number one, and you’re and you’re solving a problem. And then when that problem is solved, you’re moving on to company two, and you’re solving a problem there and you’re in, then you move to Company number three, and you solve a problem there.

Matt Krause
Or you can do the same if you’re a long term employee, like if you’ve been at a company for decades, you know, you solve problem number one, and then you stay at that same company, and then you solve problem number two, and then you stay at that same company, and you solve problem three, and then you stay at that same company.

Matt Krause
So you’re moving on, as you move on in your career, you’re solving problem after problem.

Matt Krause
And the when I I’ve noticed that when I am selecting for that trait that I run into two significantly different kinds of people.

Matt Krause
And one is kind of the more pragmatic and practical person. And they their approach to it is kind of like, well, you know, use Matt and then ditch them and move on it. You know that? That sounds kind of derogatory. Yeah. Sounds kind of cruel. But actually, I enjoy working with those people very much. I think that this the, the, the pragmatic and practical mindset that they bring to the work is really very interesting. But they do they see it as Okay, well, I’ve got this problem in front of me, Matt has a skill set that can help me solve that problem. And then when the problem is solved, then I’m done with all the tools, including Matt, I’m done with all the tools that I’ve used to solve that problem. And so now I move on to problem number two. And so maybe this client only sticks around for four months, and then the problem, their problem is solved, and they’ve moved on. And so that’s one kind of person. And I like working with that person, by the way.

Matt Krause
The other kind of person, they solve the problem. And then they they say, Okay, well, for this next problem for problem number two, I need a certain skill set. And that’s not exactly like the way that I was using Matt in the past, but Matt’s got the skills that I need. So I’ll bring him along for the ride. And so the so we end up solving problem number two, and then they do the same calculation for problem number three. And so as they move from problem one to two to three, they’re basically making the decision that Matt has a skill set that, slightly repurposed, is going to help me solve the next problem.

Matt Krause
And that those people tend to stick around for longer. So I’ll have those clients for you know, two or three or five years I’ve even had I had clients who lasted for longer than that, you know, eight or 10 years, just moving from problem to problem solving it. So that’s the that’s the first filter that I use, is, does this person have a history of serial problem solving?

Alper Rozanes
Okay, so that’s number one. What is the what is the second one on your list?

Matt Krause
The second one on the list is frustration and a successful client for me feels some sort of frustration. And by, by frustration, what I mean is, they’ve been slapped in the face recently.

Matt Krause
And some examples of being slapped in the face might be passed over for promotion. You know, the company promoted somebody half my age and with less experience, and less knowledge, and but they have better presentation skills. So they chose they went with that person instead.

Matt Krause
Another example of getting slapped would be, you know, if we’re working on a sales presentation, so we the company has been trying to sell outside of its home territory. And as it has ventured out into other countries, the clients are saying no.

Matt Krause
And, and the reason the reason that I mention those two things, is that if the client has this frustration, or if the client has the memory of the pain of being slapped in the face, the client will be more motivated when I make a suggestion. So the client won’t be considering this just a fun game, the client will be thinking this is there’s a problem, and it needs to be solved, and we’re motivated to do it.

Alper Rozanes
Okay. That sounds reasonable, yeah.

Matt Krause
And the, shall I move on to the third one?

Alper Rozanes
Yes. What’s the third one?

Matt Krause
The third one is fear of god. And fear of god is…

Alper Rozanes
My favorite.

Matt Krause
Fear of god is very similar to frustration, except, it’s a little bit more personal, which is why I use the phrase fear of god. And fear of god is basically, again, closely related to motivation, it is the personal price that’s going to be paid, if the problem is not solved.

Matt Krause
For example, often for people with children, the fear of god is their children. Not that their children are god. But the fear is that if I don’t solve this problem, my professional life is going to plateau. And if my professional life plateaus, I won’t be able to send my kids to private school, or I won’t be able to buy a car for my kids, or I won’t be able to buy a house for my kids, or I won’t be able to give my kids the opportunities that I had dreamed of.

Matt Krause
So they’re feeling this external motivation that’s coming from the fear that if I don’t solve this problem, you know, my kids aren’t going to have the opportunities or my spouse is going to leave me or some very powerful, motivating personal motivating factor that is driving them to want to solve this problem.

Alper Rozanes
Okay, that makes sense. I mean, those are really good incentives to to keep pushing.

Matt Krause
Yeah. I’ve also found over the years that there are a handful of people who usually do not meet these criteria. So when I see these people coming, I basically turn and run, this is not going to be a good situation. Shall I mention what those kinds of people are?

Alper Rozanes
Yeah, I’m curious.

Matt Krause
One is the entrepreneur with a dream. And this goes closely to consistency. Or maybe even it ties into frustration, and also come to think of it fear of god.

Matt Krause
The entrepreneur with a dream is just that they have a dream, they don’t have a problem they’re trying to solve they have something that they see and think would be nice, but it doesn’t have the force of pain avoidance and pain avoidance is a big part of the second two, frustration and fear of god. Pain avoidance, they don’t have the pain avoidance, or they don’t have the motivation that comes from wanting to avoid the pain. So that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s one group of people that I tend to avoid.

Matt Krause
Another is the happy person who’s just looking to kill some time. And, you know, if you’re, if you’re just looking to kill some time, there are a gazillion ways that you could do it. And you don’t even need to pay if you want to kill some time, you know, you could get a friend’s logon for Netflix, or you could read some blog posts for free or you could listen to some free music on YouTube. There are a gazillion ways.

Matt Krause
If you’re looking to kill some time, you do not need Matt. So so the happy person just looking to kill some time is a second category of person who I tend to not do a lot of work with.

Alper Rozanes
I understand. That makes sense. So we’re running out of time, so we’ll we’ll wrap this up, but for future episodes, do it think you have other criterias on your mind that that might come up?

Matt Krause
Not off the top of my head. But I’ll be thinking about some and there may be some some things that I need to clarify for the next meeting. So and so we have Alper’s criteria coming up. And we also have that Matt will probably need to clarify some of the points that he’s made. So we’ve got those two things coming up in future episodes.

Alper Rozanes
Like looking for God fearing presenters.

Matt Krause
You don’t have to be religious to work with Matt, it’s perfectly fine. If you’re, it’s perfectly fine if you’re not a religious person.

Alper Rozanes
Okay, just checking.

Matt Krause
Okay.

Alper Rozanes
All right. I’ll talk to you next week. Good talking to you.

Matt Krause
All right. Thank you Alper, talk to you soon.