cleints are always different

Last week I met with FH Perry builders to talk about the FHP Home devision. Perry is one of the top builders in the area, so it was a huge honor for me to talk with them. When I walked into the conference room I had a few minutes alone at first. I read some left over notes on their white board from a staff meeting of some sort, and what I saw was very impressive. One of the things that really resonated with me was a point about how what is important to one customer will not necessarily be important to another customer. That is something that I struggle with all the time. Just recently I spent much time and money making a beautiful sample door panel for a client. custom design, custom knife, custom finish work the whole bit. Come to find out that the client didn't like it and that the panel design was not that important to them all they wanted was something really simple. A few months later a different client has had me making a dozen different panels, all custom, custom knives, custom panels the whole bit. I never know what my clients are going to perseverate on. It is one of the hardest things to do in my business, we are always trying to anticipate what is important to the client but there is no consistency to it, people are different. I guess now that I should work on trying to read people during the first stages of meeting them to determine where there interest are.