Inquiring Minds

Watershaping carries us onto the properties and into the private lives of our clients, and it does so to such a personal, even intimate level that I see the value and importance of getting to know them to the best of my ability. Invariably, that means asking the right questions and knowing how to listen and interpret the answers.

This isn’t a new topic – in fact, it’s been about ten years since I wrote an early string of WaterShapes columns on how I communicate with my clients at the outset of our relationships – but I think it bears discussion again basically because I continue to get questions about it from readers and from students in Genesis 3 courses.

This doesn’t surprise me, of course, because all of those inquiring minds know that the ability to communicate with clients is an essential building block of success in watershaping and in any other endeavor where making clients happy is important. What they’re after from me is some mortar to hold a few of those blocks together.

This is a vast topic, of course, and it comes easily to some and only with difficulty to others. And if you’re paying attention to the way you do things, it’s also something you’ll see evolving as time passes. But regardless of who or where you are, I find that early client communication – that is, the process of interviewing them to discover all you can about them – is something that requires forethought, care and close, ongoing attention.

TWO-WAY STREET

Through the years, I’ve developed a number of ways to jump into this topic in teaching classes and conversing with individuals, and one of my favorites is to start by pointing out that one of the first skills anyone needs to be an effective interviewer is knowledge of the art of keeping your mouth shut and your ears open. To be an effective interviewer, in other words, you must be an effective listener.

That may seem obvious, but I bring it up because I know for a fact that many of us are really bad at it. In fact, it’s part of human nature to want to impress others with the things we say, so instead of actively listening, we spend the time in which clients are answering our questions thinking of how we’ll react and respond to what’s being said. It’s as if our own silence makes us uncomfortable.

So what I tell people is that, no matter what, you must learn to listen. Perhaps you’ll have to bite your lip (literally or figuratively) or run through some mental exercise to remind yourself to keep your mouth shut and actually listen to what your clients are saying. Whatever works for you, it’s absolutely necessary to find a way.

And never forget that a big part of listening is actually retaining what your clients say. When you listen carefully, much of what they tell you will stick on some level, but personally, I need to take notes as they speak to remind myself of what was said, what they emphasized and how they phrased things – and keep those notes in a file. I’ve known some people who record these conversations, and others who take notes and make recordings as well. Again, whatever works: However you do it, you must have some method for registering the content of your clients’ comments.

The last listening-related point that needs emphasis is this: When you conduct client interviews, you must be tangibly and completely there with them. This means turning off or at least ignoring your cell phone, removing the Bluetooth device from your ear and stepping away from your world and moving physically into theirs. It shows that you respect your clients’ time and are focused entirely on their needs and desires.

This is all background, of course – the sort of mental preparation and commitment you need to run through to set your interviews up to be as productive as possible. With that beachhead established, you can focus on the content of the interview itself.

For me, this is a constantly evolving process: I tinker with my own approach every time I head into a meeting, and I’ve spent a lot of time through the years listening to what other watershapers do and adapting their techniques to mesh with my own.

Not long ago, for example, I received a wonderful set of interview questions from Kate Wiseman, a landscape architect who runs Sage Outdoor Designs in San Diego, Calif. I was so impressed by what I saw that I’ve incorporated much of what she does into my own interviews and presentations.

In addition to those questions, she sends out a pre-interview questionnaire that she later uses to guide the discussion when she and her clients meet face to face and, in some cases, uses the responses to begin forming design ideas. What I like most about her questionnaire is that it purposely gets clients’ creative juices flowing, prompting them begin thinking in a more focused way about what they really want.

DIGGING DEEP

Wiseman’s questionnaire begins by offering a list of words describing various characteristics associated with swimming pools and other watershapes and asking the clients to pick the five they prefer while highlighting one term that stands out among all the rest. (The list includes words such as “curvilinear,” “flowing,” “natural,” “rectangular,” “geometric,” “modern,” “architectural,” “clean,” “bright,” “decorative,” “peaceful,” and “playful,” among many others.)

Then she asks a string of key questions: From which rooms inside the house do you want to be able to see your watershape? Do you have a favorite garden or landscape? What’s your favorite country or city to which you’ve traveled? What in that city or country particularly inspires you or do you find especially beautiful? Do you have a favorite artist, architect or landscape architect? Are there specific materials you’d like to use? Is there a local project or property that you admire?

Next, she asks a question I think we all should ask: How interested are you in participating in this project? The options: Not at all – you’re the expert, you take care of it; Minimal – I’ll complete the questionnaire, but that’s about it; Average – I’ll discuss options and possibilities; and Extensive – I’ll personally decide most details.

The questionnaire then asks questions aimed at determining the clients’ degree of familiarity with their home’s architecture and design style by asking them to pick descriptions from a list of choices she supplies ranging from Colonial and Craftsman to Contemporary and Spanish Colonial. Finally, she asks about color preferences, eliciting favorites as well as those the clients simple don’t like.

My own pre-interview questionnaire – again, a constantly evolving document – has adopted some her ideas but diverges in other areas. No matter the specifics, the point is that such questionnaires are capable of gleaning a great deal of critical information from clients before we ever sit down with them in person. It’s also not lost on me that filling out such forms is fun for some people – a wonderful way to get engaged in the process and express some of their likes and dislikes.

All of this, of course, sets me up nicely for the interview itself. When we meet, I start with a series of questions that some people might consider to be unnecessary – basic no-brainers – because my desire is to help my clients feel relaxed and comfortable in opening up to me. My sense has long been that there are strong narratives at the heart of every great design – narratives that support the concepts that eventually make it onto the page and into the project itself – so my aim is to get them to a mental space where they’re willing to tell their stories.

Once we pass through the preliminaries and everyone is at ease, I get down to the business at hand by asking them what has motivated them to begin the process of seeking a watershape and/or an exterior design. In effect, Why are we here?

TALKING TIME

My desire at this stage is to determine primary motivations and, in cases where the clients are a couple or a group of people, to find out who in the room is truly driving the process.

This is where I learn, for example, that the husband’s doctor has recommended swimming as a form of therapy for a bad back, or that the wife has always dreamed of entertaining by a beautiful swimming pool because of experiences she had as a child or on a recent vacation somewhere. In my experience, I’ve found that this single line of inquiry provides absolutely critical information that shapes everything that follows.

Backing off a bit, I then change things up by asking how they found me and my company. On one level, this lets me know if whatever sort of marketing campaign I’m pursuing is doing its job, but more important, it tells me a lot about the clients themselves. If, for example, they say they found me in the Yellow Pages and I know full well that I’ve never had such a listing or placed such an ad, I discover early on that my clients have an interesting relationship with the truth.

If they reached me by referral, I can make an entirely different set of assumptions based on the fact that birds of a feather do indeed tend to flock together. That’s not invariably true, but I’ve found through the years that these people tend to dine in the same restaurants, belong to the same clubs and travel to many of the same destinations as their referring friends. If they’ve seen my work and liked it and have contacted me because of a positive recommendation from a friend or business associate, it tells me a good deal about the scope of the project – and sometimes even the budget.

(By this point, I’ve also done my homework: I generally know from the point of initial contact that a new client has been referred to me by a past client, and I call up the past client to express my appreciation and often am treated to details about the evolution of the referral. Sometimes, these past clients will even share what they know about the new clients’ characters, giving me a heads up if I’ll be dealing with someone who’s extremely picky, for example, or, conversely, quite easygoing.)

Now that we’re face to face, I also probe one of the most important of all issues to be covered in any interview: How do the clients plan on using their pool, spa or waterfeature? Although there are many important issues to be addressed in these interviews, this may actually be the most significant one to cover, and it needs to be pursued in depth.

I start down this path by asking how many family members will be using the watershape on a regular basis. If there are children at home, I want to know how many there are, their ages and their general activity levels. Beyond the answers, I keep my eyes and ears open for clues that will help me sort things out.

If, for example, the home is filled with pictures of kids engaged in baseball, soccer, cheerleading or scouting, I rest assured that, no matter what’s explicitly said, the family is active and spends time together sharing away-from-home activities. Or I might notice that the kids are more sedentary and tend to be wrapped up in video games – or that the family has photos on the wall attesting to the fact that they love vacations in the tropics or in the mountains or in historic places.

FINDING THE PAYOFF

If you’re paying attention, you should be able to come away from the interview process with a pretty good idea of how the family spends its time together – which in turn will give you a fair idea of how they’d be likely to use recreational waterfeatures around their home.

It’s also important to determine who outside the immediate family will be likely to use the pool. Do they have an extended family that will be frequent visitors, and do they bring the kids along as well? Do the children in the home have active social lives that would lead them to invite friends over for casual swimming as well as the occasional pool party?

What all of this becomes is a pile of information related to the basic issue of how the water will be used. Once I get the clients thinking along the lines of how they, personally, will be using the pool and how others, collectively, will enjoy the water, I find it’s much easier to turn the corner and get them to start visualizing – that is, to start seeing all the ways in which their pool or spa or waterfeature will be used.

Visualization is a powerful tool: Once I get clients thinking in these terms, it’s far easier to draw more detailed answers from them – and also draw them more deeply into the process and generate even more anticipation and excitement.

If I’d just blandly asked, “How will you use the pool,” my suspicion is that, more often than not, I’d blandly hear, “For exercising.” But when I press them to visualize their future relationship with the water, they tend to become more expansive and see beyond their initial concepts to include broader, brighter sets of water-oriented opportunities. In plain terms, these responses provide potentially critical information that goes far beyond any non-visualized reaction.

This, in a nutshell, is how a doctor’s basic recommendation of aquatic exercise morphs into a vision of entertaining at poolside, hosting pool parties for the kids, relaxing in the spa with good friends or watching reflections off the water as the sun sets. It becomes a matter of the seductiveness of the space, and visualization is what helps my clients recognize water’s appeal on all-new levels.

As these conversations progress, I generally find that my clients and I will open doors they’ve never considered – to the outdoor kitchen, to the lounging shelf for the grandchildren, to the outdoor dining room, to the outdoor entertainment center and to a whole new lifestyle of which water is one of many components. All that, and the doctor will be happy as well!

What’s happening now is that the interview has become a collaboration, and you’re all working together to shape the story they’ll be able to tell later about how much they enjoy what’s been done. One byproduct, of course, is that I’m fully loaded with great information in defining design ideas; another is that we’ve also set the stage for further discussions of configurations, materials, and a whole host of details that will come together as the project moves along.

Much of this, in my view, is the product of using a questionnaire, an interview and processes of visualization to unlock creative potential and stoke the fires of anticipation and excitement.

BIG PICTURES

I’ve stated the following point in this column many times, but it bears repeating: Our clients come to us out of a desire for luxury, pleasure, prestige, excitement and beauty. They are, at heart, seeking their own slices of the good life.

Our job – and it starts from the very beginning – is to avoid doing anything that will disrupt their good mood. As important, we should also do everything we can to amplify those positive feelings and desires. By prompting our clients to imagine the joy and pride they’ll have in their homes when all is said and done, we’re doing all we can to lead them to see the future in a bright, sunny light.

Next month, I’ll delve into the parts of the interview in which I begin discussions of a variety of specific design details.

Brian Van Bower runs Aquatic Consultants, a design firm based in Miami, Fla., and is a co-founder of the Genesis 3 Design Group; dedicated to top-of-the-line performance in aquatic design and construction, this organization conducts schools for like-minded pool designers and builders. He can be reached at [email protected].