During client meetings, it s not only important to listen to their ideas and suggestions but it is very important to ask the right questions. The clients can sometimes seem to forget that you may not know certain terms and abbreviations, which can be easily be confusing to anyone. They might just assume that you might be familiar with it. For example, the company that I'm doing my Capstone experience for is an Insurance company that gives out Specialty Insurance. From my Client research I knew that they have rates on Boat which they sometimes refer as BT and Collector Vehicle as CV. So in some instances, during client meetings, when they mentioned BT, I just assumed that they were talking about Boats. But It just didn't make sense at all.
It took me a couple of times to realize that this may in fact be something else entirely. After one month, I happened to talk to my manager about it and she corrected me saying that BT , the clients were referring to was actually Business Transformation, which made total sense.
I was embarrassed at my own folly. Had I raised my questions and doubts before, I wouldn't have wasted this much time and would have been able to move on pretty fast.
-Bhavya Mohan
Student, University of Cincinnati
MS MARKETING
