Start With A Win - Setting Expectations to Prevent Miscommunication with Kelly Contos

Episode Date: November 9, 2022

The majority of challenges business owners face can be boiled down to a lack of communication surrounding expectations. One way to troubleshoot issues in business and personal relationships is by setting the stage with clear expectations for time commitments, scenarios, outcomes and goals. By providing clarity through helpful boundaries, business leaders can give their employees and customers more confidence and direction when it comes to production, collaboration, and the overall success of a project. Expectations prevent surprises. They make potentially difficult conversations easier because there are previous, foundational conversations to which people can refer. If people are given clear expectations from the beginning, they are less likely to feel defensive when it comes time to evaluate efficiency and productivity. Setting expectations for customers also gives them a sense of your own expertise, which in turn relays trust through transparency. This communication tool applies not only in business, but also in personal relationships and parenting. It’s important to set clear expectations, communicate often, and revisit those expectations again and again. Practicing this process for success eliminates many miscommunication issues so that time and energy can be spent elsewhere in more productive ways. Main TopicsSetting the expectations to prevent confusion, lack of direction, and miscommunication (02:00)How setting the expectations helps us have potentially hard conversations (06:43)Establishing yourself as the expert (11:15)Appropriate expectations support long term goals (13:00)Kelly’s experience training for a fitness competition with a coach who helped her manage her expectations (15:20)A consistent communication regimen provides accountability (18:20)Apply the strategy to parenting (21:30)Connect with Kelly:https://www.facebook.com/kelly.contos.3https://twitter.com/kellycontoshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/kellycontos/Connect with Adam:https://www.startwithawin.com/https://www.facebook.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://twitter.com/AdamContosCEOhttps://www.instagram.com/adamcontosceo/Listen, rate, and subscribe!Apple PodcastsSpotifyGoogle Podcasts

Welcome to Start With A Win, where we give you the tools and lessons you need to create business and personal success. Are you ready? Let's do this. Producer Mark, how are you doing today, buddy? Hey, I'm doing so good. We're here in the in-person studio. So we got Studio A where we do our Zoom calls and people who we have on Start With Win. And then we have Studio B here that we have when we have in-person guests. And today we have the best in-person guest. The bestest.

But I could have Zoomed, I guess. But you wouldn't be in studio B with us. Right down the street, you know. Exactly. So today we have, and I guess I have the honor of introducing her, my amazing wife, Kelly Contos. Welcome to Start With a Win.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're so welcome. And for everybody that doesn't know, to get into Kelly's schedule is extraordinarily difficult. It's so hard. So we're honored to have you on the show. But at the same time, you're kind of also my business voice in the back of my head. I want to talk about some business challenges today that all of our listeners can benefit from when it comes to how to not get yourself into these little issues as a business leader, as somebody in sales. You were in the real estate space for a long time.

Before that, you were in franchising at REMAX World Headquarters, and you learned a lot of really, really good business lessons that somehow pop up when we see these different business challenges and you're like, oh, they need to think about this. So I want to get into that today, okay? Okay. All right. So here's the challenge we see happening quite a bit, is somebody saying, I didn't know, or they get frustrated because they're lacking some direction, some knowledge. They just don't know where to go with something. And it's always reflected back on

you, listener, the person that I'm talking to right now, or the business leader in this, because they're the customer and everything's kind of supposed to be served up on a silver platter for the customer, but ultimately they feel like they're missing something. So let's talk about this. And you have a good word that you always just immediately throw out. Tell me what that word is. You have to set the expectations. Tell me about that. Why do you feel that's so important? I think almost any failure in communication breakdown in any kind of business, whether it's franchising or the sales process or leading your employees, it doesn't even have to be business to customer. It can just be within an organization. It's a communication breakdown that comes down to lack of setting expectations. So the person, you know, if you're, you know, when we were in franchising and we would talk to our franchisees, whether we were going through the onboarding process or we were talking to

someone who's been a longtime franchisee, you want to always set the expectation, how often you're going to talk to them, what specific things you're going to be talking to them about every time, specifically what their goals are and what you're looking for them to achieve and what you're looking to help them to achieve. So when you have those conversations and you're talking about these things, you're not just springing these surprises on them. They know going into the call the things that they're supposed to be working on because the things that they know are going to come up during the conversation and the things that you're going to hold them accountable for. So there's no surprises if they're set ahead of time. That translated into

the real estate transaction when I became a realtor and started selling real estate. You could tell immediately when you were working with an agent that had clients on the other side of the transaction that didn't set any expectations with their clients because it was always a mess. You have to, going into something, let your clients know, okay, here's the inspection process. This is going to be a negotiation. We don't just negotiate at the beginning of the contract when we're trying to set the price on the house. We're going to have a negotiation again when it comes to an inspection objection. But here's the things we're going to be looking for. Then you get this inspection objection on the other side that's five pages worth of cosmetic things that you don't ask for in an inspection objection, you know that that client hasn't set the expectations with their clients to say,

we're only looking for safety hazards. We're only looking for foundational issues. We're only looking for these things in an inspection. But if you can kind of read that situation ahead of time and say to your clients, listen, this agent may not have prepared their clients properly for what they can ask for. So don't be alarmed when you see this five-page objection. We're going to go through it. And as we've talked about, we're only going to address these following issues. And it's going to be a negotiation. So this is I want to I want to hit pause right there because this is an interesting way of looking at the concept of expectations, because a lot of people are like expectations. Why told them? And the reality is expectations are actually like a spider web. They're a series of conversations that continue to branch into other conversations,

but there's always setting expectations on it. But it's fascinating to watch how, and since you're using the example of real estate transactions and watching you and being part of some of those real estate transactions, you and I have bought and sold a lot of real estate together as well. It's always, it's fascinating when you look at it because you set the expectation that there are going to be expectations set. And it's, I mean, instead of just coming in and saying, okay, I'm going to keep you in the loop on things. That's not it. It's, I'm going to keep you in a loop on things and there are going to be things that happen on the other side that somebody didn't set expectations for. We're going to try and set all

the expectations on our side, but you have to understand we're always going to be renewing these expectations throughout the conversation of the sales process. And that's where problems happen as soon as we miss one of those, right? Well, and that's exactly right, because something's always going to go wrong. There is no perfect real estate transaction. There is no perfect franchisee. There is no perfect business relationship in anything. Eventually, you're going to have to have a hard conversation with somebody, whether it's an employee, whether it's a franchisee, whether it's a customer, whether it's a business partner.

There's always going to be a time where you have to have a difficult conversation. But if you can lead off that conversation by saying, remember when we talked about this before and I told you this was probably going to come up? This is the time now. We have to have this conversation and deal with this. And it's not somebody doesn't feel attacked. They don't feel threatened. They don't feel defensive because they've known all along this was something that could arise and this is something that they would be held accountable for.

And it just makes the hard conversations easier because you're just revisiting expectations than kind of hitting them with a knockout punch. So we're talking about revisiting expectations here. We're talking about setting the expectations, going back to them, because things are going to go wrong, as Kelly was just talking about here. And this happens in every business. I was involved in several of them this week, different business transactions,

and there's always something. There's always somebody that slips up, forgets something, misses something, misses something, something changes, the economy changes, interest rates change, whatever it might be. The reality is we have to be flexible and understanding in these things. But you said it will come up, and people want to know that, OK, you're true to what you said. This is what you originally said. Things change. And the expectation that things change has to be set.

For instance, like on a real estate transaction, for that matter, like you said, you're going to run into something with the inspection. You're going to run into something. Like right now, interest rates are changing. And there's going to be a change in the funding as far as, oh my gosh, what can I afford? Interest rates just went up by 75 basis point or three quarters of a percentage for everybody, just a good round number here, three quarters of a percentage. How do we deal with that? And how do you overcome the frustration of setting expectations and meeting expectations when sometimes you can't meet

those expectations? I mean, what's the best advice you have where people don't get upset with each other? They don't take it personally. They don't judge. I mean, what do you do? Well, again, I mean, that comes back to setting an expectation and communication and knowing whatever this relationship is that you're entering into and setting these expectations. Having been the person who's been through it before, so in the agent-buyer-seller scenario, the agent obviously has the experience to kind of look down and foresee whatever kind of variables could possibly jump in with certain situations.

In the case of the market right now, if I started working with a buyer, that would certainly be something that I would say probably before even having them sign a buyer's agency agreement. And maybe their mortgage broker went over it with them too. But they need to know, hey, our interest rates are a little volatile right now. Things could change during the process of your transaction, and we're going to have to figure out how to deal with it, you know, along the way. And sometimes there is just the unknown. setting up the expectations that are known or possible in the beginning, if other things come up that maybe you didn't account for, at least you've communicated with them so thoroughly and you've set all of these other expectations that, you know, they're kind of in this mindset already that things are not going to be perfect. There are going to be speed bumps and the things

that you've talked to them about is kind of, it's not necessarily limited to that group of things. Okay. So we're talking about making sure that they're on board with where we're at with everything going on right now. And there's no, I guess, surprises, if you will. And expectations are avoiding surprises. And I guess revisiting those. Yes. And expectations, being able to set expectations comes from experience of how those relationships have gone before, right? Like if you're an experienced agent that you have this list of expectations to set, but what that's really doing is also communicating that you are the expert in this field. And so if things come up that they're not prepared for, that you may not have foreseen, because there will always be an opportunity to have

something new to you too. But your client or your employee or whoever this relationship is with should feel comfortable in the fact that you've already put these expectations forth. You've already presented yourself as an expert. So when something new off the cuff comes up, they feel better because they know that they have a good person trying to handle this for them. This is really an interesting topic because we're dealing with trust here when it comes to, you know, if you don't set expectations, you're constantly violating trust because people have one thing in their head and the stuff never turns out the way that they think it's going to initially because they have this preconceived notion about it. There was actually this preconceived notion that like to buy a house, you could go online.

At some point, you click the buy or whatever and we know that that's never going to occur. Things just get more and more complicated. But even getting away from the real estate analogy of this, it might be, let's say you hire a personal trainer and you're like, I'm going to lose some weight. I was just going to give that example too. Yeah. Okay. So take me into that. If anybody has ever been on a health journey or a weight loss journey or a fitness journey and you've hired a coach, you know that things don't always go smoothly. You don't just start working with this person, working out and eating a certain way and you just lose, lose, lose, lose, build muscle, build muscle. It's not – that's not how it is.

It's not like ta-da. I'm in shape. Also, I think the number one reason why people don't stick with eating a certain way or working out a certain way or just any kind of a healthy lifestyle is because they expect that they're going to see immediate results. And after two or three weeks of not having the results that they desire, they completely just stop and give up. And if you're working with a coach, then hopefully your coach is setting those expectations ahead of time to say, okay, this isn't an overnight process. It took a year to get where you are now. It's going to take a year to get back to where you want to be. Or it's going to be, you know, you can't build muscle and lose fat and

lose 30 pounds in 30 days. Don't fall for those. But a coach will tell you, you know, they may put you on a plan where they say, it might get a little worse before it gets better. But, you know, we're prepping your body to do a certain thing. Or we may have weeks that you're not going to see any weight loss. We may have weeks that you might see weight gain. Maybe that's muscle. Maybe it's water. Maybe it's this. Maybe it's that. Maybe it's just part of the process. But I think if people go into this knowing this is going to be long term, this isn't going to be perfect every week, there are going to be good weeks and bad weeks. It's just it's part of the process. And also, by the way, life happens along the to be perfect every week they're going to be good weeks and bad weeks it's just it's part of the process and also by the way life happens along the way not every week can be a

perfect you know eating and workout regimen so if you set those expectations up ahead then your clients are less to freak out when one of those week occurs and they don't, you know, lose the weight or lose the inches or build the muscle or feel stronger. They know that that's coming and hopefully they won't give up because they know it's part of the process. So this, I'm listening to you here, this happened to you. Oh, for sure. So for all the listeners, you know, Kelly, a few years ago, trained for a fitness competition. And it was interesting because you had tried so many different diets that really nobody set any expectations for. It was the whole tone up, lose 5 pounds, 10 pounds, whatever it might be, go do the workout routine. And then you hired probably the best fitness coach in Colorado since gone nationwide, worldwide, whatever. And first thing, I remember

you came home from that first meeting with him and all it was, was him setting expectations. He sat you down. Yeah, totally different than what I thought. Right. So he just sat you down and he said, you're going to gain weight. You're going to think that nothing's going right. Yeah. But we need to stay the course and work on these things. Yes. How did you, I mean it's hard to take – to swallow the pill initially. It is. But it's easy when the results start. Yeah.

When you know that's what you have to get through, right? It was kind of a kick in the gut at first because the reason that I went to him was because everything I was doing wasn't working. And you see all these things online about fitness training. And, you know, it's a three month bikini prep. So I was like, okay, I wasn't planning on doing the contest. I just wanted to lose the weight and look like I could do a contest. And so I went to him and I thought, all right, in three months, I'm going to have what I need out of this thing. And that's when he told he said, this is you can't do this in three months. Like there's just, you can't, this is because of where you are right now, this is going to take you a year. But if you give me a year, I will change your fitness and your health and your physique in a

way that you won't yo-yo anymore. If you want to, if you want to keep yo-yoing, go find a three-month quick fix. But if you really want to change for the better long-term and stay healthy, I will give you the tools that you need, but you have to stick with me for a year. And you did. And I did. It's incredible. So the foundation for setting expectations, and really that's what this conversation is about, is so people understand set and meet expectations.

And coming from a public company, that's what we always said with Wall Street was set and meet expectations. And it's all done through this magic word called communication and a regimen of communication. So we have in our listener base a great deal of people who do business in different ways. Some of them haven't talked to their clients in weeks or months probably and might have expectations that the clients are even still thinking on the same wavelength as them or maybe not. I don't know. I mean, if you're in real estate and you haven't talked to your client at least several times a week, or you're in sales and you haven't talked to somebody who's actively in the sales pipeline at least several times a week, I think the expectations start veering away from truly where they are. What do you think is a good communication regimen for an active sales

process versus just a nurturing process versus just keeping in touch, whatever that might look like? Well, I think it definitely depends on what your situation is, but you have to have regular constant communication. You definitely can't go weeks or months without talking to someone, especially after you set an expectation because it's not just expectation. It's also there's some accountability in there, right? Like especially if you're – if it's an employee situation or if it's a franchisee situation, a lot of those expectations that you're setting is their accountability. Even for the customer, they have accountability? I mean the client does have some accountability.

Right, OK. They've got certain deadlines that they need to meet on their part. Right. But if you're setting the accountability or you're setting the expectations and you're not following up on the account, then there is no accountability. Then why bother setting the expectations? It's a constant process. It's not like a one or done. And the expectations, as you said earlier, they're going to change throughout the process a little bit. And they're going to kind of ebb and flow. And there might be new ones that come up on during different parts of the sales cycle or the job or

whatever. For the record, I do agree that the person in the sales cycle, the customer or whatever, does have accountability because everybody has a part in the sales process. And even like, say, you in the training, you had serious accountability in your fitness goals, your health and exercise and nutrition and things like that. But even a home buyer has accountability because if they haven't done their loan paperwork or they're not looking at what you sent them to check out the properties, you know, there's no magic wand that's just instantly going to put them in the house that they dream of. Sure. They have, they obviously, they have deadlines during the contract that you're going to need their help meeting to review documents and to sign off on documents. And of course, missing a date or a deadline in a contract could make or break the contract. It could cost them money. You know, even I would say in the, in this crazy market that we've had lately,

before you even get to a contract, I think there's a lot of accountability that the buyers have to try to make sure they're communicating what it is, what they're looking for, moving very quickly if they want to write an offer, if they need to get a loan package together, if they need to go see a house. There's a lot of different roles in that. Different than a franchisee-franchisor relationship where their accountability is they're needing to hit a certain dollar amount, generate a certain dollar amount, or they're needing to hire certain employees or make certain sales goals. There's, it's a different kind of accountability, but definitely accountability nonetheless.

You know, and another example too would be, you know, with your kids and setting expectations. It's the same thing. You're setting expectations with your kids and, you know, the expectations for going into church might be different than your expectations for going to a birthday party or going to a barbecue or their expectations might be different from school. But, you know, you're constantly reminding your kids of those expectations, even though they've heard it a million times. You're still, you know, you're going to church every Sunday. You're setting those expectations probably every time before you walk in the door. And then when, you know, something happens and they start getting a little antsy, it's just, you know, remember we talked about this. This is one of those things. And then you're not having that whole conversation. So it applies to a lot of different things.

I like it. So expectations are kind of the setting the bar and the little nudges along the way. The final words on this, because this is, you know, we dug deep into this concept of expectations. They have to be out there. They have to be communicated. Otherwise, people wander and they don't have clarity in the direction that they're going. And this is one of the biggest traits of a leader. We talk about it in Leadership Factory of that clarity of, okay, do I know what I need to be doing? Everybody wants that. And nobody wants to wonder. The whole game of guess

what I'm thinking. I mean, nobody wants to play that game because it's not fun. You always, you know, it's frustrating, I guess, more than anything. And it doesn't feel like there's trust and transparency in that. Whereas with expectations and communication, there is. So what final words do you have for our listeners on, in their business and in their life, setting expectations and communicating those? Well, I would say if you are working with someone that you expect something from, set your expectations clearly, set them in the beginning, revisit them often. A lot of times when you're on the other end of that and you're starting something new for the first time, whether it's, you know, a brand new home buyer, a brand new home seller, or it might be a brand new franchisee

or somebody new to a certain aspect of business. We saw this very recently where this person felt like an expectation wasn't communicated to them, but it was actually set in the beginning. But I don't think anybody had revisited that with them in a few weeks. So you have to revisit those because when people are getting that information for the first time, it can be overwhelming for them and they're not going to remember everything. So it's just, it's communicate often, revisit the expectations every single time you communicate, make that part of your standard discussion every time you touch base with them. Awesome. And this is a regular topic in our world. You and I will be going someplace or talking about business and you'll look at me and you'll say expectations. So I can't stress this enough for our listeners.

Think about that word expectations. Think about communicating with your customers, even with your family, your kids, things like that. But if we are not setting expectations and communicating those, we are not providing clarity in our relationships, and it's a lot more frustrating to get anywhere. Kelly Contos, my accountability partner, my coach in life, and my amazing wife. Thank you for being on Start With A Win. I do have one final question for you. Kelly, how do you start your day with a win? Exercise. Tell me about that. A regular gym routine. the blood flowing wakes you up makes you feel

like you've been productive right away gives you a lot of energy for your day awesome and I get to be part of that so yes thank you and thanks for being on start with a win thanks hey and thank you for listening to Start With A Win. Hey, if you need to understand what you're doing with your time and how to be more efficient with your time, Adam's put together a foolproof time system that will help you analyze what you're doing, when you're doing it, and maximize your time and the results you get with that.

So head over to foolprooftimesystem.com, download that PDF, and remember, until next time, start with a win.