Your first job is not to give information, but to get information.
To be an effective influencer (the definition of a leader) requires that the first thing you do is not to give information, but to get information. You are knighted as an effective influencer to first help your client articulate what’s in it for them. It’s been said that the greatest gift you can give someone is to listen to them. Begin building a strong foundation for effective communication by first giving your clients the opportunity to be heard. Get them to tell you their “story”. Ask them how they ended up in your office. Why are they there, what do they want to accomplish? If they were looking back a year or three from now and coming to you ended up being the best thing that ever happened to them what kinds of things would need to have happened along the way?
Ask positive questions, rephrase the answers, and give answers back to clients to facilitate identifying what they want.
Asking positive questions, rephrasing the answers and then giving their answers back to them in your words helps them identify what they want. By articulating what is motivating them to seek you out, establishes for both you and them what can and should happen. My guess is that the clear majority of time these conversations will be basically the same one you have had with other clients with basically the same needs, wants and desires that all your clients have. They will just be named differently.