Shift #4 - Giving your best work a fair chance
One of the biggest source of frustration for many coaches, trainers, consultants and service professionals is to talk about what they do so that high-value clients see the value of investing in working with them.
If we aren’t able to articulate what we do effectively in a way that positions our brand as a valuable, relevant resource for our audience, our message won’t be heard.
So we’ll be talking about what to stop saying when we talk about what we do and what to start saying instead.
But before that…
Why the emphasis on high-value clients?
High-value clients that see the value of your work, invest their time, money and resources to do it, tend to engage and commit more. The more they commit and take action, the better results they tend to get. The better results they get, the more confident they get and the more excited they are to take action. The better results they get, the more excited they are to recommend you and your work.
You can start to build a reputation for someone worth investing in. Your business grows. Your impact grows. It creates a virtuous cycle of growth and impact for your business.
I call these clients that can create this virtuous business cycle: “highly-invested” clients.
Let’s consider for a second the alternative - Clients who invest at a low level, tend not value the work. They tend to take little or not much action. That usually leads to poor results, not-so-great referrals, and places where we don’t want to go with our work.
I’m on a mission to help people like us – coaches, trainers, healers, consultants, experts and service professionals – to be seen, valued and chosen by highly-invested clients because I know what it did for my first training/consulting business and for my current business.
Working with highly-invested clients allows you to accelerate your business growth by working with people who value your work, get great results and create that virtuous cycle I was telling you about.
I want that for you and for all my fellow experts who can make the world a better place with their good work.
So let’s take the first step towards changing the dynamics of your business and how you help people.
The #1 Opportunity You Cannot Afford To Miss Every Time You Introduce Yourself Online Or Offline
That opportunity is called “positioning” and it makes the difference between being seen, valued and chosen by your best clients or being ignored by the very same people you can help the most.
Do you ever wonder… why is it people see clearly and value the contribution of some experts while others remain invisible?
The answer to that is positioning. (We are not talking here about bragging, self-proclamation or declaring oneself the #1).
What we are talking about is how visibility (and invisibility) really work.
The market place is noisy and cluttered so human beings turn off. That's our way of managing an overload of information. We have bandwidth only for what we perceive as true resources to us.
Positioning starts by becoming a valuable, relevant, credible resource for your audience of potential clients in the first two seconds of them seeing you or the online representations of you.
As human beings that we all are, we have a fantastic brain… Well, in fact we have 3 brains. The oldest part of our brain is called the “reptilian brain” and it is in charge of our survival.
When we meet a person, our reptilian brain will decide in a matter of seconds if it is a “friend”, an enemy or someone that should be… ignored. Unless you make it in the category of “friend” (resource), chances are your message will be positioned to be “ignored”.
What “friend” basically means is that you can trust me and I am here to provide resources to you (and NOT to take away from you).
After that initial decision, they decide that you are relevant and there to provide resources… Now they put you in some category in their mind. That is how our brain works as humans. We immediately assign meaning. In this case, we “position” or “place” the expert in front of us in a category of resource (for ourselves or for someone we could refer them to).
So every time you introduce yourself – live or online – is an opportunity to position yourself as a valuable, relevant, credible resource.
3 Things To STOP Saying – The Checklist
1. STOP Using Labels
Labels are not useful when you start your introduction because people may not know what they mean and you may be wasting the first words that come out of your mouth making the person switch off and position you in the category of someone to be ignored.
For example, if someone says “I’m a transformative coach”, the listener may not know what that means or can connect the “coach” label with some other experience they had with a coach they didn’t like…
What To Say Instead – Start with the value you provide so that you aim at positioning yourself as a resource.
You can start by using this simple structure:
I help {XYZ group of people] to [ACHIEVE OUTCOME].
Example for a weight loss expert: I help new moms lose the pregnancy weight fast.
2. STOP Using Jargon, Vague Words, Marketing Words
Again, your words paint pictures in people’s heads. You want them to position as a specific, valuable, relevant resource.
For example, if a coach says “I help people get unstuck”, what would the listener see in their mind? What picture is painted with those words?
A good test for the few words you will say is to close your eyes and see what picture they paint. Would anyone hearing these words see a similar picture?
What To Say Instead - Use the words that people would use to describe the problems you solve, the pain they experience and the outcomes they wish you to achieve.
3. STOP Talking About The Process
We love so much the modalities, the technology, the techniques that we use that we can tend to put too much emphasis in the process we use to get a certain outcome. Some experts focus too much in how they deliver the outcomes.
For example: (going back to the weight loss expert): I do weight loss 15-day retreats or I have a membership site or I sell a 997-page ebook. I use hypnosis and a lettuce diet.
People are not interested in how many pages an ebook has. Some people may not know what hypnosis is or they may have the wrong idea about lettuce.
What To Say Instead – Put your focus on the outcomes you help people achieve and the pains you help them alleviate.
BONUS - How to turn the "how much do you charge?" potential trap into an opportunity to enroll clients
Sometimes you get the dreaded “what do you charge?” question and it can be a “trap” difficult to recover from. Some people ask out of curiosity. Some people want to know if they are able to afford it.
It can be a “trap” because you haven’t been able to help them discover the value of working with you (for themselves). So any number is completely out of frame. (They have no frame of reference to understand the value for them).
Money brings all sorts of reactions in people. If you quote your hourly rate, many people will immediately compare it with what they themselves earn per hour… That seldom leads to good places.
Even if you don’t charge by the hour, it is not a wise decision to talk about the investment in working with you before giving the person the opportunity to uncover for themselves what it is costing them not to work with you.
What To Do And Say - You can adopt the position of a specialist (which you are) and invite them for a conversation to see if or how you can help them. If you are not a good fit, there is no charge.
HOT TIP – Make sure to structure that conversation in a way that is super valuable for your potential client (whether they invest in working with you or not) AND that it helps them to see for themselves the value of working with you (and the cost of not moving forward).
One of the biggest shifts into marketing and selling confidently (and actually enjoying it) for people like us who have a business based on our expertise is what we are going to discuss next.
Continue reading…