Whats Second Nature To You... Is Transformational To Others

Transforming the Way You Think About What You Do

Have you ever made a comment in passing, only to have the other person jump on it with great enthusiasm as though the ordinary (to you) item you mentioned was a ground-breaking insight?

I was talking to a client the other day and she was telling me her internal struggles with the idea of raising prices and how she’d fought against my advice to do so because she felt inadequate even though she often had people say how marvellous her work was and how it changed their life.

In her words:

“It wasn’t until I actually followed the strategy you laid out for me that I realised how much more impact I created when I charged higher prices in the context of everything else you helped me set up.

Suddenly my clients paid more attention and followed instructions better… so guess what? Their results multiplied and my business grew even faster!”

The trigger was my simple statement:

“For you, it’s second nature. For others, this is life-changing.”

Here’s the deal, when you don’t put yourself out there and share your expertise because you assume that people already know the information you have, you’re not merely depriving yourself of sales and opportunities, you’re preventing other people from moving ahead and solving their problems too… and that’s a serious problem!

You probably remember the old saying: “One man’s meat is another man’s poison.”

It’s a dramatic way of stating that we’re all different and therefore, you should never underestimate the unique value you deliver to your clients.

At the same time, never underestimate the value that others can deliver to you and don’t just measure things in $ terms.

When you give yourself real credit for the value you deliver to clients there’s an almost magical transformation that takes place in yourself and your business. I’ve noticed that the week we work on this in my Profitable Business Accelerator is often the week that everybody reports a shift in their profits and other measures of success.

So ask yourself the question today:

“What is something that is second nature to me, that would deliver huge value to others who don’t know what I know?”

… if you can’t think of anything immediately, I can guarantee that you are shortchanging yourself and undermining your own confidence.

We Don't Give Ourselves Enough Credit

Often, the things that come easily to you are highly valued by your colleagues and clients. If you reflect on what specific things these are, you will feel motivated and appreciated and you will find that others will accept your ideas and proposals more easily.

Accelerate Your Sales Challenge

This week commit to spending at least 10 minutes before you start each workday making a list of all the things you can think of that add value to your clients. Review your list and keep adding to it each day.

… Tip: stick with it for a full 10 minutes (set a timer) even if you are sure there is nothing to add. The review will cement what you already know you are good at that adds value in your mind, and once your unconscious mind know that you are going to persist anyway it will offer more positive contributions.

#TuesdayTips

Margie had a niche – she was quite confident about that, but I wasn’t quite so sure, so I asked her, “Who is your ideal target market?”

“Single women over 30” was her instant response.

“Great, so am I your target market? – I’m single and over 30.”

“Umm … I don’t think so.”

I probed further, “What problem are you solving?  How are you solving it?  What do you do for these women over 30?”

“Well, we take care of their to-do list:-  source tradesmen, stay at home while they’re working, supervise the trades, plan parties etc.  Does that help?”

Once we boiled it down to the real problem Margie’s business solved, her niche was actually quite a bit narrower than she had imagined – easier to define and to target.  Margie also recognised that she was assuming that people would understand what she did from her business name and title – and that just wasn’t the case.

Rather than feeling angry because we hadn’t understood what she had to offer, Margie recognised that she needed to be a lot clearer when she described her services – whether that was verbally, or on her website, or in print.  She realised that she needed to add more information and stop making assumptions about what people thought she did.  Once she clarified this her business grew rapidly.

Are You Making Too Many Assumptions?

It’s so easy to make assumptions about people’s understanding of your business.  Just because they know the terminology doesn’t mean they get the concept.  It comes back to the whole idea that the meaning of the communication is the response you get. [Link to Blog #12]  If you don’t get a response it may be because you haven’t communicated well enough or it may be that the person you are talking to is not in your target market. 

If we incorrectly assume that people really know how our business can solve their problems we don’t get the opportunity to clarify and correct misconceptions.  You can test that easily enough – if one person says “That’s interesting,” and starts describing what they do when you share your elevator pitch [Link to Blog #32] the problem might be them.  If two or three people do it, then you need to take a long, hard look at what you’re saying and review your elevator pitch.

The purpose of an elevator pitch is always to attract attention and interest. Even if the person  you are talking to isn’t personally interested in what you do, they probably know someone who does.

The More Specific You Are The More Interest You’ll Attract and the Higher Your Prices Can Rise

The more specifically you identify your target market, and the problem you solve for that market, the easier you will find it to attract clients. A lot of people think that they will narrow the pool of prospects if they target a specific niche. I don’t know anyone in business who has narrowed their niche and then had trouble finding clients … on the other hand, I know a large number of generalists who have a hard time finding clients, and when they find them, have an even harder time getting them to pay the price they want to charge.

With a specific niche you can identify where your prospective clients work, where they hang out, and you can also identify other people who are not your competition, but who service the same market to partner with – this is one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways of getting new clients! It is also a way of repaying the favour to your strategic partners by sharing your clients with them.

Think about it this way: in the medical field a General Practitioner might receive $65 per patient while a specialist visit which doesn’t last much longer costs $350 or more. The former is hopefully good at curing basic problems and referring patients to specialists where necessary, the latter solves a specific problem. The extra cost is the value of his specialist knowledge and training.

Are you a specialist or a generalist?  I would encourage you to think about just how targeted you can get with your marketing and your elevator pitch.  Suddenly you will find a whole new mine of fantastic prospects.

Meta Description:  Clarifying your niche is often one of the most critical questions  you can use to take your business to the next level

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Book your complimentary 30-minute Discovery Session with Chandell.

By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

#TuesdayTips

Many businesses work within a single theme that has various elements and aspects to it.  The problem is that if someone asks you what you do, most people head for the biggest umbrella they can hide under and say something like, “I’m an accountant, (or a lawyer, or a teacher).” This is a conversation-killer.  It’s too general for people to really grasp what you do, and it has the added disadvantage that they think they already know all about it.

Another pet peeve of mine is the response to “Who is your target market?” ‘Everyone’ is not anyone’s target – particularly if you’re a service business.  You just don’t have the capacity to deal with everyone.  So it’s up to you to decide who are your most profitable customers, and who are the ones you like working with.  Profile them and look for more like them.

Your niche might be an industry, it might be a demographic, it might be a mindset.  The easiest way to find your niche is to ask yourself two questions, “What is the biggest problem that I solve?” and “Who are the greatest sufferers from this?”

You can still work with a variety of clients, but if you work out that the people you enjoy working with most are in a certain industry or demographic then focus on them.  You’ll pick up other clients, but you’ll be working with more of the people you love. You’ll also be able to charge higher prices because you’ll be targeting a specific kind of client and people are willing to pay more to work with specialists in their area.

At Life Puzzle, I tend to work with business and corporate clients. I don’t focus too much on solving health problems or personal problems – Teresa mostly works with those problems.  So if I’m working with a business client and a health issue comes up, we’ll work on it together but if a person contacted us and their needs were mostly outside of the business arena that person would be encouraged to work with Teresa.  Neither of us really focuses on children and the educational aspect of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) so we would refer that need elsewhere.

This says a few things to our clients: – it tells them we’re specialists, and that we’re not so hungry that we take everyone.  It also lets me provide targeted information to people when I meet them at networking events.

If I meet you at a networking event and say to you, “Oh, I do Neuro-Linguistic Programming which is the study of how to use the language of the mind to consistently achieve our specific and desired outcomes.” Do you care?  Most people don’t.

On the other hand, if I say to you, “Last week I did a 2-hour workshop with a company where I am running an NLP communication program. Each week I go into the office and we apply Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) techniques to their product and service. In this session with them we outlined all the values of the two directors of the business, and it was really funny because one of the directors had profit very low on their values list.  The hierarchy and order of values are very important.  We realigned the values so both directors were in agreement, and we changed them at the unconscious level, and that week they went out and closed a $200,000 deal. 

Guess what?  If I talk about the possibility of making a simple change in a couple of hours that makes a $200,000 sale – that’s pretty powerful.  People want to know how, why, when, do I find out more about that?

Since I also help people with other problems sometimes I’ll think, “Migraines or self-worth will probably be more interesting to this person.” And I’ll frame it in such a way that they can think,   “Oh, my aunty has terrible migraines every other week, I’m going to refer her to Chandell.”  The point is, saying something specific is much more effective than making a general statement about what you do.

It’s a question of asking questions to find out about other people, interests and expertise and then using that information to determine what part of your business will be most interesting to them.

Feel free to share some of the questions you ask to learn about the people you meet at networking and business events?

Meta Description:  Working in a niche makes earning more easier because being more specific helps people identify with your business.

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By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

#TuesdayTips

At this point in your conversation you want to reflect all the issues your prospect has highlighted as being important back to them.  You also want to discuss how your product or service addresses these issues and resolves the problems they are facing in detail.  This is not the time for a quick 5 point summary, but is a serious presentation of value. Your specific solution is what the prospect will buy, so  you need to remind them of the value that each part of the solution will bring to their business.

Price will enter the discussion, but if you have stacked the value up for them then they price will be seen in the context of the return on investment they can expect – and that return could be in many forms – financial, time, peace-of-mind.  Most quality buyers won’t make their decision on price alone.  Clearly price is a factor – sometimes a business just can’t afford your solution – but more often then not, if the value is stacked high enough and there is enough convincing proof that it works, then your prospect will find the money needed to purchase.

Pricing and payment plans are just one more way you can customise your solution to fit your prospect’s needs without diminishing your profitability.  You’d be surprised at just what people can afford when the payments are split over a few months or some other installment option.

In our Confident Closing Workshops we go over the importance of stacking the value when presenting your solution and helping your prospect to really experience the benefits your product offers.  After doing this exercise many of our students go away feeling that they are seriously under-charging their clients once they have stacked up the benefits.  Some of them have doubled or tripled their prices and found that they actually get more people taking up their offers.

Have you tried stacking up the value and tailoring your solution for your clients?  Did it change their responsiveness to price and their interest in your product or service?

Let us know in the comments.

Meta Description:  A tailored solution that solves my problem is almost irresistible for most people.  Generic solutions are harder to sell at all, and certainly don’t attract premium prices.

Presenting a Customised Solution

Now that you have built rapport, asked questions, and established your prospect’s need for your product or service it is time to propose a solution before asking for the sale.  This is where many businesses fall down and lose their way – they offer every client the exact same options and solutions.  This often comes from the excellent idea that you should ‘package’ your services so people understand exactly what they are getting.

The difficulty with this is that your prospect gets the feeling that you are more interested in off-loading whatever you happen to have in your wheelbarrow, than you are in solving their problem – and that makes them defensive and hard to convince.

The Goal of Your Solution

When you actually propose your solution to a prospect your goal is to for them to feel that you have just suggested the exact piece they need to complete their puzzle.  You want them to feel that you are proposing something that is tailor made for them, rather than a generic one-size-fits-all solution.  When you propose a solution that really ticks all their boxes and meets the needs they have pointed out to you, you signal that you have heard their problems.

It is still your pre-defined package, but you have matched it exactly to your prospects needs, and described it in their language.  Now they don’t feel that you have just grabbed a box out of your wheelbarrow and are trying to get them to buy whatever it is that you have too much of – now they feel it is designed exactly for them.  Perhaps you have swapped out some coaching sessions for a top-notch presentation they can use, or made another slight tweak that meets their need.  Maybe  you haven’t changed anything, but by listening and learning have simply described the package accurately in their own language.

Whatever you have done, they have heard you describe the perfect solution to their problem.  Do you think people will pay more for a tailored solution that exactly meets their needs, or for a generic solution with more features and benefits in it?  I can tell you that the tailored solution always appears more valuable in people’s eyes – just like people are ready to pay more for a meal at a restaurant than they are at McDonalds.

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Book your complimentary 30-minute Discovery Session with Chandell.

By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

#TuesdayTips

This post is part of a series filling out details on the 5-step sales process [Link to #16]

  • Building Rapport; [Link to #20]
  • Asking Questions; [ Link to #21]
  • Establishing Need & Value-Add; [Link to #22]
  • Proposing a Solution; [Link to #23]
  • Closing the Sale. [Link to #24]

I’ve listed them sequentially, but of course you are doing many of these steps simultaneously.  While you’re asking questions, you continue to build rapport … and you’ll keep asking questions as  you move into establishing their need for your product or service and highlighting the value it brings to them.

Why Ask Questions?

The reason you want to ask questions is to learn about your prospect – to discover the things that are important to them about a product or service, the problems they are trying to solve, their decision-making strategy, and their level of interest.  All of this information will help you:

  • Decide whether your product/service is suitable for them;
  • Understand which features and benefits are most important to them;
  • Determine how to present your solution;
  • See what time-frame you will be working with.

What Kind of Questions Do You Want to Ask?

Your questions should be directly related to the business of the person you are interviewing and phrased in the the language they use, so you’ll need to tweak the following questions for each prospect:-

  • What do you do? What are you interested in?
  • For what purpose do you want this?
  • What would be a successful outcome if we went ahead with this?
  • Who will make the decision on this matter?
  • How will you know if this product/service is right for you?
  • What is important to you about this?
  • When will you make a decision on this?

– these questions will help you learn about why the person is talking to you, and how seriously they are considering your product/service.  In a business context, it is much better to disqualify a prospect quickly than to spend a lot of time talking to someone who is just getting information from you.  Of course, you don’t want to be too abrupt about this because people move around, their circumstances change, and they may recommend you to others, but if you discover that they have no intention of buying at this time, you will modify your process appropriately.  This is actually very beneficial, because you get the information you need, and you don’t force them into a situation where they are uncomfortable.

One key thing you need to uncover during this process is whether the person you are talking to is a key decision-maker or not.  If they don’t have the power to sign off on the deal then you know that you’re dealing with either a gate-keeper, or simply an ideas-person.  If you are dealing with someone who is just bringing ideas to the table then you don’t want to spend too much time or energy on them.  If it’s a gate-keeper, then your goal has to be to get their attention and interest so that they can introduce you to the decision-makers.

Whatever the situation, asking questions brings clarity and help you get the outcomes you are looking for.

Meta Description:  The quality of your life may be determined by the quality of the questions you ask, but the value of your sales certainly will be.

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Book your complimentary 30-minute Discovery Session with Chandell.

By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

#TuesdayTips

Pricing – Value – Money … this is always one of the hardest things to determine.  How do you set a value on your service?  Most of my life as an employee there wasn’t much room for negotiation.  In corporate sales, I was always paid a decent base salary plus commission that were pretty much set by the company I worked for.  In one position, I was paid a very generous salary and achieved a great deal more than the target outcome, but then my employer decided I was too expensive.

In my own business, I come across people who will debate the price, then experience the value and tell me I’m worth more.  I come across other people who  walk away as soon as they hear the price – and never even think about the value.  I know I’m not alone in this, because just about every business owner I talk to faces the same struggle.

Mindset is important because business is 80% psychology and only 20% strategy.  Most of the business owners I work with have their strategy pretty well under control, but the psychology is where they get bogged down.  I hear a lot of people saying things like, ‘I’m just not sure that I’m worth what it is that I’m asking,’ or ‘I always feel the need to discount,’ or ‘I feel the need to actually give more than I’ve agreed to’.  Others use statements like, ‘I don’t know how to sell my product – I’m really good at telling them about it, but when it comes to asking for the money, I really struggle with that’.

The problem is not the product or service they deliver, it’s their understanding of the value they bring to the table.  Mastering the mind-set of the confident closer gets rid of that procrastination, get rid of that overwhelm, and gets rid of that doubt about your value so you project confidence – and are received with confidence.

Your Perception IS the Reality You Project

When you present your business it’s really like a performance –  and the purpose of a performance is to influence the audience and move them.  The thing is that we don’t think about business presentations that way, we think about them as a means to an end, or more income, or reaching a target.   You know, I’ve got this appointment today, I’m meeting this person and I’ll try to convince them to buy.   We don’t usually see it as reaching out to influence people and they pick that up.

You see, the vital fact that you need to understand is that perception is projection. You may have heard that before, but I want you to really slow down and think about it.  Perception is projection. … But you are unable to perceive behaviour in someone else if you are not capable of it yourself. 

You’ll have heard the comment that when you point your finger at someone and call them names, there are three fingers pointing back at yourself.  That’s because the faults we’re most aware of in others are the ones we are prone to, and it’s often the reason why parents are so hard on their kids – they’re projecting their own traits and so they’re hyper-sensitive to them in others.

What About Josie?

Remember Josie, the hairdresser I wrote about the other day [Link to Part 1] – she had fallen into the vicious cycle of discounting her services to attract clients.  The problem was that this meant that she needed to see more clients to make the same money and every time she did this her perception of the value of her service plunged lower.  I could see that before long Josie would have discounted her Salon out of existence.

I have to admit that I staged a scene to help her understand the value of her work.  You see, Josie really was a great hairdresser, and she ran a great Salon but she was seeing her work as something people chose because of price.  I sent a friend in who really needed to see a great hairdresser who would help her find a hairstyle that looked great and fit her lifestyle.  I knew that Josie could help her, and I asked this friend to be really enthusiastic and pay more than she was asked IF (and only if) she was genuinely happy with the outcome.

Well, Sarah was delighted with her appearance once Josie had finished with her hair and shown her how to style it easily.  She raved about Josie’s efforts, she admired herself in the mirror, and when Josie told her how much the service cost Sarah was (genuinely) outraged.  “You can’t charge that little!  It’s impossible!” she said.  “You’re an artist and you should charge like one.”  Sarah paid twice the price that Josie asked and as she walked out, she told a client who was just walking in, “I have just had the amazing service and the best value haircut I’ve ever imagined!” – and she meant it.

What Happened Next?

We’d already worked out what Josie needed to charge in our coaching sessions.  The problem was that Josie was convinced that no-one would pay that much.  Sarah’s comment gave Josie the courage to quote the price we’d agreed on to the client who had walked in as Sarah left.  Her response gave her the courage to do it again … and again … and it wasn’t long before she really did discover the joy of owning a business.

The point of telling this story is simply that Josie is like many business owners – they can’t charge the prices they need to, because they don’t value themselves as they ought and Perception IS Projection!

Meta Description: Pricing-Value-Money – how your understanding of these can lead to success or failure and how they can turn your business around.

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By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

#TuesdayTips

It’s a pretty consistent fact around the world that approximately 50% of small businesses fail within the first two years of operation and only about 8% of them make it to 10 years.  Michael Gerber discusses the reasons for this at length in “The E-Myth Revisited”, but I’d like to discuss it briefly here and tell you a story to illustrate it.

Are You A Technician?

A lot of small businesses are started by ‘technicians’ who are very good at what they do, and angered when they think that their employer doesn’t value them enough.  The accountant who leaves a big firm to start his own practice because he knows he’s being charged at $180 per hour, but only receiving $90, the chiropractor or physiotherapist who knows what each patient is being charged, but only receives a percentage of that fee, or my friend Josie, who is a hairdresser.

Josie worked in Angie’s Salon and she was paid $15 an hour.  At the end of every week Josie saw that her income is far less than the total takings that Angie has in revenue.  She worked out what each client paid for her services and compared that with her weekly wage and said to herself, “How come Angie gets paid this much and I’m only getting $15 an hour and I work much harder than her.  I’m a much better hairdresser than she is and I see more clients!” 

After a while Josie decided to start her own Salon. She knew that she is a really great hairdresser, in fact, she loves hairdressing so much she told herself that this would not be work!  She worked really hard, put in long hours (all that administration as well as hairdressing!) and to encourage people to come in she started discounting her services. Josie was now working much harder now than when she was employed by Angie.  When we sat down together and looked at Josie’s numbers in a Business Coaching session, we worked out that her new pay rate as a business owner was $1.20 an hour.

You see, what Josie didn’t understand were all the other tasks that Angie did behind the scenes.  Things like rent, utility bills, doing the payroll, looking at how she’s actually going to get business walking in through the door, (Angie’s clients didn’t just show up with their money on the day she opened the Salon!), and managing stock levels.  Josie only saw the big picture with all the zeros at the end of the week’s takings, she didn’t even consider the rest of the picture.

In this classic example of the standard Small Business Owner Josie went from scoffing over $15 per hour as an employee to buying herself a very stressful job for the bargain price of $1.20 per hour!  Wasn’t that a great move?

Josie was down – but she was not out!  She had signed up for a 2-day Confident Closing workshop that I ran because she was determined not to go back to being an employee.  She was going to make this work!

We started by laying out all the bad news … the tasks she had to do, the bills she had to pay, etc – and then the good news … the clients she already had, the staff she had working for her and so on.  The picture was pretty ugly, but with all the facts in front of her, Josie could see clearly why she was feeling so stressed and she could make a plan to get out of it.

Find out what happened next … Part 2

Meta Description: What many small businesses owners don’t consider before they start their business and how this leads to despair and failure.

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By popular demand we have turned many of our multi-day workshops into multi-week online courses with a live day to kick them off. Learn more at https://businessgrowth.mykajabi.com/masteryoursales

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