This episode is dedicated to the people out there who do amazing work but struggle to sell it because they have trouble describing the value of their work.

It breaks my heart to see skilled, talented and passionate people with so much to give, but finding it hard to get people to engage with them or buy from them.

I want to dig into this and give you some tools to discover and communicate your value.

Why Is Knowing The Value Of Your Work So Important?

FIrst and foremost, I think it’s pretty obvious that if you believe in and truly feel the value of what you do, then you will have the confidence to do it well, promote it and talk to people about it.

Your words will flow with ease. 

You feel sure of yourself and confident to describe your services.

Secondly, understanding and believing in the value of what you do will help you to 100% nail your marketing.

When you understand the value of your work, it will be EASY to develop very, very clear and compelling the words, messages, connection statements, elevator pitches, advertisements.

So, why do we get stuck?

We Are All Professionals

When we become skilled professionals, we all get stuck in this world of our own jargon. 

What I mean is this, when you learn how to do something and the methodology behind it then those are the things that stick in your mind and those of the things that you communicate. 

I remember driving on a holiday with my parents and boyfriend once. I’d just finished a university assignment on banksia woodland.

And as we drove toward our holiday spot, I looked out the window and said something like, “wow, look at that low, open banksia woodland with a shrub understorey.”

Of course, my parents and boyfriend all laughed out loud. They even cried with laughter. I was SO mortified. But you get the idea. 

I was talking in my language about the bush, and they had no idea what I was going on about.

University Versus Kindergarten Knowledge

So here’s the lesson for you. Your audience isn’t as educated as you are on those subjects and they might be 2, 5 to 10 years behind you and experience. 

They’re not a scientist. They’re not a practitioner. They’re not heavily geeking it up on your area of interest.

It’s like you’re at the University level of knowledge in a particular area and your potential clients are at the kindergarten level in terms of their understanding and knowledge of that subject area. 

That’s a big reason why you’re struggling to communicate your value.

What that means is that you have to take a step back to the old you. 

You have to go right back to where you were five or 10 years ago or at least to the absolute  beginning of your journey and explore what you are feeling and thinking then, to reflect on why you were studying that, and what you needed and wanted. 

This segues into the second reason you’re finding it hard to communicate.

You Need Emotion, Not Logic

When you are in your geeky learning brain, university knowledge mode, you are using logic and jargon to talk about what you do.

But 90% of anybody’s buying decision is based on the emotion they feel when they interact with you.

You need to get out of your logical thinking and onto your passionate, emotionally heightened and ranty soap box to get people interested, engaged and believing that you are the person to help them.

This is known as ‘sharing your why’ and it’s the most powerful driving force in marketing.

That’s because your why contains your values, motivators, beliefs, and possibly life experience – all wrapped up in an emotive story.

That’s what you need to tap into.

A Two-Part Exercise

I want you to imagine that you are your customer. 

I want you to imagine that you are the you of a few years ago. 

Part 1 – Reflections

Now imagine that you are about to buy your service as a customer what is the value that you want to get out of buying your own service. 

• Why are you buying that service? 
• What would it mean to you if you could get the result that you wanted? 
• What is that result? 
• What will that allow you to do in future? 

That’s the first part of the exercise. Now let’s go to the second part. 

Part 2 – Reflections

Imagine that you have just finished using the service that you’re selling. Pretend that you’re the customer and you’ve completed this program or whatever it is.

• How are you feeling right now? 

Write that down. 

Imagine you are giving yourself a testimonial.

• What were you doing before the program? 
• What did you achieve in the program? 
• How is your world transformed now, because of that?
• How do you feel? 
• What have you gotten rid of? 
• Describe the sense of accomplishment that you have? 

You noticed that I’m asking a lot about feelings here. And that’s because 90% of any buying decision is based in strong emotions. Logic makes up only 10% of the buying decision.

People buy results that they want and they want to feel a certain way. 

So our goal in marketing is to listen to what our customers are saying and to reflect that back. 

Summary

Hopefully there’s two part exercise has given you some ideas on the value of what you do by putting yourself in the customer’s shoes and by asking yourself how you felt before and after using the service, what you truly wanted and what you got from it. 

I hope this has been useful and if you are a coach who needs some help to dig into this and figure out how to clarify the value of what you do, so you can more effectively package, describe and sell the value of your services, join my new Facebook tribe – CoachingSuccessAccelerator. Doors are open, I’m so excited!