judgement - Melanie White Inspiration Coach

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.

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.

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.

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.

Tapping Into Your Why

My friends, the value of what you do is in the result that it gives the person who’s buying it.

Right now, I invite you to cast your mind back to the person you used to be and what you were desperate for and how much value that brought to your life.

Think about how you would describe that value, how you would define it.

Go back to the reason why you studied this in the first place.

That’s where your ideal client is right now, and doing this will give you some clues as to the value THEY are looking for.

Now I want to talk you through a little two-part exercise to help you to get the words right for this.

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!

Ready to recognise and communicate your value?

Honouring your own journey is the key to communicating your value. If you’re truly ready to break old habits and get out of the rut I encourage you to check out the Habitology membership.

Learn more here:

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This is an important conversation of me to have with you, if you have ever given up on yourself for not getting the results you want.

There is little point in setting a goal if you never know whether or not you will achieve it.

That’s where the saying “what gets measured gets done” comes from.

I know this topic well. Around 95% of the clients I’ve seen in the last 10 years of coaching have come to me for this specific reason – because they say they have tried everything and failed and they have lost confidence in themselves. They want my help to succeed.

To succeed in anything you need to do a few things.

You need to define a very specific outcome.

You need to articulate the specific steps you will take to get there.

You need to measure your actions compared with the result you want –

You need to persist for long enough to see if you are taking the right actions.

You need to be prepared to fail, and to tweak what you are doing.

And you need to be agile enough to get back on the horse, change your approach, and try again.

Measuring your habits and actions are just as important as measuring the result.

What most people do is measure their results and progress toward them, and that’s it.

But you also need to measure your actions along the way, so you can monitor the ‘How’ part of the equation.

After all, your actions are the things that create your results.

And monitoring them means you can see what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to be tweaked and adjusted along the way.

Let’s look at an example.

Think about a weight loss goal of 15kg.

Most people think that the weight is the goal and they measure it relentlessly. I lost 1kg. Now I’ve lost another 1kg. Oh, now I’ve gained a kilo. I’m a failure!

No wonder you get disappointed – measuring weight doesn’t tell you anything about which parts of your approach, your how, your method, is working. So you start losing belief and give up at your apparent failure.

For example you could gain 1kg because you’ve put on muscle at the gym, and muscle is the main fat burning powerhouse in your body. So it’s a good thing to gain muscle mass, it’s the primary vehicle for losing weight.

The thing is that there’s a lag time. You gain muscle first, the a week or two later, the weight sees a rapid drop.

But if you are only measuring weight, then you won’t see any of this. You’ll only see the gain and you will feel like a failure.

Now imagine you are that person trying to lose 15kg. How you would feel if you understood this important point about strength training?

Let’s say you could out your emotions aside and see this fact.

What if you had correlated 1kg weight gain to your first two weeks of sessions at the gym doing a strength training program?

Chances are you’d feel excited because you could see how your actions are creating your results, and you’d want to persist for long enough to see that happen.

That’s why measuring your habits and actions are just as important as measuring the result.

Measuring actions is important for three reasons.

Measuring actions and habits gives you intrinsic motivation – what YOU are doing is working. You don’t need to rely on someone else for your self belief.
Measuring actions also gives you a sense of achievement along the way. How important do you think this is for a goal that will take a long time to get a result? Imagine for example, writing a book. It could take a year to do that. But if you were measuring writing 500 words per day, you’d feel motivated and proud of the micro goals you were achieving, knowing that they would take you to the bigger goal.
Measuring actions allows you to correct your course if you are not getting the incremental results.

Let’s go back to the weight loss example. Depending on your specific body type, there might be 10 different approaches you could take to losing weight.

Perhaps you try two specific things; for example to eat vegetables and protein at 80% of your meals, and weight training four times per week.

For some people this will create weight loss. For others it won’t. So if you are in that second group, and you saw no results in the four weeks following and your body showed no changes, you’d need to tweak the specifics of those two habits, or try something different.

You could only know this if you were tracking those habits to know a/ if you were truly being consistent or not, and b/ whether there were other factors that needed attention, such as portion size, stress or alcohol.

In other words, just because you’re taking action, it doesn’t mean that you’re going to get the results you want.

Even if the process you’re following is proven, and has worked for somebody else, it doesn’t mean that it’s going to work for you.

You are a unique person with a unique body and mind and personality, so you have to find your own formula for success, for whatever you’re trying to succeed at.

The more specific the action that you are taking, the more likely you are to be able to adjust the habit to succeed in getting the result you want.

Pursuing a goal is highly individualised. If two people want the same result, the way they get there might be entirely different.

That’s why your commitment to measuring and tweaking the process to get the results you want is as important as a measuring your progress to the result at self.

And finally, the more specific the action that you are taking, the more likely you are to be able to adjust the habit to succeed in getting the result you want.

Ready to get the results you want?

You can measure your habits and actions to help you achieve your goals. If you’re truly ready to break old habits and get out of the rut I encourage you to check out the Habitology membership.