When speaking with potential clients one of the biggest mistakes we can make is espousing our value in vague or verbose terms.
Which means we don’t clearly and succinctly articulate the impact our solutions will have for our clients.
Remember, your clients are interested in results. What they’ll get from working with you. They’re not interested in the process you use to get there. At least not initially.
So when speaking with prospects there are 3 aspects of your communication you must be deliberate about.
First, be results, not action oriented. This is about the outcome you get not your process.
Second, be clear. Don’t use vague words or “consultancy speak”. Avoid words like accountability, best practice capacity, efficiency, effectiveness, sustainability, reliability and quality.
And third, provide tangible quantifiable and countable results. What specific results will they get.
Now a great example consultancy speak is.
“Improving team communication and productivity”.
But what does “communication” or “productivity” actually mean? Both can mean different things in different contexts.
So we need to make this more specific, tangible and meaningful to the client.
This is a more descriptive way of putting it. “Understanding different personalities and how to deal with them helps your teams work together to reach their goals sooner.”
The right brain (emotive) part could be, “A happy team is a place where people want to belong. And that improves output with fewer mistakes.”
You could quantify this by including statistics on how much time is saved and how many projects fail due to team members simply not getting along and being obstructive, mainly because they don’t understand and know how to deal with different personality types.
Of course, the best statistics are ones you collect from your own clients. Interview them and ask what results they’ve achieved with your help. Get both quantifiable (something you can count) as well as emotional payoff.
And finally, when describing your value, use language a 12 year old would recognise. Make it as sensory specific as possible.
Wrapping up, interviewing your clients on a regular basis is one of the most important things you can do.
You’ll find out what’s working, what you could improve as well as what additional services you could provide. And your clients will really appreciate your taking the trouble to ask them.
Having said that, a third party, like us, interviewing your clients will give you more information as your clients will be more open than if they’re speaking directly with you.
We’ve conducted hundreds of these interviews over the years for our clients. If you’d like to take advantage of our expertise, contact me at revealedresources.com and we’ll get started.
Till next time, this is Rashid Kotwal.
