Are you a confident marketer? More business owners than you'd think have trouble feeling confident when they talk about what they do. Here's one of the questions I was asked recently in a workshop for solo professionals who offer highly transformational services (life coaches, energy workers, psychologists, business coaches, and similar professionals).
Question:
How can I be more confident when I meet with prospects? I was also asked a related question, “I love what I do but it is hard for me to show that confidence.”
My answer:
To be a more confident marketer when one meets with prospects (by phone or in person) means paying attention to your purpose and your offers. Ask yourself these questions to help get yourself ready to have a successful talk with prospects.
- Can you describe what you offer in one single word? This will help you come to the true magic in your business.
- Can you describe what solution you offer prospects in one succinct sentence? Prospects want to hear in the first 3 or 4 seconds what's in it for them. I might say, as an example, “I help you get very clear about the biggest benefit your clients get from working with you, so that your prospects get it, want it, and hire you.”
- Do you have your offers set up, with clear explanations of benefits and costs, before you talk with a prospect? As my teacher Michael Port says, you have to have “investable opportunities” in place. If you don't have your offers nailed down it's likely you will stumble over discussing price.
The second question is a slightly different issue. “I love what I do but it's hard for me to show that confidence.” Loving what one does doesn't necessarily mean one is good at it. I used to love to ride and jump horses when I was a teenager but despite how much I loved it, I never really got very good at it.
My suspicion is that the business owner who asked me this question has a false belief that loving what she does is enough to create a profitable business. It isn't. Confidence about doing what one loves comes from:
- Practicing that skill over and over again with a variety of clients. Experience gives one confidence.
- Building the back end of one's business to support the delivery of one's work out into the world. This means having systems in place to build your visibility, your social proof, your platform, your offers. Despite what we may want to believe love is not enough.
Want more help about taking action that results in higher confidence? Here's another blog post that gives you more tips.
I totally agree, Sue! In order to gain confidence you need to be able to clearly communicate how you are going to help someone and then you need to know that you can deliver the results you promised. This does require clarity in your communication, belief in your work, and systems to support you.
Michael Port offers great insight in his books and other offerings.
Great to see you are working with him.
Thanks for sharing this post Sue. I love your mentors suggestion that you have to have “investable opportunities” in place. Having them, practicing and knowing them will also provide confidence!
While I have #2 and #3 I’ve not thought about distilling what I do down to one word. So I’m going to have to work on that. There are just so many good ones to choose from.
I agree, love is not enough. It’s a big part of success and being confident but you also need the other good stuff like systems, social proof, a platform
Of course, with the work I do, I also always consider the biochemical component to lack of confidence and would look at the possibility of low serotonin and use tryptophan or 5-HTP if this does seem to be an issue.
Confidence is key and practice builds it. Great advice Sue!
Sue, this is so true about building systems! That is an ongoing project for me/my business. Thank you for the good advice as always.