Guilty, until proven innocent

It’s no secret, the stakes are as high as they’ve ever been.

With so many facets to consider, business owners are looking to find their edge and are looking for the right people to help them get there.

Unfortunately, the way of the world is that most are burnt by poor service providers that are equally as desperate for a sale.

I’m a glass half full type of guy, so I believe these experiences are there to provide our goal posts so we appreciate the people that fit that much more when we get to them.

I’ve made plenty of bad investments myself, and prefer to treat it as my ‘tuition’ - I just paid for the lessons outside of a typical classroom setting.

But I digress, with business owners entering service agreements - it’s mostly a case of guilty until proven innocent - they’re going to assume you CAN’T help them until you can convince them otherwise.

This is why creating marketing that educates, adds value, and ultimately builds a Know, Like, Trust environment is crucial to co-creating a long term client relationship.

I have yet to find sturdier foundations to build from.

Yet, most businesses will focus on everything but this…

...attributing basically no time to the messaging or the bigger picture and making just enough sales to torture themselves in a perpetual cycle of stress, burnout, and the residual fatigue that comes with it.

They might be making a living, but they’re certainly not creating a life.

Unless they have the budget of Apple, Nike - they will not succeed by simply being the loudest person in the room (i.e. throwing all the money at marketing/advertising for impressions, not outcomes/roi).

However, it’s not all doom and gloom - there is a strong pivot to be made that can increase the bottom line immediately.

It starts with positioning.

To do this, we need to let go of one key belief.

It’s not ALL about the product or service.

Hear me out...

Let me tell you about the story about Joshua Bell - one of the best classical musicians in the world.

He plays to packed theatres in some of the world’s most prominent venues, to the tune of $1000 per minute.

He performs with a very particular Stradivarius violin that was built in 1713, and is widely renowned as being the most beautiful-sounding violin ever created (it's worth $3.5 million dollars)

Back in 2007, the Washington Post created a social experiment to have him play at a local subway for an hour, during which thousands of people would step through the station on their commute to work.

Classical music maestros predicted that large crowds would gather and fawn over the music that Joshua would be creating - it was so hauntingly beautiful, that people couldn’t help but stop and listen.

The reality?

Barely anyone took notice, and he made a grand total of $32 in that hour.

So here you have it...

The world’s finest violinist, playing on violin valued at $3.5 million - making just enough money to decide whether he can eat for the day, or lay on a hostel bunk bed for the night (maybe both if he’s really lucky).

This is a humbling reminder...

The market does not owe us anything.

We cannot wait for people to discover us and our talents, and be freely willing to spend big to do so.

We have to connect the dots for them.

The lesson here, if a business owner considers themselves a professional, but they outwardly position themselves to the market as a ‘busker’ - they’ll be treated as such, and paid accordingly.

On the flip side, if you focus your energy on educating your market, providing value, and positioning yourself as an authority - the upside is monumental.

For context, just a few days later - Joshua played the exact same setlist in a Boston concert hall and earned over $60,000 per hour to a crowd that was roughly the same size as the foot traffic in the hour at the subway (thousands).

His Market was aligned, his Offer was primed, and he curated a Presence that enticed them to commit.

Now, I understand this is an extreme example, but the important thing is the lesson.

If we just ‘sell’ products and services - we are in the commodity game, interchangeable for the next best price, and in a perpetual loop of lower profits and questioning our worth.

If we build a pathway for outcomes and provide an experience - we are on an entirely level.

Their perception will create your reality…

...and it all starts with education and value-based marketing.

The true, game-changing results come from the way you market the client’s outcome, experience, and the role you play in facilitating this environment.

From there, deliver on what you have said you will, and only good things can come.

That’s the definition of a win-win scenario.

Let me know if this resonated with you!

Zac

Ps. three important notes before I go

(1) Once you reach a level of competence, i.e. the job is actually getting done (the outcome) - your key differentiator is how you position yourself as their person - I wrote about identity building purchase behaviours here, it’s one of my most popular articles.

(2) I find 99.99999% of problems in marketing, sales, and growth can be attributed to a misalignment in Market, Offer, and Presence, I address this in my guide.

Download the free guide here while it’s still available - I’ll be taking it offline end of January and replacing it with different material.  

(3) Your product and service is still super important, but it’s not your initial marketing hook.

However, it IS actually your best client retention and re-engagement tool - this is how you drastically increase lifetime value from world-class experiences - I’ll create another article about this specifically (and potentially a video training) - just hit reply, and let me know if you want to access.