Isn’t it frustrating not to know how to position yourself in such a way that people will understand why what you do is valuable and what problems they could solve with your help?
Yeah, I was there too years ago when I first started my business.
The irony was that I was really good at helping others to figure out how to position themselves and their niche.
And I couldn’t figure out how to position MYSELF!
And, precisely because I was good at positioning, I knew that my own positioning statement couldn’t be, “I help you to position yourself.” Or even, “I help coaches to position themselves.”
Because positioning is not an outcome – it’s a means to an end! And the “end” is what I use to position someone.
(Is your head spinning yet? Trying to figure out how to position positioning was so meta that it made me crazy for several years.)
Anyway, I finally hired a business coach because I couldn’t take it anymore. I figured that maybe someone with an outside perspective would be able to see something that I couldn’t.
Well, on one of our first sessions this business coach promptly declared that “the only reason someone wants help with their niche and positioning is because they want paying clients. So ‘clients’ is your outcome. You help new coaches to get their first paying clients.”
At the time, having an outcome to talk about was such a relief that I just accepted this advice.
But it never felt quite right to me.
Suddenly, I was creating webinars and FB posts and emails about “how to get your first paying clients as a coach” while deep-down knowing that I really wasn’t qualified to be talking about that or teaching it.
After all, there’s a lot that goes into getting paying clients, and niche/positioning is only part of it. At the time, I wasn’t an expert in how to get in front of people who might need you, or cold-call, or create content, or make an offer, or be confident, or any of a thousand other things.
And, needless to say, when I got people onto sales calls who’d seen my “how to get your first paying clients” content, they had a lot of questions about what my “client-getting methods” were (because my content had been vague) and were doubtful that I could help them.
I didn’t even invite most of these folks to work with me because I sensed that they needed way more help than I was qualified or prepared to give.
Most of those I did invite said no.
I shared with my coach that I felt uncomfortable with the “get your first paying clients” message because I didn’t think it really represented what I was an expert in and gifted at.
But I was told that I needed to work on my mindset, that I had to be more confident stating outcomes because that is what clients buy.
Of course, as someone who was great at positioning, I knew that outcomes were what clients bought – but that didn’t mean I felt comfortable talking about an outcome that seemed inaccurate to what I was qualified to do with clients.
I hired several other business coaches, too – and they all gave a version of the same advice.
In the end, after a lot of prayer, soul-searching, observing the industry, using my “positioning gift” more with free and low-paying clients, and reflecting on all of my experiences – I was able to see what had been “off” about my coaches’ advice.
For someone who’s good at helping others to position themselves and their niche, their ideal client usually ISN’T someone who’s brand-new to business and has never had a paying client.
Those folks are actually the ones who need positioning/niche help the LEAST, and (naturally) value it the least, also!
I can’t believe how I didn’t see it before, but you actually DON’T need a clear niche or positioning to get your first paying clients.
(!!!)
Most people are quite broad and general with their niche when starting out, and that makes perfect sense because they’ve not yet had the experience to know who they enjoy working with the most, and who gets best results from having their help.
And these kinds of folks are understandably reluctant to hire someone to help them pin down their niche/outcome message, because they know that they’re not READY to pin it down – and in fact might change it in another month or two, and then change it again.
Having help with positioning/niche/outcome articulation is actually something that’s much more valued by very experienced coaches and experts – and they’re in a much better place to do the work, because they’ve had actual experiences that can form the message.
As if to confirm that I was on the right track with my thinking, I had a very unexpected conversation with a Chicago friend who shared that the company she worked for was “always talking about what our niche is, and how to better articulate that.”
Whaaaat? A big successful company that’d been around for many years and had many employees was thinking about how to better articulate their niche and positioning? This blew my mind.
After all, I’d been told by so many business coaches that my ideal client was coaches who hadn’t had any clients or a business yet.
As it turned out, I tweaked my ideal client to be coaches and experts who were VERY experienced at the work they did, and in fact had helped many people with their expertise already – whether paid or unpaid.
These people easily saw value in having my help with their niche and positioning – and paid far more than any beginner coach had ever paid me, too.
They also shared with me that they got results from having my help – like more sales and higher-paying clients (even though we didn’t work specifically on sales or audience growth or content creation!). Wow!
And I’m now thinking about starting to take on some big corporations as clients, because I know they’ll value my help even MORE and get even BETTER results (in terms of sales numbers) from it.
What’s the takeaway here?
I used to think the lesson here was that more advanced/experienced business owners were better candidates to see value in things like niche articulation, and to get results.
And, while that is true, the REAL lesson is deeper.
It wasn’t just the fact that these folks were further along in business that made them value my help.
Rather, it was the knowledge that they brought to the work with me – knowledge they had gained FROM all of those years of being in business and/or using their expertise.
Of course, my positioning knowledge by itself won’t get anybody any result.
But positioning help combined with sales knowledge? (which many of my clients had – owing to being in business already and having had to learn to make sales)
Combined with tremendous confidence in what they offered? (which many of them had as well, owing to using their expertise to help many people already)
Combined with many other forms of knowledge and experience?
Well, positioning help/advice combined with those things yielded great results.
And, realizing this, my next “aha” moment was that I could never again use one short sentence to position myself (or anyone else!)…
Because in order to be confident stating an outcome, you have to be able to make caveats.
Caveats like “I can only help you to get clients if you already know how to make sales and already feel confident in the work you do, and the only thing you really feel stuck on is your positioning.”
And those one-liners like “I help coaches to get their first paying clients” don’t have room for caveats.
So now, what I use to position myself (and my clients!) is a 500-word offer statement – NOT one sentence!
This statement is structured in a particular way – outcome first, then how we get the outcome, then what the client needs to bring to the table to combine with the help we offer and make the outcome likely.
(A training on how to construct the 500-word statement is available here.)
So, for my outcome, I actually DID use a version of “get clients” – but it was more specific, because I realized that my help actually enables the right person to get clients who pay higher-ticket fees and who don’t give objections and aren’t hard to convince.
(Which is way different from saying just “get clients,” and definitely way different from saying “get your first paying clients.”)
And now, after nearly a decade in this industry, I DO have amazing methods for audience building, closing sales, writing content, and all the other stuff that I didn’t know about at the beginning of my journey – so I do help people with those things now.
(All of that plus my tried-and-true positioning method has collectively become known as the Strong Method™ for Organic Momentum for those who want to get high-ticket enrollments with ease from organic post-writing.)
BUT – I don’t want anyone to think that they have to become an expert at a bunch of things like that in order to easily and consistently get high-ticket clients.
If you have a real expertise in something right now, that expertise alone is enough to get you consistent high-ticket clients.
You just need to not make the mistakes that I and my past business coaches made.
#1 – Don’t make the mistake of trying to market an outcome while making no caveats about who can get that outcome. Clients will need to bring the expertise/knowledge that you don’t have if they are going to have a good chance at getting the outcome.
#2 – (related to #1, of course) Don’t make the mistake of trying to sell your services to a client avatar who is not at the right stage to appreciate them, need them, or get great results from them.
If you’re an experienced expert or coach who would like help thinking through how to articulate what outcome you offer, and what type of client is the best fit to get it (so you don’t feel out of integrity when stating the outcome) – that’s the type of help I provide in my 30-day private intensive. 🙂
I also provide help and feedback as you write your 500-word offer statement (that’s the framework I developed to share what you do and how you do it AND what your program is, in a way that allows you to make all the caveats we’ve talked about).
And I help you to write the value content in the essay-style framework that you’ve seen me use, which is aimed at exactly the right client and allows them to see what your methods are and how they’re a perfect fit for what they need.
If needed, I also help you with a plan to consistently grow your FB audience organically by 500-800 people per month, and to close sales over DM or a very short phone call (as the people you get from your content in this method are typically very pre-sold).
All of this work is aimed at getting at least a few high-ticket enrollments per month from clients who are the perfect fit for what you offer, are easy to enroll and don’t have objections before doing so.
DM me on Facebook if you’re interested in this 30-day private intensive, and we’ll chat to see if it’s a good fit.
More information about the program is available here.
If you’re interested in having my help to articulate ONLY the outcome you provide, I break off this piece from the 30-day private intensive and address it by itself in a couple of group workshops every month. You can always check this page to find out when the next workshop will be.
More information about those workshops is available here.
And, if you’re a fan of the Strong Method™ way of packaging offers and attracting the right clients, and want to teach it to your own clients, DM me on Facebook about my certification program!