I received a great question the other day from a follower of mine, and I wanted to answer in a post.
So here we go!
For context: I had been talking about how it’s hard to catch the attention of potential high-paying clients with our marketing when it’s not clear what main outcome we help clients to get.
(Or, said another way, what main problem we help to solve.)
A lot of people feel stuck on naming/articulating that main outcome, for various reasons.
So here was the question I received:
“What do you do when each of your clients has a different problem they want your help to solve?
“I’m a coach for startup founders, here are some of the things we’ve worked on:
“Being more visible, with confidence, to ‘be the face’ and promote my business
“Communicating better with my co-founders
“Working out if I should fire my Head of Sales, or is the real problem elsewhere?
“The market has changed in the last 6mo, should we pivot or persevere?
“My business is doing well but I’m not enjoying it anymore
“The pressure of meeting 6-figure payroll every month is really getting to me, I’m not sure how much longer I can go on like this
“I get stressed out before investor meetings and feel like I’m begging them for money, I don’t want to feel like I’m a little kid and they are the adults
“Now that we’re 45 people strong, it’s less like a small family where everyone knows each other, my team have told me we don’t have good onboarding and knowledge-sharing systems in place, what do I do?
…
“The coaching method I use is fantastically flexible, I am able to coach founders through pretty much any situation.
“But usually they come to me feeling stuck about one thing, and we quickly discover that’s just a symptom or a distraction, there’s a whole deeper thing going on.
“How do I use your method for this, when there isn’t ‘one outcome’ they all want?
“If I describe my process to them, it just sounds like, ‘I ask you one question, and depending on your answer I ask you another question, and so on. Automagically through this process you suddenly realise what you need to do and any “resistance” melts away.’
“That is genuinely how it works, it’s evidence-based that it works, it’s very hard to do well and even harder for people to believe it until they experience it!”
…
I love this question so much because unknowingly, this person started to provide me some of the homework that I ask for when I guide paying clients through my “outcome-articulation” process. 😉
It’s not COMPLETE homework, and it’s not written exactly the way I ask clients for it, but it tells me A LOT of what I need to know.
So here’s what I’d say about that long list of problems:
In my paradigm, those are actually MICRO-problems, while the OVERALL problem/outcome (which was absent from the information this person provided) will be something overarching that is common to them all.
This is where I’m missing a bit of detail, but I’m guessing the overall outcome/problem being solved is something like:
“I help startup founders to navigate all the ‘growing pains’ and complicated questions that come up in the first 5 years of a business’ existence.” [or however long]
And I think there’s a little bit still missing, which I would need more info to say for sure, but I’d want to know a lot more details on the method used (and I have homework assignments for that too 😉 ).
Specifically, what is involved in “asking a series of questions and automagically you suddenly realise what you need to do and any ‘resistance’ melts away”?
And what is typically discovered/realized? (What’s the “whole deeper thing” that’s going on?) Is there a theme to that?
(There usually is 😉 For experienced coaches who aren’t pivoting niches, I’m almost always able to discern a theme to both the problems they solve and the way they solve them)
Like, maybe what’s discovered/realized is that they are not fully stepping into their power or acknowledging that they have the answers.
If that’s the case, then the outcome statement could be expanded like so:
“I help startup founders to navigate all the ‘growing pains’ and complicated questions that come up in the first 5 years of a business’ existence.
“I help them to see that their belief that they’re stuck on certain situations or don’t know how to solve them is usually an illusion. They’re not stepping into their power.”
Obviously, I’m guessing here, but that theme to what’s being solved would likely make it into the outcome statement.
It would also be part of the “here’s how we do it” bullet points, which are a part of my Strong Method style offer pitch – but that’s a topic for another post.
Now, I want to jump ahead to the comment about “it’s hard for people to believe that [my method of questioning] works until they experience it.”
This is common, for sure – because a transformational process can seem ethereal and difficult to pin down in words.
However, I have a framework for it that allows you to give your audience a real glimpse into what your process is like – so they’ll think to themselves, “hmm, this just might work for me” – and go ahead and hire you even without having experienced it directly yet.
For long-time followers of my work, I’m referring to the “belief-shifting post” framework here.
And if we applied it to this particular coaching business, we’d take one of the micro-problems listed above, and spend a whole post on it, and explain the “questioning” process with reference to that specific problem, giving examples.
So, let’s say that we took the first problem in the list:
“Being more visible, with confidence, to ‘be the face’ and promote my business”
There could be a post that started off like so:
“A lot of startup founders I work with say they really struggle with keeping the business growing because they’re not confident being the face of the business. It’s all very new to them and they’re not used to it yet.”
Then there could be a diagnosis of why startup founders tend to struggle with being visible, from this expert’s perspective, which I’m not sure yet what that diagnosis would be because I’m lacking a few details about the method.
But, just to pull something out of thin air:
“From my perspective this happens because they haven’t fully stepped into their power.”
(Extending my “guess” from earlier 😉 )
And then here’s where we’d demonstrate how the “questioning” method would lead to this realization:
“Founders often don’t realize that’s the reason why they struggle with visibility, but they have to admit it’s true after they go through a process of inquiry with me.
“That might start out with my asking them: [QUESTION]
“And they might respond: [ANSWER]
“And I might ask: [QUESTION]
“And they might respond: WOW, I never thought of it that way… I see how I can solve this problem. I can do [SOLUTION THEY THOUGHT OF] to get myself to be more visible AND I’ll be more comfortable doing it.”
I wish I could be more detailed here as I sketch out what the inquiry process might sound like, but I’m lacking some of the information I need.
(Psst: for people who’ve wondered why I don’t offer a done-for-you post writing service: this is why 😉 I’m not gonna know all the nooks and crannies of your expertise and how/why it works to solve problems)
But… can you see how a post like that would actually put this method on display, and relate it to one of the exact problems that this client deals with, and show how it has been solved in the past for people who are very similar to them?
That’s EXACTLY the goal of my post-writing method and it works brilliantly to attract high-ticket empowered buyers.
(And yep, there will always be people who read a post like that and STILL think: “Yeah but that inquiry process would never work for me, I’m just plain stuck and nothing can help me” and not contact you. And that’s a GOOD thing! That’s not a high-ticket empowered buyer and repelling them before they ever contact you is exactly what we want to do!)
Does this help?
Give you a few “aha” moments?
Let me know in the comments here. I’m happy to take any questions, too.
I’ll also let you know that if you want me to help you articulate your outcome, and/or figure out what topics to write content about, and/or figure out how to actually construct the content – I do all of those things in my 30-day 1:1 program, and you got a glimpse of my thought process in this post.
If you want me to help you articulate your outcome ONLY, that’s what I do in my half-day small group workshops (which I host a couple of times per month from 1:00-4:00p.m. Chicago time, and you can always find out when the next dates will be by clicking on this page).
I have a great process – honed over many years of field experience – for helping coaches and experts to get clear on this stuff so they can get more high-ticket enrollments.
If you’re interested in either or both programs, you can DM me on FB and we’ll do a quick text chat to see if it/they are a good fit for you.
If you’re interested in learning my process for helping clients to get clear on this stuff and using it with your own clients, you might like my upcoming Strong Method certification program. DM me on FB about that one as well if you’re interested.
More information on these three offers can be found at the following links:
Group workshop: SEE HERE
1-on-1 program: SEE HERE
Certification program: SEE HERE