Your potential clients have three options other than hiring you.

1. Do it themselves - doesn't help you.
2. Find someone else other than you to do it.
3. Do nothing.

What's going through ther minds is probably something like this:
"Why should I choose you rather than the next person? When I think about it, maybe I can do it myself and save a ton of money".

If everything you do or say is the same as your competitors, then one of you is not necessary.

Unless there's a really high demand for your service and a shortage of providers like you.

If I have several massage therapists lined up in front or me, or several organizers, or several coaches, tell me why I should pick you. If you don't give me a good reason to pick you, I'll probably pick the person with the lowest fees.

Why should I pay more if you don't give me a good reason to do so?

Setting yourself apart is almost never about what you do but more often it's about WHO you are and HOW you do things. It can be the theme you organize your business around, or something about your personality, or something in your background.

One big mistake I see people making is using price as a way to set themselves apart.

Don't do it!

Using price is not a good option, unless you're the 99c Store or a huge corporation that can turn over huge volumes of products in order to meet their revenue goals.

If you say you're the least expensive dog-care facility in town and you use that as part of your branding, what happens when another facility comes into town and undercuts your prices? You have to go even lower to maintain your image. It's a race to the bottom.

That doesn't mean you can't have special time-limited offers. Of course you can. That's different from promoting permanently low fees.

Another thing that doesn't work so well is saying: "I'm honest," or "You can trust me" or "I have integrity" or any of those admirable qualities that people want.

Those are qualities that people recognize AFTER they've had the experience of working with you.

If you really do embody those qualities, let other people claim them for you. Get testimonials that say so.

If you try to claim them for yourself, people are likely to be skeptical. In their minds they'll go : "Oh yeah!" After all Bernie Madoff probably claimed you could trust him! And look what happened to his clients.

It takes time and commitment to dig deeper than what you do to find out what might set you apart, attract YOUR ideal clients to you and to figure out what will what will resonate with them that will make you their ideal service provider.

But it's worth it.

Your message will be that much more precise and people will understand why they need YOU!

And that's one key to getting good clients.

If you need help with this, I have a module that helps you get your arms around this information in detail. To find out more, email me at Maggie@MyMarketingMessage.com or call me at 805 965 9173 and I'll tell you more.

Copyright 2015 Maggie Dennison

Sounds like a simple question!

But it's not so easy to answer it in a way that'll get your potential clients interested in finding out more about your services.

The obvious answer is something like this: they're buying coaching or marketing services or massage or psychotherapy.

Yes, on a superficial level, in the end that's the service they'll get.

However to get someone interested enough to engage in a dialogue with you about you and your services, it takes a bit more digging.

First, let's look at what they DON'T buy:
 

• Clients don't buy WHAT you do or the facts around what you offer.
   
• Clients don't buy your process, HOW you do what you do. The process you go through doesn't interest them until they know how you can help.

These things play into their final decision but to encourage them to take the first step, they need to know the benefits or results they'll get from using your service.

It's your job as a business owner to be as clear as possible about these and communicate them clearly to your potential clients so they understand the value in finding out more.

When you build on that foundation, it becomes easier for them to make the decision to hire you.

Many of us run into two problems in this area:
 

1. We make assumptions based on what WE know. We often give people the benefit of the doubt by thinking they know more than they do.
    
2. We haven't taken the time to figure out what people are really buying from us. So we default to talking about ourselves, what we do and how we do it, the very things that potential clients are not interested in during those early stages of your interactions with them.

YET - the benefits are the parts they're least likely to understand until we spell it out for them.

If you try to sell only what you do or how you do it, you're making your potential client do all the work to figure out what they'll really get out of working with you. You don't want to make them work that hard because probably they won't.

Often this is where you lose good clients already. They walk away because they don't know why they should continue the conversation.

If you don't let them know what they'll get out of your work together, why should they bother?

You can do your part by digging into your business and discovering what's behind it, uncovering what you're really selling and what your ideal clients want to buy. The more precise, the better. Go here to read an article I wrote about the value of knowing your ideal client inside out.

If you need help with this, I have a module that helps you get your arms around this information in detail. To find out more, email me at Maggie@MyMarketingMessage.com or call me at 805 965 9173 and I'll tell you more.

Copyright 2015 Maggie Dennison