TT#030 - How to be seen as an expert in your field (and get paid like one too)...
“Sales” makes a lot of entrepreneurs uncomfortable.
I get it. Even as a 20-year sales and sales leadership veteran.
If your view of sales is stalking people that don’t want to talk to you and convincing them to buy stuff they don’t want, sales doesn’t sound all that appealing.
Even less so when what you’re selling is you and your expertise.
If that’s your view of sales, I’ve got some great news for you:
You don’t have to sell your soul to sell your expertise.
Over the last 10 years, I’ve helped some of the top names in the coaching business, like Dan Martell and Robin Robins, build and improve insanely high performance sales practices. And I’ve helped some of the most prestigious organizations in the world, like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, do the same.
In that time, there’s one thing I’ve learned to be absolutely true:
If you want to sell your expertise, you have to be perceived as an expert… not just “another salesperson.”
That’s why scrappy sales practices like impersonal cold outreach and generic automation may help generate some new client opportunities, but won’t win you the premium clients you actually want to work with (or the rates you really want to earn).
Winning those clients (and earning those rates) requires intentionally positioning yourself as an expert, and…
Positioning yourself as an expert requires a fundamentally different approach to sales.
It requires an expertise-oriented sales system, or one where you’re working with prospects from a position of authority, credibility, and trust.
Here are 2 things that will help you do that:
Marketing that brings people to you.
An expertise-oriented sales process.
Marketing That Brings People to You
When someone seeks you out, their perception of you will always be different than if you found them with a cold email or phone call.
Think about it.
If you needed heart surgery, would your perception of the doctor who sent you a cold email and called you a dozen times be the same as the doctor you spent hours researching and seemed to be booked out weeks or months in advance?
That’s why good marketing is a cornerstone of an expertise-oriented sales system. And...
Good marketing is all about positioning.
Good marketing lays the foundation for people to find you, become really interested in your services, and request time from you to talk. That positions the call very differently than one where you’ve initiated contact out of the blue and are requesting time from them to talk.
There’s no single “right way” to market yourself, but one of the best forms of marketing for an expertise-oriented sales system is content.
Through content, you can demonstrate domain knowledge, share case studies and results, and highlight your unique strengths that differentiate you from competitors.
Then, when people reach out to request time, you know they already have at least some degree of interest in you or your services. That puts you in the perfect position to run a sales process that doesn’t make you cringe.
Which leads us to the second point…
An Expert-Oriented Sales Process
When people engage with your marketing and request a call, you’ll want a process to run that call that boosts your authority, credibility, and trust.
Here are a two common mistakes that will position you like any ‘ol salesperson, not an expert:
1: Building the Wrong Kind of Rapport
A lot of professional service providers have been trained to “build rapport.”
It’s not that this is bad advice. It’s that most people misunderstand “rapport.” So, they go into calls with potential clients and talk about crap like the local weather and football teams for 10 minutes thinking they’re building the right kind of relationship.
But here’s the thing:
If you are solving an important problem for clients, rapport means knowing what the hell you’re talking about.
Credibility is a better rapport builder than likability.
People don’t hire the person they were most chummy with on the phone to solve critical problems. They hire the most credible person, and they pay a premium for that credibility.
2: Prescribing Without Diagnosing
Would you trust your mechanic if he offered you a prescriptive remedy for your car without bothering to look at it or ask any questions?
Please tell me no.
If your mechanic handed you a quote for work without bothering to diagnose what was wrong, you’d feel like you were being sold.
And… you’d be right.
Positioning yourself as an expert means being an expert. And experts don’t hawk their crap to anyone that’ll buy it.
Taking the time to really understand your potential clients’ problems, assessing whether or not it’s a good fit, and offering them recommendations in their best interest is an essential piece of an expert-oriented sales system.
And that means recommending they work with you if it’s a fit, and recommending they don’t if it’s not.
[If you want my High Ticket Sales Playbook that gives you a play-by-play process for calls, you can get it for free here.]
P.S.
Before signing off, note that when I talk about good marketing above, it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do any outbound activity. It does mean that your outbound activity should direct potential clients to marketing assets, not immediately jumping on a call with you.
