RR#127- WTF is chocolate broccoli?
A frustrating truth for service providers: just because someone needs your services, doesn’t mean they want them.
I see it all the time.
IT companies push cybersecurity services when clients are only interested in faster help desk support.
Marketing consultants pitch strategic overhauls when clients just want more leads.
Operations consultants try to sell process creation when clients are asking for a simple CRM installation.
Mindset coaches emphasize long-term habit-building when clients just want to feel better today.
I get it—I've made the same mistake.
When I started sales consulting, I focused a lot on the importance of organizational culture in getting long-term results.
Why?
Because I’d led 8 sales turnarounds and that was a common factor in every single one.
But guess what? Most of the prospects I talked to didn’t care.
They just wanted more sales.
What Clients Want vs. What They Need
Here’s what I’ve learned over the years: What your clients want isn’t always what they need.
And it’s not their fault.
They don’t know as much as you do. If they did, they wouldn’t need you in the first place.
All they know is what’s right in front of them—the symptoms that are causing them pain right now.
It’s up to us to help them get what they need by marketing to what they want.
Dan Martell, a business coach I consulted with, called this concept “chocolate broccoli.”
It’s the art of packaging what clients need (the broccoli) in a way that’s irresistible (the chocolate).
In other words, we need to market to their symptoms while delivering the root cause solution.
My Chocolate-Broccoli Moment
A perfect example is how I originally marketed my audits before launching sales consulting engagements.
I was selling a “Growth System Audit,” which, to me, was exactly what businesses needed.
I knew that to scale, all the pieces had to work together: the product, the marketing, the sales team, the culture, everything.
I even wrote an ebook called Systematic Growth to prove the point.
But here’s the problem: my clients didn’t care about a “growth system.” They didn’t wake up thinking about it. They wanted more sales.
So, I changed the name of the service to the 360º Sales Audit and shifted my messaging to focus on analyzing the sales team, processes, and execution.
And that’s when I started getting traction.
Did I change the audit itself? Not at all.
But by changing how I positioned the audit—turning it from broccoli into chocolate—I started attracting more clients.
The Curse of Knowledge
“Just change up the positioning to what people want.”
Easier said than done.
Why?
As experts, we fall victim to what Chip and Dan Heath call the “Curse of Knowledge.”
We’re so deep into the weeds of our field that it’s hard to remember what it’s like not to know what we know.
We focus on root causes while our clients are fixated on surface-level symptoms.
And that’s where the disconnect happens.
It’s our job to bridge the gap between what we know they need and what they think they want.
How to Beat the Curse of Knowledge
Here are a few strategies to help you get out of your own head and start speaking your clients’ language:
Listen to How They Describe Their Problems
Don’t assume you know what your clients are struggling with—go find out. Look at places like Quora, Reddit, or even the intake forms your clients fill out when booking a call. These are goldmines for how your clients describe their pain points in their own words.Leverage AI
Tools like Perplexity will search the web for you. Drop in a good description of what you do and who you help, and ask these tools how people are likely to describe those issues in their words. You’ll get real insights without your expertise clouding the language.Record Every Sales Call
If you’re not recording and reviewing your sales calls, you’re leaving valuable information on the table. These calls reveal exactly how your best clients talk about their problems. Transcribe them and use AI to analyze patterns. You’ll be surprised at how much you learn.
By focusing on these tactics, you can break the “Curse of Knowledge” and start packaging your services in a way that speaks to your clients' immediate needs.
At the end of the day, you’re still delivering the solution they need—but you’re doing it by marketing what they want.
This is how you start selling the chocolate, not the broccoli.
Hope this helps you reframe your approach to selling. Your clients will thank you for it—and so will your bottom line.
P.S. -
If you’re struggling with any of this, Chip & Dan Heath’s book, Made to Stick, is one of the best books I’ve ever read to help create messaging that truly resonates with your audience.
