There are few things more frustrating than knowing you’re exceptionally good at what you do while watching your dream client choose to work with someone who appears less experienced, less capable and, if you’re honest, not nearly as good as you.
(With the exception of thinking you’ve found the one empty space in a busy car park, only to drive up and discover there’s already a tiny car in it. But I digress...)
When the right clients overlook them, most experts assume they have a visibility problem. So naturally, they conclude they need to post more on LinkedIn, start another social media channel, improve their website or somehow become ‘better at marketing’.
Sometimes that helps.
But more often, they amplify the real problem: you are being overlooked because while people see you, they don’t get you.
Over more than three decades working in marketing and communications and advising founders, leaders and experts, it’s one of the most common, yet least recognised, problems I’ve seen.
Most experts don’t have a visibility problem.
They have a value recognition problem.
The frustrating part is that the more experienced you become, the easier it is for this to happen.
Your expertise evolves gradually over the years, while the language you use to describe it often remains attached to the visible parts of your work rather than the depth of value you create for your clients.
And the truth is, people won’t invest in value they don’t recognise.
And value recognition always comes before a decision to buy.
Once you start looking through that lens, you notice something fascinating:
The experts who struggle to attract clients usually spend most of their time describing who they are and what they do.
The experts who become the obvious choice spend far more time helping people understand what their work makes possible in the lives of their clients. They make the value of their outcomes clear, tangible and easy to recognise.
In this article, I want to explore that difference and show you how to communicate your value in a way that helps the right people quickly understand why you may be exactly the person they’re looking for.
One of the most common pieces of sales and marketing advice is that features tell and benefits sell.
And while that’s true, I don’t think it goes far enough.
This is how I see it.
Features provide information.
Benefits give that information meaning.
Meaning is what allows people to recognise themselves in your work. Until someone understands not only what you do, but why it matters to their life or business, they have nothing meaningful to say yes to.
That’s why I believe recognition always comes before persuasion.
Think about how often we describe our offers like this:
Six coaching sessions
A private online community
Weekly accountability
A strategy workshop
A personalised report
There’s nothing wrong with any of those things.
They’re simply incomplete. They tell people what they’ll receive, but give them no reason to understand why any of it matters.
Imagine meeting someone at a networking event and they proudly tell you they offer a personalised report.
Your first thought probably isn’t:
“Wonderful. I’d love one.”
It’s far more likely to be:
“OK... but what does that actually do for me?”
That’s the question every potential client is quietly asking.
Not because they’re sceptical, but because they’re human. Our brains constantly filter information for relevance. Before we decide whether something deserves our time, attention or investment, we instinctively ask ourselves whether it matters to us.
So once you start explaining the meaning behind the feature, everything changes.
Now they understand exactly what that personalised report will enable them to do differently, why it matters and whether it’s relevant to the outcome they’re trying to create.
The feature hasn’t changed.
Its meaning has.
One of the first marketing lessons I ever learnt came from Theodore Levitt, the Harvard marketing professor who famously said:
“People don’t buy a quarter-inch drill because they want a quarter-inch drill. They buy it because they want a quarter-inch hole.”
I heard that example throughout my marketing studies.
Then one day I realised something.
Nobody wakes up thinking:
“Today’s the day I finally get that hole in the wall I’ve always dreamed about.”
People want a hole in the wall for a reason.
Perhaps it allows them to hang a treasured family photograph. Perhaps it’s somewhere to display books they’ve collected over a lifetime. Or maybe it’s to display a piece of art that gives their house the final touch that finally makes it feel like home.
The drill isn’t the goal, and neither is the hole.
Both are simply steps towards something much more meaningful.
That’s exactly how your expertise works.
Your clients don’t really want coaching.
They don’t really want strategy, a workshop, a framework or a ninety-minute session either.
Those things matter only because of what they make possible afterwards.
The mistake most experts make is stopping one step too early. They explain the drill. Sometimes they even explain the hole. Very few explain the life their client is hoping to create on the other side of it.
Your job is to understand why your client wants that metaphorical hole in the wall and communicate that. Not the drill. Not even the hole.
But the life they’ll be able to create because of it.
This is where I see brilliant experts unintentionally making life harder for themselves.
As your expertise grows, more and more of what you do becomes instinctive. You stop noticing the value because it feels obvious to you.
Features are also safer to talk about.
It’s easy to say your programme includes six sessions, a framework or a personalised report. It’s much harder to articulate the transformation those things create, because doing so requires you to recognise the value of your own expertise first.
That is often the very thing you’ve become blind to.
So you begin describing the journey instead of the destination.
You talk about your methodology, qualifications, programme structure, discovery call or years of experience.
All of that information has a role to play.
Just not first.
Because none of it answers the crucial question your client wants answered before they’re willing to invest the time to understand more.
“How will my life be different because of this?”
Or, put more simply:
“What’s in it for me?”
Take something as simple as a complimentary discovery call.
Most websites simply say:
“Book a complimentary discovery call.”
That’s information.
It tells people what’s available, but gives them no reason to understand why the call matters.
Because the value isn’t the call itself.
It’s the opportunity to ask questions without pressure, understand their options, explore whether this is the right next step and make a confident decision.
Exactly the same call.
Completely different meaning.
One describes an activity.
The other helps someone recognise its value.
Whenever I’m helping clients improve their messaging, there’s one exercise that consistently helps them uncover the value hidden inside what they do.
The question is simply:
Which means...?
Take one feature of working with you.
Ask yourself what that gives your client.
Then ask:
Which means...?
And then ask it again. And again.
Keep going until you reach something your client can genuinely feel.
For example, let’s say the first step in your offer provides your client with a personalised strategy.
Which means … their priorities become clearer.
Which means … they stop wasting time on marketing that isn’t working.
Which means … they finally have confidence that their effort is moving their business forwards.
Notice how each answer moves further away from describing your business and closer to describing your client’s future.
Most businesses stop after the first answer.
That’s one reason so much marketing and messaging sounds alike.
Every time you ask “Which means...?” you move one step away from your process and one step closer to helping your client recognise the future they’re hoping to create.
For more content like this, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
This is where Value Whispering takes a different approach to traditional marketing.
Traditional marketing often asks:
“How do I promote my offer?”
Value Whispering asks:
“How do I help someone recognise themselves enjoying a better future through my offer?”
Think about the last holiday advertisement that caught your attention.
It probably wasn’t full of airport queues, delayed flights and cramped aeroplane seats, even though that’s what the journey actually involves.
It showed warm evenings, white sand, laughter around a restaurant table and memories waiting to be made.
The holiday company wasn’t selling the journey.
It was helping you imagine the life waiting at the other end of it.
Your expertise deserves the same level of thought.
Your clients aren’t looking for another framework.
They’re looking for what that framework allows them to achieve or become once they have implemented it.
When I first started working with Kate, her business was struggling.
She assumed she needed to become better at marketing.
She didn’t.
Like many experts, she described her service in almost exactly the same way as everyone else in her industry. The only obvious difference was that her prices were significantly higher, so she found it hard to attract clients.
Once we uncovered the value she consistently created for clients and, more importantly, why that mattered to the people she most wanted to work with, everything changed.
She stopped describing the mechanics of her service and started communicating the transformation her clients were really looking for.
Within a week she had attracted four new clients who never even asked for her price list because they immediately understood why she was the right person to help them.
Within three months she was making a profit for the first time in two years.
Three months later, she had a waiting list of high-paying clients.
She didn’t become more visible or do more marketing (in fact, she did a lot less).
She made her unique value easier to recognise.
The next time you’re tinkering with your website, updating your LinkedIn headline or describing your offer, pause for a moment.
Ask yourself:
Am I describing what I do?
Or...
Am I helping someone recognise why it matters to them?
Because clients rarely choose the expert with the longest list of features.
They choose the expert whose value they understand most easily.
This is why I believe marketing is rarely the real problem.
Value Recognition is.
When people recognise the value you create, saying ‘Heck Yes!’ to working with you no longer feels like a leap of faith.
It feels like the natural next step.
If you suspect that Value Recognition could be the issue that’s keeping your dream clients from saying ‘Heck Yes!’ to your offer, here are two ways I can help you:
Get a copy of my book: Value Whispering - The Smarter Way to Market Your Small Business you can find it here.
Or for a quick taster, you can download the first chapter free here »Consider joining the Value Whispering Blueprint. This is my signature programme where I’ll guide you step by step through the process of getting your value clear, communicating and marketing it to your dream clients, creating your signature system and offers and developing your customer journey and sales process, all while working on your mindset and creating the right conditions for your success.
Click here to learn more and arrange a time for us to discuss your needs and whether now is the right time to join the programme.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.