Please Don’t Look in the Closet
To be effective in your professional services practice, it’s vital to understand what’s in the “closet” for each of your clients and prospects, and to offer a response free of judgment.
The Price and Value Journey is presented by John Ray and produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX®.
TRANSCRIPT
John Ray: [00:00:00] I’m John Ray on The Price and Value Journey. Have you ever been a guest in someone’s home maybe for a holiday party and asked for the location of the bathroom? Has the response included not only the directions, but a “just don’t look in the closet” response with a chuckle? Well, what your host is thinking at that moment might be a bit more frantic. Please, please, whatever you do, please don’t open that closet door.
John Ray: [00:00:29] Professional services providers, prospects, and clients invariably have a messy closet, if you will. That’s my term for what’s underneath, what the world doesn’t see. That’s particularly true for do it yourselfers that are coming in from out of the cold. It could be they’ve been practicing law without a license, using Google to produce legal agreements, for example. Or that their accounting system of choice involves a Nike shoe box. For coaches, the problem is particularly acute, because getting into the closet, that mess of emotional and mindset baggage a client has been carrying around is the whole point of coaching.
John Ray: [00:01:14] To be effective in your practice, it’s vital to understand where the closets of your clients and prospects are located, and to know what those closets contain. As you engage with a prospect, their closets, if you will, are your competitors. That prospect sitting in front of you has deliberately put themselves in an emotionally vulnerable position. It might have taken them years, literally, to get over the embarrassment and shame they’re feeling such that they are willing to engage an outside provider. The only reason they’ve called you is that the pain emanating from the closet is so bad that they just can’t take it anymore.
John Ray: [00:01:59] Part of your trust equation with that prospect and even after that prospect becomes a client involves giving them comfort that you’re not going to judge. And that no matter how disordered the closet may be, you’ve seen it so many times that it’s not a big deal at all. And these closet exist for our clients, even after they become clients, because they don’t share everything the moment they hire us. There are some things that they just don’t want to get into.
John Ray: [00:02:29] It’s something like what my primary care doctor once told me during an examination. He said, “I’ve seen so many versions of what you’ve got everyday so don’t worry.” What he actually said was a bit more colorful and funny and, therefore, helped me relax. It was a marked contrast with some doctors I visited who acted like they were working on a cadaver. Further, it’s quite likely that the prospect became your client without all the closet doors being opened.
John Ray: [00:03:02] If that client feels safe to share and isn’t worried about judgement, then as the engagement proceeds, they’ll share. And you’ll have the ability to serve them much more effectively, which means deliver more value than you would have otherwise. Our jobs as services professionals is to allow our clients to breathe, relax, and not worry about judgment. If we’re successful in this regard, we’re delivering priceless value.
John Ray: [00:03:33] I’m John Ray on The Price and Value Journey. If you go to pricevaluejourney.com, you can find two things. One is the show archive of this series, as well as a link to get details on a book I have coming out in 2023, The Price Value Journey: Raise Your Confidence, Your Value, and Your Prices to Grow Your Business Using The Generosity Mindset. If you’d like to send me an email, please feel free to do so, john@johnray.co. Thank you for joining me.
About The Price and Value Journey
The title of this show describes the journey all professional services providers are on: building a services practice by seeking to convince the world of the value we offer, helping clients achieve the outcomes they desire, and trying to do all that at pricing which reflects the value we deliver.
If you feel like you’re working too hard for too little money in your solo or small firm practice, this show is for you. Even if you’re reasonably happy with your practice, you’ll hear ways to improve both your bottom line as well as the mindset you bring to your business.
The show is produced by the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® and can be found on all the major podcast apps. The complete show archive is here.
John Ray, Host of The Price and Value Journey
John Ray is the host of The Price and Value Journey.
John owns Ray Business Advisors, a business advisory practice. John’s services include advising solopreneur and small professional services firms on their pricing. John is passionate about the power of pricing for business owners, as changing pricing is the fastest way to change the profitability of a business. His clients are professionals who are selling their “grey matter,” such as attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, consultants, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.
In his other business, John is a Studio Owner, Producer, and Show Host with Business RadioX®, and works with business owners who want to do their own podcast. As a veteran B2B services provider, John’s special sauce is coaching B2B professionals to use a podcast to build relationships in a non-salesy way which translate into revenue.
John is the host of North Fulton Business Radio, Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Radio, Alpharetta Tech Talk, and Business Leaders Radio. house shows which feature a wide range of business leaders and companies. John has hosted and/or produced over 1,700 podcast episodes.
Coming in 2023: A New Book!
John’s working on a book that will be released in 2023: The Price and Value Journey: Raise Your Confidence, Your Value, and Your Prices Using The Generosity Mindset. The book covers topics like value and adopting a mindset of value, pricing your services more effectively, proposals, and essential elements of growing your business. For more information or to sign up to receive updates on the book release, go to pricevaluejourney.com.
