Our Intelligence is a Vulnerability
In our professional services practices, our intelligence is a vulnerability, but not because we don’t know what we’re doing. On the contrary, the sharper our intelligence, the more captive we can be to our biases. Further, and contrary to what we might like to think, our intelligence is not the primary reason we usually win business. 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] Hello again. I’m John Ray on The Price and Value Journey. I recently finished a book called We Need to Talk: How to Have Conversations That Matter by Celeste Headlee. It’s a book I highly recommend, by the way, for a number of reasons, a couple of which I’ll talk about here.
John Ray: [00:00:19] There’s some obvious human reasons why we all need to improve our ability to communicate with each other. But there are some business reasons as well, Headlee notes. And she references research by Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, and he’s the author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, another book I highly, highly recommend, by the way. She points out that in Kahneman’s research, he finds that most people would rather do business with someone that they like and trust than someone they dislike.
John Ray: [00:00:51] I realized that may seem like a no-brainer to you and to all of us, but get this, customers will choose a likeable person over a less likable person, even if the likable person’s product is lower quality and higher priced. Professional services providers, what this means is that our degrees and certifications don’t mean as much as we’d like to think. It’s not that they’re not important, it’s just that our expertise at a certain point is assumed. Further, our ability to price our services effectively is more closely tied to our likability than our expertise.
John Ray: [00:01:32] Let me say that again, our ability to price our services effectively is more closely tied to our likeability than our expertise. We’re given a lot of latitude and dollars by our prospects and clients if we are likable. A major piece of likability, too, is tied up, not in how well we express ourselves, but how well we listen.
John Ray: [00:01:59] Headlee goes on to point out a red light warning in all of this. The smarter you are, the more you’ll assume that you know your biases, and therefore are effective at self-assessment. In fact, Headlee observes the exact opposite is true. Research indicates that the belief that your intelligence protects you from erroneous assumptions may actually make you more vulnerable to them. Our intelligence actually works against us as we evaluate our likeability, objectivity, or our ability to listen.
John Ray: [00:02:40] So, here’s the question then, what do we do to put a check on our erroneous biases and assumptions about ourselves? Now, for me, it’s having a few individuals who I can trust to tell me not what I want to hear, but what I need to hear.
John Ray: [00:02:59] So, what works effectively for you or what do you need to introduce in your practice? It could be hiring a coach. It could be engaging a mentor. It could be having an unofficial board of directors. Whatever it is, though, you need to have some friendly yet frank objectivity coming from a trusted third party that will help you overcome the limits and the biases that are inherent in your intelligence.
John Ray: [00:03:29] I’m John Ray on The Price and Value Journey. Past episodes of this series can be found at pricevaluejourney.com. And if you’d like to connect with me, you can send me a note, 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, Nashville 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 1,100 podcast episodes.
