What’s the difference between PROVIDING value and PROVING your value?
I want to start to answer this question by telling you a tale of two coaching calls that happened to me recently as far as deciding on new 1-on-1 clients. Both people were awesome, but I showed up differently in each of the calls.
So, I got set up with a call that Karen, who’s in charge of all of our sales, marketing, and operations and everything, set up for me, and I knew that this client loved Karen, like, Karen was their first choice.
And so at the beginning of this call I asked, “Well, what do you know about what it is that I do?”
And she responded with, “Nothing, except for you create Presidential Diamonds,” which for this particular company is their highest rank.
I got really freaked out, and my imposter syndrome set in majorly. I found myself really trying to wow and impress this client with my amazing knowledge and my amazing this and my amazing that. And it just felt a little off to me because I was in this space of trying to prove my value as opposed to really taking a step back and trying to provide value.
Now, it has a happy ending because we still totally hit it off and it was all good. But I felt like it wasn’t right…I just felt off, and I took a step back and reflected on what was different about that call and the others that I have had. It was this thought of, “Okay, I need to prove that I’m as valuable as I’ve been promoted to be.”
And that was just a really dangerous place. That was so much more about my ego than it was about that client, and I didn’t like it, and it wasn’t good, and I wanted to make a change.
So I was chatting with a few folks on my coaching team who really shifted my perspective, and so I showed up to the next call differently. And this client is a little bit different. It was a renewal, and so I chatted with her.
Both clients, basically, coming into the call, I knew were yeses, and it was more of a formality. But I came in a little bit different and I said, “Okay, what’s going on with you?” And I actually asked the question, “How can I provide value to you and your family over the next six months?”
And she said something that’s kind of hard to do…she said, “Show me what I don’t know or don’t see, and just be you.”
Well, okay, I can do that.
And so, we kept talking, and her computer kept buzzing, and beeping and stuff. I said, hold on a second, can I just take 10 minutes and fix your computer? And I turned off all of the notifications, I synced her calendars up, I shared them with her husband so he always would know what was going on, and I changed her default browser so she would be able to go a little faster, and she looked at me and she said, “After 15 minutes of tech support, you completely just earned your whole first month.”
And I thought that was so interesting because it didn’t take a lot of time, and it’s technically not my greatest gift or what I was being hired for. I don’t think people will look at me and say, “Oh, hire Tasha, she’s great at tech support.”
But it was super, super valuable for her, and it helped me to realize that, and even with the first call, I was trying to prove my value and trying to be impressive, but both of those people got something very different out of those calls, and I realized that value is subjective. What we think is valuable is based on our knowledge, our experience, and our skills.
I think that I probably saved her a few hours a week of productivity, and gosh, is there anything more valuable than getting time back?
And I just think that we need to rethink what it means to provide value and not get so caught up in proving our value.
So, what if we walked into sales conversations, retention calls, recruiting calls, coaching calls, looking to provide value instead of trying to prove our value? How would this change all of our interactions?
So, I have a couple points before we get into how to do this in your recruiting process.
#1: Providing value is all about them.
It’s other-centered. Proving value is about us and it’s about our ego. When we focus on us and our ego, our business does not grow. When we focus on serving others and providing them value, our business grows.
#2: Customers need to want the thing you have more than they want their time or their money.
So, if you give value, they will give money, and when you can establish a reputation as a value provider, your relationships increase, people want to be around you, and people want to be connected with you. If you are constantly providing value, it helps us to relax a lot.
#3: Building your team provides a lot of value to those individuals.
I think about some of my clients and they always say I just get so much more excited now talking about the business opportunity than I do the product.The reason they say that is because the people that are successful in the network marketing business opportunity have all that financial reward and some of the freedom and flexibility.
Even if it’s incredibly hard, they’ve overcome trials, built character, and developed personally. But along with that comes the benefits of the product, right? And so, they’re just so much more passionate about that, and they see their role as a team-builder, inviting people to join their team, building their team, recruiting, whatever you wanna call it, as something that is adding value to the other person’s life.
And I wonder, if we changed our thought process around that, how would that change our recruiting process? And so, how do we provide value in a recruiting conversation?
So, let’s say someone is interested in learning more about how to earn money with the company, or the business opportunity. Here are four tips:
#1: Keep growing.
Your ability to provide value increases as your skills, knowledge, and experience increase. So, my ability to provide value as a coach continues to increase as I invest in my own coaching, my own personal development, and my own professional development. Even more so, my experience. The experience is the most valuable part of what you offer people when it comes to the value you give them. And experience can only operate through action. Sometimes we get caught up in wanting to increase our value, increase our professional and personal development, and so go read a book. Well, just hearing about something and not acting on it won’t help us to grow.
The more action you have, the more experience you have, the more wisdom you can provide which is valuable to people.
#2: Listen.
Tell me all about you. What would be helpful for you to go over today? And really take good notes. If we’re not thinking about ourselves and how we need to prove value, then it’s a lot easier to listen and take good notes.
#3: Gain consent or agreement.
People don’t like unsolicited advice, and so if you hear something, just ask, “If we talked more about that, would that be helpful?”
Just gain consent there, and it’s going to increase your ability to provide value to that person because they’re going to be a lot more receptive. If you listen and then you just start giving value and they haven’t really consented to that yet, you run the risk of them just being defensive. And so, by asking a question like, “If we went over this, would that be helpful,” really opens them up to being receptive of the value that you are going to add.
#4: Ask for action.
The real value exchange comes when they get the results, not when they know about the thing. So yes, listening is important, asking consent is important, and giving them information about your business opportunity, and how they can earn money, and how they can better their family’s life, but you have to ask for action, because just knowing they can have a better life doesn’t provide the same amount of value as them actually launching, getting some customers, and being on their way.
And so, ask them for action. When you listened to them earlier, they told you why doing this business would be valuable to them and their family’s life, so listen to that and hold onto that and remember that your job as a value adder and value creator is to follow through on helping them to do that thing.
So those are my tips on providing value, so let me go ahead and do a quick recap for you. Keep growing, listen, gain consent, and ask for action.
I hope that this was helpful for you, and I really want to invite you to become a stronger team builder and join us at our Good Human Recruiter full-day event on how to build your team. So, you can learn more about that at emergesalestraining.com/events.