3 Clever ways to communicate value and drive more sales
If sales is the heartbeat of every business then communicating value must be the heart itself. If we fail to communicate our value we’ll struggle to ever get our businesses off the ground or to grow them to the levels that we desire. Communicating value is an absolutely critical skill for business success. In this blog we’ll discuss 3 clever ways you can better communicate value and drive more sales. Does value matter to you? We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you. Access it here! Exclusivity People love being a part of something greater than themselves. People especially love being a part of something exclusive. When communicating your offering or services you can level up your sales with the clever technique of making something exclusive. This will naturally drive people to want to be a part of something and speak about it on your behalf too, after all, nobody wants to keep it a secret! Case Studies We are naturally drawn to stories because it allows us to feel what someone else is feeling and experience their journey first hand. Case studies are clever vehicles to create different profiles for different people that they can immediately resonate with. Case studies are like storytelling on steroids because you can cater different case studies specifically to the challenges and problems your clients have. A great case study will highlight the pain point that is specific to your client and allow you to really speak to what is bothering them most! Value Ladders Not everyone can afford your services or products, and that’s ok. But often people can afford and choose not to. An effective way to communicate your value is to offer multiple products and services on a ladder. The ladder starts with low cost solutions and increases to your highest cost offerings. By doing this you’ll offer you prospects flexibility and anchor your pricing to a high and low point! How do you communicate your value? Let us know your thoughts, you can email us at info@jbandthedoctor.com! Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your soft skills to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
Key elements in storytelling
Mastering the art of storytelling does not come naturally to many people. Thankfully there are some common elements that are universal in most good stories. These same elements can be incorporated to provide your business and brand with the ‘wow’ factor that you need to stand apart! Want to be the hero in your story and not the side story? We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you. Access it here! Le’ts jump right into what makes storytelling great and the elements you need to include in your story. What makes storytelling great? Storytelling allows us to create an emotional response in the people who are experiencing our story. It engages and captivates the audience by evoking emotions and touching on universal themes that everyone can identify with. A good story will resonate with people over time and never truly ages. Key Element #1: Conflict There is no good story without conflict. No matter how small, conflict is something all of us can appreciate and have gone through. Every story must have a conflict and the better the conflict the more engaging the story. Key Element #2: Resolution Not all conflicts are won but there are always resolutions. The resolution of a conflict provides insight and helps guide our future decisions. The wisdom in many stories is found in how the conflict was resolved. Key Element #3: Character In order for a story to hit, somebody has to place themselves in the shoes of the character. A great story will always have a character that people can relate to in some way and allows them to imagine themselves going through the conflict as the character themselves. Building out these elements in your story will help you engage with your audience in a more meaningful way and truly stand apart from the crowd! How do you tell stories? Let us know your thoughts, you can email us at info@jbandthedoctor.com! Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your soft skills to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
Communicating certainty – how setting expectations creates peace of mind
Trust and peace of mind are critical ingredients to any client or prospect relationship. Peace of mind may be the ultimate benefit of implementing strategies and solutions and we commonly find as a top response from any individuals we work with. In order to create peace of mind and fast track building out trust, setting expectations is top of the list of necessary skills to develop. Want more peace of mind? We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you. Access it here! Setting expectations will create peace of mind by communicating certainty. Here’s how! Reduced Anxiety Anxiety arises when we are unsure about the future. It’s almost like paying taxes on money you haven’t earned, yet many of us are guilty of having anxiety about the future. One of the easiest ways to reduce anxiety is to set crystal clear expectations. When communicated regularly these expectations will create certainty and reduce anxiety about the future. Less anxiety means happier prospects and clients with greater levels of trust! Enhanced Trust Speaking of trust, the speed in which we can develop and build trust is going to have a direct impact on our bottom line in our businesses. When we are able to set and meet expectations regularly we end up developing trust much more effectively than we otherwise would. Sure, getting things done will increase trust but only if it’s in line with the expectations that have been set. PS, there are always expectations regardless of whether you set them, so if you’re not, you are missing out on a serious opportunity to control the narrative of your relationship with clients and prospects and ensure peace of mind! Increased Critical Thinking Setting expectations facilitates greater collaboration, problem solving and most importantly critical thinking. By setting expectations we are mapping out our timeline for when and how we’re going to achieve our goals. The process of creating a plan and roadmap for our projects and services forces us to critically think about the problems and challenges we need to overcome. When we work on a team it allows all members to actively engage collaboratively to solve any problems. By setting clear expectations team members are able to all be on the same page and address challenges head on. This provides peace of mind to everyone involved in the process! Setting expectations allows us to communicate certainty and creates peace of mind for all parties involved including yourself and your team. It’s why we consider consistent expectation setting to be one of the most critical skills you can develop as a professional! Do you have any stories around great (or poor) expectation setting? Let us know your thoughts, you can email us at info@jbandthedoctor.com! Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your soft skills to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
Language that moves people to take action
Getting clients to take action is one of the most difficult aspects of being a professional advisor or, truly, most businesses. Very few clients are at the point of action and decision making to begin with and so it’s incredibly important to speak to them in a way that is most effective. This, of course, is for your client’s benefit and your own. Any recommendations we make are client centric and it’s in our best interest to see our client’s best interests served. Normally, our stance is language isn’t as important as people often make it out to be, and we stand by that. However, there are occasions where our language choice is critical and we’re going to provide you with some of the language that will actually move people to action. Now is the moment! We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you. Access it here! So what is some language we can use that will help people take action? Let’s dive right into motivational interviewing. What is motivational interviewing Motivational interviewing is a counseling method developed by clinical psychologists William R Miller and Stephen Rollnick. It’s a client-centered approach primarily used to help individuals overcome ambivalence or resistance to behavior change. Most people aren’t ready to take action and even when they approach the stage of decision making often struggle with conflict and want to avoid doing anything difficult. Motivational interviewing and the language within works to help people reduce internal conflict and overcome discomfort so they’ll take action! For the purpose of today we need to think of the acronym RULE! Resist the righting reflex: in other words, instead of using language that corrects other people use language that will reframe what someone has said you can understand what they meant or shift the conversation to another topic. Understand client motivations: Use language and ask questions that allow the client to explain their own motivation to change. They are chatting with you for a reason so they must have their reasons! Listen with empathy: Share that you understand your client is going through something. You don’t have to share in the feeling simply acknowledge that they are going through something and you’re doing pretty good here. Empower the client: Client’s will never take action if they don’t feel confident in the ability to take the action. Use language that empowers your clients to have confidence and self-efficacy. Everything above is built around reflective listening, asking open-ended questions and being empathetic. The best way to get a client to take action is to make sure they feel heard and help them understand with clarity why they need and want to make a change! How do you help your clients move into a take action stage? Let us know your thoughts, you can email us at info@jbandthedoctor.com! Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your soft skills to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
3 Easy Tips to Strengthen Your Communication
Communication skills are some of the most important skills we can develop. For many of us, our development of these skills started as children and ended by the time we graduated from school. Yet there are many powerful techniques we can implement that can easily strengthen our communication skills. In this blog we explore 3 easy tips anyone can use to strengthen their communication skills. Have we been clear that we have a free gift that you may be interested in? We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you. Access it here! If you want to strengthen your communication skills then check out these great tips that are easy to start using today! 1. Practice Active Listening Active listening is an incredibly simple concept that anyone can put to practice today. It requires us to pay attention to more than the words that are spoken. We can pay attention to body language, what’s not being said and carefully consider what it is someone is trying to say, not just what they have said, to achieve active listening in our conversations. 2. Reflective Language Reflective language is a way of responding back to someone that allows us to ensure we understand what they are saying. We can do this through statements or questions. A reflective question or statement confirms if we understood what was being said. Implementing reflective language means we don’t take what someone says at face value, we dig deeper to ensure better comprehension. 3. Motivational Interviewing Motivational interviewing is a series of techniques designed to help bring two different viewpoints together. Motivational interviewing can be used to help reframe, to agree with a spin or shift focus onto something to reduce friction. When we communicate with someone and feel like we aren’t getting anywhere this type of communication can be essential to making progress towards a meeting of the minds. What are some easy tips you suggest to strengthen your communication skills? Let us know your thoughts, you can email us at info@jbandthedoctor.com! Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your soft skills to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
Soft Skills: The Future Determinant of Success in an AI world
While we’ve been promoting the importance of soft skills for years and there have been plenty of studies that substantiate the benefit of soft skill development, today soft skills are the most investment you can make into yourself and your business. Why? What if we told you that AI is going to transform the way we work and that technical expertise is going to be primarily supported by AI function? You probably wouldn’t be surprised. If our technical expertise can be transitioned over to technology, then it becomes clear that what will set us apart is the skills that AI cannot replace. These are the decidedly human soft skills like emotional intelligence, empathy, active listening, and communication. Soft skill investment today is the best way to guarantee future success in an AI world. Excited about AI? We are too, in fact, we’re so excited we have a free gift that you may be interested in! We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you. Access it here! AI has advanced exponentially in an incredibly short period of time. As we publish this blog, we are seeing plug-in support and AI like ChatGPT has already established itself as power enough to pass several business school exams, the United States Licensure Exam and has performed better than many students typically would. While ChatGPT and other AI have a long way to go the functionality is undeniable and it’s clear that given enough time, ChatGPT and AI will be able to more effectively, more efficiently and more accurately provide technical expertise to consumers at (potentially) a fraction of the cost that experts charge today. This will be hugely disruptive for many professionals and businesses. AI is not perfect, however, and struggles with many of the same challenges that people struggle with today. ChatGPT and AI are not great at active listening. The software is incapable, and we believe will remain incapable of being able to understand the many levels of nuance in human communication and interaction. Without active listening we cannot effectively display empathy and we cannot connect well with other people. The greatest strength we have as people is to be people and to grow and develop the skills that allow us to work alongside other people. If our technical skills are easily commoditized, then it makes complete sense for us to be doubling down on our soft skills. These are the skills that will separate us from other professionals and businesses. These are the skills that will allow us to better understand our consumers, their behaviors, and their biases. What do you think? How will AI handle soft skills? Will it ever come close to what we can accomplish as people? For now, we’re confident the answer is NO! Let us know at info@jbandthedoctor.com Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your time, sales, and confidence, to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
What is Active Listening and How to Use It!
“‘We have two ears and one mouth, use them proportionately.” – Anonymous Some wisdom holds true over time better than others. Some of the best advice I’ve heard about being in sales is ‘shut up,’ or something similar. The reason for this is, most of the time when we talk, we learn nothing. When we listen, we can learn. We also allow the people we are with the opportunity to be heard, which they love! What if we told you there are simple ways you can get people to share what’s most important to them? In our blog today we explain what active listening is and how you can use it! If you care to listen, we have a free gift for you! We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our gift to you and you can access it right here. Access it here! What is Active Listening Active listening is best described as listening with intention. Most of us aren’t in good practice at listening. Although it’s commonly said that the smartest person in the room is the one keeping quiet, much of the attention goes to the loudest or fastest speaking individual in a room. Traditional listening might be hearing the words being spoken to you. Active listening is an exercise in concentration, focus and effort to better understand not just the words being spoken but what is not being spoken. Attention to the tone, undertones, body language and other non-verbal cues creates better understanding of what someone is communicating and builds tremendous empathy between both parties. Active listening is intentional. How to Use Active Listening Use active listening to build better relationships with the people around you. You’ll learn much more about someone, help them feel validated and express much greater empathy by actively listening to what someone is saying. Use it to stand out from other people and cement yourself as a unicorn in the eyes of anyone you’re working with. Active listening takes discipline, but that discipline shows someone you care! Use active listening to build better relationships! Are you a good listener? Let us know at info@jbandthedoctor.com Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your time, sales, and confidence, to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
Why It’s Important to Address Failure Directly
Failure is inevitable and it’s not a bad thing. We look at failure as a negative and yet, in the grand experiment that is life and business, failure is an absolute certainty. Everyone experiences failure and it’s often the best learning experience for us. Failure can be the best teacher and should be embraced. In this blog we’ll discuss why it’s so important to address failure directly. Don’t fail to check out our free giveaway for you! We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you. Access it here! Failure Does Not Mean Fault Failure and fault are two different things that we commonly lump together. Oh, something failed so whomever was responsible for that failure must be at fault. Yet that is rarely the case. If there is a failure, the statistics suggest that rarely is any single individual at fault (think less than 10% of the time). Failure is an opportunity to fix something broken, not an opportunity to assign blame and fault. Failure Helps Us Get Better There are different types of failures and many of them deal with uncertainty and experimentation. In these instances, our failures help us correct to more predictable outcomes. In other words, these failures drive innovation. If the failure is a result of effort to improve, it can absolutely be a positive. It’s All About Perception People will trust you more if you’re open about your failures. Everyone knows we’re going to have them from time to time, and it’s about how you deal with them that is most important. By addressing failures head-on we can emphasize to anyone paying attention that we’re aware of the failure, will put energy and time into correcting for them in the future and that will help develop more trust than simply pretending we are perfect! How do you address your failures? Let us know at info@jbandthedoctor.com Did you know we work with professionals and leaders with 2 on 1 coaching that marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 sales executive. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your time, sales, and confidence, to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
Tips to create a positive culture
I’ve never met a business owner that wanted to lead a poor or weak team culture. Yet so many businesses are run with cultures that are far from effective. A bad culture can lead to turnover, HR nightmares, lost revenue, and the demise of a business. With that in mind we thought we’d drop you some tips to create a positive team culture that you can implement right now! Before we discuss our tips, did you know that 70% of businesses will fail? We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you and you can access it right here. To create a positive culture we need to define it first! Step 1: Define what a positive culture means to you. What does it look like? How does it respond to common challenges and business struggles? How does it handle adversity? How does it celebrate? How does it lift up team members? By defining a positive culture you can start to identify what if anything about your current culture you’d like to change. Step 2: Make it about those that you serve. In business we serve our clients/customers, our employees, our shareholders and then, of course, ourselves. Too often we see business owners focus only on serving one stakeholder. Make sure to take a close look at your culture and try to identify if you fall short of serving any of your stakeholders. If you do, you have a place where you can quickly shift the culture more positively. Having trouble identifying this? If all else fails, make sure you are a customer first oriented business followed very closely by employees as this will solve many business issues. Step 3: Set expectations and hold YOURSELF to them. It’s not easy to set and hold expectations for others and it’s even harder to set and hold them for ourselves. Lead by example, take ownership and accountability for all aspects of your business and never expect an employee or team member to do something you yourself would not. Lead by example and lead with personal accountability. Our tips were inspired by our recent podcast with Guillaume Viatr of MetaHelm, where we discuss strategic narrative and the impact on culture! You can listen in to our podcast here, or if you prefer you can also check it out on our Youtube channel right here! Listen to Podcast Watch on Youtube We love answering your questions from the lab. If you’d like to join us and other professionals that are striving to get better every day, you can access the group here! If you’re working on developing a better team culture, we can help! Our unique 2 on 1 coaching marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 external sales Vice President. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your time, sales, and confidence, to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science.
Top Tips To Excel At Active Listening
To listen means we hear the words that are being said to us. To actively listen means we hear the words, the meaning of the words and we seek to understand the why behind the words as well. It’s like the difference between seeing a photo of a mountain and being in the mountains. Photos can capture details, but they can’t capture the experience. Active listening captures the full experience and is important to level up your communication skills. Here are some of our top tips to help you excel at active listening. Before we discuss our tips, did you know that 70% of businesses will fail? We put together a FREE guide identifying the Top 6 reasons businesses fail and give you actionable steps you can take on every one of these to make sure it’s your competition failing and not you! It’s our free gift to you you can access it right here. Tip # 1 – Be Present Sure it sounds simple, but is it? For us to be present means we need to shut down our need to reply. Instead of listening to figure out how we should reply it’s listening to understand. It also means freeing ourselves from the many other distractions that can stop us from really being engaged in the conversation. That means removing the distractions of technology, our own anxieties about the past and future and anything else that get’s in the way of our focus. Tip #2 – Ask and ask again What’s the best reply to what someone says? A lot of times, it’s simply repeating it back and making sure you heard it right. Not only does this help you understand what’s being said, it also helps the speaker clarify what they meant. It’s not uncommon for us to say one thing and mean another. This is one way to make sure both parties are on the same page! Believe it or not, this will not only help with your communication it will actually speed up your conversations! This blog was inspired by our recent podcast of Better Business Brewing, our live conversation where we answer questions and challenges directly from the lab! You can listen in to our podcast here, or if you prefer you can also check it out on our Youtube channel right here! Listen to Podcast Watch on Youtube We love answering your questions from the lab. If you’d like to join us and other professionals that are striving to get better every day, you can access the group here! If you’re working on being more effective with your communication skills, we can help! Our unique 2 on 1 coaching marries the expertise of a Doctor of Psychology and mindset coach with the business savvy of a former Fortune 50 external sales Vice President. We specialize in helping entrepreneurs and professionals like you master your time, sales, and confidence, to evolve you to your greatest potential. To learn more about our coaching you can contact us here! Feel like you need coaching but not sure you can afford the investment in yourself? That’s ok! We have a scholarship available to diverse candidates of need. You can apply for our scholarship for our coaching and our courses here. Not enough time in the day, we get it. Check out our AYOP course, 2x Your Time, right here. We walk through everything from time management and calendar basics to how you can supercharge your days weeks and months through practices and techniques that are grounded in experience and proven by science. Time Mastery With Science Get access now!