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Hosted by Hanne Vervaeck

WBS 11: How to Position Yourself as a Trusted Advisor

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When all you see on the internet are fake gurus and self-claimed billionaires, getting people to trust you and your advice is getting harder. So how can you gain your audience's trust without selling your soul?

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This episode is for you if

  • You need to work on your skills of selling your advice to people
  • You want to learn a different approach to positioning yourself as an expert
  • You feel like people often ignore your advice in general and you want to change that.

If any of these is what you're dealing with, then keep on listening.

Automatic Transcription

I can see it in his eyes, the way he asked me whether I read his email. And if I could now Please tell him how much money he could make from his app. He doesn't trust me. He's testing me. And at the moment, I'm failing to convince him that I know what I'm talking about.

This episode is for you. If your job requires to convince people, you know what you're talking about, if you hate helping yourself up, and want a different way to quickly position yourself as an expert. And if you often feel like your advice gets ignored, and you want that to change.

Hi, there. I'm Hannah, host of the well balanced success podcast. In this weekly podcast, we explore how you can have it all how you can have a successful career, an active social life, a thriving love and family life, all of that while being healthy and happy. Now, if that sounds like something you would like, then keep on listening.

Now, back to my Xoom call, I was doing this consultation call for a startup. And I knew it would be a tough audience. The reason I knew that it would be a tough audience is because he sent me an email and the questions that he was asking, were questions that I simply could not provide an answer for, because it was impossible to give a correct answer. Now, the problem is that a lot of people, and I'll call them fake gurus, or whatever, a lot of those people promise results and throw numbers around that are just completely ridiculous. And if you have some integrity, but you still need to sell your advice, whether that's your services, or whether that is your advice within the company, there must be a different way to position yourself without selling your soul. Now, in order to use the method that I will describe in a moment, you need to know your competition and what you're up against.

You also need to know your own values and what you stand for. And you need to be ready to do the hard work and to miss out on some quote unquote, easy wins in order to build long term relationships. If that is something that you are up for, then my three punch technique to position yourself as an expert will really work. Now the three punch method works the following. First, you tell them why you can't give an answer, and that you would be lying if you would give an answer. The second thing is you give proof as to why this is the truth. And then the third part is you give them your advice. So let's take an example of this. At some point in my industry, there was a company that decided that they would sort their landing pages by conversion rates to tell people which ones were the best designs. Now, this started to cause problems when people were asking us which landing pages were converting best, which is a stupid question. Now the reason that this is such a stupid question is because conversion rates will depend enormously on the traffic that comes to your landing page. And so saying that a landing page has higher conversion rate than another landing page is just bullshit. 

And it is really annoying when then people start asking you why you're not rating your landing pages on conversion rates. So we actually created this article explaining all the reasons why this was stupid, and then giving the solution that you actually have to AB test your own landing pages. So that was our solution to this problem. Now, on the zoom call, the way that this was playing out, is that again, I had to explain that it was impossible for me to give them how much money they would earn on their app, because there were so many variables for this based on impressions and keywords, and so on. And then I went on to showcase how certain keywords are only worth 10 cents, while other keywords are worth $30. And so then I concluded that they could look up how much they would earn by looking at these specific keywords. And that that would give them some kind of an idea of how much they could earn with their app. Now, the thing is that all the way through my explanation, the person was still very hesitant whether or not I knew what I was talking about, but I could see

The more proof I showed, for explaining why I couldn't give an answer and why it would be unethical of me to give him an answer to the revenue question, the more he started to trust me. And so we ended this call with the fact that he had extremely high trust in my advisory, and that he actually learned a lot during the consultation call.

So how can you implement this in your own business? So first of all, find something stupid. That happens in your industry. So for us in the industry, for example, it was those landing pages that were rated for conversion rates. But if you're an SEO consultant, it might be people promising to be on the first page within a certain time. Or, if you're in nutrition, it might be something completely different. So first of all, you need to know what are like those myths that go on in your industry, and what are things that people believe in. And then you can use this to write about, and you can use the exact framework, the three punch method to show your expertise and to gain that trust, or you can also use this on your sales calls.

So let's imagine that you are a business consultant. And what happens in your industry is that everyone will try to sell Facebook ads, even though you know that that is not the best solution to most of people's problems. So then you can actually call this out on a sales call. And you can say like, Hey, I imagine that you were thinking that I would offer you to add more to your marketing budget, for example. But the truth is that I first need to learn about your overall business, there might be a leak somewhere else in your funnel, and then can tell about the use case of another client who thought that the problem was one thing, but then it was actually the other. And so that will position you again as the trusted advisor. And it will set you apart from the rest of the industry and from the people selling dreams. Now, while this is easiest to use, if you are actually trying to sell your services, it can also be used within an organization, because you can still disagree with something that is happening. And if you do the work to show why what is happening is not okay, and then give your advice, it will actually be very beneficial. And people will take notice and because you did the work to find the proof as to why what you're doing now is not working out. People will really believe that you know what you're talking about.

Now, I would love to hear from you. What are the things in your industry that just simply make your blood boil when you think about it? And how can you use those things, to position yourself as the trusted expert in the industry? How can you take that information and show why it is not true and why it's not the right way to do that. Also, I'd love to hear from you. If you test out this method and you have good results. Or if you publish a blog post about this, then let me know leave a comment under this episode on the well balanced success website. Thank you very much for listening and talk to you soon.

Let's Discuss!

Over to you. What is the reaction you normally get from people when you give them advice? Have you tried any of these methods to improve the feedback? What else would you add to the tips in this episode? I would love to hear from you.  Leave a comment underneath this episode.

Thank you very much for listening and talk to you soon.

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SELECTED episode:

WBS 02: How to Create Meaningful Connections 

About the Show

Hi there. I'm Hanne, host of the Well Balanced Success podcast (WBS) in this weekly podcast, we explore how you can have it all. How you can have a successful career, an active social life, a thriving love and family life all that while being healthy and happy. Now if that sounds like something you would like, then subscribe to get notified.

Your Host: Hanne Vervaeck

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