How to Communicate Your Worth With Confidence
Do you stumble over your words or struggle to communicate your worth to prospective clients?
It’s not uncommon to struggle with communication, especially if you are new to starting your business.
But with every trip over your tongue comes a trap of missed opportunity.
Knowing how to communicate effectively to help get your ideas across smoothly to your ideal clients is crucial.
Fortunately, there are ways to learn how to easily overcome objectives and avoid misunderstandings.
I was a recent guest on Mary Fain Brandt’s show, Bite-Sized Tips For Entrepreneurs. Mary is a LinkedIn Strategist, speaker, and career consultant. She is a leading LinkedIn expert and the go-to person to make your profile stand out to prospective employers and clients.
During the episode, we discussed how to master the art and science of influence, create instant connections, and get to “yes” easily and effortlessly.
When you communicate effectively, you learn to ignite your ideas, so prospective clients readily accept them. You also can easily overcome objections and avoid misunderstandings.
Ready to get started?
What it means to communicate effectively
Every person you come in contact with has a different communication style.
“Our communication styles are like our thumbprints; they are individual and unique. The way we communicate is characterized by our values, beliefs, and attitudes. To communicate effectively, you must understand who you are speaking to and how you need to talk to them.”
Mastering influence is understanding communication styles and picking up on clues by just looking at an email or having a discovery call.
When you understand a person’s communication style, you can use that to your advantage. Most of the time, misunderstandings and objections come from miscommunication.
If you want to pitch a new idea, extend or renew a contract, or increase your rates, you first need to know the communication style of who you are speaking with.
How to master influence through communication
The art and science of mastering influence are both social and scientific.
As you practice mastering influence in your business, it’s important to build a rapport with your ideal client
You want to be relatable and approachable. When you are authentic, it is easier to build an instant connection with the people you come across.
That’s the social element to influence. On the science side of things is strategy.
What strategies can you use to help your client, and how will you follow through? There is a balance between social and scientific that you need to achieve.
For example, if you are speaking to a client who wants to invest in themselves, you first need to figure out what the client’s motivation strategy is to make a purchasing decision.
Yes, you need to be relatable and authentic, but you also need to know what levers to pull to get the client to move from interest to purchase.
In a discovery call, I always ask the most straightforward question: “What’s the problem?”
Asking what the problem is will get the gears in their brain turning. They’ll tell you what they are struggling with and the stories and reasons behind their problem.
As you listen to their answers, look for a presupposition statement such as, “I really want to do it, but I don’t have the time.”
Why don’t they have the time? Is that really the case, or do they struggle with prioritizing?
Get to the root cause of the problem. Keep asking questions and listen for their presuppositions and keywords to determine their belief system and values.
As you write down notes, don’t take their answers and put them in your own words. Remember: everyone has their own communication style, including their own feelings, beliefs, and attitudes.
“The goal of mastering influence is learning to speak with your ideal client in their communication style. The deeper you dig, the better you will understand them, and the easier it will be to build a connection.”
How to build instant connections
Sometimes we build instant connections, but other times, we first need to build rapport. Building rapport with our ideal clients often happens at an unconscious level.
We experience the imprint period from newborn to age seven. This is when we learn about things like mannerisms, values, beliefs, and attitudes.
We pick up on things we see and hear on TV or something that our parents and family members do. We start to mimic these things, and it soon becomes second nature.
For example, waving hello. It is a sign of universal openness that we learn at such a young age; as adults, we know it on an unconscious level.
Waving hello and showing your hands, especially on a Zoom discovery call or in your live stream, is the first step to build an instant connection. It shows you are trustworthy and are welcoming someone into your life.
Being animated with your hands and gesturing as you speak is scientifically proven to help engage, build rapport, and form an instant connection.
Speakers at conferences that use gestures when communicating have more viral content.
Susan Goldin-Meadow, a psychology professor, found that using hand gestures lightens your cognitive load. When you don't gesture, it actually makes your audience’s brain work harder to make sense of what you’re saying.
This means that when you're presenting... or pitching... or speaking, adding hand gestures helps you be a better presenter.
When you learn to master influence and build an instant connection, it’ll be that much easier to get to “yes” effortlessly.
How to get to “yes” easily and effortlessly
For most business owners, getting to “yes” is tough. So what’s the secret?
It all boils down to your communication style.
Think back to my earlier example when I ask a client, “What’s the problem?” Imagine their response is, “I’m tired of being the best-kept secret in town because no one is talking about what I do, and I know that we’re the absolute best.”
As the client tells me more stories about the problem, I take notes. I realize that his communication style is embedded with auditory keywords like buzzing, hear, listen, tune in, and so on.
I take the words he used and input them in my answers.
As for me, I am a visual communicator. I may jump fast from one idea to the next, but that doesn’t mean I’m distracted. It means I make quick connections as I communicate.
However, as I speak with clients, I need to mirror their communication style to make a connection and get to “yes.”
As you practice this in your own business, figure out if you are speaking with a visual, auditory, or kinesthetic learner. Match their tone and energy, and use the predicates they are using.
How to become a master communicator
In my early years of ad agency life, I was a part of the agency pitch team. If the agency needed to land a new client, I would meet with them (and knock it out of the park.)
Part of that training included NLP, which stands for neuro-linguistic programming.
NLP is the study of communication, psychology, and personal development. Through NLP, I learned how to communicate effectively. I started as a practitioner and later moved up to a master practitioner.
Today, I train people to become a certified NLP Practitioner. My students have gotten new clients, launched new products, and overall, learned to be more confident.
Have you ever been so excited to begin a new project or work with a new client, but you get nervous? You start to talk yourself out of it before you’ve even started. You’re driving, but you aren’t keeping your foot on the gas pedal.
In the study of NLP, we get rid of those limiting beliefs. We teach you things like price anchoring and the conscious use of language because your thoughts become words, and words become actions.
When you know what your values are, and they align with your core principles, you understand what your purpose is. And when that happens, it’ll be easier to communicate with others and form connections.
Whether you are an employee, a business owner, or an entrepreneur, becoming NLP-certified can take your career or business to new heights.
Do you want to learn more about NLP training and how to communicate your worth with confidence?
Take a look at the upcoming NLP training calendar or schedule a call.
