Ian Brodie

Ian Brodie


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AuthorIan Brodie
Ian Brodie

Ian Brodie

https://www.ianbrodie.com

Ian Brodie is the best-selling author of Email Persuasion and the creator of Unsnooze Your Inbox - *the* guide to crafting engaging emails and newsletters that captivate your audience, build authority and generate more sales.

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Selling

Debunking the myths of non-verbal communication

Posted on January 9th, 2008.

93 Percent?93% of communication is non-verbal. Everyone knows that.

I've lost track of the number of times I've heard this in sales training sessions or read it in books, articles and blogs. Sometimes the stats are qualified further, for example:

  • “One study at UCLA indicated that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues. Another study indicated that the impact of a performance was determined 7 percent by the words used, 38 percent by voice quality, and 55 percent by the nonverbal communication.”

The trouble is – it's not true.

Let's think about it for a minute – how can you possibly get 93% of the communication without the words? If you watch a foreign-language film, and watch the body language and listen to the vocal tones – can you really understand 93% of it? I certainly can't.

The truth is that the experiments at the source of this myth (carried out by researcher Albert Mehrabian in the 70's) were focused on some very specific areas of communication – namely the communication of feelings and attitudes – not communication in general.

As Mehrabian himself points out:

“Please note that this and other equations regarding relative importance of verbal and nonverbal messages were derived from experiments dealing with communications of feelings and attitudes (i.e., like-dislike). Unless a communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are not applicable”

In addition, the construction of the experiments was not an accurate reflection of real-world communication conditions. In one of the central experiments, for example, participants were read out single words (either positive words like “thanks”, neutral like “maybe” or negative like “don't”) in either positive, negative or neutral voices. In another, the words were combined with photographs of people looking positive, negative or neutral.

Participants had to judge whether the words were positive, negative or neutral based on the combined word/tone or word/picture combinations – which is where the statistics came from. It highlighted how the tone of voice or the facial expression often overrode the meaning of the word when it came to conveying a positive or negative feeling.

Of course, in the real world, we typically don't communicate in single words. And we're typically not just trying to communicate feelings either. But what has happened is that these important – but limited – findings from the experiments have been taken out of context, repeated, misunderstood, repeated, confused, etc. – up to the point where “93% of communication is non-verbal” has become accepted as reality.

So what does this mean for sales people?

Well, there's no doubting that non-verbal communication is important – but don't take the 93% rule too seriously. The words you use really are vitally important – they're the core of your communication.

Your non-verbals serve mainly to support what you're saying by conveying your feelings – your passion, your empathy, your truthfulness. How do you make sure your non-verbals provide the right support?

Well, critically – don't fake it. Despite what some trainers may try to convince you of, it really is almost impossible to try to “technique” your way through body-language. Non-verbal communication is so complex – too complex to try to act out or replicate – yet most people are really good at reading it, so they will pick up any fakery very quickly. Instead – make sure you really believe in what you are saying – and the correct non-verbal communication will follow naturally.

And of course, if you find yourself on a training course, or reading an article, and you read the phrase “93% of communication is non-verbal” – then think twice about the credibility of the trainer or author. They haven't done their homework properly on this – so what else have they skimped on?

Onward!

Ian

Postcript: Further thoughts on this myth

Featured

Strategy

“Find Your Style” to Transform Your Business Development Success

Posted on January 4th, 2008.

We all have our own unique styleFinding a selling “style” congruent with your personality and your experience is a crucial determinant of your business development success.

One of the best pieces of advice I received early in my sales career was from a consulting industry veteran who urged me to “find my own style” in order to sell effectively. I've found the advice to be as relevant today as it was over a decade ago when I was just making the transition from managing large consulting projects to selling them.

One of the stages all professionals must go through in their careers is to learn to build relationships with senior client executives. To move from being a “do-er” to a trusted business advisor.

In my case I struggled early on to adapt to this. The role models and teachers I had were great – highly effective relationship builders. But I just couldn't seem to do the things they did. The techniques they used just didn't seem to work for me.

Luckily one of my mentors gave me the clue to finding my own style. “Look at those other guys.” he said, “You can't do what they do or say what they say because you're not them. You don't have the same experience or the same capabilities. You have to achieve the same outcomes in different ways. Ways that work for you”.

When we talked over what he meant, he highlighted two main areas:

  • Adapting the words you use to fit in with your natural language patterns
  • Making sure your personal positioning – your source of credibility – is based on your actual experience and capabilities.

When it comes to language, I see mistakes most often when it comes to scripts – for example for cold calls, or elevator speeches. These can be really helpful to focus communication and avoid the umms and ahhs that creep in to our speech when we're under pressure. But many of the scripts I've seen include language that I can't imagine anyone other than a character from a 19th century novel using.

For example: “In researching your firm prior to calling you today, I noticed that….”

Really, does anyone you know speak like this? Do you?

Exactly.

The idea is great – show you've done your homework. And most of the cold-call scripts people showcase contain great thoughts and are well structured and proven in the field.

Don't change those aspects. But please, please, before launching them on your own potential customers, adapt the language so it fits with your style.

I don't mean major changes. If you've got a good script don't change the structure or the key words – especially if you're new to sales. You run the risk of changing the very elements that make the script work.

But do make sure that you can use the words naturally – they fit with your way of speaking. If you wouldn't say the phrase “in researching your company prior to this call” in real life, then it won't sound natural. Try “When I was researching your company before this call”. You keep the structure and the critical words like “research” – but gain a naturalness which will shine through.

The other key area where your style is important – probably even more than with your language – is what I call your “source of credibility”.

One of the crucial criteria for effective sales is that the customer trusts that your product really does do what you say it does. When the product or service you sell is complex or intangible, customers rely very heavily on their impression of you yourself for that trust and credibility – since they can't see, touch or easily “test drive” the product itself.

You need to think through why your customer should trust your opinion and your advice – and position yourself in that way. In my case, I was trying to copy successful business developers whose source of credibility was their many years experience as senior executives in business, or the fact that they were part of the same “old boys network”.

But the strategies they adopted and the words they used didn't work for me – because I didn't have the same source of credibility. I couldn't talk to senior executives about the business challenges they faced as if I had faced the same ones running my company – because I hadn't.

But what I did have was many years as a consultant successfully helping clients overcome similar challenges. I was able to use this track record as my source of credibility – my invitation to the “top table conversation”. And from there I was able to build strong business level relationships with senior executives – relationships that led to major sales.

Similarly, any business developer needs to build on their own source of credibility. By thinking about what qualifies them to talk with authority about their product or service they should get an excellent start.

Featured

Selling

Making it easy for customers to say "yes". How to make cross-selling work.

Posted on December 21st, 2007.

Fries“Would you like fries with that?”

Some say those are the six most profitable words in business. And cross-selling can indeed ramp up the profitability of your sales.

Yet at the same time, clumsy cross-selling attempts can turn-off customers in no-time and leave a sour taste that damages customer retention.

So when does cross-selling work – and what are the most effective cross-selling strategies?

In my experience, the first secret behind an effective cross or up-sell is that cross-selling works when it's actually helpful to the customer. When it makes the customer aware of valuable or useful options they didn't know they had (or in the case of “would you like fries” – when they had forgotten or overlooked the option).  When the salesperson or server is genuinely thinking about what might be useful to the customer – then the cross-sell will be seen more positively.

As I posted in In Praise of Passion, everyone's BS detector is set to max nowadays – and a mechanistic, pre-programmed, corporately mandated script will be seen through in an instant.

So why does “would you like fries with that?” work? It's the same pre-programmed script in every outlet. Well, in this case, there's no pretense about the cross-sell. There's no fake sincerity in the simple six words. Just a reminder that you've got the option of fries.

And it takes advantage of the second secret of the effective cross-sell (in fact it's one of the secrets of all sales): they've made it easy to say yes. There's no complex choice to work through, no expensive options to evaluate. Just a yes or no to something you knew you wanted anyway.

In Malcom Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking he highlights an experiment where researchers wanted to examine the impact of breadth of choice on decision-making.

They set out two booths showcasing different types of jam. One with 6 selections, the other with 24. Conventional economic wisdom says that the more choices customers have, the more likely they are to buy, because it is easier for them to find the product that perfectly fits their needs. But the researchers found the opposite to be true. 30% of those who stopped by the 6 choice booth ended up buying some jam, while only 3% of those who stopped by the 24 choice booth bought anything.

Contrary to economic theory, in the real world too much choice paralysed their decision-making. In particular, because the effort involved in making the choice was far greater than justified by the payoff (a better jam is hardly a life-changing decision).

The same applies when cross-or up-selling – particularly for a small, simple sale. Make it simple for the customer to say yes and don't over-complicate with too many choices.

Case in point: I regularly stop by for a coffee in my local Caffe Nero (a kind of UK Starbucks with more of an Italian flavour). Historically, whenever I've bought a coffee they've always asked “would you like a cake or muffin with that?”.  And I've always said no. Too much choice. I've never had enough energy to think through what exactly I might want. But recently, they've started tailoring the cross-sell – and making it more specific.

Last time in I was asked if I'd like a Raspberry and Vanilla Chocolate muffin – the time before that it was some Passion-cake. It was far easier for me to say yes to that proposition. Nothing too deep to consider and weigh up. Just would I like one or not (and I have to admit, I succumbed to the passion-cake). And by tailoring each offer they're showing some genuine (albeit small) concern for me rather than just trotting out the corporate script. 

Onward!

Ian

Disclosure: I've included an amazon affiliate link for Gladwell's book Blink. Hell, someone might as well make some money if you really want to buy it. In reality, I didn't think it was that great. Some interesting examples – but no real clarity on when the instant “blink” assessment was accurate and when more reflective thought worked better. I found both Freakonomics and The Undercover Economistboth more interesting and useful. (Hey – did you see the way I sneaked a couple more affiliate links in there – much more of this and be able to sell my own “how to make money blogging” programme to an unsuspecting world.

Featured

Marketing

The Perils of Drifting Away from your Core Sales Positioning

Posted on December 19th, 2007.

I was recently given a clear reminder of how easy it can be to drift away from your core sales positioning – and how dangerous that can be.

For more years than I care to remember I've positioned the value of my consulting services and expertise as being able to practically implement new ideas and solutions to achieve tangible business results. Yes, I like to think I can bring thought leadership and leading-edge practices; but those things only bring value when they result in real change and improvement with bottom-line benefits.

That positioning has always seemed to resonate with clients – but over the last few years I've drifted away from using it. Sometimes it's felt like I've talked about it so often that surely it's “old hat”. Surely everyone understands that value from consulting only comes when real improvements are made, not when reports are written or presentations delivered? Surely all consultants position their services this way and I risk just becoming “one of the pack”?

So over the years I've tried to make my positioning more “sophisticated” – making the importance of successful implementation a given, or even an unstated assumption.

But a recent conversation with a potential client (where I almost accidentally focused on my old “successful implementation” message) highlighted for me that it still resonates brilliantly – and is very often the most important factor for many clients. The client almost bit my hand off when I started talking about how I focused on strategies which were proven and practical and how I stayed with them to ensure they were implemented successfully.

In my quest to improve my positioning over the years I'd forgotten that although I sit through hundreds of my own sales meetings and presentations; my clients only experience one. Messages which for me had become stale and seemed old hat can still hit all the right buttons for them.

By focusing on my perception of my positioning rather than my clients I had begun to drift away from something that worked really well.

Key learning: If you find yourself wanting to make your positioning or your sales messages more “sophisticated”, or you feel that what you are saying must surely be old news by now – take a reality check. Find out how your clients and potential clients perceive those messages – you may be pleasantly surprised – and you may prevent yourself from a dangerous drift away from something that works really well.

Onward!

Ian

Featured

Selling

In Praise of Passion

Posted on December 17th, 2007.

PassionThe stereotype many people have of salespeople is of an amoral hired gun. A sharp suited, sharp talking huckster who doesn't care what he's peddling as long as it brings in the money.

But in reality, the opposite is true of all truly successful salespeople: they have a real passion and belief in the products and services they sell. And this is even more true for professional services where the person doing the selling is usually the person who will deliver or oversee the service. After all, if you can't get passionate about what you do – how can you expect a client to do so.

In my 15 years as a consultant I've worked with and observed hundreds of business developers in action. I've seen very different selling styles and cultures, and helped salespeople from countries as diverse as Iran, the US, Lebanon, Algeria, Finland, Spain, Panama and Japan.

Yet across all these countries and cultures, the very best salespeople share a real passion in the quality of their products and services and a sincere belief that their customers will genuinely benefit from using them. And I've witnessed that passion overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles to win a sale, or protect an account from an undercutting competitor.

We live in a cynical world today, with everyone's BS detector constantly set on max. And it doesn't matter how many body language or NLP courses you've been on; if you aren't being sincere – if you don't really believe in your products with a passion; then your customers will pick this up in an instant.

Winston Churchill said it best: “Before you can inspire with emotion, you must be swamped with it yourself. Before you can move their tears, your own must flow. To convince them, you must yourself believe”.

Churchill knew the power of passion and belief. And we saw the power of his belief in his great speeches which convinced and mobilised a nation at its time of greatest need.

How can we build this same level of passion in ourselves and in our professionals?

First, we need to make sure that the professionals we hire are capable of being passionate. Emotion is often frowned upon in business – and especially in the supposedly “rational” professions such as law and engineering. But without emotion – and the strength of character to express it; we cannot communicate our passion. We need to hire people able to maturely express their emotions. Not just to wear their heart on their sleeve; but to be able to convince with passion.

Next we need to make sure we incubate belief in our services amongst our professionals and business developers. Don't just train them in the technicalities of the service and in its features and benefits. Really show them what the service can do for our customers – what an impact it can have on their lives and their businesses. Use case studies and examples in training.

Better still, take the salespeople and professionals out to “spend a day in the life” of their customers – they will benefit immeasurably. And make sure they keep talking to customers over time about the impact of the work they do for them. Not just the cold, hard financial impact – but what they personally get from the service in their own words.

Finally, make sure your partners and managers “walk the talk” too – and really support the passion of your people.

All too often it's seen as “cool” to be ultra-hip and cynical. Yet this cynicism can kill the passion of the team. They'll become embarrassed to talk about how great they believe the service is to their peers.

They'll figure that maybe being cynical is the way to success in this organisation. And pretty soon they'll become the cynical, smooth operators that customers hate.

Featured

Selling

Selling is simple, isn’t it?

Posted on December 4th, 2007.

Selling is simple.

Just like golf is simple and sculpture is simple. You just put the ball in the hole, or chip away all the stone that isn’t your subject.

Selling is simple in concept – but difficult in practice. And often, under pressure to deliver our numbers this quarter or in the heat of the moment trying to close that deal we’ve been chasing for months, we forget the simple things that actually lie at the core of sales excellence.

In my work with clients I often find that returning to the basics – the simple core of excellent sales – can often lead to a great leap in performance.

And in my experience, the basics of selling can be simplified into two essentials – what I call “Twin Track Selling”. In essence, these are to establish with potential customers:

  • That they have a need for the benefits your product or service can deliver – a need big enough to justify paying the price you’re charging for the product.
  • That they trust that your product, service or people can really deliver the benefits you claim – and do so better than your competitors.

That’s all you need really. Establish the need, and build the trust. Simple in concept, but immensely difficult in practice.

When we work to establish needs, typically we jump too fast at the first hint of a need and try to close immediately.

Sure, the customer said he wanted a more reliable car, or a more usable sales management system. But is that initial, surface need going to be enough when you start pitching how great your £20,000 car or £100,000 CRM system is? Probably not.

Most likely the customer hasn’t fully thought through their needs and doesn’t realise just how much that unreliable car or the unusable sales management system is really costing them. They haven’t considered the risk of their wife being left stranded at the side of a motorway if the car breaks down, or the impact of the system on sales-force productivity and morale – and hence on sales.

As a result, your product looks awfully expensive compared to their perception of a relatively minor problem. So they’re uncertain when you push for the sale – and despite your attempts to steamroller their “objections”, you usually end up in the nightmare “I’m not really ready to buy yet – but I promise to keep you in mind in future” scenario.

Or perhaps the customer does understand the value of what you’re offering to them – but the sale just seems to be drifting away over time. You keep telling the customer about the benefits of your product – but even thought they agree with your business case projections they just seem unwilling to commit.

While it’s tempting to write them off as tyre-kickers; often the problem goes much deeper. Often the issue is that you just haven’t proven to them that your product really can deliver the wonderful benefits you’re claiming.

In this increasingly sceptical world, they won’t just take your word for it. And all your competitors have equally glowing testimonials in their literature. Building a high degree of trust with your customer is crucial – not just personal trust, but trust that your product, your services and your people really can deliver.

It takes time – and thoughtful planning to build up a sufficient level of trust to allow the customer to buy with confidence that the benefits they’re looking fo really are going to be delivered by your product.

Often when you’re in a rut or you have a sales pursuit you’re really struggling with, it’s tempting to turn to a flavour of the month solution – a new closing technique, a clever elevator pitch or other techniques.

But in reality, you’re far better off investing your time going back to basics and really thinking through, for this situation – how can I help my customer understand their real needs? And how can I prove that my product really does meet those needs?

It’s only by doing this, and tailoring it uniquely for each sales situation, that you can put yourself firmly on the track of Sales Excellence.

Onward!

Ian

Featured

Get Clients Online

The paradox of pressure

Posted on November 19th, 0202.

Have you ever been hesitating to do something and then just a little nudge, a little bit of pressure from someone, has got you over the line?

Like you've been considering buying something for ages but never pulled the trigger…until they announce the price is going up in a few days time?

That's pressure working positively. A little nudge to get you to take the decision you were eventually going to take anyway.

On the other hand, have you been uncertain about something and had someone push you for a decision when you weren't ready – and so you backed out completely?

That's pressure working negatively. It feels like you're being pushed too hard – so you push back.

Sometimes pressure works. It gets people to take action when they might otherwise have waited (and waited and waited).

But sometimes it backfires. Push someone too hard and they push back and you've lost all chance of getting them to do what you want.

Typically a little bit of pressure works if someone is just about ready to make a decision and they're just procrastinating a bit. Or other priorities have got in the way.

But if it's a big important decision and you're some way off being ready then that same pressure feels manipulative. It feels like they're trying to get you to do something you don't want and they lose trust.

So what does all this have to do with email marketing, the topic I promised we were going to focus on next?

Here's the thing: an awful lot of training on email marketing focuses on applying pressure to get a sale.

5-Day cash machine emails. Gain-Logic-Fear sequences. Flash sales. Product Launches.

That's because, whether they realise it or not, most people who train others in email marketing tend to sell lower-cost products to audiences who are pretty close to being ready to buy.

Marketing training courses, financial newsletters, self-help books and seminars are all situations where a little nudge gets buyers over the line.

6 or 7-figure consulting projects or life-changing coaching engagements aren't.

They're situations where the buyer is making a big decision. Where you need to build significant credibility and trust.

Where if you push too hard too soon, you lose them.

That's why in this series of emails about email marketing for high-value products and services you won't find any tricks involving scarcity or sequences of hot-button pushing emails designed to extract the most cash from your email list in a short space of time.

What you will find are strategies for using email to build the credibility and trust you need for people to be ready and willing to buy something high value and high impact.

And we'll start in the next email by looking at what it is your emails need to “prove” to get people ready.

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More Clients Memorandum

New thinking on Linkedin Profiles

Posted on October 22nd, 0202.

Here's a really simple but subtle tip.

I'm sure you've read tons of advice about your Linkedin profile. Most of it solid and sensible:

  • Have a decent profile image
  • Make sure your headline isn't just your job title but instead tells people what they'd get from working with you (perhaps the problems you solve or the benefits they'd get)
  • Make sure your profile summary expands on that so they can see the value of working with you, backed up with proof, and followed by a call to action to connect or visit your website or call you.

But you have to be careful with that advice.

You see, how we use Linkedin has morphed over the years.

Most of the advice on profiles hasn't changed from back in the days when we thought the main way to get business on Linkedin was to be found in searches by people looking for someone who does the sort of work you do.

In fact, you'll still see people stuffing a bunch of keywords into their headline and profile in the hope there are people out there searching for people just like them ready to hire them.

I don't know about you but if I want to hire someone I don't start by searching for someone I don't know on Linkedin. I start with people I know.

And although it used to happen, I can't remember the last time someone contacted me to work with me after finding me on a Linkedin search. But I regularly get people contacting me after reading posts I've made on Linkedin.

So these days the most powerful use of Linkedin is to build credibility and trust with potential clients by using it as a publishing platform and as a follow-up messaging platform.

And both of those methods require you to be connected to your potential clients.

That means the most important use of your profile is not to “optimise” your profile for search and then persuade people to contact you or go to your website; it's to persuade someone who you've sent a connection request to to accept it.

If they don't connect they don't see your content. They don't get all that value you put out to build credibility and trust.

If they don't connect you can't message them to begin nurturing conversations or follow up on them.

So it all begins with them accepting that connection request.

And I should correct myself here. The goal really isn't to “persuade” them to accept your connection request. It's to avoid them rejecting it.

I've been doing research recently on what makes people accept or reject connection requests and the overwhelming finding is that people filter out rather than filter in.

In other words, they primarily look for red flags that give them a reason to reject your connection request rather than searching for positive reasons to connect with you.

Some people only connect with a few people. But most people are fairly open and are happy to connect with a wider group of people – as long as they don't see red flags.

What's a red flag?

Overwhelmingly it's when it looks like you might start aggressively selling to them if they connect with you.

Sometimes that's down to what you do and can't be avoided. Don't get me started on the number of “high ticket closers” I get asking to connect with me – and I just know their first message is going to be about how they can help me close loads more sales blah blah blah.

But very often the problem is the way you've written your profile.

If you've written your profile thinking that people looking to hire you from cold will find it via search then there's a good chance it will try to grab them, tell them about all the amazing benefits they'll get from working with you, and push them into calling you or going to your website.

And there's a good chance it will come across as a bit too salesy because of that.

Not for everyone. But for someone who could be a great client but who's not currently looking (exactly the sort of person you want to build a relationship with based on giving value first) it can give the impression that you might try to pitch them if they connect with you.

It's one of the most common red flags that people use to reject your connection request.

For example, my headline used to say something along the lines of “I help consultants and coaches get more clients without the pain and expense of traditional marketing”.

That's pretty decent in the sense that if a consultant or coach on the lookout for help to get clients stumbled across it they might check me out.

But the reality is that that tiny sliver of people aren't going to stumble across it.

Instead, most people who don't know me will see it when I send them a connection request. And to people who don't know me, that headline says “I am going to try to sell you my services to win clients”.

Even though in reality I won't. My approach is to thank them for connecting, to publish valuable content, and to wait for them to contact me when they're ready or when a post triggers their interest.

So these days I use the headline “Creator of the Value-Based Marketing Blueprint. Owner of dodgy beard. Grower of exotic chillies.”

The first sentence hints that I might have something interesting for them if they're interested in winning more clients – but doesn't ram it down their throats. The next two sentences add a bit of humour.

Most importantly, it hasn't got the red flags that would make them reject my connection request.

Because people aren't going to hire me based on reading my headline and profile. They're going to hire me based on the value they get from me after we connect.

It's a subtle difference, to be sure.

You still need your profile to say what value people get from you.

But you want to tone down the sales side.

Your goal isn't to get them to take action to hire you straight away. It's simply for them not to reject your connection request.

Once you're connected then the value you give on an ongoing basis comes into play and over time they'll come to see you as the person they want to work with.

But only if they connect.

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More Clients Memorandum

Don’t make this basic error

Posted on November 22nd, 0201.

I was driving home recently after running a bunch of errands and I got it into my head that I wanted to pop into a Garden Centre to pick up a few bits and bobs for the greenhouse.

It had just gone 5.30, so I wasn't sure whether anywhere would be open.

On my way home I passed 4 garden centres. All of them had entrance gateways with the main shop being further down a driveway.

And not one of them had their opening hours visible at the gateway.

For the first couple I drove in, parked up, and walked to the entrance. Only to find out they'd just shut.

I didn't even bother with the last two.

You'd think it would be obvious: to make sure crucial information like your opening hours were visible to potential customers driving past who might come in if they knew you were open.

But none of them did.

I wonder how much potential “drop in” trade they've lost as a result?

Of course, we would never do anything like that, would we?

Our “shop front” (usually our website) always has all the information our potential clients need to know to be ready to give us a call, doesn't it?

We have clear descriptions of who we work with and the sort of challenges or goals we help them with, don't we?

And we make it crystal clear what benefits clients get from working with us and how we're different to others in our field, right?

If not, you might want to start working on those areas. You don't want to end up like the Garden Centres: losing customers simply because you didn't make the basic information people need to know available to them.