Try before you buy

Hey there,

Decades ago, I rescued my mother from a tiny rock, in a shallow sea.

No big deal you might think, but she had poor eyesight, vertigo, and couldn’t swim. She was used to staying on the sand. She was panicking, hiding it because she’s our mum, and supposed to be in charge.

I might have been tempted to shout from my place halfway up the beach: “Just step in, it’s not deep, you’ll be fine!”

But I didn’t. I paddled out to her, took her by the hand, and helped her to put one foot down into the water and see just how shallow it was. I got her to put her next foot down, letting her lean on me until she felt steady on her feet.

Then I let her walk by herself the rest of the way, with dignity.

When what you offer is new, it is also scary. It doesn’t matter that you know the rock is tiny and the sea is shallow. Your prospect doesn’t know that, not emotionally, where it matters.

Don’t just shout from a distance, move to where they are, accompany them on the first steps of their journey.

That’s what ‘Demonstrate Value’ really means, and today I’m going to talk you through why and how you should include some way of doing it as part of Share Promise:

What ‘Demonstrate Value’ does for your prospect, and for you.
What it is exactly that you need to demonstrate.
How to create your own ‘Demonstrate Value’ Activity. Or Activities. You’re allowed more than one.

Here’s a reminder of where it fits:

What ‘Demonstrate Value’ does for your prospect, and for you

It’s pretty clear that for your potential buyer ‘Try before you buy’ is a way to reduce risk. They can get a real taste of what’s on offer, see how you might work together without committing a lot of time or money. Perhaps even for free.

For you, ‘Try before you buy’ is a way to build trust. It’s also a way to create a productive tension for your prospect - the tension between ‘I’m safe where I am now’ and ‘but that’s where I really want to be’ that helps them to actually start moving and take their first step.

Because if they take that first step with you and you move them a little nearer to their goal, there’s a good chance they’ll ask you to complete the journey with them.

If they don’t, well, at least you’ll know that you aren’t good travelling companions without taking a long, painful and expensive route to finding that out. You can still part friends.

What it is exactly that you need to demonstrate

Fundamentally, this is a test of whether you keep the promises that you make.

Not just in terms of what you do, but also how you uniquely do it.

So it's not enough simply to give people any old nibble. You need your prospective buyer to experience some key benefit of buying from you or working with you that they can’t get anywhere else, together with one or two key behaviours too.

That means going beyond the obvious thing that everybody else is doing, even for straightforward products like food or drink:

You make “Posh Pop”* in unusual, adult flavours like ‘sloe and rose lemonade’, ‘pear and elderflower’, ‘plum and cherry’. Make those the samples you get people to taste at your next show. Once they know the ‘new’ flavours are delicious, they’ll trust you with the cola. Maybe too, you could hand out cocktail recipes - showing people how to use your adult flavours in adult drinks.

*Breckland Orchard’s “Posh Pops” really do taste of what the label says and are delicious.

You sell your artisan cheese on its texture, taste and sustainability. Maybe, rather than (or as well as) giving everyone a tiny nibble to try, you sell an intermediate sized chunk to try at home, with a recipe that makes the most of that texture. Those chunks could be from the offcuts, to emphasise your sustainable behaviour.

For services, it means going beyond the standard ‘Discovery Call’:

You sell your business coaching on getting straight down to business. So get straight down to business and help them solve one problem in a genuine ‘Taster session’. You can go back to Discovery as the next part of your process, once they’re signed up.

My friend Simon* builds bespoke software for frustrated Super Hero Business Owners. He does a discovery meeting, followed by a Proposal. And to create his proposal he puts together a full Mission Plan for the most urgent part of the work, prioritised to deliver value that pays for itself as soon as possible, and shares it with his prospect exactly as he would if they were already working together.

*Find out a little more about Simon. Or listen to his SHBO Show on Regency Radio.

I’ll admit I’ve struggled with this. For years I used the first step in my process as my ‘Demonstrate Value’. The trouble is that while incredibly valuable, that first step isn’t unique to me. It didn’t demonstrate a unique benefit of my approach. So now I offer to ‘Map and Console’ one process that needs handing over, so clients get to feel the benefit almost immediately.

*Find out a little more about Simon. Or listen to the SHBO Show on Regency Radio.

‘Demonstrate Value’ doesn’t only have to take place face to face. You can demonstrate value in a book, an audiobook, a video, a tool or an online course.

You could even create an AI version of yourself, if that fits with your Promise of Value. (If you decide to that I recommend using Thaura, Luma or Duck, so you don’t end up scraped into the soup of everything and start hallucinating. That would be a very bad demonstration of value.)

‘Demonstrate Value’ doesn’t have to be free either. You can charge for it, in proportion to the cost of your whole programme.

Remember, the point is to make it low-risk for the buyer, and the most important thing is that it is a true sample of what you do.

How to create your own ‘Demonstrate Value’ Activity. Or Activities. You’re allowed more than one to reflect more than one key benefit.

Start by deciding which key benefit of working with you is the one you really want your prospective buyer to experience. The one that will tip them into taking the next step.

Then ask: ‘How do I actually do that now when I’m working with a client? What key behaviours do I demonstrate along the way?’

Then ask: ‘How could I package that up into a self-contained ‘product’?’:

Could it be a short workshop I deliver one-on-one?
Could I train one of my team to deliver that as well as me? (Hint: yes of course. See this previous newsletter, and this one).
Could it be a short workshop I deliver to a small group?
Could it be a talk I give to a larger, targeted audience?
Could I write it up as a newsletter, or newsletter series?
Could I turn that into a book?
Could I turn that into an audio-book?
Could I turn it into a self-guided course? (Hint: yes. Loom (or similar) and a structured pdf document is all the tech you need).
Could I turn it into a DIY tool someone could download, with access to support if they need it?
Could I video a testimonial from someone whose been through it?
Could I (with permission of course) video someone else experiencing it?

Start with one format (the face to face one is usually easiest), then gradually work through as many of the others as you can.

The more formats you create the more ways you have to demonstrate value, at more price-points and to suit many communication preferences, often without even needing to be there.

That’s it.

Here’s what you learned today:

The first time a client buys from you is a journey into the unknown. They hesitate between desire and fear. Between the desire to get to where they want to be and the fear that you might not get them there. Or that you might. A test-drive, taster or trial reduces their fear, and by actually moving them forward, creates trust that you will carry on keeping your promise to them.

You don’t need to lose money on ‘Demonstrate Value’. A test-drive, taster or trial can be free, but it can also be paid for. What it must do is provide real value, by demonstrating a key benefit of working with you. Once you’ve cracked that it can even become a profit centre.

Once you’ve productised one way to ‘Demonstrate Vaue’, you created a resource that can be re-purposed over and over again in different formats to reach even more people who are on the brink of the transformation you offer.

If you'd like some help, or to bounce ideas around, just book a zoom.

What do you do now to ‘Demonstrate Value’? What could you do that you aren’t already? What would you try from my list?

Thanks for reading!

The Disappearing Boss

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