Everyone with whom you want to do business uses the same decision-making process. They analyze the relationship between the benefits they will receive compared to the costs. This is a Benefit/Cost ratio. Another way of describing it is, "The most for the money." This decision may be made consciously by your targets through deliberate analysis or casually with minimal conscious effort.
When you can convey to your targets that you offer superior benefits, you can justify charging higher prices and still provide greater value than your competitors. So you need to constantly seek ways to be better than the competition.
Having confidence in your ability to offer superior value may be the most important thing you can do to improve your outreach. When you are confident in the value you offer, you will be excited about reaching out. When that happens, business development is not a burden, but rather the very energizing experience of letting people know that you are a valuable person.
Your superior characteristics may be in the level of your expertise, your efficiency, your ability to provide introductions, etc. When listing your superior characteristics, be as specific as possible. The more detail you provide, the easier it will be to develop ways to communicate your superiority.
One of the obstacles to identifying how your are you are superior to your competitors is you may feel that it is inappropriate to consider yourself as superior to others. If this is the case, you will have difficulty communicatining your superior characteristics and that will be a problem. If this is the case, you need to understand that claiming superior characteristincs in business is not claiming that you are a superior person. It is saying that you have unique business characteristics that allow you to serve your client more effectively.
Another obstacle is feeling that claiming superior characteristics is bragging. The key here is accuracy. Your are correct that bragging is a problem. But bragging connotes exaggerating. So you must develop an ability to describe your superior characteristics in very precise ways. When you are accurate, you will lose the concern about bragging.
An interesting obstacle for some is that they feel they have superior characteristics to offer but are not good at explaining them. You must regularly look at how you are superior and practice accurately describing the characteristics so prospects will be able to appreciate them.
Of course, you may not be superior to your competitors. If that is the case, you can still maintain a high Benefit/Cost ratio by lowering your price and/or offering additional services that create a more competitive package.
The key to developing the highest benefit to cost ratio is to immerse yourself in looking for ways to improve your offers. You should remind yourself every morning that it is your job to identify better ways to serve your clients. Try to notice how everything you do can be improved. You might want to add a the question, "Is there a better way?" to the Top of Mind section on your Dashboard. Remind yourself to notice how the people you hire are providing superior benefits to you and try to apply those principles to your business. If you accept responsibility for thinking about being superior, you will certainly be more likely to figure out ways to do it.
