In addition to reducing your embarrassment, value in advance is an effective strategy for motivating targets to hire you. Your targets hire people they see as compatible and capable. Consider how these five categories of value in advance help communicate compatibility and capability:
- Education: When you give a speech, you have an opportunity to reveal positive personal traits such as knowledge and expertise. Through your body language and your voice, you can reveal qualities such as your energy, enthusiasm, confidence, etc. These are qualities that you might otherwise feel awkward discussing. It sounds funny to say, “I’m smart. I’m energetic.” But when you speak in public, these qualities can be revealed.
- Entertainment: Entertainment helps you communicate compatibility. Doing fun things such as golf, tennis, or dining out with your targets helps you build rapport and reveal positive personal qualities.
- Introductions: Introducing quality people to each other communicates compatibility and capability. It demonstrates that you know quality people. And as those people interact with each other, it strengthens their emotional connection to you.
- Leadership: There is no question that taking on a leadership role communicates compatibility and capability. When your targets see you in a position of authority, it communicates capability. Your leadership role may not have anything to do with your practice area. For example, the task of helping plan a fundraising dinner may have nothing to do with what you do for a living. However, many of the qualities that are needed in leadership are the same as those required for your profession. You need to be organized, persistent, and energetic. When your targets see you as a capable leader, it is logical for them to assume that you are also capable in your line of work.
- Inspiration: Being inspirational is an effective way of revealing positive personal qualities. It can reveal qualities such as compassion, empathy, good communication skills, and knowledge.
For more marketing tips, check out our book Selling in Your Comfort Zone.