Welcome to the Inside BS Show. I'm Dave Lorenzo, the Godfather of Growth. Today we're talking about your language and how it's going to impact your ability to connect with prospective clients and influence your clients overall.

I want you to stop talking about your fees. That's right, you gotta stop talking about your fees. What you need to talk about instead is the investment, your prospect or your client is making in you, in your team, in the outcome they're going to receive and in the overall service that you provide.

So there's four aspects of your relationship with your prospect that converts them into becoming a client. The first is the outcome they expect to receive. In business to business, in B2B, your prospect expects to get a return on their investment.

In business to consumer, your prospect may also expect to get a return on investment as their outcome, but their emotional investment is more important. They want to feel smart for selecting you. They want to feel like they did the right thing for themselves, for their family.

They want to feel really good about their relationship with you. If you don't think this is true, think about buying a car from a business to consumer perspective. What's the difference between a Toyota and a Lexus? It's just the logo on the vehicle.

That's it. That's the only difference. The engine is the same.

The chassis is the same. There may be some upgrades in the trim packages. The cup holder may be fancier.

The dashboard may look a little richer. The new car smell may be a little stronger when you get in it in a Lexus. But overall, the car is the same, but the consumer, when they go out to their friends, they feel more important.

They feel better. They feel valuable when they're driving a Lexus versus driving a Toyota. I want you to break your service offering down into four specific things.

There's the outcome and the ROI they receive as a result of the outcome. There's the product. There's the service you provide.

And then there's the overall engagement experience, the overall feeling the client or the customer has in connecting with you, working with you, and developing a relationship with you. When you talk about your investment, so what the client has to give you in order to receive those four things, your entire framework should be built around the outcome they're going to receive, the product that's going to deliver that outcome, the service that helps them discover how to use the product to get the outcome, and then the overall engagement experience, the relationship they have with you. Your ability to convince someone to work with you is dependent on those four things.

So when you're talking about the ROI or the outcome, the return on investment, your case studies, your testimonials, the references you can provide make all the difference in the world. What you say to your client doesn't matter as much as what your client thinks of you, the opinion your client forms of you. And your client's opinion is going to come from the case studies and the social proof you provide.

So upfront, testimonials, referrals, references. What's the difference between referrals and a reference? A referral is someone who brings a new prospect to you. A reference is someone you offer to that prospect to verify that you're going to do what you say you're going to do.

So those things are all really important. Try before you buy. Test drives are really important in influencing the people to believe that they're going to get a return on investment from you.

The second thing is your product, the actual product itself. Now, you don't want people thinking they're buying a product. You want them thinking they're buying an outcome, they're buying a result, but the product helps to deliver the outcome.

So again, going back to the car analogy, Volvo has a reputation of being the safest car on the road because of the accident data. You want people to buy safety, but what delivers the safety, it's the Volvo. It's the car they're buying, but they're buying safety through that vehicle.

So whatever your product is, that is the vehicle that gets them to the outcome. So you're an estate planning attorney. They're buying a four-document package from you.

They're buying their will, they're buying their healthcare proxy, they're buying a trust, they're buying a durable power of attorney, but what they're really buying is peace of mind. That's the ROI, the emotional return on investment that they're getting is peace of mind that their wishes will be carried out after their death. Those documents are the product, but that's just the vehicle that gets them the peace of mind.

Now, service is the next element of this. So the service you provide them, do you answer the phone or do they have to wait for a call back? Do you set expectations so that they know exactly what's going to happen and when it's going to happen? Do you follow through on your commitments? Do you do exactly what you say you're going to do? All of these things are service to help get the product in the hands of the folks so that they can receive the return on investment, both financial and emotional return on investment. Then finally, there's the engagement experience.

What relationship do they feel like they have with you? Before, during, and after. Before the relationship, do they feel pressure to work with you or do they feel like you're a resource, you're an educational center for them? Can they come to you and ask questions? If they can't, you need to fix that because you want the prospect thinking that you're the expert and they will come to you looking for educational information so that they can make the best possible decision. If you are the gold standard, you are the people who educate folks on how to work with you in your industry, how to work with anyone in your industry, that's what you want.

They feel comfortable coming to you. You're an authority. Then during the engagement, they need to feel like they're the most important client in the world.

Whether they're paying $10 or $10 million, they should feel like a $10 million client. You need to give them that feeling from start to finish. Give them that feeling.

Then after the engagement is over, welcome them into the family. Make them feel like they're part of something bigger than themselves. Help them understand that your business grows when they refer people to you, but you're also gonna refer people to them.

In the B2B space, you should be working with your clients. You should be referring other people to your clients because you're family now. That's the engagement experience, the overall engagement experience.

It's all about relationship and welcoming them into your community. So stop talking about fees. Start talking about investment because people invest in you, your business, and your service.

They invest emotionally first, then they invest financially after. And this verbiage, what you say to them about investment versus fee, helps you with your mindset to shift from client and customer to relationships. And that's absolutely essential.

My name is Dave Lorenzo. I'm the Godfather of Growth. I'll be back here again tomorrow with another edition of our show.

Until then, here's hoping you make a great living and live a great life.