Hello, wonderful friends. My name is Kristin N. Spencer and I am the big boss lady and lead writer at Literary Symmetry where we help our clients make everything balanced so that they can finally see the results they want from their messaging, copywriting, and all that fun stuff.

If you've ever wondered why there is pushback when you talk about your prices, there is usually one big reason the person that you're talking to doesn't value your skills at the same level that you do.

Contrary to popular belief, this isn't a problem that you fix by going out and getting new skills. Usually most professionals we work with at literary symmetry already have amazing high-value skills.

They just aren't communicating about those skills in a way that resonates with their unique purchasers. And unique purchasers are the people that we help with our goods or services or both.

The truth is, a high value skill needs to be defined as a skill that those you work with automatically assign a really high value to. And a lot of us think that if we can just communicate the thing that really works, the thing that most people don't even know about, which we would say is our high value skill, that we would finally start making sales and change people's lives. But it doesn't work that way.

If we don't talk straight to what our unique purchasers think they need, we will never gain permission to talk to them about what will really help. And I don't like to use the word never very often, but in this case I have found it to be true.

How then can you work through that disconnect between what will really help your unique purchaser and what they think will help them? Here are 10 concrete ways to approach discovering and leveraging your high value skill, the one that people are happy to pay you for. Let's take a look.

The first one is identifying your high-value skills. This one can feel a little complex because it is very difficult for us to be objective about our own high-value skills. That's one of the reasons that people hire literary symmetry: to create their offers because we can take an objective look at what those high-value skills are from the perspective of the unique purchaser.

So, you need to think about what your clients or customers are seeing as high value. What are they more than happy to pay for? What thing do they think is going to move the needle?

And this can actually be achieved by reflecting on the skills that your organization or that you are known for that people are excited to pay premium prices for. And one of the best ways for you to determine what that skill is to think back or even look back at your testimonials, look back at your case studies and have a curiosity about what results they say you got.

For example, let's talk about websites. A lot of people are like, yes, I want a website. I will pay a lot of money for a website. Why are they willing to do that? Because they think that a website will get them leads and momentum and establish their brand reputation basically overnight. And for all of my friends out there listening who run web design firms, you're probably laughing and shaking your head right now because you've had clients that expect that from you.

But what they don't understand is in order to, well, first of all, there's no overnight anything that's not going to happen. And to establish a really successful web presence, you have to have a bunch of tools in your business toolkit, including an SEO expert who knows exactly what you need to hit someone who creates lead magnets that will draw the people in and give them value to set them up in order to purchase, which takes sales, psychology and copywriting.

There's no simple answer for establishing a presence and reputation for your business, but people assume that if you have a website, it will automatically do that. So you're selling them a website and then you can have these add-ons, right? But you have to set the expectations with them first and you have to talk to the website piece first because that's what they associate with value.

So that would be the high value skill, even though there's so much more going on behind the scenes and there are so many more team members that need to join the team to see the actual results that that client would want, the first thing that you're going to do is say, yes, I absolutely can make you an amazing website that has the potential to do the things that you needed to do. And you're not lying to them, you're being honest. But until you talk to that expectation they have, they're not going to hear anything else that you say.

Alright, the next thing on this list is you're going to assess market perceptions. So, you are going to do some market research. You can use answerthepublic.com to find out what questions people are asking about the services you offer, about the skills you have so that you can take a look at which skills other people are seeing as those high-value skills.

You can talk to other people in your industry as well. Ask them what is the thing that people always bring up to you that they think will solve their problem? And I'm sure that if you've been on enough calls yourself, you already know what the things are because you hear them all the time and you try not to talk about them. But that's actually not the solution. You need to get feedback.

You need to analyze interactions between you and those people and your competitors or colleagues and those people so that you understand which skills are highly valued. Because if you don't understand, then you definitely can't speak to those skills, and that's what people want.

Alright, the next one, you're going to look at your marketing strategies and you're probably like, “I look at my marketing strategies all the time, Kristin. I don't know why you would bring that up.” And I get that because I’m in marketing. I know I know how it is, but you probably have not evaluated your organization's marketing strategies to ensure that the high value skill is coming out. First, the champion is what everything else is rallying around. And remember, the high value skill is what your unique purchaser values, not what is the most valuable thing.

If you are not addressing those skills that they want and those things that they think will work in your marketing, it is not going to bring in the people that you want it to bring in. And you're not going to have that effective communication and people are not going to want to pay the prices that you're charging.

Here's the fourth thing. You need to actually refine your sales approaches. So we talked about your marketing, now we need to talk about sales, marketing and sales are besties, right? They go together. So if you have not been putting those high-value skills in your marketing, you probably haven't been addressing them in your sales approaches either.

You need to make sure that the way that you're selling, the way that your team is selling, if you have a team, emphasizes the features and benefits of those high-value skills that the unique purchasers want during any interactions you have.

And you need to make sure that your team is equipped to talk about these skills in a knowledgeable way and to answer questions about these skills. We're going to get to one thing they definitely shouldn't do and a few of these points here, but you want them talking about the benefits. You want them talking about the results of having those skills implemented on the unique purchaser's behalf.

Because that's what the unique purchaser wants to hear, and we want to give them the information that they need in order to make a decision.

And that brings us to number five, which is you must educate your unique purchasers.

It is extremely valuable and helpful to develop educational materials or content that highlights how great the benefits of these high-value skills are for your customers. And in that, we can start to introduce them to the thing that will actually help them.

The thing that we know behind the scenes, that's really the most valuable by using case studies. And we're going to talk about that more in a second. But you need to give them content that helps them take that idea that they have in their head, which is that, oh, this thing is the high-value skill. And then work them through seeing how you can show up with that skill and go beyond even what their expectations are.

Alright, let's look at number six here. Align the skills with the customer needs.

I feel like we all have these moments in our professional careers, whether we're in a huge organization or we're leading a team of five where we feel like we really want to do this thing and therefore everyone should value it. But that is not the way that we should be thinking about it as far as the order.

We first need to think about what the customer needs, what pain they are in right now, so that we can align our goals, our, I call them touchstone principles, which is how we, that's the foundation piece of how we operate and how the clients that I work with operate, we build that foundational piece for them so they can measure everything against that.

That way, you can identify the areas where these high-value skills can be further developed or combined with other skills in order to actually work through the customer needs to address the pain that they're in right now. And especially if you are going after cold leads, people who don't know your organization, people who don't know you, people who do not understand that they have a problem, they're like, “I just need the solution to this vague feeling that I have.”

You really need to talk about the pain that's vital for any kind of cold leads. And the best way to do that is to do sort of a call and response, call out the pain and then respond to yourself by saying, look, we have these high-value skills that you think are going to help because they're coming to you.

Even though you know that skill alone is not actually going to move the needle for them, you're putting yourself in a position to actually be able to help, which is what you want. 

Number seven, you're going to utilize strategic storytelling. Strategic storytelling in business is different than any other kind of storytelling. I am sort of on my soapbox about this all the time because certain brands that love stories don't actually connect stories to the products or services that they're trying to help their clients sell. And that makes me very sad. It bums me out.

So, when I say that you're going to use strategic storytelling, you're basically going to incorporate storytelling techniques as far as there's a beginning, there's a middle, and there's an end to convey the high-value skills that you bring to your customers by using real life stories.

In the business world, we call these real life stories case studies. And one thing that can change your entire business is using emotional imagery. In those case studies, have the journey that you're telling them mirror emotionally, the journey that they're at the beginning of right now.

If you can do that successfully, you are going to really help them understand why they need your help and why they should pay the prices that you're asking for. Okay?

Now, we're getting to number eight, and I don't want to start any fights, but number eight is that you should avoid argumentative approaches.

One of the things that often happens when I'm first working with a new client or a new client is working with our team is that they will say, “oh, but Kristin, this is not actually our high value skill. Our high value skill where we show up and get the best results is X.” And I'm like, “Okay, I understand, but your unique purchasers don't know that X exists, right?” And they're like, “Oh, no, they don't understand.” I'm like, “And when you bring up X, do they seem confident or confused?” And they'll say, “Oh yeah, they get confused.”

The first thing is to remember: Confused people never purchase. They are not going to purchase if they're feeling confused because confusion dilutes all the trust you've been earning through this process.

So, you're not going to want to try to convince them that X is the right answer because they will feel confused. And they're not going to agree with you because they don't have the experience, they haven't seen what you've seen. They're not in it the way you're in it every single day. So, they just are going to resist.

That means you won't be able to help them, and that's not what we want. So instead of arguing and saying, “No, what you need is not Y, you need X,” you're going to talk about Y. 

You are going to focus on helping them understand that Y is one step, Y is one approach, and when you add Y to X, boom, that's where the results are.

That's where you can see a real difference, and you're going to make sure that you are friendly and focused on their needs during this interaction. And not trying to justify what you have seen to be the real answer, the real solution to this problem with whatever strength you feel about this concept, you are not to pass those feelings on to the unique purchaser that you're talking to. Okay?

Do you promise we're not going to use argumentative approaches because they do not work, they are not collaborative and they do not show that you understand this person's pain or problem.

Number nine, offer comprehensive solutions. This is something that we do in our business all the time because there are people out there who are like flash-pan copywriters who will give you an amazing CTA that will get you responses from all these people. And so you don't have to pay people like Literary Symmetry to do the foundational work.

And what they find when they hire someone who does that, who has that approach, is that they're not able to have comprehensive results. They're not able to sustainably grow and scale. So, whatever your solution is, let's go back to the X and Y.

If you're like, “I know X works, but they're like, ‘I want Y,’” you can say, “Listen, I totally understand why you would want Y, and we can definitely incorporate that in what we are doing for you. But what we have seen is that when we do Y without X, it doesn't last.” And that's going to make them pause. That's going to make them think.

And that's also a great time to insert a case study if you haven't talked through a case study with them already. One mistake that I see a lot of sales and marketing team members make is they will be like, okay, after this conversation I'm going to mail you or email you or text you a case study.

You're losing an opportunity. Talk through the case study right there when you can see their face and you can adjust accordingly.

That is one of the big picture things that we teach, is offer them comprehensive solutions. Help them understand that's what you're doing. Because when you're saying “Do you want temporary results or do you want long lasting results?” what do you think people are going to pick? They don't want temporary results. They want to keep growing, they want to keep going. They want to keep succeeding in whatever your service or product helps them succeed in.

Alright, this leads us to number 10. Continuously improve communication. And since that is our whole thing, I'm sure it won't surprise you, but you need to regularly review and refine the communication strategies in your organization so that you know that unique purchasers understand the full range of skills that you're bringing with your company—in addition to what they see as high-value skills.

You want to have conversations with them, you want to have conversations with your team, you want to be able to adjust and adapt the way you're approaching talking about your prices based on all of the other things that we just discussed. All so that you can stay in a place where you are adjusting so that you are not growing stale in your communication because the world changes and humans are already really complex.

You have to constantly be curious to shut down that judgment zone, which when we're not in curiosity, we're usually in judgment—all so that you can figure out better ways to communicate your high-value skills with your unique purchasers better than your competitors who probably don't care as much.

And in my case, that's the situation all the time. I'm like, the results they get are not as good because they don't care as much.

So, I have to make sure that I am open, I have to make sure that I am curious, and I do that with my team as well because that's so beneficial to us.

By doing all of these 10 steps, you will be able to leverage your high-value skill in a much more powerful way so that you're not arguing with people about prices because you're showing up with the knowledge of what they think is going to work. You are telling them how you are going to use that, and then, hey, guess what you're telling them? “I'm also going to use these things that I know that work because they worked for this person in this case study,” and their mind is going to be blown.

They're going to be super confident in what you're talking about. You are going to show up  in a more confident way, and when you say your price, you're going to feel, I mean this price, and they're going to perceive that, and that makes a huge difference.

If you want help being objective about what your organization's high value-skills are and you are thinking, “Kristin, I would love to build those foundational pieces that you mentioned earlier such as touchstone principles,” please reach out to our team. You can find us at litsym.com, or you can find me on LinkedIn, Kristin N. Spencer. And I would love to have a conversation with you about your amazing organization and your exceptional high-value skills. Talk real soon.