The third secret the gurus don’t tell you when you’re writing your book
How do you get to know the best solutions for your clients?
How do you find out what makes them tick, what makes their business tick, what challenges they face, what opportunities are ahead, what resistance they have to making necessary changes?
Chances are you’re thinking something like, “Well…
- I take time to ask them lots of questions that I know uncover the underlying issues and motivations.
- Then I’ll discover how they view the world and the challenges that model creates.
- We will explore other options.
- Then we implement strategies that can bring about the results they want to achieve.”
Yes, there is something about this that probably rings true with anyone who runs a business or facilitates change through coaching, consultancy or training. But, and it is a big BUT, you may not really know what it is that truly makes the biggest difference to your clients.
Your formula for success with your clients
You have a general, or even highly detailed process, that you are consciously aware of. Yet, how often does a client get silenced by a simple question, puzzled, struggling to answer before they respond with, “I’ve never thought of that before, I can see that now, I just never noticed that pattern…”
Could the same be true for you?
When we spend a 1-2-1 day with an author it is a real privilege. As publishers we receive masterclasses in coaching/HR/addiction… whatever the topic of the book is. Yet there are also wonderful moments when we ask questions that stump the author, that force them to go inside and figure something out.
At the end of a day with an amazing leadership coach I remember him saying, “WOW! No one has asked me these questions before!”
Could it be that what makes real change work for your clients is something you’re not entirely conscious of, something that you do naturally, something intrinsic to your way of thinking and being that you don’t even notice along the way?
Is your secret sauce, still secret?
Perhaps there is an overall process that you apply to situations that you’re not aware of. This could be the most useful and powerful of all your strategies—and you don’t even know about it.
Many business writers, even the ones who move beyond throwing information at their readers, present what they think it is that they do to lead others to transformation. But very often their books contain information, clichés and anecdotes that everyone else in the field uses. This is because they don’t realise that in order to write to teach, inspire and motivate others to transform they need to learn what truly makes them different.
What is it you do to affect the business or lives of your clients when many others have failed to do so? Are you certain that you really understand this or have you simply accepted that it all rests with your strategies or techniques?
Perhaps you are running some sort of meta-level process you haven’t been consciously aware of…
Get someone to question everything you do, they have ways of making you talk!
If you want to make your book stand out, make your book most effective, then you need to invest time discovering what it is that makes you different. Or you could short-change yourself and simply say, “I’m different because of the 10-point success formula I developed [substitute your own instant answer here].”
If you want to write the book that shows clearly how you are different, more reliable, more effective, more authoritative and more transformational than the others in your field why not do what you do for your clients?
Get someone whose expertise you can rely on to question you, to interrogate you, to draw out what is really going on, what it is really that makes you different and therefore makes such a difference to your clients.
Oh, yes—the third secret—Discover what makes you different, you may not know this yourself…
Secret four, coming soon…