Jay Acunzo

Ask About Heart and Head to Uncover True Objections

HOW TO ATTRACT MORE FULFILLING CLIENTS At the end of my client calls, I like to ask two questions: How are you feeling? Do you sense any objections in your head and your heart right now? The first question is simple and obvious, but the second yields better answers. It lets them off the hook ever so slightly, like we can just blame a reflex inside of them for their feelings. They can be more honest with me because it feels less like a therapy session and more like a plumber stopping by to address something we can plainly see. "Woo, yeah. My heart's got a leak right there. We can fix 'er, but it'll cost ya." By giving them a subtle way to blame something else (even though I said "your head and your heart"), I get more honest answers. This week, I got an answer worth writing about. I'm working with the owner of a podcast production agency who hired me to help him turn his expertise into a clear and differentiated premise and turn that premise into a signature speech. The podcast space is highly saturated right now, especially for folks in production, and dollars aren't flowing to these projects like a couple years ago. This entrepreneur (smartly) decided to lean into thought leadership and public speaking. Rather than wait for the market to simply find him, then get lumped onto a spreadsheet next to 12 competitors and their pricing (a race to the bottom), this client has chosen something powerful yet possibly more scary: He's chosen to lead. He's raising his hand and saying, "I have a perspective on this space. I think the way we understand something is broken, and I want to help show others a better way." But in hiring me, he also admitted in some sense, "I am not marketing that perspective. I am not even sure how to articulate it crisply or use it to inform my work." We'd just had our first call. I think of my job differently than other consultants. I don't impose on you. I extract from you. I'm more practitioner-peer than coach with templates. This means, early on in my work with someone, I provide lots of prompts and questions to get brutal honesty from a client about how they view their space. Without good raw ingredients on the table first, we can't cook anything great later, so we refrain from word-smithing or judging whether something is good or original or insightful. Instead, we just let 'er rip. And rip my client did: https://lnkd.in/eWNc6pjr