Five Key Steps To Gain Expert Status – Part One
This is part one of a five part series on how you can gain expert status and be seen as the go-to person in your target market. To get the rest of the series, sign up in the boxes to the right. You will then receive the next four parts of the series and be notified via email of new blog posts, tips, invitations and updates at the Therapist Leadership Institute.
Key Step 1: Have a Process.
When I was ten years old I entered a contest called “What neatness means to me.” I submitted a 100 word essay (without telling my parents) and I won! The prize was a tall brass coat rack to hang up my clothes. (true fact)
The best part was that the prize came on the exact day that I was grounded due to my very, very messy bedroom. But my parents had a sense of humor – and we all laughed that I was considered an expert on ‘neatness.’
Are you seen as an expert with your target market or community? People love the experts. They trust and respect experts. I mean, really, if you have a problem – who would you rather see – a generalist or someone who specializes in your problem?
And the truth is that experts (specialists) make more money than generalists.
So, how do you become recognized as an expert? This is Step 1:
Have a process.
Do you have a process for your work? From the client’s perspective?
I am sure you take a history and have a way of working in the session. But that is not very interesting to clients. They want to know that you have a plan to help them. Because clients today are more sophisticated, knowing you have a process can make them feel more confident in you and your services.
They are looking for a process. Just talking generally to a stranger may not seem focused enough for your more sophisticated client today. Knowing that there is a process helps them to feel that the therapy is time-limited and that there is a plan.
So what is your process? I recommend having an easy 4-step process you can refer to on your web site or when someone wants more info about your work.
Here is a “4-step process” formula I often recommend. Now this won’t fit for everyone but take a peek at it and see if you can think of something like it when people ask you “How do you work?” Okay .. the formula…
- First, we look at what the situation is now.
- Next, we figure out what it is you want your life (or the situation) to look like – what would be ideal.
- Third, we figure out what needs to happen in order to get your life (or the situation) where you want it to be.
- Finally we come up with an action plan to do so.
That is it. Now you can use that formula as is or it would be even better if you tailor this to your ideal client’s situation and perhaps use words that are more attractive to your client.
When you have a process, it automatically elevates you to the status of an expert. And the truth is people are more interested in seeing the expert.
Again, if you are interested in getting the next four parts of “How To Gain Expert Status” (and also get notifies of new blog postings), please subscribe in the box on your right under the header at the top of this page.
In Key Step Two of How To Gain Expert Status in Your Target Market, we will talk about how “taking a unique stand” can elevate you to expert status.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Explaining my process is something I do from the start, whether over the phone or in the first session. The clients’ responses have been consistenly positive. I do stress that the strategy for “how to get where you want to be” is a not “carved in stone” and may be revised as other concerns come to light.
Lisa, I think you’re getting closer to the point. An X-point process should not imply to our clients (or ourselves) that the process is going to be completed in X hours or X weeks. Nor should it be assumed that the process will be linear or that once we’ve identified a step that we can’t expand our ideas about it as time goes on and we gain more information.
I often talk w/clients about processes (e.g., 12 Steps, 7 stages of grief). I also remind them that while we may think in a linear way, we more often repeat steps and circle through stages.
I think Sherry’s point is a good one, and so is Nanette’s! The basic four-step process seems like a great starting point for coaches, but for therapists it may be too superficial to really describe what happens in therapy, unless you’re just doing short-term CBT type work. On the other hand, perhaps if “looking at the situation as it is now” is undertaken in a spirit of openess and honesty, with an eye on what’s at the surface and an ear tuned to what’s below it (in my case, looking at dream and fantasy material) maybe the other steps might make sense?
The opposing universes of coaching therapists vs doing therapy is very real, but therapists who want to be successful absolutely MUST cross over into the foreign lands of what Casey is talking about.
For every therapist website I see that makes me say, “they KNOW how to reach clients!” I see a thousand more that say and do nothing… and from where I sit, it’s such a waste to have such passionate, talented therapists out there who are unable to reach people they want to help! If I could only pull out all the knowledge of therapists and get all that intelligently put on their website, the world would be healthier, the therapist would be more exposed to potential clients, and their amazing knowledge wouldn’t be lost inside their head.
I am getting a sense that the marketing stretagies that Casey is talking about here is more of a ploy to get them in the door, more so than a way to actually proceed with therapy. In general we all have a process that is mandated by our profession integrity. A protcall, if you will, that is necessary for all clients; a beginning, a middle and an end. To us it is common sense, but to the customer it is not. That’s why we lay it out for them in our advertising and marketing. The details come when they actually enter into therapy. Hope this helps.
Nanette, MFT
I just read your 4 step process that you suggested using with cleints so they will feel assured you are an expert.
It sounds so simple in theory, but in practice, it isn’t. For example, I just started seeing a man who wants to be more responsible with his wife and family and step up to the plate on his family duties. Great. But as we talked, it beame clear to me, but not yet to him, that his wife is bullying him, she is verbally abusive and he is afraid of her. He described what his current level of acting responsibly is, and honetly, it sounded pretty good. So his action plan involves all these things he can do to be an uver-husband and father, but my sense of it is this will only garner resentment and rebelling on his part, which is already happening.
AThe first task, as I see it is to work with the difference between what he thinks he needs and wants and what he actually needs and wants. It is a slow, delicate process, but when I start to make space for his true feelings, he is starting to see that the relationship with his wife is much more complex than he would like to believe.
Please be careful when you put out brief strategies like this to not overlook the complexites of doing actually therapy. I think what you are doing in the field for therapists is great. They see you as an expert on practice building, and I have learned for you too That is why I’ve taken the time to respond. I welcome your thoughts and feeldback.
Sherry Freeman, MFT