Congruency: The Entrepreneur’s Friend or Foe?
Author: Gary Whitehill
How many times have you met an entrepreneur and after your conversation ended, you walked away confused?
- It’s perhaps not that you didn’t like them or that what they created wasn’t meaningful or valuable to you or someone you know
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It’s because something they said or didn’t say didn’t make sense.
Remember the last time you met someone who talked with you about their business but didn’t really seem to have their finger on the pulse of it?
When you asked them, “Who is your ideal client?” or “What businesses can benefit from your work, service or product?”, they said “EVERYBODY!”: yet they never offered one specific example of how it worked for someone they’ve already worked with.
There just seemed to be either something that didn’t make sense about how they were approaching you or it felt like something just didn’t line up. It’s like talking to the stockbroker who’s broke; or working with the real estate agent who lives at home and hasn’t owned anything but has been in the business for 5 years; or the chef who invites you over for a tasting and burns more than just the créme brulee for dessert.
When you hold yourself out as an expert and as someone who can help, you want people to hire you and buy from you. If you don’t dress appropriately, talk appropriately and speak of how your business logically makes sense for someone else and solves a problem they have or someone they know has, all we’re left with is asking ourselves why we just don’t feel confident in you or what you’re offering.
Your incongruence just may be lurking in the shadows and be confusing the heck out of the people whom you really want to sell your offerings. The further we get down the path as entrepreneurs, the more we want to really understand what we each offer, what problem we each solve, why we do it and, most importantly, how we can help one another
When you know your business and industry and can specifically demonstrate how it works for others and when what you say makes sense to others about it, they begin to want to know, like and trust you. You’re congruent and their confidence in you and what you do stems from this.
If you don’t make sense, not only will you be left wondering why they didn’t buy from you: more than this, they won’t feel comfortable introducing you to someone else.
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