The effect of exaggerating your skills

True, we can't all be number 1 specialist in the US.

We all can say it.

The one who pops up #1 on page 1 convinces.

In addition, the rest can claim to be #1, this side of the Mississippi. Or in Tulsa or Cedar Rapids.

The one popping at #1 in Google for Tulsa gets credibility.

The rest can claim they are #1 SEO in Tulsa for dentists.

There are many #1 positions to be claimed. Find the one that fits you.

Claim to be the best, get to be #1 and get bad reviews and you are still not # 1.

What you are asking is a positioning question. You are supposed to find something that your clients are looking for but nobody has claimed and claim it.

FedX has been advertising next day delivery, not the best or the fastest.

Domino's Pizza: 30 minutes delivery not the best pizza.

Curious what folks might think of James Altucher's guidance here: Over promise - AND over deliver. Many advocate "under promise / over deliver," but Altucher's view is that this puts you in with the glut of "everyone else." He reasons it's better to differentiate through consistent "surprise and delight." By taking pains to deliver a pleasant surprise / something that was not expected (or paid for), one might attract more loyal lifetime customers.

Imo this may not work for every discipline, but is a great way of thinking about positioning and differentiation for a lot of client-based work.

I want to address that.

Sure, "Fake it till you make it' helps if you imply there is demand for your services when there really isn't. Harmless little white lies like that just make you more attractive to clients.

But fake experience? Credentials? Expertise? Lie about how many years you have been in business? How many clients you have? The results you have been able to produce?

Those aren't little white lies. Those are gross misrepresentations. Fraud.

And amazingly, it isn't necessary at all.

Offer what you have. If you are new, you have enthusiasm, dedication to your first client to prove yourself, If you are young, you have energy. You can dedicate more time to a new client. You can learn their expectations....so you can fit your service to them.

I knew a sales rep that was successful for decades. His sole approach was telling potential customers that it was his third day in business. Why? People love helping beginners. They allow for mistakes.

And if you tell them you are brand new at your profession, it takes away roadblocks. Nobody is intimidated by the new guy. Their guard is lowered. The bar is set so low, it's easy to make sales.

Of course, once you are really proficient and established, you talk about your experience and expertise.

Always sell what you have. Everything about you can be used to your advantage.

The problem with Faking it...is after they buy...they find out you lied about yourself. And that's the end of that.

when there is no set rule for actually deciding who is the best or who is number one ..it is really just a fluffy marketing claim .. my view doesn't matter .. but if someone was that good they would be interviewing client and have a waiting list

i'm under the delusion that the best people let their work speak for their skills.... or if you claim to be number one but your prices are on the low side ..somthing i wrong ..

if the customer is in on the act .. or you are king it clear you are putting on a magic show ... but that it hard to explain right now

sometime faking it is just faking it and you are attracting clients who are into that (the reads a lot dirtier than i meant it )

There's no point in exaggerating.

If you can demonstrate understanding via questions and revealing pain points, that's a lot more powerful IMO then simply stating a certification. It also allows for more granular control of the narrative. Overselling is real and bland generalities are obvious.

Most people also grossly misunderstand fields outside their own. More often then not, I find that going by credentials or experience, you attach a label to yourself, which may be good or bad.

If you exaggerate your claims, people will expect you to live to that claim. It's basically puffery.

I expect the upcoming PPV event to be hyped to the hilt. I won't blame Sky Sports if the game is a washout. To use the same hype to sell me on a product you know is not as amazing as you presented it, puts you in the same category as the frauds to avoid in future.

Be careful who you associate with: Not all hype merchants are frauds. But all frauds are hype merchants.

Too many people are playing the "I'm better" game; all competing against each other for attention. If I play that game the only way to win is to exaggerate more than the rest. How else can I get you to buy from me, over them?

Since nobody trusts marketers/advertisers because they are mostly liars, it makes more sense to be different than trying to be incrementally better than the same. Big claims are rightly met with skepticism. Be careful. You may need to be an expert copywriter to overturn the skepticism you yourself created by how you showed up.

Most wounds are self inflicted. Hype, or exaggerated claims tend to raise the 'risk' level of the person it's being done to.

If the bathroom is filthy in the restaurant, it's much harder to get orders from the kitchen no matter how clean it is or how well your menu reads.

Good question. I think to a certain degree it can help but the trouble is that if you get found out then you lose trust with people. Building trust is probably one of the most important things because, in essence, you are asking people for their money. Exactly why offering value is so important. Although, it is a very powerful thing to show people results. Convincing proof that a product is worth it's salt. If you don't have that you can try showing other people's results and hope that is enough to swing the deal.

Honesty, and integrity I think is important so I wouldn't personally "fake it" as such myself but they do say through these manifestation courses that you should think like you are already rich and successful. Apparently, it reprograms your mind and then magic things start to happen

Reminds me of Avis who actually came out in their ads and said they were number 2...

A while back there was a lot of discussion here about when it's appropriate for a person to sell how to make money products. Some people had generic answers like when you are rich or when you are successful. Other answers were silly. They would say once you've made a minimum $100,000 profit online you can write an ebook about how to make money. 90,000 wouldn't do, I guess.

This discussion brought up that several big name gurus had never sold anything but how to make money information--even when they hadn't made money in the beginning. Joe Newbie Warrior was laughed out of the forum for selling an MMO ebook under those circumstances while big gurus were respected.

About the same time, I heard a theory about the expertise scale which says that expertise has different levels, say 0-10. A 0 level expert isn't an expert at all. They know nothing. A 1 level knows more than the 0 level and the 5 level expert knows more than the 1 level expert.

How this relates to selling your expertise is this (sticking to MMO but it applies in many areas): I would guess that the great majority of members of this forum have never made even $100 online much less have a consistent income.

Yet, a much higher percentage have more expertise in building a WP site, getting it online, and doing some online marketing things like sending an email than billions of other humans who have zero clue about any of that.

According to the theory, they are experts, albeit level 1 or 2 experts, compared to those billions.

The would be experts at those basic tasks could figuratively dunk on most politicians, CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, doctors, lawyers, rich people, etc.

The problem comes when a level 1 expert pretends like they are a level 9 expert. I agree with what Claude said, sell what you have.

This is blatantly obvious when someone says they have a new SEO contract for a local business, and they want to know what the first step is. Or when they ask about getting traffic to their site but advertising a how to get traffic book. Or when they spam a link for a HVAC mechanic in Miami here on the forum (they sold their link building package to the Miami guy and then they post their links here).

I would say those are faking and they won't ever make it.

If they would just sell their level 1 or 2 expertise, they could have billions of potential customers. But they won't. They try to be the big shot too soon and wind up failing.

Mark

Stealing is wrong.
Lying is wrong.

Aside from the fact that they are major relationship killers,

If you purposely lie to a customer about your skills and you can't/ don't deliver then you are
stealing time, money and resources from them. End of story.

Don't fake the funk because people will catch on and start distrusting you .Document your journey each step of the way and share so that people can see your progression

I would recommend People to be 100% upfront and honest. Many People can kind of sense when a Person is "exaggerating" and/or lying. The fact that a Person may be starting out in Copywriting (for example) can be a benefit/advantage ― for instance they can work for less money to build their skills, testimonials, portfolio etc.

2C

Exaggerating? In my opinion an excellent business doesn't need it....

To give a real example: if you buy something for $8 and make $1200 back then.... there are no reasons for exaggerating.
We talk about web properties

just be yourself do your job as good as you can and of course fake it until you make it!