When you’re looking for a doctor, lawyer, accountant, coach, psychologist, realtor, mentor, consultant, advisor, who’s the real deal?

And when you’re competing in the marketplace of services and ideas, how do you differentiate yourself, how do you stand out?

Who can you rely on? Who can you trust?

How do you know what’s real, what’s authentic, what’s true?

Ann has faced this recently. She’s been looking for a marketing consultant to work with her as she moves her business to the next level.

The talking heads, the pseudo experts are everywhere.

“Enroll in my strategy session.”  “Take my webinar.” “Work with me; you’ll have a $10,000 day.”

The cacophony is staggering.

How should you shop for your next consultant or expert? Here are the factors I consider:

• Does she walk the talk?  I don’t want a fat doctor or a decrepit personal trainer. I don’t want an accountant who has had an IRS problem or a network marketer who has never built a team. If I have a running injury, I want to see a runner. If I need a realtor, I want someone who has survived the dark valley of real estate despair.
• Is he referable? I want someone who is 100% reliable, someone I would want to refer to others. Strategic coach Dan Sullivan teaches the concept of referability. He says people are “referable” when they show up on time, do what they say, finish what they start and have good manners. I like that. I want to work with someone who is referable. And has been referred.
  
• Is she present? How many of you have you been in a doctor’s office when you just as well could have been at a meat-packing plant? You know what I’m talking about: the doc comes in, looks at the chart, mumbles a few words, writes out a script and moves down the hall. I don’t want a professional who is distracted. I want my expert to be 100% connected with me; 100% tuned into what I need; 100% present. I want a relationship. Even if my professional has a dozen other clients that day, I want to feel like I’m the most important person in the world when it comes time to work with me.

And what if you’re on the other side of the fence? What if you’re trying to market your wares? How do you stand out from the crowd?

• Give a lot. I recently re-read the Go-Giver, a wonderful business parable that teaches anew the age-old principal that it is in giving that we receive. And paradoxically, the more we give, the more we will receive. Frank Kern and Jeff Walker have talked extensively about the movement of the “free line,” the content that experts must share freely in the marketplace of ideas if they have any hope of developing rapport and credibility with their prospective customers. Seth Godin executes on this concept brilliantly through his Domino Project and suffers not for prosperity or success.
• Say thank you. Common sense is, well, not all that common anymore. And manners seem to have disappeared with bell-bottoms. I had a client call me out of the blue recently to thank me for some work I did. It shocked the shit out of me. And set the man apart in my memory for all time. When we express gratitude, we not only deepen our connections with one another, but we also differentiate ourselves  from an entitled world and attract even more abundance and prosperity into our lives.
• Just be you. Years ago in a photography workshop, ten of us lined our tripods up in front of a beautiful vista. You might predict that there would have been ten identical images. Not so. Ten very different photographs. Here’s the truth: Each of us see the world, touch the world, and impact the lives of others in our own unique ways. No one does it like we do it. And as long as we stand in our own authenticity, no one can compete with us.

It might seem as if you need to be a Jedi master to pierce through the noise of advertising, to look beyond the sizzle of social media, to see through the scammers, the illusionists, and the charlatans. But beyond the banality and the blather, there is truth. Just apply a few simple principals. Take your time. You’ll see it.

For real.

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