The longer you do something, the harder it can be to explain it. In this episode, we dig into why experienced experts struggle to communicate their value. See real before-and-after examples, plus four questions you can ask customers to uncover what drives them to buy, and how to use those insights to attract potential clients.
Your happiest customers might be giving you the wrong words to attract your next client.
That was one of my biggest takeaways from my recent chat with Stacy Eleczko, aka The Positioning Psychologist (honestly, what a great name).
Stacy helps experienced experts explain what they do so potential customers actually get it. And she made a point about customer research I hadn’t really considered before.
The words people use after hiring you can be very different from what they were saying when they were still trying to solve the problem themselves.
And if you’re using LinkedIn to attract clients, that difference matters.
The bookkeeper who was selling the wrong thing
Stacy worked with a bookkeeping firm whose website used to say:
“Each day, our exceptional team assists clients in establishing successful companies and living the lives they dream of.”
Perfectly professional. Also, I have no idea what they actually do.
As Stacy pointed out, nobody goes looking for a bookkeeper saying they need exceptional people to help them establish a successful company.
Then she interviewed the firm’s customers.
One was a construction company CEO who told her he was spending Sundays in his garage, staring at spreadsheets instead of spending time with his family.
He wanted his Sundays back.
After those interviews, Stacy helped the firm write LinkedIn posts that sounded very different.
One opened like this:
“You promised yourself you’d catch up on the books over the weekend, but now it’s 2 AM on Sunday night and you’re staring at a spreadsheet that looks like a foreign language.”
See the difference?
The original website copy told me how exceptional the bookkeepers were. The new post made me think, oh, they know exactly what I’m dealing with.
It reminded me of something I used to repeat constantly when I was Head of Marketing at Arc.dev: “Don’t make our audience’s brain do more work.”
We were marketing a remote hiring platform, and it was easy to describe everything our service could do instead of focusing on the exact thing our customers wanted solved.
I see the same thing now with the founders and executives I work with on LinkedIn.
One leadership advisor I worked with originally described her work as:
“Helping leaders navigate complex dynamics to lead authentically & expand their impact.”
Nothing technically wrong with that. But it’s hard to picture when you’d actually need her.
When we looked at how her clients described their challenges, one talked about “outgrowing how the team works together.”
That gave us a much more useful starting point for her LinkedIn content. We could explore what happens when a leadership team outgrows its old ways of working, rather than writing another general post about authentic leadership.
The thing about testimonials you may not realize
I’ll admit it. Testimonials were usually one of the first places I’d look when I wanted to understand how customers talked about a business.
They’re right there, already glowing.
But Stacy made a great point:
“Once your problem is solved, you forget what it was like living in that problem.”
She explained that there’s pre-decision language and post-decision language.
Post-decision language is what customers say after they’ve worked with you. They talk about the results, how great the experience was, and what changed.
That’s useful proof. It helps potential buyers trust that you can deliver.
But pre-decision language is what customers say when they’re still living with the problem, before they’ve decided to pay someone to solve it.
Go back to that construction CEO.
After hiring a bookkeeper, he'd probably say, "They've saved me so much time." That's true, and it's useful proof.
But before he hired anyone, he wasn't thinking about saving time. He was thinking about another Sunday in the garage instead of with his family.
One tells you what success looks like.
The other tells you why someone finally decides to buy.
And for LinkedIn, you need both.
The before helps potential clients recognize a problem they’re dealing with. The after gives them a reason to believe you can help.
Stacy mentioned another benefit I loved. She said clients often tell her that once they start using this language in sales conversations, those conversations become easier.
Instead of spending the whole call explaining what they do, they’re talking about a problem the prospect already understands.
I think the same principle applies to LinkedIn. Ideally, your content does some of that explaining before someone ever gets on a call with you.
They should already have a pretty good idea of the problem you solve and why you might be the person to help.
Where to find the words that attract the right clients
Stacy shared another habit I loved. She keeps her sales call transcripts in two folders: people who became clients and people who didn’t.
Her reasoning?
“I don’t want to use the language from people who didn’t end up working with me to attract more clients.”
Makes sense.
Lost deals can still teach you plenty about objections and why people don’t buy. But if you’re trying to attract more of your best customers, start with the people who already said yes.
Stacy also shared four questions she likes to ask during customer interviews:
4 question to find your buyer’s exact words (and attract more ideal clients)
What was happening when you realized you needed help?
Can you remember a time when this really frustrated you?
What made you start looking for a solution?
What’s changed in your day-to-day since?
My favorite is number three.
Stacy says the first answer is often vague. But when she keeps digging, people usually remember a specific moment when the problem went from frustrating to something they couldn’t ignore anymore.
I find the same thing when I interview founders and executives for their LinkedIn content. Someone will make a general point about leadership or marketing, and I’ll ask them to give me an example or tell me what happened next.
That’s usually when the actual story comes out.
One thing to try this week
Before writing your next LinkedIn post, pull up a sales call transcript from someone who became a client.
Find the moment they explained why they started looking for help.
What was happening in their business? What had become frustrating enough that they decided to do something about it?
Now try opening your next post with that situation, using language your customer would recognize.
Then connect it to something you’ve learned from solving that problem. Better yet, share a specific example of how you’ve helped someone through it.
For example, instead of writing about why leadership alignment matters, a consultant could open with a problem their clients repeatedly describe: everyone agrees in the leadership meeting, but a week later, nothing has changed.
From there, they can explain what’s usually going wrong and how they’ve helped a team address it.
You don’t necessarily need to post more. You need more of the right people to understand why they might need you.
Watch the full conversation with Stacy Eleczko
We also talked about the psychology behind why experienced experts struggle to explain their work, how to decide what you want to be known for, and why studying competitors can accidentally make you sound more like them.
A quick behind-the-scenes note from me
This is my first issue after a few months off from writing, and I rewrote it more times than I'd like to admit. I wanted to be sure it was actually useful to you, not just me getting back into the habit. So I'd love to know… did this give you something to try on LinkedIn this week? Hit reply and tell me, even if it's one line.
Keep those ideas flowing,
Christine
P.S. This kind of research is a big part of what I do at Orchard Strategy. We help founders and executives turn their expertise into LinkedIn content that attracts clients, not just attention. If you’re posting consistently but not getting business from LinkedIn, let me know.
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Key questions from this episode
Why is it so hard for experts to explain what they do?
Mostly the curse of knowledge: the closer you are to your work, the harder it is to see it the way a buyer does. It’s frustrating because, as I put it to Stacy, “I should know this, but it’s not that easy.” She explained it with construal level theory: “the way we process our own expertise is super specific, but … how other people perceive us is very abstract.” I think there’s an ego trap too: when you know something “in such depth and such rigor and detail,” going simpler can feel like it “might undercut your credibility.”
What’s the difference between testimonials and pre-decision buyer language?
Testimonials capture how clients talk after the problem is solved, while pre-decision language is how buyers describe the problem while they still have it, on sales calls, in DMs, and in LinkedIn comments. I’d put your LinkedIn recommendations in the same pile as testimonials, so I asked Stacy about both. Her answer: “yes and yes, I would recommend it, but there are also challenges to it,” because they capture “the after the fact.” For marketing, she wants “what’s triggering them to buy,” so use testimonials as proof and pre-decision language for your messaging.
What questions should I ask clients to find their buyer language?
Ask about the moment before they bought, not just the outcome. Stacy’s four are: what was going on in your business when you realized you needed help with this; a moment you felt overwhelmed or frustrated by it; what prompted you to start looking; and what has changed in your day-to-day since. Question three matters most, so keep digging past the vague first answer.
Where do I find buyer language, and whose words should I use?
Anywhere buyers describe the problem in their own words, but only from people who actually became clients. If you have a simple intake form on your website, questions like “what’s the biggest challenge you’re facing?” already collect it. Stacy adds sales calls, “emails or DMs from people,” and LinkedIn polls: “I love posting a poll with options that will lead to good engagement in the comments because you can get tons of buyer language that way.” Then she filters hard: “You only want to collect insights from the people who are truly your ideal clients.”
How do I write a LinkedIn headline my buyers actually understand?
Use your clients’ words instead of yours, then read it out loud and ask whether a real customer would ever say it. A leadership coach I work with started with “Helping leaders navigate complex dynamics to lead authentically & expand their impact,” while her clients said “We should be performing better.” Their phrase became the first line of her About section.
How do I know if my positioning is too generic or too broad?
It’s too generic if it could describe your whole company, and too broad if anyone could relate to it. My check is whether the language applies to the company instead of a person, because “companies don’t buy, people buy.” Stacy’s test is “if it can apply to anybody, then it’s definitely too broad,” and a post with tons of engagement can mean “too many people can relate to it.” Too narrow has its own problem, though: “you’re not even mentioning some of the table stakes kind of features or services you offer.”
What if I want to be known for several things?
Lead with one thing and put the rest behind it. I see this with a lot of my clients, because I do positioning work at the very beginning: they want to be known for “this, that, and that.” My rule of thumb: “If you’re selling coffee, put that at the front. Yes, you sell scones and whatever else, but you’re going to a coffee shop first.” Stacy’s version is to pick “the thing that people can associate with you, and you can still talk about the other things, but just under that lens.”
Does evidence-based positioning still matter now that AI can write anything?
Yes, more than ever, because a guess written by AI is still a guess. I think of good content as “evidence-based content,” and positioning assumptions are “inventions in a way if you’re not basing it in research or customer … buyer words.” Stacy’s rule is “actual evidence and not guesswork,” and my version is “AI can invent you anything, but the only way it can be real is if it’s based in evidence.” I dug into this with Justyna Ciecierska in AI can’t fix your bad positioning.
Btw I’m Christine Orchard. I host Marketers Do Coffee to learn how LinkedIn actually works from the people who do each part best. I also run Orchard Strategy, a LinkedIn strategy and content agency. We handle the whole channel for B2B founders, executives, and consultants, from positioning through to publishing. Before this, I was Head of Marketing at Arc from seed through acquisition.
