“What would you do if you only got paid if your client gets the result?” That’s the one question I always ask when hatching evil schemes with somebody. (And you heard me say it over and over on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, I’m sure.)

But here’s the thing.

Sometimes you can’t answer that with certainty because you don’t know what kind of result you can get your clients. And that’s ok. When you’re just starting out, doing something new for the first time, it’s normal to be uncertain.

What you’re missing is data to prove your case. That’s all. I learned this great term from Craig Venter, who decoded the human genome, called “ N of 1 Study ”. It is a clinical term. It means that one single patient is the entire trial. And it can be very effective when trying to confirm causality.

That’s exactly what you need to do: Find the data that proves your widget is making a difference! Whenever you venture into something new… the best thing is to find that ONE single case study and build your evidence on it.

For example.

When I wanted to gather proof that my “”World’s Most Interesting Postcard”” is great for orchestrating referrals, this is what I did: I tested it out with one realtor here in Winter Haven. I had her pick her top 150 clients and look over the last 12 months of her transactions. I was looking for data to see how many returned or referred somebody.

Until then, her whole strategy for communicating with clients was: Every December, she would send a magnet calendar for your fridge. That’s it. No other communication throughout the rest of the year.

Based only on that, she made 13 repeat and referral transactions in the past 12 months from those top 150.

This was my benchmark.

Next, we implemented The World’s Most Interesting Postcard for the year. We would send one postcard to her clients every month and monitor and document what was happening. (Very important!)

Once the year was up, we looked at our data and here’s what we noticed: That year, she did 33 repeat and referral transactions. An increase of more than double!  And the ONLY change was sending those postcards out. The whole point of my documenting everything was to make it clear there was no other explanation for such an increase in transactions.

I had now built my first evidence that my postcards worked. From there on, it was much easier to go to the next agent and convince them to get on board. I didn’t have to ask them to believe me – I could show the actual data and prove it.

Even if it doesn’t look like it… it is actually way cheaper for you to do it this way. To over-invest your time and money initially in that one case study.

Why?

Because what you’re doing is you’re building your evidence. And it pays big dividends the moment you go to your next person. You see, now you’ve got PROVEN documentation that your $179/month turns into $28,000 or $58,000. But there’s something else that happens when you do it this way. Your offer now becomes 10x more compelling in the eyes of your prospects.

Because now… you’ve actually got confidence in it. And that confidence shines through. Now you KNOW, with data to back you up, the results you can get for your clients.

And isn’t this just the greatest feeling to have? 🙂