Make Your Expertise Observable Before the Sales Call

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Why selling expertise is hard for consultants

Rate on a scale of one to 10, how hard is it to sell your expertise? Is it a seven, maybe a 10

Perhaps you're a consultant, a coach, a psychologist, or even a professor. You've spent years developing your knowledge, and you know how to solve complex problems. People come to you. But do leads know about you? That's the difference. You know that your expertise can create real value.

You've got a lot of retention clients, but the challenge is maybe for you to get new leads convince them to become customers. Your potential customers cannot see your expertise, how you think before they decide to hire you.

They can see your qualifications, your website, your social media profiles, even your LinkedIn profile, but they don't know you and how you would approach their particular problem, and that [00:01:00] creates uncertainty.

Imagine your potential client has already listened to you and also watched you on screen, how you explain a problem, how you challenge assumptions, and how you are developing a solution to a relatable problem, right? Before they even contact you, they have experienced as a bystander, as someone sitting at the fence, your professional reasoning, And that's what a business video podcast can accomplish for your business.

How video podcasts demonstrate expertise beyond talking

Today, I wanna show you how you can use your video podcast not simply to talk about your expertise, because talk is cheap, but how you can use that to demo your expertise.

That's a difference, right? Demonstration versus talking about it, because your podcast could become one of your most valuable business assets. Intrigued?

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Welcome to Creating Reorganized. As a psychologist, I love how people think.

Love that black box, right? And as an entrepreneur, I also love practical results, and this Creating Reorganized show lives at the intersection. Every week I translate psychology, enterprise thinking, and technology into practical ideas that help you build a better business and hopefully according to your vision of life.

And I'm building a family-first AI business in public, and I'm taking you with me.

Who benefits from expertise-based video podcasting

So today we're talking about selling expertise, and I want to address two groups in particular. First, [00:03:00] consultants, coaches, and professional service providers.

And second, Adjacent to that, professors and researchers who are considering how to share their expertise beyond academia. Both of these groups have something important in common. They have valuable knowledge, but they often struggle to communicate what makes their approach distinctive.

And I believe that video podcasting offers an interesting opportunity to change that. When I worked in IT strategy consulting at Accenture, I learned that clients weren't simply buying presentations.

They were buying our ability to understand their situation, to structure complex problems, and to recommend and execute a course of action. And when I became a professor, I encountered a similar challenge from another perspective. Colleagues sometimes ask me in the coffee room how they could start a podcast like [00:04:00] me.

And I understand why that is interesting. Universities are full of people with extraordinary expertise, but publishing academic research and making that knowledge accessible to potential business customers are two very different activities. So a professor might have published extensively about leadership, and organizational change but a business owner considering to hire that professor as a consultant still wants to know, can this person understand my organization? Translate research into practical recommendations? Work for my situation as such? So a list of publications doesn't necessarily answer this question, right?

Neither does a long description of consulting services of un-relatable business.

What customers need to evaluate before hiring you

So what customers need, is a way to evaluate how you, as a service provider with your expertise, approach [00:05:00] problems relatable to me. And that's where I would use a video podcast, not as an extended ad or advertisement, but as a demonstration of your professional judgment, your professional behavior.

Okay? So

The science of signaling in professional services

let's bring in the science, as always. In 1973, economist Michael Spence published his influential work on signaling in the job market. And that also applies to my students nowadays, right? The underlying problem is information asymmetry.

So one party knows something that the other party cannot easily observe, right? So when I apply for a job, I can say I'm highly qualified, I can do this, blah, blah, blah, blah. But an employer or the recruiter cannot directly observe every aspect of an applicant's abilities before hiring them. So they use signals to make that judgment or [00:06:00] assessment. Now, let's transfer that idea to your professional services.

Your potential customer cannot directly observe the quality of your future consulting work, right? So they look for signals, qualifications, professional experience, recommendations, even published research, and perhaps also your video podcast. And when we look at all these signals, what we can say is that not all of these signals provide the same information. A qualification tells something about your education, how privileged you were, maybe also even.

A testimonial of a client describes somebody else's experience. But the question is, are they similar to me? I'm very special, of course. A podcast can reveal how you communicate and reason through a problem.

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Three dimensions of trust: ability, benevolence, integrity

And that brings me to our second scientific foundation. In 1995, Mayer, Davis, and Schoorman published an influential model of organizational trust.

They identified three important dimensions of perceived trustworthiness: ability, benevolence, and integrity. And ability concerns whether someone has the competence to perform effectively. Benevolence concerns whether someone is perceived as having a good will towards you, right?

And integrity concerns whether someone is perceived adhering to acceptable social principles. Now, consider how these dimensions might appear in your video podcast. When you explain a [00:08:00] complex problem, listeners can understand and evaluate your ability. When you acknowledge your customer's constraints, they may perceive greater benevolence because you're going the extra mile to adapt your solution to their problem specifically.

And when you openly discuss limitations or situations where your services might not be appropriate, you demonstrate your principles, relevant to integrity. And of course, listening to a video podcast cannot prove that someone is trustworthy, but it gives potential leads more information on which to base their judgments.

And that's the opportunity for you. Your video podcast can help people evaluate your expertise before the sales call

Now,

The Expertise to Trust Journey: a four-stage framework

how do you turn that idea into a practical video podcast strategy? I use a simple framework [00:09:00] called the Expertise to Trust Journey. It has four stages. First, identify a problem your potential customer recognizes. So you have to be in their shoes. For example, a consultant might address why digital transformation projects fail to deliver the expected benefits because of blah, blah, blah.

Second, demonstrate how you analyze that problem, how would you do that step by step? Of course, you're not giving away everything, but you should give them the impression of how you would work through the problem, right? You can ask them more questions, assumptions that you would challenge or which evidence would you consider.

Third, you can explain how you would approach a solution. Give a plan of how many days, weeks, years maybe you need to solve the problem, right? Not necessarily as a complete consulting engagement, but long and [00:10:00] realistic enough to make your methods understandable.

And fourth, help listeners decide what to do next. Give them a call to action so they know what is the next step for them to work with you. Perhaps they can test one recommendation independently. Perhaps they need additional information they should gather before they approach you, and perhaps their situation requires additional support.

Notice the difference between this approach and a conventional promotional episode. You're not spending 20 minutes telling people how qualified you are, but instead you're allowing them to experience your expertise through a relevant, at least adjacent, relatable problem.

Building a library of expertise demonstrations

And if you do this consistently, your video podcast becomes a collection of demonstrations that potential customers, leads can explore before contacting you. One of my [00:11:00] most listened to Creating Reorganized episodes demonstrates exactly this.

That's a little bit ironic, but it's called "Making Of How To Create a Demo Video in Descript." I'm not kidding. And that is, a short social clip that was featured in my full episode, "Best Ways to Showcase Your Products and Services on a Video Podcast to Drive Sales," published in '25, I think.

Now, I will link to that episode because it really is a demonstration of how evergreen content can be.

All right. So

Real-world example: building personalized educational apps

let me share how I'm applying this whole principle to my own business as well. As you know, I'm a professor, psychologist, and most of all, I'm a mother of two school children. And recently I've been experimenting with personalized educational learning apps.

It started with everyday learning challenges in my family. Okay, so for example, vocabulary [00:12:00] practice, reading comprehension, and helping my children to prepare for school tests, obviously. Instead of looking for another generic application, I began experimenting with building tools tailored to specific learning needs.

I've developed applications such as WordWise for vocabulary practice for Latin and English, NumberWise for English numbers, LeseProfi for becoming proficient in reading and subject learning. And so many more. Now, I could tell parents that I'm developing personalized education software, but what does that actually mean? It becomes so much more clearer when I demonstrate one of the applications I could show how a child would practice vocabulary with my app, how the app responds to an incorrect answer, or how a learning exercise can be adapted to a particular topic.

And that demonstration allows parents to [00:13:00] evaluate the experience that they would buy. It allows me to also explain the psychological and education reasoning behind my design choices. Now, I want to emphasize that these are business experiments, okay? I'm not claiming that I've already established a validated education software business.

It's in the making. Maybe I'm not fully executing on that. But I will test the market, and to me, the biggest success would be already if my kids would be learning better and be more proficient in school because of my apps.

So I'm testing what works for my own children, exploring the technology and investigating whether other families would also value similar solutions. And that's why I wanna share that whole thing through Creating Reorganized, because it gives you the opportunity to observe how I move from [00:14:00] identifying a potential problem to creating a product or even service to solve that problem. And you can evaluate my reasoning. You can challenge my assumptions. You can challenge even my decisions. And maybe you can also apply a similar approach to your own business.

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So one of my current business experiments is particularly interesting for you.

Testing products through video demonstrations and sponsorship

I've been developing an interactive educational advent calendar about electricity and energy, and it contains 24 learning experiences. So for December 1st until December 24th, which is, Heiligabend in Germany. Children can explore topics such as electrical circuits, switches, [00:15:00] and how different components work together.

The idea is to combine reading, interactive exercises, and age-appropriate explanations. I created that in September, And that is obviously too late to get new sponsors for 2026.

But I will test that now with my children and select the test kids, and maybe it will be something for '27 to get sponsors for that.

And this being said, I'm now considering how to market this product. And here's where video podcasting and video content becomes particularly interesting. Instead of simply advertising an education advent calendar, I could demonstrate a learning activity, and I already did this on my TikTok channel.

For example, I could show how a child explores a simple electrical circuit. I could explain why I designed the exercise in a particular way. I could invite parents and educators to evaluate whether the experience would be useful. And [00:16:00] that would demonstrate the product and also my approach to learning design.

And I'm also currently exploring sponsorship opportunities, but they need a product first before they can sponsor that, obviously. And they want to know whether I'm able to execute fully on a sponsorship package, right? For example, an energy supplier could be interested in supporting an education initiative that introduces children to electricity, and that opportunity needs to be validated with some prototypes, so I would need to demonstrate the educational concept, identify an appropriate sponsor, and establish what value a partnership could offer.

A podcast or a video demonstration could support that conversation, not by guaranteeing sponsorship, but by making the proposed partnership easier to understand. And that's a useful lesson for you [00:17:00] as a business owner. Maybe you have something similar that you want to demo your expertise in building something as a solution for that problem, that's where we are in the same boat, right?

So sometimes the most effective way to explain a potential partnership is to show what you're creating and why it matters.

Now,

Practical tools for podcast production and distribution

let's talk about the practical tools that I use. In my bonus episode, I also showed you that I'm using Metricool, so that is just one of the tools.

Recording a good video episode is only part of the process. You need to make it accessible to the people who might benefit from your expertise, and they could be on that social media platform, on that podcast player, depending on the geography of the regions where they are, right?

So you need to host your video podcast somewhere where the distribution is easy. And for podcast hosting, I've used Podbean. That is [00:18:00] my hosting platform that provides the infrastructure for publishing and also distributing all my episodes. I've connected Podbean to ChatGPT through the MCP, the Model Context Protocol. That allows me to explore how podcast hosting and publishing can become part of a more integrated business workflow, because it informs automatically which previous episodes were most listened to, so that I know, by the listening behavior, which new episodes I should put out in the next seasons, right?

But once a video podcast episode is recorded, I wanna create more than just one useful episode. There must be more than that, right? And that's where Descript becomes relevant. I use Descript to work with audio and video recordings, and its transcript-based editing features make it easier to refine an episode and create shorter content. I have also connected [00:19:00] Descript to ChatGPT through its Model Context Protocol, MCP, which allows me to explore AI-assisted podcast production workflows directly from ChatGPT. So for example, I might extract a 60 second psychological explanation or a short demo of a learning app, and that content can be then distributed through relevant social media channels. Like I said, I only publish my advent calendar things or the learning apps in TikTok because it's my sandbox, right? Where I do my experimentation. And that's where Metricool comes in. I use Metricool to support my content planning, scheduling, and performance analysis.

And if you are comparing social media management platforms, schedulers, don't forget my Creating Reorganized bonus episodes comparing Metricool and SocialBee, which is linked in the show notes. Basically, Metricool helps me examine which topics and formats on social media get attention.

[00:20:00] But I don't wanna confuse attention with actual business revenue, right? So a video receiving many views doesn't necessarily mean that people are interested in purchasing a product or hiring me as a consultant or whatever. So I need a way to manage relevant customer relationships, and that's where ActiveCampaign fits into my business.

I use it for contact management and marketing automation email lists, right? So for example, a listener might visit a landing page of mine and request an education resource via a form and subscribe to receive updates via my email newsletter. I can do segmentation based on which landing pages are visited,

With appropriate consent, I can provide relevant follow-up information. So the overall process looks like this. I demonstrate my expertise through a video podcast. I use [00:21:00] Descript to prepare additional content, and then I distribute it with support of Metricool, and I use ActiveCampaign to manage appropriate customer communication.

Now, these tools do not automatically create a complete business system. You still need a strategy and properly configured workflows but they can help you turn one episode into several reusable business assets.

And I will include links to the relevant tools in my show notes. Some of them are affiliate links, meaning I may earn a commission if you purchase through them at no additional cost to you

All right.

How to apply expertise podcasting to your own business

Now I want you to apply that to your own business. Choose one problem that your ideal customer frequently encounters, something that falls directly into your professional expertise, then design a video podcast episode around that problem. Start by describing the [00:22:00] situation. Explain why that happens and show how you would analyze that, and offer one practical recommendation for free.

For example, if you are a leadership consultant, you might explain why employees resist organizational change. Maybe you are a financial consultant, Then you might explain how you evaluate a particular business decision. And if you're a professor, you might translate one research finding into a practical business application.

The important thing is to demonstrate your thinking. Do not copy someone else. Do not copy AI. Just demonstrate how you would solve that problem because this is a test for them, whether they want to buy from you or not. Do not simply describe your qualifications. They don't mean anything to them. They don't know what they can do with them.

You need to ask yourself, how can you make an episode that becomes a [00:23:00] reusable resource for you, which you can send to a potential customer before a consultation, embed on your service page, or create short clips from?

And also, could it help customers determine whether your approach is relevant to their situation? That's your experiment. One problem, one demonstration, and one reusable business asset for you.

Now I

Why producing a video podcast matters strategically

wanna turn to a more strategic question. Why are you producing your video podcast? Is it simply because you enjoy talking about your professional interests? That's a perfectly reasonable motivation if you have time for that. But if you are producing a business video podcast, it's worth defining what you expect it to contribute. Perhaps you want to attract consulting clients, educate potential customers, establish credibility in a particular market. Or perhaps you want to demo a new [00:24:00] product or service. Those objectives aren't identical, and they should influence heavily the episode you create. For me, Creating Reorganized serves several purposes.

It's a place where I share psychological research and business thinking. It's a way to also document my experience with AI-supported entrepreneurship and to leave a legacy also for my own children. But it's also an opportunity for me to explore potential business models, to test the market, and as such, it's becoming a collection of useful business assets for me and also for you. So these are also resources that people like you, Creating Reorganizers, can discover, share, and revisit. And that's how I want to evaluate the long-term contribution, not by counting downloads, because they vary according to my seasons and also my lectures, but by examining [00:25:00] whether my podcast episodes help you understand my work and create meaningful business opportunities, create impact.

And that last word is the most important reason for me why it matters to me. As a professor, entrepreneur, and mother, I have to make deliberate choices of how I use my time. I enjoy teaching, I enjoy consulting, and I enjoy conversations about psychology and business, and I enjoy coding.

But I cannot personally explain all my experience and expertise to every potential customer. And I don't wanna build a business that depends on my constant availability, And that's what makes video podcasting so valuable for me. I can record an episode once and someone can listen to it when it suits them. The teacher appears when the student is ready, right? Perhaps while commuting, while exercising, and perhaps [00:26:00] while they are deciding whether to work with me or not.

So this episode does not replace a professional relationship. Of course not. But it can make the first conversation more informed. And for me, that's a very practical way to connect business development with the life I want to live according to my vision of life. So let's bring all of this together. If you're a consultant, coach, professional service provider, or even a professor, your expertise is one of your most important business assets. But leads need a way to understand its value before they meet you. Video podcast can help you demonstrate how you think, analyze problems, and also develop recommendations.

And when you combine that video podcast with a deliberate content and customer communication process, it can become so much more than a weekly publication. It's part of your business development infrastructure.

So here's my question to you: What is one problem [00:27:00] your ideal customer faces that you can analyze in a podcast episode better than anyone else? Start with that problem. Show how you think, and give your listeners something useful they can apply, so they will come back for more.

Because the objective here is not to convince everybody to work with you. It's to help the right people recognize when your expertise is relevant to them. Remember, it's all about the questions. Better questions create better businesses.

I hope this was valuable for you, and I'll see you in the next episode. Until then, happy creating reorganized according to your vision of life.