“Put cake mix in oven,
set oven temperature to
350 degrees fahrenheit,
and bake for 35 minutes.”
Wait! It can’t be that easy. Can it?
In our last post, we looked at the factors that go into building your credibility.
You learned that it’s just like watching and listening to a witness in a courtroom to see if you believe him or her.
And you learned the Mother of All Factors of credibility, the “talk is cheap” factor: Action.
Given the fact that Mass Persuasion is truly powerful, and given the fact that you are a responsible person truly concerned about the welfare of your prospects rather than merely being interested in harvesting their bank accounts, you absolutely need to make sure you put this next part into Action:
Consistency:
the thread that ties all factors together
We covered quite a bit in the two prior posts on trust and credibility (What is credibility? and What are the factors that establish credibility?).
You learned that credibility really is just believability.
If you think about these factors like gathering, measuring, and mixing all the ingredients and all the other effort in baking a cake, this step — tying them all together — is going to be a cake walk.
It’s simple:
“Put cake mix in oven, set oven temperature to 350 degrees fahrenheit, and bake for 35 minutes.”
The oven’s consistent heat of 350 degrees, continuously applied over 35 minutes, produces the cake. And your consistent credibility, used over time, produces the trust your audience has in you.
Remember that the key to credibility is that your consistent words, behaviors, and actions slowly establish your credibility.
There are two reasons:
- your audience’s suspicion and distrust about you, and
- you sabotaging your own efforts by not communicating the same message long enough for it to be effective in building the momentum your audience needs to finally trust you
So let’s take a look at these two. First:
Your audience’s suspicion and distrust about you
First, don’t take it personally that they’re suspicious about you. They don’t know you. They’re just suspicious about you like any stranger bearing gifts. They’re immediately asking themselves, “What’s the catch?”
You read in Mass Persuasion part 11 that your reason for building trust through credibility is simple: “their experience that they are often the object of exploitation.” They don’t want to be taken for a ride.
Like abused dogs, they see you approach with a smiling face and wonder if the hand behind your back holds the stick you’re going to beat them with — just like the last person who approached them.
Second, trust is the result of your consistency. Like consistently applying heat to your cake mix in the oven, the trust automatically forms over time.
That trust is based on the emotions of fear and security and the need to feel safe:
- If you’re always inconsistent, you become unpredictable like a wild animal and they won’t trust you. They may still love you, but they won’t trust you. (I love lions, but I’m not going to run up and pet them.) For them, the solution is simple: always carry weapons and wear armor when dealing with you. In today’s business environment, they create their weapons and armor with iron-clad legal documents
- If you’re always consistent in demonstrating bad intentions, they will trust you … to always be mean and nasty. For them, the solution is simple: why waste time and money on combat gear when they can just stay away from you?
- And of course, if you’re always consistent in demonstrating good intentions, they will love you and trust you. For them, the solution is simple: they feel secure and comfortable showing up without bringing their army of warriors with them.
The biggest benefit in being consistent with good intentions is this: instead of judging you moment by moment, they now judge you by the overall quality of your character.
For example, you fly to tropical, sunny Hawaii for a weekend vacation. While you’re there, a tropical storm rages the entire time, producing high winds, darkening the skies, and soaking the ground. I think we all know that Hawaii is tropical and sunny — the beautiful ads aren’t produced by lying, cheating scoundrels trying to separate us from our money. Instead of searching the terms of your vacation agreement for loopholes so you can get your vacation money back, you give Hawaii the benefit of the doubt and tell yourself you just caught nature having a bad day or two.
Your audience will give you the benefit of the doubt in cases where you aren’t consistent: such as when the service you deliver is less than your usual, or products they order arrive late, damaged, or their order is only partially fulfilled.
Sabotaging your own efforts:
not communicating the same message long enough
A famous cartoon I keep on hearing about in business books featured a character called Pogo who said: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”
In your case, you’ve gathered all the right ingredients, measured them precisely, and mixed and blended all of them perfectly. Your set your oven to 350 degrees, put your cake mix in it, and waited.
After five minutes, you took it out to see how it’s doing. And the oven got cold.
Then you put it back in. But all the heat escaped out of the oven.
You can see where you end up: lots of energy invested in gathering and mixing ingredients. Then a pan full of cold goo — not warm fluffy cake — after 35 minutes.
But I know you don’t do this with your business. I know you’re 100% continuous and consistent in communicating the same message long enough for it to build your credibility and get your audience to trust you and set aside its combat gear. Right?
Well, you ask, How long is long enough?
Your cake recipe requires 35 minutes of a continuous and consistent 350 degrees of heat.
Your business requires continuous and consistent messages for 35 days or 35 weeks or 35 months or 35 years.
Here’s why:
In your mind:
- you tend to overestimate the number of people seeing your message (they’ve put everything else in their lives on hold, including raising a family and earning a living, and are all anxiously awaiting your next communication so they can open it immediately) and you tend to overestimate the impact your messages have and underestimate the time it takes to be noticed and then have an effect on building credibility and trust in you. In your mind, you’re seeing “shock and awe” marketing
- by underestimating the time it takes, you tend to assume your marketing isn’t working — then go about changing your message prematurely to something new. You’re pulling your unbaked chocolate cake out of the oven and now putting in a sponge cake
There’s a rule of thumb in sales: 80% of sales are made after the seventh contact. Your marketing and advertising will likely take many more contacts. Keep that in mind for all your communications.
In their mind: it takes a number of steps just to find out who you are and what you offer, how it fits into their lives or not, and why they should consider you, then more steps to get to opening their wallet. At each step, you lose a bunch of people:
- it takes a while to even notice you’re there
- then they have to see if they believe you enough to pay any attention to you
- then they have you schedule the time to invest in finding out who are you (even if that means 10 seconds to click on your subject line and open your email)
- then they have to figure out what you do
- then they have to see if they can believe you at all
- then they have to figure out if it has any relevance to their lives
- then how much relevance
- then when to look into it further
- then to see how you compare to others
- then to consider the risk of contacting you for more information (they don’t know if you’re going to hard-sell them into buying on that first inquiry)
- then to …
While you’re seeing “shock and awe” marketing that turns the black night sky into day, most of them aren’t seeing anything and are in the dark about who you are.
Even if you got a whoppingly unrealistic 75% of people to move to each next step, out of every 1000, you only have 100 looking into your offer deeper (step 8).
Instead of moving people into Room 1 like a herd of 1000 cattle, then moving 750 to room 2, then 562 to room 3, 422 to room 4, 316 to room 5, and so on . . .
Isn’t there an easier, better, faster way . . .
. . . to shortcut these steps and convert more of your audience from shell-shocked skeptics to trusting believers – without sabotaging your own efforts?
Yes, there is!
In one fell swoop, you can get your audience to suspend their suspicions and distrust about you and make sure you don’t sabotage your own efforts (of course, you have to consistently continue your messages) …
Learn exactly where you start in establishing credibility: Find out in our next post covering Mass Persuasion.
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