In order for them to trust you,
they need to believe you:
How to build your credibility
In our last post, we looked at how to build tremendous momentum over a series of events.
You learned that Kate Smith had completed a handful of bond sale marathons:
- First marathon: $1 million
- Second marathon: $2 million
- Third marathon: $39 million — the marathon whose secrets we’ve been uncovering
- Fourth marathon: $110 million
She raised a total of $600 million dollars in the 1940s — $7.2 billion dollars in today’s money.
And you learned that of all these things she did, from asking for the order 65 times … using an overall theme of sacredness … using specific themes … sharing her deep personal dream with her audience and asking them to help her fullfill it … promoting each marathon like a major Hollywood movie …
… without one crucial element, she would have done a royal face plant and never would shatter each prior sales record with new higher totals.
Given the fact 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 understand this extremely important element:
What is credibility? And why do you need it, anyway?
It begins here with this eternal truth about all people, in 1940 and today:
Importance of Trust through Credibility: Kate Smith’s audience put enormous importance on her integrity. This is based on their experience and magnified by the anxiety that followed, that they are often the object of exploitation, manipulation, and control by others who have their own private interests at heart.
- Faith: they increased their “will to believe” in a public figure who they thought demonstrated the virtues of sincerity, integrity, goodfellowship, and caring for others
- In Pain: they brought to the broadcast their own unmet wants and expectations based on their experiences in a society that took advantage of them
Importance of This for You:
Today, there is a lot of distrust in salespeople and in messages that blatantly sell. It’s always been that way: nobody likes to be sold, but everybody likes to buy. And if you knock on the door of a buyer but have no reputation (or worse, a bad reputation earned through past misdeed or by association with others), your challenge is to begin building your integrity one action at a time and to be consistent in doing so.
Kate Smith’s audience believed she demonstrated sincerity, integrity, goodfellowship, and caring for others. Why did they believe? She built it up through years of consistency.
But what about using testimonials? Can you fast-track to credibility and trust with customer testimonials in your marketing or advertising? Yes, but only so far. The more weight your endorser has with your prospect, the more likely your prospect will invite you in and chat over coffee while you introduce yourself. (And Kate Smith used testimonials masterfully.) Meanwhile, compare these three:
- Testimonial in brochure, on website: “I was in pain. Then I found your product. My life has turned around completely. Thank you Dr. Fred Jones for giving me my life back. I highly recommend this to everyone.”
– Joe Blow, Smuckersville, Georgia - Testimonial in brochure, on website: “I was in pain. Then I found your product. My life has turned around completely. Thank you Dr. Fred Jones for giving me my life back. I highly recommend this to everyone.”
– Joseph P. Blow III, retired Chairman and CEO, Industry Leader Corporation - Introduction via email or note: “Hi Michelle, I really want you to meet Freddie Jones, who I’ve known for years. He’s a good guy, a trusted personal friend, and tells some wicked jokes after a couple of beers which I’ll spare you. I told him to call you — I really think he can help with that pain in your back. He’s worked wonders for me. We still on for lunch Tuesday? I’m buying this time.”
– Joe
You can clearly see that the first one has little effect on you, the second only if you’ve heard of this high-powered executive, and the third? You’re going to take the call from Dr. Fred when he calls and make the time for him by setting up an appointment. It’s moved from the cold, impersonal testimonial to your red-hot network endorsement.
But remember, one false move in your integrity and expect your prospect to turn on you instantly like a vicious, hungry, abused Doberman.
Okay, let’s take a deeper look into building trust through credibility, and begin by answering the question: What’s credibility?
What is credibility?
The key to credibility is this: your consistent words, behaviors, and actions slowly result in and establish your credibility. And just like consistently heating water to turn it into steam, consistently building your credibility turns it into trust.
Before we get to what consistent words, behaviors, and actions you use to establish your credibility and how to consistently build that credibility into trust, let’s find out . . .
What is credibility, anyway?
Please tell me:
Trust results from credibility. So we need to have credibility first. But what is credibility? And is it the result of something else, like trust is?
Credibility is:
- the quality, capability, or power to get your audience to believe
- you yourself being believable or trustworthy
- your audience being capable of believing
- believability itself
You can see the key word is belief.
Usually, people don’t instantly believe in something or easily change their existing beliefs to accommodate something new. And a lot of the time, they aren’t even aware of their beliefs, since some are hidden deeply and operate in the background.
Right away, we can learn two quick marketing lessons from the definitions:
- Lesson #1: credibility begins with you. You need to be believable
- Lesson #2: your audience has to be capable of believing
Let’s take a deeper look at each lesson, with some real-world examples:
Lesson #1: credibility begins with you:
You need to be believable, whether you have a reputation, good or otherwise, or don’t have a reputation at all because you’re unknown. Your reputation is simply a moral judgment based on your audience’s beliefs, which come from your consistent words, behaviors, and actions.
Let’s look at both having a reputation and having no reputation at all:
- you have a reputation through your past or through your association with others, whether honorable or not:
- by building on your current reputation, you can increase your credibility and make yourself more believable. Since you don’t operate in a vacuum, let’s look now at connecting yourself with others for ideas on building your reputation:
- by connecting yourself with others, you can harness their good reputation or impartial approval and transfer that to yourself for your benefit (and nearly all of the following can be put into testimonials and other forms of proof). Very simply, you use outside, objective, third-party references for your own benefit, such as:
- holding a professional degree or license or exclusive membership such as MD, Attorney at Law, or membership in a professional or exclusive organization
- having a stellar client roster or customer list: it’s hard to argue with success, and an A-list of clients or 1,000,000 name prospect list does the arguing in your favor – one of my former colleagues includes the following in his bio: “along the way, he has worked with award winning artists such as Snoop Dog and Norah Jones” and another, a branding and naming expert, named the Ford Explorer and the American Express Optima card
- serving in an industry association leadership position: this is a tremendously powerful way to build your credibility — by raising your visibility as a leader
- delivering speeches or addresses to important groups or groups including important people
- having your content carried in recognized publications or being interviewed by the news media — such as your local newspaper, TV station, industry magazines, or well-known websites
- having partners or authorities recognize you for your technical expertise or credibility (certification, technical award) – my business partners at Axero Solutions are recognized by Microsoft as Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and sit on the committee that creates the exams that others must take to become Microsoft certified
- winning awards and recognition from well-known industry, nonprofit, and government organizations (such as trade associations, the JD Powers & Associates auto award, or the US Department of Commerce’s Malcom Baldridge Award) — my friend took this route, and was formally recognized by the president of South Korea, the City of San Francisco (she even had a San Francisco day named in her honor), won a business award from the US Department of Commerce, and has a testimonial from the former chairman of Korean consumer electronics giant LG
- gaining the endorsements, testimonials, and introductions to others through the people and organizations above
- or simply name-dropping the well-known organizations and individuals you have been associated with
- you have no reputation: you’re starting out and have no track record or experience:
- the Catch 22 of every graduating student looking for their first real job and presenting a resume proving their lack of experience
- the Catch 22 of every business or professional breaking into a new industry, new market segment, or new use for an existing product
Look through the list above about connecting with others and see which of them you can apply for your own situation so you can start a track record and get some experience.
And remember, your reputation is simply a moral judgment.
Lesson #2: your audience has to be capable of believing:
If they’re closed to new ideas, their wallets are padlocked. Let’s look at three examples of earning your audience’s credibility by gaining a toehold to start the credibility-building process:
- Easy to earn: It’s easy to start building credibility if the perceived benefit is great, the entry price is low, and none of it requires any change — this is a reason for using low-priced trial offers for subscriptions
- Hard to earn: If they’ve been following the belief that success comes only to those who are formally educated or work long and hard, you’ll find they don’t believe you when you claim success is not highly connected with education or time or energy spent, or that you offer what look like shortcuts to success. “You can lose all the weight you want: no dieting, exercise, or anything else.” Hard for you to believe? What do you think most of your audience believes?
- Easy to earn and quick to lose: If you make claims that are hard to believe and are based solely on your audience’s hope, such as amazing restorative health cures that pull them back from the brink of death, your audience’s ability to believe you will be stretched and strained more than a young child reaching for his toys on the top shelf. For those few who do believe and buy in desperate hope, you’ve established beliefs that are nearly impossible to meet and you’re going to have a very high cancellation rate following your sales — and perhaps a few government regulators making your acquaintance.
Okay, we defined credibility as believability and even looked at two lessons and a fistful of examples that help you build your credibility.
But this definition still lacks a lot for our practical purposes.
It doesn’t tell us what goes into being credible and believable so audiences believe you and eventually trust you.
What are the exact, specific factors that go into establishing credibility? And what is the Biggest and Baddest factor, the Mother of all Credibility Factors?
All of this is as easy to understand as, “Your Honor, I call as my next witness . . .” So, find out in our next post covering Mass Persuasion.
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