How to Quickly Build Business Winning Credibility with Your Target Market

Ever wondered what separates businesses that make it big from those that fail to make a mark?
Here’s a clue…it’s not the quality of their products and services, nor their Google rank or even how well they differentiate themselves from their competition.
It’s an ability to quickly build credibility by demonstrating their value in a way that’s deeply meaningful to their target market.
After all, if you can’t convince your prospects that you’ve worthy of their attention, it won’t matter how good you are at what you do or how well you stand out from the crowd.
They won’t hang around to find out.

The 3 Keys to Quickly Building Credibility and Trust

Building credibility and trust takes time. That is true.
What’s also true is you can shortcut the process when you know the essential elements for building them effectively.
In business, there are 3 elements that have the power to build your credibility quickly with your chosen audience.

1. The Relevance of Your Experience

Experience matters a great deal to your prospects.
They want to know that you are good at what you do but also that you’re good at doing it for people like them.
So the first thing they will measure is the relevance of your experience.
Showing relevant experience tells you prospect that you understand both their industry and the idiosyncrasies of their business.
This is important because:

1. When you show an understanding of their sector and the specifics of their business you inspire the confidence that you have the relevant knowledge to get up and running quickly and do a good job
2. When you have experience of their size of businesses, they’ll feel more comfortable that your approach and, in many cases, your fee structure, will make a good fit

Of course, relevant experience is not the be all and end all.
Sometimes a prospect will be looking for a provider that has little to no experience of their sector. In these instances they will be looking for a unique approach and not someone clouded by past work.
That is why this first key element, although important, plays third fiddle to the next two.

2. Your Understanding of Their Problem

Empathy is extremely persuasive.
9 times out of 10 your prospects are coming to you with a problem that they can’t solve by themselves. A problem that likely has serious consequences if it’s not solved.
It’s likely causing both mental and emotional distress and so they are motivated to solve it.
But they don’t just want anyone to solve it for them. They want someone they can trust. Preferably someone who understands the problem and how it is affecting them personally.
Most of all they want someone who has dealt with it before and successfully overcome it.
The greater the awareness that you can show of their problem, the greater their belief that you can solve it.
Therefore, when looking to convince someone that you have what it takes to help them achieve their goals it’s just as important to communicate the problems you’ve helped overcome as it is to demonstrate the benefits of your products and services.
If not more so.

3. The Results You’ve Achieved

There’s nothing more persuasive than results.
Providing the most compelling differentiators in any business, your track record sets you apart from your competition. The quality of your results tell your prospect what they can expect from working with you.
Remember your prospects will not only be weighing you up against your competitors but also the endless alternatives to your services. Just because you are the best SEO company in town doesn’t mean that you won’t lose business to a PR company or cold call agency.
So it’s important that you not only focus on the immediate results but also the long-term impact of them.
For example, our clients want our help to generate media coverage but the ultimate result are the business and personal goals the coverage enables them to achieve.

Exercise

The reason why case studies are such powerful sales and marketing tools is because they communicate each of these three elements in a clear and compelling way, i.e. in the form of a story.
For your next exercise, I’d like you to write a mini case study for one of your best clients.
To help you I’ve split the case study into 3 sections and provided questions that will help you get the most important information onto the page.
Introduction

• What is the name of your client’s company?
• What sector does it operate in?
• What does it do?
• What was the role of the person you worked with?
• What did they want to achieve?
• Why was this important?

The Challenge

• Why were they struggling to achieve their end goal on their own?
• What barriers were in their way?
• What would be the consequence of their not overcoming these challenges?
• How did it make them feel?

The Result

• What result did you help them to achieve?
• Can you express this result in the form of a tangible metric that someone else can measure their own success by?
• What was the impact of achieving this result both on your client’s business and the individual you worked with?

Next Time

So far, we’ve spent some time looking at how to work with the people you know to generate leads.
In the next phase of the Prospecting Playbook course, we will look at how to build leads from beyond your network.

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