How to Create Magnetic Credibility That Makes Prospective Clients Say ‘YES’ to Your Offers.
Let’s say that you can attract all the new leads you want, the next hurdle to overcome is turning prospects into paying clients. One big reason why folks aren’t tripping over themselves to throw their credit cards at you is because they don’t trust you.
They don’t believe you and your claims. Â Fortunately, that can be easily changed.
You can quickly give your credibility a healthy boost – even if you are just starting out. Here you’ll find a few “trust building methods” that are easy to implement for everyone.
1) Stop Dwelling On What You Don’t Have.
Creating magnetic credibility starts with confidence. This is particularly important for newer entrepreneurs, but even established business owner often make the mistake of drawing attention to what they don’t have or can’t do.
If you don’t believe in yourself and your offers… And if you are the first one to focus on your shortcomings – your audience will follow.
For example, new service professionals often believe that because they have only been in business for on a short period of time, it somehow makes them less valuable! So they charge less and say things like “because I’m just starting out my fees are smaller.” The truth is your potential clients don’t care if you started yesterday or 10 years ago. What they do care about is whether or not you can help them!
Stop dwelling on the fact that you just opened shop an hour ago and get busy creating proof how valuable you are to your clients.
2) Show “Demonstratable Results.”
When asked what where some of the key criteria he used to decide what products to promote, Billy Mays – the famous pitchman – said “I’m looking for demonstratable results.” A way to instantly show that the product works.
I call it a HUB – Hot Undeniable Benefit of how clients are better off as a result working with you. And you goal is to develop and demonstrate your HUB as quickly as you can by creating real results for real clients.
Collect testimonials. Always be on the lookout for comments from raving fans. Or even better – create compelling case studies showcasing client’s results. It seems obvious, but it’s startling how few people actually do it!
Many of your clients will gladly share how you helped them and give you glowing endorsements. All you need to do is ask them. Noting builds trust (and nothing sells) like third party endorsements. Your bold claims will fall on death ears. But a favorable whisper from a 3-rd party will quickly move people to a buying decision.
Past performance. Even if you just started your business  and don’t have clients yet, you have most likely done similar work before. Maybe for your previous employer? Or maybe it’s something you implemented for yourself to solve one of your big problems. If so, you can get your old boss and colleagues to share how great you are at that type of work. Or tell your own story in a way that highlights the capabilities you now want to offer as a service to others.
Character endorsements. If you don’t have results yet – get them as fast as you can. Do a project for free if you absolutely have to. And while you’re doing that I’m sure you at least have some professional relationships and connections. Ask people who know you – and who are visible and recognizable in your market – to endorse you as an upstanding and reliable person. That itself could be huge when you just starting out.
Lifestyle proof. If your audience desires to achieve the kind of results you’re already enjoying, showcasing your lifestyle can help convince people you’re the real deal. For example, you could be sharing pictures of attending high-end events and meeting influential people.
Personally, I find this a bit challenging since I’m rather a private person and don’t like sharing details of my life. Plus, I usually don’t think of enjoying my life through the lens of my iPhone.
Still, since many of my prospects are professionals who are trapped in a “trading time for money” business model, sharing pictures or teaching moments from traveling the world while my business is still growing helps showcase that my strategies work.
3)Â Use Statistics and Implied Endorsements.
This is a really easy strategy, but I don’t see is used a lot.
This is helpful when you’re launching a new product or program and don’t have testimonials or case studies for it yet. With a little bit of research you can quickly find relevant statistics to back your claims or point of view. You can also just as quickly create “implied endorsements.”
For example, when one of my graduate Platinum Members Donna Kozik first started her business as a book writing coach she used quotes from successful people who credited writing their book as a trigger that accelerated their success.
Even though Donna never claimed, or even hinted in any way, that those folks where her clients, those quotes almost read as if they were crediting Donna for helping them with their book. Very clever!
When another graduate Platinum Member, Mary Allen, was launching a brand new program she also didn’t have any testimonials (obviously, it was a brand new program!)
I advised her to reach out to prominent players in the industry and ask them to simply endorse the methodology she was teaching. This was huge! Again, those statements read as if they credited her for their accomplishments.
You can use quotes from famous people and statistics in the same manner. The point is, these aren’t specifically endorsing you, but they are endorsing the process, technique, strategy or method that you help people use. Thus the term “implied testimonial.”
4) Develop Legitimizers
We automatically believe people in the position of authority. So give yourself a marketing advantage and turn yourself into a legitimate authority. Again, this is quite easy today.
Write a book. This used to be a hard, tedious and time consuming process. Today you can write your own simple book in one weekend and have it self-published a few days later.
Give presentations, teach workshops, and host teleseminars and webinars. Anytime you are in front of the audience, teaching on your topic of expertise, you are automatically perceived as authority. Aside from HUB testimonials there is almost nothing better than this to build credibility.
Create information products. This can be as easy as hosting and recording a teleseminar, or combining a compilation of articles into a special report. But the true power behind this approach is when you ultimately develop your own methodology to help your clients solve their problems and reach their goals.
As you can see, it’s easy to create your own marketing assets that make you look credible and help you close more deals. All you really need to do is put in a little time to develop them. Believe me, it will help you attract and enroll more and better clients with much less effort.
Thank you Adam for giving insights into how to reach out, being of service in a way that serves, others, myself and my purpose!
Hi Adam, I loved the article. Your words are always gold.
What an excellent post Adam!
And full of s many extremely viable and not terribly expensive
marketing ideas!
I love the way you advised some of your clients to sort of
or temporarily borrow credibility by using statistics and implied endorsements!
Also, if someone is still i good standing with one of their past employers and or even supervisors an they can offer a credibility boosting testimonial of some kind, but especially a video one!
That’s another terrific long term marketing strategy! Thank you for sharing anothe awesome post!
This one really has my mind racing with some short & long term marketing possibilities!LOL!