Businesses don’t make decisions people do, and people make business decisions for personal reasons. Personal and professional credibility is at the core of addressing the personal reasons that drive decision-makers to choose you over your competition. Do three things to earn personal and professional credibility and lifelong customers.

1. Demonstrate – Basic credibility is earned by showing your customer how your offering will work for them. Even better, let them show themselves. Nothing communicates product credibility more than letting the customer do it themselves. Equally important, if not more so, is how you demonstrate yourself. Answer questions honestly even if not in full agreement with your customer and you demonstrate integrity. Take notes when your customer is lamenting about their internal challenges and you demonstrate empathy. Ask clarifying questions in the face of heated objections and you demonstrate maturity. How you demonstrate your credibility is more memorable than a product demo.
2. Educate – Everyone benefits from working with people who bring new, relevant information to the table. Credibility is earned by sharing expert knowledge of your product/service, your industry and that of your customer’s. Advanced education comes when you can help customers, especially in enterprises, to understand the workings of their own company. Suppliers are often privy to information that doesn’t get through the complex communication barriers inside a company. When Boeing was making the transition from proprietary computing to open systems, many end-users didn’t know why applications were changed. Our salespeople educated business executives about the benefits of open systems. We were helping ourselves at the same time we were helping our Boeing IT partners who didn’t have enough hours in the day to educate end-users.
3. Advocate – Trusted advisor is an over-used phrase but it’s still meaningful. People buy from people they trust and with today’s speed of business the difference between your offering and that of your competitor’s, is typically small. The differences that interest decision-makers are indicators of whom with they’d rather work—you or them? Certainly, you want to advocate for your offering and you want other customers to advocate for you. However, the way you deepen your credibility is to advocate for others who can help the customer when you cannot. Some consider this a loss of control but, in truth, it’s a huge gain in credibility because the customer sees you as someone truly looking out for them.

I keep in touch with former executives at Boeing who I first met as prospective customers. After we had all moved on to different roles they told us over dinner one night that, “In the end, we chose you guys because we preferred working with you.” The project they referred to resulted in HP becoming the preferred server supplier to The Boeing Company. Not small business.

Companies don’t make decisions—people do, and people make business decisions for personal reasons.

©2017 Rick Wong, The Five Abilities® LLC

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