Proving your Credibility in Business

Testimonials and case studies attesting to the power of your work are great ways to prove your credibility, so that your ideal clients feel confident about investing in themselves through working with you.

But what if you’re just starting out in a new field or niche and you don’t have that level of evidence yet?
Never fear, because here are two ways to create credibility at the beginning of a new business—and a third approach that helps entrepreneurs at every stage articulate the power of their work:

1. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.Make sure to use all the credibility that you created in previous occupations and highlight the qualities that made you successful. Whether you spent ten years wrangling five year olds as a preschool teacher without losing your cool or you were a rocket scientist, and now you’re teaching online marketing, what were the qualities of being a preschool teacher or rocket scientist that make you the best online marketing teacher ever?

2. Borrow from your new business category.If you’re in a new niche, let’s say you’re a life coach, and you don’t have any testimonials yet, look online for famous or influential people that your ideal clients respect, who are talking about how life coaching changed their life. These “subject matter testimonials” lend credibility to your entire enterprise, and, by extension, to you as well.

3. Project a strong offer.
In order to prove to your ideal clients that you are the “real deal” at any stage in your business development, you need to be clear about what the unique outcome or transformation would be for the client who does your work. How do you do that if you’re just starting out? The questions below will guide you in directly and succinctly articulating what you offer to potential clients…in their words (which is the key!). It’s part of our “Offer Communication” pre-work training series that you receive when you take advantage of our special early-bird pricing for our Speak-to-Sell LIVE Training Bootcamp, which is coming up in October.

• Choose one client who is your greatest success story. This can be somebody you helped in a past position, or in an unofficial capacity. Whether you were paid or not, this person took your advice and had amazing results, and you’d love to have 100 more clients just like him or her!

• What specific results did that person get from working with you? What were the specific outcomes? For instance, did Suzanne lose 20 pounds? Did Jonathan improve his relationship with his teenagers? Did Felicia organize her office? Do your best to channel THEIR words.

• What other transformations happened in your client’s life because of these results? Did Suzanne land an acting role that she had been hoping for? Did Jonathan start sleeping at night and lower his blood pressure. Did Felicia find important documents she thought she’d lost and double her productivity ? Again, do your best to say this the way THEY would talk about it.

• Now, what would have been the cost to the client if he or she had not taken your advice?

Don’t skip this step. When you pitch your $497 product or your $5,000 service, you have to understand that the cost to somebody not saying yes is high. So really look at and imagine what it would have cost this person if he or she had not worked with you. Would Suzanne still be struggling to make it as an actress and pay her bills? Would Jonathan be locked in endless arguments with his children, damaging their relationship and his health? And would Felicia continue to waste her workday because she can’t find things?
This exercise not only gives you the confidence to be able to project a strong and clear statement of the transformation that you provide, which we call your “offer,” but you now have descriptions of your work that you can use throughout your marketing channels, be it from the stage, on your website, in your book, or when talking directly to your ideal clients.

And speaking of connecting with your ideal clients, these words are also the key to being able to express yourself from live or virtual stages and make your Irresistible Offer pop for those who need you.

Join us for more at Speak-to-Sell Bootcamp, Live in Las Vegas this October! You’ve got a week to grab your early-bird ticket and jump in on our bonus pre-training calls.