What does “credibility” really mean?
A while back, I was interviewed by a writer for a trade magazine regarding the most desirable characteristics in sales. She asked me what the #1 characteristic a salesperson needed to possess to succeed with his or her customers. I know that she was expecting me to say, “Trust,” but I didn’t. I said, “Credibility.” She was taken a bit aback, and said, “What do you mean?”
I replied that my definition of credibility is this: Credibility means that people believe what you are saying because it is you that says it. They don’t feel the need to check your sources, research your facts and claims, etc. Credibility means that, in the customer’s mind, “Troy said it. That’s good enough for me.” The writer asked, “Isn’t that just another word for trust?” I replied, “No, not at all. Credibility works at a higher level than trust. Trust is simply one of the prerequisites for credibility.” I explained it to her, and I’ll explain it to you.
In professional selling, trust means that the customer believes that you would not intentionally steer them wrong, and that you have their best interests at heart. That word, “intentionally,” is a big deal. “Trust” means that the customer allows for you to make mistakes in your verbiage, in your claims, in your references, and in your recommendations – and if the customer allows for these mistakes, that means that they will back-check at least some of those potential mistakes. You cannot have credibility without trust, but you can have trust without credibility.
See the difference? Credibility means that they don’t back-check you. Can we agree, then, that credibility is a much higher level of dialogue with the customer? Let’s talk about how to achieve it.
First, achieving credibility means taking something of a sales Hippocratic oath: “First, do no harm.” In sales, that could mean, “First, make no false statements.” This is a big problem for salespeople for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that salespeople want to be seen as experts – even if they’re not. Now, I’ve said before that becoming an expertise provider should be the goal of every salesperson; part of expertise, however, is realizing what you don’t know. The salesperson who decides to “wing it” and gives a false answer forever calls his claims into question.
The second reason is that salespeople fear giving the “I’ll get you that answer” answer to a question because it can slow down the selling process. Well….maybe it does, and maybe it doesn’t. The advent of technology means that we can be far more prepared with resources to answer questions than we used to be. I once sold for a distributor of bearings and power transmission products that represented and stocked over 150 product lines. If I needed technical information on all of them, my car wouldn’t have been able to store all the catalogs and technical documents I needed!
Today, however, we can carry all those documents – or access to them – on a smartphone. Think about it for a minute. What if you carried all your technical information on micro-SD cards (or whatever memory source your phone takes), labeled, so that if you had a particularly tough question to answer, you could simply load the proper document on your phone and give the CORRECT answer? That wouldn’t slow the process and your customer would respect your efforts. This, by the way, is one way that even rookie salespeople can generate credibility very quickly.
Another way of generating credibility is getting in front of particular problems. If there is going to be a problem such as a delayed delivery, incorrect product spec, etc., the credible salesperson finds out about it before the customer, and communicates with the customer as soon as possible – rather than just letting the delivery happen incorrectly and letting everything hit the fan.
A third way of generating credibility is never throwing your team members under the bus to the customer. This is difficult, but it’s the most common way I see that salespeople blow any potential for credibility. You win as a team, and you lose as a team – and when you lose, the credible salesperson says, “we messed up,” not “they messed up.” Take the lumps for everyone else – and then, fix problems in-house and behind closed doors.
Finally – and I know that this will hit some of you hard – credible salespeople stay at their jobs for a reasonable period of time. I talk to a lot of salespeople who change jobs on a frequent basis, and it hurts your credibility, both in the interview process and in the selling process. If you’re going back to your customers on an annual basis and saying, “Guess what – I’m selling something different now!”, you’re not going to have any credibility whatsoever.
Gaining credibility requires more than sales skills. It requires discipline in your actions and your conversations. It is, however, worth the effort, because it’s the highest level of business relationship you can achieve.
