The Best Way To Promote Yourself And Build Credibility -- Part III

The best way to build your credibility is to focus on your prospects or on their needs and wants. Don’t start off talking about your company or your product. In stead ask them what their needs and wants are. You don’t know that person, but they surely know what their needs and wants are, and they know why they are looking for a product or business opportunity.

It is your responsibility to focus on their needs and wants instead of focusing on your own outcome. You need to focus on helping your prospects with the things they really want to accomplish. This is the consultative approach, and it is based in the relationship business which hinges on one key element, building credibility.

As a marketing consultant, you have to build credibility. Are you focusing on building credibility? Or are you just showing and telling your prospects why they need your product or services? You have to build credibility first, because until you build credibility you won’t harness the power of word of mouth in your business. And you won’t get the same level of trust compared to somebody the prospect already knows and has a long-term relationship with.

There will be times when you don’t have something that fits the prospects needs and wants. You just have to be honest and tell them. You will save them time and yourself time so you can move on to someone else who might be a good fit for your offer.

As an independent marketing consultant, you need to know your company, products and operations in order to show your prospects that you know what you are talking about. You need to be able to position yourself as an expert who has the resources to help your prospects solve their problems and achieve what they want.

When you call prospects, you don’t have credibility. You can build some credibility prior to the call by doing research to gather some information about your prospects. By knowing something about your prospects before you call, the conversation can start off as if you know them and help to put them at ease and make them receptive to receive your message. They will feel that you do understand them because you are focusing on the things that concern them most. They will feel that you really understand where they are coming from, and it helps to build rapport a lot quicker.

How you handle the questions and information with your prospects hinges back to credibility, because your prospects want to know if what you are offering is genuine. You want to approach your prospects with honesty in order to enhance your credibility. When you call prospects beware of the way you introduce yourself, the questions you ask, and your tone of voice. All of these things point back to your credibility. Always remember you start the call with a primary negative perception, and you only have 20 seconds to turn it into a primary positive perception.

The reason for this is, people are not happy to hear from you when you call them, because you are interrupting their schedule. So you first have to think of how prospects would feel receiving your call. What would make them comfortable? How would you like to be treated on the phone? Don’t delude yourself into believing you have a right to barge in and try to own the prospect because you have some information on them or because you sent them a free CD or webpage.

Your mindset for your first call is to introduce yourself positively, and to find out if it is a convenient time to talk about the challenges each prospect is facing. You have to build rapport and credibility with your prospects. You have to find out what their needs and wants are, and you have to focus on their wants and needs and offer practical solutions.