4 Ways to Make or Break Rep Credibility

Credibility is a need to have for sales reps – but it's just one of many factors critical to winning a deal. It alone doesn't guarantee success, but without it your chances of winning that account are next to nil.

So the million dollar question: how exactly do you build credibility in the first place?

Admittedly, part of credibility is simply based on a prospect's perception of your credibility, especially when you haven't yet interacted. Many of our recent member conversations show that personal references and introductions made by mutual contacts help prospects view you as more credible than other suppliers.

While part of this may seem beyond your control, you can directly impact other aspects of credibility-building. We recently spoke with a few corporate buyers to get their perspective on vendor trust and reputation. These conversations revealed a number of key credibility-building factors, mainly:

ATTITUDE: "It's important that the supplier understand my world and is committed to my cause," one buyer stated in a recent conversation. Sellers must have a positive, "we can solve this together" attitude. On the contrary, hard line techniques, such as telling customers the price will go up by 20% if they don't commit within a few days, are a huge turn off. According to the same buyer, that's a sign to him that there was no loss in turning away that business.
PERCEIVED INTENT: According to the buyers we spoke with, perceived intent is vitally important. "Is the supplier self-serving or are they really educating me?" one buyer asked. He told us of an instance where his organization had been overbilled by a supplier. During follow up conversations to clarify the seller's complex billing system, the supplier joked, "where there's mystery, there's margin." While this comment was in jest, it immediately made the buyer doubt the supplier's intentions and ultimately, take his business somewhere else. "If I hadn't pointed out the mistake, would he have?  Can I trust someone like that to lead me down the right path in the future?" the buyer asked.
INSIGHTS: Insights are quite powerful and compelling – but can backfire if used incorrectly. "I've had situations where sellers thought they said something insightful when in fact it was not," one buyer we spoke with commented. "They may not have referenced faulty data, but may have drawn the wrong conclusion based on that data – and that's a sign to me that I don't want to do business with them."
CHALLENGING—AT THE RIGHT TIME. One buyer we spoke with commented how the seller constantly pressured him, as the customer, to share proprietary information that they as a company were not yet ready to share. Now the seller probably did not intend to make the customer uncomfortable, but the customer was very concerned about sharing this information with an outsider. While challenging the customer in itself is a good thing, doing so prematurely when you haven't yet achieved that trusted advisor status can make them uneasy and stall, rather than progress the deal.

The bottom line is that trust grows over time. As one customer put it, one wrong move by the seller can undo years of work in an instant, and "the relationship could come tumbling down like a house of cards."

SEC Members, now that you've delved into the buyer mindset, incorporate these ideas into your commercial teaching pitch.

What are your thoughts? What other approaches do you use to build credibility with prospects and customers?