by Shelley Webb | Feature Contributor
Last week in one of my groups, a person asked “What things do you do throughout your prospects’ buying process to establish your credibility with them?”
The first thing that came to my mind is that you must establish your credibility long before your prospect ever approaches you. In fact, you must establish your credibility with yourself before you attempt to establish it with anyone else.
There’s a song I like called “Some Nights” by the band Fun. The lyrics start out like this:
“Some nights I stay up cashing in my bad luck
Some nights I call it a draw
Some nights I wish that my lips could build a castle
Some nights I wish they’d just fall off
But I still wake up, I still see your ghost
Oh, Lord, I’m still not sure what I stand for oh
Whoa oh oh (What do I stand for?)
Whoa oh oh (What do I stand for?)
Most nights I don’t know anymore…”
Do you know what you stand for? Do you know what your business stands for? Once you know this, and walk your walk (because you won’t NEED to talk), your customers and potential customers will find you, will like you and will trust that you mean what you say.
Additionally, once you know this, you will know how to handle situations in your life and in your business that are currently unknown to you… because the answers will be based on what you stand for.
Zappos is an excellent example of this. They spend a lot of time developing and refining their core values so that both they and we know what to expect of them: a quirkiness with impeccable customer service and employee loyalty (my interpretation).
When I was in nursing school (many moons ago), we spent a lot of time determining our core values because they play an important role in our ability to help our patients. When students were asked why they wanted to be a nurse, they generally responded “to help people”. And generally, that wasn’t enough. Why? Because of core values. Like it or not, there would be some patients that nurses would be less excited to help.
And like it or not, even if your reason for going into business IS to help people, there will be people that you will be reluctant to help. Why? Same reason: core values.
For example: you may be asked to help a person promote a business that is completely against your values. Will you accept their money? Know yourself well enough to be able to answer on the spot.
If you’re not sure what you (and/or your business) stand for or what your core values are, there are many tools available to help you find the answer, some free and some not. Here are a couple that seem pretty good: Living Moxie and Life Values.
Both of those resources require an opt in but you can also just Google (or Bing or use Yahoo) “free tools to discover your core values”.
So I ask you again: what do you stand for?
Photo Credit: Konstantin Sutyagin via Compfight cc
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Shelley Webb – Social Influence Expert
Shelley Webb is founder of On The Webb Social Media, an agency devoted to teaching professionals how to position themselves as an expert in their field using the power of social media.
Having worked as a registered nurse for over 30 years, Shelley suddenly found herself as the soul caregiver to her father who suffered from dementia. She began writing a blog in order to support other caregivers and just by using the power of social media, rose from a simple nurse to an award winning blog owner, “social media rockstar”, sought after speaker and expert writer for Dr. Oz.
People began asking her if she had a publicity agent. Her response: “social media is my publicity agent”. Soon, requests for social media assistance came flooding in and so in January of 2012, Shelley founded On The Webb Social Media Services.
Born in Canada, raised in southern California, she currently resides in a small town in northern Idaho with 2 dogs, 2 tortoises and about 35 chickens.
On The Webb Social Media blog
The Intentional Caregiver blog
Twitter: @ShelleyWebbCSO and @ShelleyWebbRN
Facebook: OnTheWebbSocialMedia and TheIntentionalCaregiver
Google+: ShelleyWebb
Pinterest: OnTheWebbSocialMedia
