Networking and 60 Second Commercials--Your Credibility

Networking Commercials and Your Believability

The fourth criteria of a powerful 60 second commercial is your believability. Michael Hepworth said it best. There are only three reasons why you don’t make a sale. Your prospect doesn’t want what you are selling. Your prospect can’t afford what you are selling. Your prospect doesn’t believe you. If you have either of the first two conditions, you don’t have a market for your business.

If you have a market, the number one reason for your lack of sales is prospects don’t believe you. You can have a wonderful product. You can sell at the lowest price. You can run a first class business operation. But if the prospect does not believe you, you will not make the sale. Let’s explore and what you have to do to overcome the credibility factor with network groups.

Believability Crisis

I cannot speak for other countries. Certainly in the USA we suffer a credibility gap. For generations we put trust and confidence in people with authority. No more. Political leaders, church and school leaders, business leaders, doctors, police, sport heroes—people we trusted have let us down.

As I opened my morning paper, here is what I found. The headline on the first page, “Friend of Police Chief Indicated in Slaying of Girl”. The Local Section of the paper: Ex-priest gets new trial on molestation charges.” On the Business Section first page: “General Mills recalls 5,000 Pizza.” Finally in the Sport section: “Tennis hero tested positive for steroids.”

On a daily basis we are flooded with images of fallen leaders. Stories parade before us on TV, on internet blogs and newspaper articles about people and institutions that have abused their credibility. We have become dull to scandals. The words our mothers taught us, “Don’t talk with strangers” have a deeper and wider meaning.

Your can relate your own examples of today’s crisis of mistrust. My purpose is not to beat the proverbial “dead horse”. It’s to remind us that we live in a climate of distrust. Institutions are working hard to regaining their trust. They hire PR firms. They change their policies to re-establish trust. They have a long road to travel.

The climate of uncertainty affects each of us. It affects every customer. Unless your customer has been living under a rock for the last ten years, they carry believability baggage. It is something you must address as a business owner if you are going to be successful with your commercials.

More on credibility in the next blog entry.  Your comments are welcomed...