"Credibility is your believability, reliability, and plausibility as a business"
Business partners, clients, and potential customers must all be able to believe you and rely on you if you want to keep them or win them over. Credibility and trust are vital to being respected by your peers, your customers and for a business, this is important to take note of.
Credibility is key when determining if you’ll succeed or if you’ll crash and drift away and be eventually forgotten. Regardless of how good your service is or how efficient and beneficial your product is, to stay relevant, you need to be seen as a credible business.
According to a 2011 study, there is a positive correlation between a CEO’s credibility and the reputation of the organisation they represent when employees of a Fortune 500 company were surveyed.
In short, how credible you are can be reassuring to customers who may be on the fence about purchasing from your company. It’s a vital element when looking to attract new customers, employees, partners, and investors. How credible your business is, determines whether people deem your business as worthy of their time or money and both are necessary if you want your business to be successful. That’s why it is sometimes referred to as, “credibility currency.”
Building credibility is usually an exponential process and as you become more credible in the public eye and grow as a result, it becomes easier to prove time and time again why employees, customers, and others chose your company to begin with. However, this process can sometimes be hard to start. It can be damaging if you find yourself unable to build upon this extremely necessary trait, especially when first starting your business. Although, even in the later stages of your company, losing your credibility can be a death sentence for most business endeavours.
Credibility relies on trust and trust isn’t easy to come by without putting in the effort (https://www.excelifysolutions.com/post/building-customer-trust). This doesn’t mean it has to be a complicated endeavour; however.
Display your achievements proudly
You’ve earned these achievements both big and small and there’s no need to hide them. In fact, some achievements will speak about your credibility and showing them off can show your customers, partners, and employees just how far your company has come and (with that) how it’s grown in reliability.
This can make a huge difference. By showing off how much you’ve grown, many of your peers will be more willing to respect your business and respect somewhat goes hand-in-hand with credibility.
Testimonials should be shown off too
Use your customers’ words/ reviews to your advantage to boost your credibility. Customers are more willing to trust the word of a fellow customer after all. Moreover, any business partners you have will see that your customers are happy with you, making you a more credible business in their eyes.
Share reviews on your website, on social media, via email marketing campaigns, wherever you can. You should be proud of your positive reviews and considering this may be the easiest way to build upon your credibility, you should use what you have to your advantage.
Consistency is Key
Your advertising, marketing, and tone should stay mostly consistent. It’s more than ok to evolve as a company and change should be embraced as you adapt to whatever changes come your way. However, it’s harder for clients and partners to become better acquainted with a company that’s constantly changing. Therefore, it’ll be harder for you to build any kind of credibility with them when they can’t even familiarise themselves with your brand.
Lead by example
As stated before, credibility relies on trust, and you must be trustworthy if you want to be viewed as a credible company. This won’t happen if you say one thing only to then do another so be sure to practice what you preach.
Show that your words are true by being honest about them in the first place. Be open and transparent about how your company functions and show that you have nothing to hide. Customers and other companies aren’t likely to get involved with a business that isn’t deemed credible and this starts by building trust.
Credibility is an attribute that businesses should strive to attain and cultivate. It isn’t always easy to do so but it is a crucial trait to have if you want to succeed. Credibility can usually mean the difference between having loyal customers and having customers jump ship to find a more reliable brand. Between those two, it’s easy to see which is the preferable option and as a result, it should be obvious why credibility is so important.
Hopefully, after reading this, you have a better idea of what credibility means to a company and what steps you can take to build upon your own. If you are still unsure and you’d like to learn more, consider visiting the Excelify Solutions website at https://www.excelifysolutions.com/ or send us an email at contact@excelifysolutions.com.