In business the Credibility Statement is as essential as a business card.  You need to be able to say who you are, what you do and how people benefit from what you do in as little as 90 seconds.  As we discussed in a previous article, the Agenda Statement is a great way to begin a meeting with a prospect or client.  This 45-second piece of magic lets your prospect/client know the purpose of the meeting and what you’re going to cover.  When you follow your Agenda Statement with a concise and crisp Credibility Statement, it’s like delivering a 1-2 punch to the way your prospect/client perceives you.  Remember that people do business with people they like and trust, and how you are perceived often determines whether you’ll get the deal or not.

The Credibility Statement can help you lower buying resistance and communicate that you are a competent and successful professional.

• Positive Effects of a Credibility Statement:
• It will position you as a unique and highly competent expert
• It will communicate how clients benefit from your product or service
• It will convey your value
• It will let the prospect know you  have worked with businesses like theirs before

There are four parts to the Credibility Statement:

1. My Company and Me
2. Typical Client
3. Success Story
4. Transition to Discovery
5. My Company and Me.

My Company and Me

Open the Credibility Statement with a feature-filled introduction of your company and yourself.  When I say “feature-filled” I mean a paragraph with 7-8 sentences that speak to:

• Your company’s history
• Your company’s niche or area of specialization
• 2 or 3 features about your company
• Your relevant experience

Here’s an example introduction from the financial services world:
Mike I am not sure how much you may know about Cedar National Bank.  Actually CNB was founded by a small group of entrepreneurs in 1954 and has grown into a premier private and business bank.  We are now the second largest independent bank based in the state with assets exceeding $16 billion and we are the only bank in the eastern United States that has been recognized by the Greenwich Associates with six awards for Excellence in Business Banking.  We have over 65 branches in the tri-state area.

I’ve been in banking for 20 years, and I have spent the last 7 of those years with Cedar National Bank working with food manufacturing companies in the Hudson Valley.

Typical Client

You want to follow up your introduction with a description of your typical client.  Your description should resemble the prospect or client you are speaking to.  Doing so will build credibility because it will give your client/prospect confidence that you have worked with clients like him before.

Example typical client: I typically work with large agribusiness companies who want to execute a long-term growth strategy.  And I usually bank the company itself and then the key executive officers too.

Success Story

During your Credibility Statement you want to share a success story that illustrates how one of your clients recently benefited from working with you.  There are three parts to telling a compelling success story:

Issue: Describe the issue in a couple of sentences.
Resolution: Explain how you helped your client resolve the issue.
Benefit: Explain briefly how your client benefited from the resolution.

Example Success Story:
For example, recently we were able to provide a $5.5 million business loan to a frozen foods company so they could modernize their flash freezing equipment and add on 10,000 square feet to their production facility.  Of course, we also welcomed the opportunity to work with the business owner on reaching personal financial goals as well, and we were able to provide a creative financial solution to help him finance a vacation home in Lake Placid.

Transition to Discovery

The last part of your Credibility Statement is transitioning into the Discovery Step.  We transition by seeking permission to ask questions.  Like with the Transition in the Agenda Statement, we wait for our prospect/client to say “Yes” before moving on.

Example Transition to Discovery

Now that you know a little about Cedar National and me, may I ask you a few questions  (Wait for a yes!)

Reserve Power

The Credibility Statement is a powerful tool you can use to quickly create a great impression in many situations.  For example, just last week I used my credibility statement on my flight to Mexico City when my neighboring passenger asked me what I do for a living. How many more situations can you think of?

G.A. and Paul have met in the Garden State of New Jersey to talk about what to get their mother for Mother’s Day (which is May 10, by the way), and to tape the May Day episode of the Pay Day podcast.

The credibility statement of the most important aspects of a sales conversation. Use this short, quick statement it to allay the prospects fears and position yourself as an expert. Here are the four parts of the credibility statement: 1. Your company and you, 2. Your typical buyer, 3. Success story, 4. Transition into discovery in the form of a question. Post your own credibility statements at silverbulletselling.com.

So today G.A. and I will be talking to you about Pre-Call Planning and how it can help you close more sales.

1. Create your vision
2. Create goals that will realize your vision
3. Create your game plan including the activities/tasks/behaviors that will accomplish your goals
4. Develop a score card to track your activities and goals
5. Execute mid-game adjustments (through the Monthly PDM*)
6. Plan the celebration for when you exceed your year-end goals (this includes how you’re going to spend your bonus money!)

In the next two issues we are going to break down each of these steps to help you develop your game plan.  In this edition we are going to talk about the first three steps.

Step 1: Your Vision

Nearly all great accomplishments in life begin with a vision or a dream.  We as human beings have the unique ability to imagine our future before we create it.  In fact, the future we imagine, to a large extent, determines the future we eventually create for ourselves.  Perhaps the greatest of all human abilities is the capacity to create, on purpose, the vision we intend for ourselves.  Success is not going to happen for you unless you see the possibility of it happening first, and then build a vision and a plan that will generate results.

Some people seem to have the ability to turn their dreams into reality.  How do they do it?  While many people fall into activities that seem urgent and build habits by accident, top performers do it differently: they start with the end in mind (their vision) and work backwards from there.

Vision is not as complicated as many experts make it out to be.  It is simply a compelling description of the ultimate destination you are trying to reach.  It is a clear explanation of what the destination looks like and feels like and what the reward is for all the effort it will take to get there.  The vision does not lay out how you will achieve this goal, but it does create an excitement-generating snapshot of what it will look like when the ultimate goal is achieved.  An effective vision motivates you to get up every morning and do the activities you need to do (especially the more unsavory ones) to make what you want a reality.

Creating Your Vision Statement

The whole idea here is to describe your vision and expectations in vibrant color to motivate you.  Effective vision statements have three different parts:

1. Definition of vision: Identifying the objectives of your vision and what it means to be successful.
2. How you will realize the vision: Understanding the behaviors and activities required to realize the vision.
3. Reward of realizing your vision: Identifying the rewards for realizing your vision.

Step 2: Your Goals

Goals provide the stepping stones to realizing your vision.  Remember, that to be effective, a goal must be SMART by satisfying the following 5 SMART elements:

S = Specific – The goal must be specific and clear with no ambiguity.
M = Measurable - The goal needs to have a measurable outcome.
A = Achievable - The goal must be achievable, practical and possible.
R = Realisitc - A goal needs to be realistic with the resources available (time, energy, capital, people).
T = Time specific - A goal must be achievable within a defined period of time.

Example Goals:

• $5MM production in 2009
• Bring on 4 new clients this year
• Grow my revenue by 25%

Step 3: Your Game Plan

An effective game plan includes the activities, tasks and behaviors that will accomplish your goals.  The key to an effective game plan is that it lays out in no uncertain terms the level of activity you need to do in order to accomplish your goal.  For example to accomplish the goal of bringing on 4 new clients this year I will have to make 20 calls to prospects every week.

So there you have it…the first three steps to accomplishing your vision.  Stay tuned next month when we will talk about the final three steps:

Step 4: Develop a score card to track your activities and goals
Step 5: Execute mid-game adjustments
Step 6: Plan the celebration for when you exceed your year-end goals (this includes how you’re going to spend your bonus money!)

Download the SMART Goals Worksheet

Effective game plans and effective execution are two of the fundamentals that set top performers apart from the rest.  That’s what was missing in my early January goal-setting sessions.  I knew what I wanted to accomplish, but I had no idea what activities, tasks and behaviors I had to execute to accomplish it.

As a Sales Professional the amount of success you have depends solely on your ability to create and execute an effective game plan.  Most people have a lot of difficulty navigating the muddy waters between setting goals and executing on those goals.  The top producers in any industry have a game plan to turn their goals into activities and then execute those activities to create results.  This is why top producers blow the doors off their numbers and they do it year after year!

The Vision-To-Reality Process: A Navigation System To Success

If you were planning to drive cross country, what are the three most important things you would pack to take with you?  Music to pass the time…probably.  Cell phone to stay connected to the outside world (your buyers)….certainly.  A GPS system to help you find your way across the deserts and mountains…definitely.

Think of a game plan as your navigation system to success.  It will keep you on course so you can accomplish your goals and eventually realize your vision.  A game plan is standard equipment to Sales Professionals who want to succeed.

Your job right now is to create your goals for 2009 and then figure out your game plan – the activities, tasks and behaviors you have to execute to make these goals a reality.  With this in mind we offer you a proven six-step process for making your vision a reality:

1. Create your vision
2. Create goals that will realize your vision
3. Create your game plan including the activities/tasks/behaviors that will accomplish your goals.
4. Develop a score card to track your activities and goals.
5. Execute mid-game adjustments
6. Plan the celebration for when you exceed your year-end goals (this includes how you’re going to spend your bonus money!).