Last week Seth Godin posted a brilliantly incisive post on the power of Doubt! Titled, The benefit of the doubt, he brought into focus, in my view, why we fail to move people. In his words: “The crowd likes the songs from the singer they came to hear, not the unknown opening act. The patient responds to medicine when he believes in the doctor who prescribes it. The client is far more likely to applaud your work if he’s already put down a big, non-refundable deposit. A huge part of making our work more effective is creating the environment where we will be given the benefit of the doubt. Often, creating this environment is at least as important as the work itself.”
This is really important to recognize. Specifically for small business owners struggling to scale, here are my translated actions for you to diminish that doubt. 10 Key actions to diminish doubt:
- Create human, meaningful video case studies that demonstrate your solution works in each relevant, vertical market.
- Build years of great content, month by month, showing you understand the issues that keep prospects awake at night.
- Win awards that your industry recognizes.
- Recruit exceptional talent.
- Treat every single interaction with prospects as gold dust.
- Serve first, sell second.
- Passionately nail deadlines. Set up reasonable expectations and over-deliver.
- Handle staff with a mentoring attitude.
- Invest heavily in making new hires a success.
- Don’t demonstrate to prospects why you’re better than the competition. Demonstrate why you are a better fit than the competitor to help solve the prospect’s issues.
These actions take time to make an impact, but gradually over time, you will prepare the ground for the market to stop doubting you.
