Show Notes
Bart: Welcome to the remarkability Institute. This is Bart Queen your host. Now, if you've been following me over the last couple of weeks, we've really been focusing in on some ideas around trust. In last week's episode, I gave you more of a high level overview of some trust concepts. I talked about the challenges that we face in building trust.
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00:02:02] I gave you some ideas around the benefits, the things that will come to us as a result of working through our trust. And then I really looked at it a deep dive in building trust from a visual perspective, as a communicator, from a verbal perspective, meaning more your content. And then from a vocal perspective, the idea on how you say things.
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00:02:27] Today's episode is a followup to what I covered last week. Now I come back to this idea that if you Google the number one trusted person in America, you're going to find that the name Tom Hanks comes up. But if you Google, what's the number one authentic person in the world. You will get zero. If you, Google.
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00:02:53] Who is the richest person in America. You'll find currently today, or when I Googled it, you'll get Jeff. So what I find interesting is that we can't pinpoint someone around authenticity, but we can pinpoint someone around trust. I come back to the idea that I shared with you last week. That's so very important in my mind that we need to look at trust as a critical factor that we focus in on.
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00:03:22] It is not something that you should leave to what I call the whim that you don't really think about. And last week, I gave you a challenge that when you wake up in the morning, before your feet hit the floor that you ask yourself, what's a number, one thing I can do today to build trust lost with my spouse, my child, a family member, or one of my good friends.
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00:03:46] And I had you keep it in the context of that close family idea before you start making an application to your customers or your clients, in this session. What I want you to do is begin to learn and understand some ideas around what I call credibility templates. And I want you to take those templates, build with them and begin to build your credibility in the market place differently.
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00:04:16] I want you to get rid of what I call, show up and throw up about your credibility. How many times have you heard someone say this good afternoon? My name is Bart. I'm with XYZ company. Our company's been around for 35 years. We've got X number of employees. Our revenue is X. We're a global company, and we're a leader in this.
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00:04:41] And you hear these long string of things, and you'll roll your eyes. If you're the customer, especially, and you say, who cares? I thought you came here to help me building your credibility by just giving a list of resume. It is probably not the most effective way to do it. I am saying I don't share that information.
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00:05:05] What I am sharing I am saying is don't make that the first thing out of your mouth builds your credibility uniquely stand out so that they can remember you. So I come back to where I started. This is something that you should take a look at critically and not leave to a whim. And what I want you to do is understand these credibility templates and be able to apply them.
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00:05:32] Now, here's what I know. You're going to find; you're going to build stronger relationships. You're going to create deeper connections, and you're going to be able to expand and make your ability to influence people far greater. One of my favorite quotes is from John Maxwell. That leadership is nothing more or nothing less than pure influence. Your ability to influence your friends, your family, and your clients is critical to your success.
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00:06:02] So, let me come back and just review two pieces of foundational information I shared in the last episode that really the effectiveness of our communication relies more on the character of the message than the content of the message. But most of us feel like it's the content of the message. And I see this over and over again because you'll spend hours and hours on a PowerPoint slide, but you won't even take five minutes to think through in this situation, in this business meeting at this conference, in this keynote speech, how can I build my trust factor with my listeners?
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00:06:44] The second thing I want you to remember around these foundational pieces is that credibility will continue to grow. Trust will continue to grow. The connection will continue to grow if credibility continues to go up, but as soon as that fails to go up, as soon as it is lessened, as soon as it is destroyed, the connection.
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00:07:07] Becomes a disconnect. And if you don't have a connection with the people that you're communicating with, why to bother share information because you want to strengthen those connections, remember everything that I've shared with you is about building trust, build relationship engagement, and the, for a level two, that everything is about building connection, building a conversation and building your confidence.
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00:07:33] And as we think about these ideas of trust, These are the things I want you to build in your confidence. I want you to have confidence in sharing who you are and what you're about, whether it's in a one-on-one, whether it's a small group around a boardroom table, whether it's in a training room of 25 to 50, or you're at a conference speaking in front of 250 people or 5,000 people, I want you to know how to build your credit bell credibility in a manner.
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00:08:06] That people immediately begin to say, I'm like him. I trust him. This is good. And when our interaction time is shorter, you know, it's even more critical when that executive says, I've got five minutes, give you, give me what you got. The first thing that come through your mind, go, how do I build credibility or deeds?
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00:08:27] The first thing that goes through your mind is, how do I sell this person? Where if you think about how do I build credibility and build a relationship, he or she will want you to come back, especially if you've engaged them about what you can bring to the table. But most of us don't think that way. I want you to start thinking that way.
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00:08:49] I want you to take a paradigm shift and the way you build your credibility. I want you to think about it uniquely based on who you're speaking to. So think about the things you did when you met your spouse or your significant other; what did you do to create conversation and trust with them? You shared stories; you shared experiences, you shared where you've been, you share how you felt about things.
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00:09:19] And if that connection started to build, if you felt like there was good communication, then the credibility begins to get stronger. So remember, within the first six months of any relationship, that communication trumps credibility, but after that six months, credibility trumps communication or overrides it; those are two amazing principals.
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00:09:42] Think about those as you're building relationships with your customer. So now, let's really get into these ideas. In the last episode, I gave you an overview, but today I want to get very, very specific.
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00:09:56]Remember that why trust is so important is because that we're capable. We're more capable of than what we think, and we're capable and building more, more reliability, we're capable and building more truth with the relationships that we have. W we're more capable of them believing in our ability of what we bring to the table, and in a business situation, someone having confidence in your ability is crucial to moving forward.
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00:10:25] The higher the trust factor, the lower the fear factor of failure, the higher the trust factor, the lower the fear factor of failure. They've got to have confidence in your abilities and what you bring to the table. And how are they going to know what your abilities are if you've not shared the skills and the strengths of your company and the skills and the strengths that you personally bring to the table, remember people buy from people, and they buy from people that they like.
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00:10:58] And as you share about yourself, Seamlessly sharing your strengths and abilities and examples and stories is a great way to build that without saying, hi, my name is Bart queen. This is where I went to school. This is what I bring to the table, and people roll their eyes at you. The other reason that trust is so important is that it creates that firm belief in your strength as a leader, as someone that can take them from point a to point B, that you can take them from uncertainty to certainty that you can take them from being unresolved to resolved that you can take them from.
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00:11:41] No action to taking action from not being able to make a decision to be able to make a decision. I think one of the greatest benefits is when trust is in place, the decision-making process is much quicker, but if there is a lack of trust, it becomes very, very slow.
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00:12:01]So let's look at this a little bit different perspective and guys.
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00:12:05]There are three major areas, three major buckets, three major concepts. When you go to build your trust and credibility that I want you to think about the very first is your character. The second is your capabilities. And the third is your commitment. Now, let me get into really what I mean about that.
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00:12:30] Let's look at the very first one, your character. What I mean by that is, do you walk the talk? Do you say, what do you do? What do you say you're going to do? Do you follow up? When you say you're going to follow up, do you send the information out? When you say you're going to send the information out, this is all part of your character.
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00:12:52] And if you go back to the first foundational piece, I gave you that the effectiveness of our communication is based on the character of the messenger and not on the content. It makes a difference. Think about a young person coming out of school with no. Job experience when someone asks them, well, what's the number one thing you can bring to my company.
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00:13:15] Most young people with no experience will say my sense of honesty, my sense of integrity, my sense of reliability. It's all character because they don't have the skills and strengths that they bring to the table yet. But if you're at someone at my point in life, It's not where I went to school. That's not so important as it is the skills and the strengths that I bring to the table.
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00:13:41] That's the second major bucket—your capabilities. Now, your capabilities are broken into two major buckets. There's what I call resume information positions. You've held titles that you've held where you went to school, places that you've worked. Experiences that you've had projects that you've taken.
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00:14:07] Those are your resume type information. The second bucket is your skills and strengths. Now I'm not saying that we don't put our skills and strengths on the resume. Um, they're there, but what I'm talking about is us sharing those skills and those strengths, what I teach our three-day speaker boot camp, one of the exercises for homework.
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00:14:33] I asked them to write down the top 10 skills and strengths that they bring to the table. And before I send them off at the end of the day, I ask, will that be easier or hard? The majority of people in the class will say, Oh, this is going to be difficult. I can only think of three. And some of these people have been in the workforce for 25, 30, and 35 years.
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00:14:55] And I think you've been in the workforce that long, and you can't pinpoint one, three strengths that you bring to the table more than three skills. But if I asked them, identify the top three areas in your life where you're trying to get better, your weaknesses or areas of opportunity, they won't give me three.
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00:15:14] They'll give me five to 10. I think there's something dramatically wrong. If you can look at yourself and pinpoint all the areas where you feel like you need to get better, but you can't balance that with all the things that you're doing. Well, I personally believe that we sell ourselves short. We don't give ourselves enough credit.
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00:15:35] Now, as you think about these skills and strengths, I'm not asking you to be arrogant. I'm not asking you to be cocky. I'm asking you to be confident. In what you have worked hard at developing and pre, please realize that for most of us, we overlook the most obvious. I can distinctly remember teaching a class.
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00:15:58] It was a public class, and I had two teachers in class, and I was having them do this exercise. And they came to the table with her, their 10 skills and strengths. And I looked at these two lovely ladies. And I said, please tell me that one of you put down your teaching skills and they both looked at me like, Oh my gosh, Bart, no, we didn't put that down.
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00:16:19] Each one of them have been teaching more than 25 years, but they missed the obvious, the things that they do on a day to day basis. I see this with salespeople all the time. I'll say, did you put down your selling skills? Did you put down your closing skills? Did you put down your account management skills?
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00:16:38] Did you put down your questioning skills? Did you put down your some type of foundational financial skills, budgeting skills? Your account planning skills they don't put any of those things down. They miss the obvious in what they bring to the table. The third bucket is your commitment. And what I mean by your commitment are proven examples.
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00:17:04] So I want you to think about this. Think about the last interview, where you're in. It might've been a few years ago, and maybe there was one recently the person interviewing you says, well, what's the number one thing you bring to the table? You told them my organizational skills. It's my reliability.
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00:17:22] It's my personal character. Whatever you answered. And I'll put a $20 bill on the table. That the next question by that person interviewing was, well, can you give me an example? No one should ever have to ask you that question. I see the same thing. When I'm coaching executives for press and media, they'll offer something about the company, a solution, a tool, or a product, and the reporter has to say, or the journalist has to say, can you give me an example?
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00:17:54] When you offer a capability, a strength, a skill, you should say what that is, for example, and follow it up immediately. No one should ever ask that. Now, remember if you followed with me at all on context structure, a structure of a good example has four main pieces to it. Who did you work with an organization, a team, an individual? What was the problem they faced?
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00:18:25] And please remember when you state that problem, you want to state that problem as a negative, as a negative, a lack of an inability to then the solution that you bring to the table. And then the result that you got. You want to make sure that you cover all four of those points; many people, when they give an example, they won't cover all four points.
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00:18:55] It's not giving a good, solid example. Who did you do it with? What was the problem? What was the solution, and what is it? What was the result you got? Now? These are the three major buckets that you want to build your credibility and. Pick and choose based on who you're speaking to. One of the things you always want to do is make sure your listener focused.
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00:19:20]It's by chance. Let's say you're getting asked to speak at a conference. They're going to ask you to send out a bio, and nine times out of 10, when you send out your bio, you're going to send out a fair amount of resume information. So when you get to the conference, I might get you to take a paradigm shift.
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00:19:40] Don't share more resume; share some more ideas around your skills and your strengths. That way, you get a broad scope of sharing who you are and what you're all about.
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00:19:52]Now, let's take a look at breaking those downs and putting in some type of a template that you can use.
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00:19:58]The first template is a very, very easy template and building your credibility. So if you're with me and you're listening, and you have a pen and paper, I'd like you to write this down. When you build your credibility, you want to not share more than four points. Three is what you strive for. Four are on the max.
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00:20:20] I want you to share two pieces of resume information, how long you've been at the company where you went to school, a position that you've held that type of resume information. So two different pieces of resume, one skill, and strength. And then what I call unique business value. Now let me explain to you what I mean by unique business value.
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00:20:48] What I mean by unique is listener focused. If I'm talking to a CFO, I need to gear that business value to the CFO. If I'm talking to a chief risk officer to the risk officer, if I'm talking to a technical person to the technical person now in our three-day class, we always talk about the listener, focus, listener, focused, listener, focused.
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00:21:10] This is the idea of it being a unique listener, focus on them. Business value is simply the, so what, what that means to them, but here is what I find interesting. The majority of people do not distinguish the difference between benefits and value. They are distinctly different benefits. Traditionally are very objective.
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00:22:17] If I was talking to you about a solution tool or product that would help you with complete and C or regulatory issues, I might say that the benefits are greater, accurate, greater compliance, greater transparency, especially it's around Sarbanes Oxley Bazell to one of that kind of key components. But the business value, the, so what to the CFO is what it means to him or her.
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00:22:48] Now that can mean sleep at night, a stronger reputation. You stay out of the newspaper. That is the value. That is the, so what business value is subjective, but if you don't know your listener, you cannot hit the Mark with value. Now, I don't want you to say the value of that is some other type of language will be stronger.
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00:23:18] What that means to you is I would strongly get you to say the benefits are the results are what you'll find is, but when it comes to value, I will get you to stress. What that means to you is. When I was teaching a class at NC state university with the MBA program, and we would teach this concept to the MBA students in their final, which was only a five-minute talk that they had to share with me.
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00:23:48] Anytime they offered a benefit of what they were talking about, a solution, a tool, a product, or service that they had worked with or came up with. I required them to it immediately follow what that means to you. So for every minute, every benefit there was what that means to you. For every benefit, there was a value for every benefit.
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00:24:08] There was a value. The benefit is the value of what that means to you is in conjunction with each other. Think about Volvo cars, probably the number one benefit that they bring to the table is safety because of the extra steel in the door. But if you'll pay close attention to their ads there. So what is typically said, your family, your friends, your mom, your dad, your children will always arrive at their destination.
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00:24:40] They will always arrive at their destination. We're not buying the extra steel in the door; we're buying this. So what we're buying that value, that can be extremely powerful. So I want you to remember, as you share your credibility, your credibility is your currency. Your credibility is your currency—the CEO of Pepsi.
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00:25:05] One said that the new global currency would not be money. It's not going to be money. It's going to be trusted. It's going to be your credibility. So on this template, I got you to do two pieces of resume, one skill, or strengthen unique business value. Now I'm going to give you an opportunity. You can switch that.
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00:25:29] So the second template, just kind of inverts that a little bit, guys. This time it's one piece of resume. Two skills or strengths and your unique value business value. So depending on what you want to stress, whether you want to stress your resume, or you want to stress your skills and your strengths, you have an opportunity to do both picks and choose what you feel like is most important.
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00:25:57] What I want you to remember is that your trust is your currency. Your credibility is your currency. These two templates will allow you to share about yourself in a clean, easy, crisp, conversational manner. Now, if by chance, you get asked to introduce someone to say at a conference or at a business meeting at a sales kickoff, use one of those templates.
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00:26:30] But add one thing to the very top of that. Start with some type of a grabber, something, a short story, a short example, maybe a quote, anything at the front end, then go right through that. So, let me give you an example. Let's say I was going to introduce my good friend, Joe. I might say something like this.
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00:26:59] When I think of Joe, the very first word that comes to my mind is integrity. And when I think about the definition of integrity, I think of that idea that he does what he says he's going to do, even when no one else is looking. That is a word that best describes Joe Joe comes to the table with 20 years of experience and helping people articulate their message.
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00:27:26] He comes with five years of experience of helping people do that, especially in the podcast world; probably one of the greatest strengths he brings to the table is his technology skills. He can work with any type of platform in almost any format. What that means to you is you don't have to make the same mistakes he made.
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00:27:48] What that means to you is you don't I'll have to reinvent the wheel. Let's welcome, Joe. That's a simple example of me following one of those templates and adding a grabber at the top as you want to introduce someone. You should be building your credibility in a seamless manner. And what I mean by that or stories and examples.
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00:28:15] If at the front end, you need to build your company, credibility, use the same template. And then if you have to build your credibility, because it's the first time you've been with someone, use one of the templates. So make sure you vary them. Remember that when trust is higher, the fear of failure is less.
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00:28:36] Remember that when trust is higher, confidence is stronger. Remember that trust is far more important in a relationship than your product or your service. If you think your product or your services most important, you're missing the Mark. It's that trust in the relationship that they're going to have with you, which is far more important.
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00:29:01] And then please remember from a selling perspective, if the trust is high and credibility is high, the chance of a referral of you nurturing that relationship and nurturing another relationship only is exponentially higher because you've cared for your customer or your client. Referral-based selling, as you know, is the best.
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00:29:27] It is the easiest compared to hunt and conquer. Get away from hunting, conquer, get into nurturing relationships. And you nurture that relationship by building your trust and your credibility. So, guys, I come back to what I said when we started this episode and what I said in the very first episode around trust.
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00:29:48] The trust is critical. It's something that we have to work on. Do not leave it to whim. Do not be lackadaisical about building your trust. Now, as you walk out the door today, as we end our episode, as we can in the session, I want you to think about taking one of those templates home. Sit at your desk, go to your office.
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00:30:11] Think through it on a pen and paper when you're having a glass of wine, cold beer, or a cup of coffee and build your credibility template. And then practice saying it. I want you to be able to go through one of those templates in no more than 90 seconds. No more than 90 seconds. Keep it clean and crisp. I want you to have the confidence that you can build stronger relationships.
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00:30:36] I want you to have the confidence that you can deepen the connection between the people that you love and care about and your customer or your clients. And I want you to be able to expand. And increase your ability to influence the people that you're connecting with. Your credibility is your currency.
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00:30:58] This is Bart Queen. This has been the remarkability Institute, and I'll see you next time.