If you’re looking to expand your sphere of influence, it all comes down to one word: trust.

Here’s how to boost your credibility and take the weight of your word to new heights. In the twenty-first century, building a trusting businesscustomer relationship relies on creating confidence—you’ve got to get people to know, like, and trust you to make them loyal customers who provide not only repeat business but also referrals to others.

In short, trust drives influence and influence drives success. But the million-dollar question is: How do you do so tactically from a sales and marketing standpoint? There are a ton of ways, but based on my experience working with 30,000- plus professionals, these four are virtually guaranteed to work every time.

Share accolades

The first thing to do is turn the traditional marketing relationship on its head by thinking of it as a continuous job interview—and you’re the one giving out your résumé. After all, your goal is to convince prospects that they need your products or services, and that requires proving yourself a cut above the rest. I always urge people to showcase how many years they’ve been in business, how many clients they’ve served, and even if they’ve won any local awards.

For example, my brother’s real estate team sends a thank-you mailer at the end of each year, saying something like, “Thank you for supporting my business and helping me serve over 300 families this year.” It’s a kind of humblebragging through the lens of gratitude, which helps his clients feel appreciated while reinforcing his expertise.

You may be thinking, “That’s great, Luke. But I’m brand-new at this.” Well, are you part of a seasoned business? Leverage its kudos, such as how long it has been in the area or its total number of clients, to get a foothold with prospects. At my company, ReminderMedia—which helps real estate agents and other professionals stay connected with their clients—we teach new salespeople a tactic called the Royal We. They may not have twenty years of experience, but we do, so when they pitch someone, they say, “We’ve been helping agents for over twenty years.” Such a statement builds credibility with the potential customer, who feels they can trust them because their company has been in business for decades.

If you’re in face-to-face sales, such as real estate or car sales, another good place to showcase your accolades is at the close. Snap a picture with you and the new owners, and post a thank-you to them on social media along with the all-smiles photo. Even the simplest of shoutouts can have the biggest influence on current and future customers.

Tout testimonials

While people do care what you say, they’ll care way more about what your clients say. So testimonials are the name of the game when it comes to convincing customers that your product is worth purchasing or your service worth using. Think about online shopping. What do you immediately look at to compare similar items? Reviews—specifically, the star rating and, the unsung hero, the rating volume. Say you’re comparing the same tool from two companies. You may very well trust the one with a fourstar average from 1,000 reviews more than the five-star product that’s only been rated by ten people.

At the very least, encourage customer reviews on the obvious sites, such as Facebook and Google, and share your stellar ratings everywhere you can. But you can also take testimonials to another level by turning some of them into stories: lay out the setting, describe the pain-point situation a client was in, and explain how you brought solutions to the table. Such a compelling narrative is hard to resist.

Forge partnerships

You’ve undoubtedly heard about partnerships, but I call them something different—trust by association. For instance, I love giving conference talks because whoever’s putting on the event has earned a huge amount of trust from their attendees, who have spent time and money to be there. As a speaker, that trust is now inherently passed on to me since I’ve been allowed on their stage, raising my influence merely through having that partnership.

The same can be achieved in various areas of business. Start by going through an exercise called six degrees of separation: ask yourself which six noncompetitive companies serve the same client base as you to see who you could potentially team up with. If you’re a local financial adviser, partner with an estate-planning attorney. If you’re a real estate agent, connect with an insurance agent. Then generate ideas for serving your clients in a synergistic way and helping each other boost your respective brands.

A strategy to consider is going live every week with one of your partners. As an example, when I welcome a guest on my company’s podcast, Stay Paid, the Facebook algorithm notifies everybody that it’s happening—for those in my and my guest’s spheres. So when their followers see me, they naturally trust me because of my association (and vice versa), enabling both parties’ influence to grow. And don’t underestimate the power of common values. When you partner with a local or national charity you’re invested in, it showcases that you care about more than just business. This builds your likability factor, allowing you to create what’s known as the halo effect in marketing: when you associate yourself with something good, it’s naturally connected to everything else you do.

Provide educational content

Putting out instructive information on your subject matter elevates your credibility because people A strategy to consider is going live every week with one of your partners. As an example, when I welcome a guest on my company’s podcast, Stay Paid, the Facebook algorithm notifies everybody that it’s happening–for those in my and my guest’s spheres. want to buy from experts who know more than them about a topic. The key is to consistently talk about it over long periods of time, discussing it wherever you can, including social media, blogs, newsletters, and reels. In essence, you’re giving away free value—educational content—for the sake of building trust.

I can tell you firsthand that it works. We did our Stay Paid podcast for three years, and almost nobody listened. But by the fourth, it started to take off, and it’s now one of the biggest brands in the industry. That happened because, from the beginning, we’ve only talked to people about what we want to be known for: sales and marketing. By consistently reinforcing our industry expertise through the podcast, we’ve become a leading influencer in our sphere.

The traditional businesscustomer relationship from yesteryear—a one-sided affair where customers often had blind faith in companies and their products—is long gone. The good news, though, is that if you work to earn customers’ trust through these four tactics, you can pump up your influence in no time, reaping game-changing rewards from building your brand’s credibility to fostering longtime customer loyalty.

TAKE ACTION:
Take ten to fifteen minutes to brainstorm a few ways that you can apply each of these influenceattracting pillars to your organization.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Luke Acree is an authority on leadership, a lead-generation specialist, and a referral expert who has helped more than 30,000 entrepreneurs and small businesses grow their companies. He hosts Stay Paid, a sales and marketing podcast, and has been featured in Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Foundr.com.