Early stage companies face challenges on all fronts, but establishing credibility with mainstream buyers is often one of the biggest marketing hurdles.

A press release claiming market leadership and marketing materials chock full of tidbits about your product benefits and expected ROI may help initiate conversations, but they won’t close deals.

For products and services with higher price tags, pragmatic business buyers often need more reassurance about the credibility of your company before making a buying decision – especially one that is seen as risky (a.k.a. investing in an innovative technology).

Ultimately prospective customers want peace of mind that you can deliver what you promise. People often seek the opinions of others whom they consider better informed within their community to validate the legitimacy of your company and technology.

Establishing credibility with the influencers within your buyer’s community should be a company priority if you want to hit your sales growth targets. Press, analysts, reference customers and influential partners can make or break your perceived credibility.

When it comes to building credibility it is all about a sound strategy and commitment to execution. While owning a large percentage of market share with a strong customer base can be helpful to your credibility building efforts – it is not essential or a guarantee of success.

We have seen clients with shoe string budgets and only a handful of customers successfully build credibility within their prospective buyer’s community. While better-funded players with broader customer bases may falter because they fail to make credibility a priority.

Here are 7 credibility building strategies and tips that we have seen work for our clients over the years:

1. Create, document and disseminate a plan of execution. If you fail to plan, you will fail to succeed. Bring company stakeholders together to get buy off on plan goals, tactics, roles and responsibilities, timelines, and metrics for success. Then distribute the plan to everyone in the company.
2. Declare credibility a company priority. Integrate credibility objectives into company and employee performance goals. Every employee should understand how he/she is expected to contribute towards meeting the goal and provide incentives for employees that make significant contributions.
3. Resist over-inflating your marketing claims. You quickly lose credibility by claiming your product is a wonder tonic that cures all that ails your prospective buyer. Be realistic about what your product can and can’t do and then consistently deliver on your marketing promises.
4. Get your sales team on board. Sales people tend to be protective of their relationships and resist opening customer reference discussions too early in the sales cycle. But the most successful companies begin these conversations early and aggressively. Brand promotion and contract discounts can be effectively used as bargaining chips during negotiations to secure reference agreements. But beware… before the deal is inked make sure the customer’s corporate communications team is on board or the agreement may be worthless.
5. Integrate the plan into every stage of the customer lifecycle. An unhappy customer does not make a good reference no matter what type of pre-sales agreement was forged. Make sure your reference customers get the support they need at all costs.
6. Build strong relationships with influential press, bloggers and analysts. Research and find the industry influencers, track what they are saying and try to forge a relationship. Avoid spamming this audience with meaningless noise and unsupported claims. The only way to solidify a productive relationship with press and analysts is to provide real value, so be strategic in your communications.
7. Maximize relationships with strategic partners. High profile partners can elevate your credibility if the partnership has some substance. Microsoft Certified Partners are a dime a dozen, but if you are able to announce that you are joining forces with the likes of Oracle to solve an industry problem, you will instantly garner more credibility.

The Bottomline: Building credibility is a shared responsibility across the entire organization. With a properly executed credibility strategy, even small companies can achieve great things. So get your plan in order, commit to enhancing your credibility quotient, and witness an increase in sales conversion rates and revenues.