When you are new to the business world, you can often be ready to get going and drive your business forwards. In addition, although your ambition and determination is definitely going to help to get you somewhere, it is not always enough to win customers over. Because you can often find that customers are afraid to buy from new businesses. When you run a business from home, whether that’s selling a product to consumers or providing a service to businesses, it can be hard to set yourself as credible. Even when you’re super reliable and have a lot of integrity, your customers aren’t always going to be able to see that, so you need to be able to build up some credibility to put them at ease.
Be Transparent
The first thing that is going to help you here, is transparency. Trust is hugely important in business, and your customers need to be able to trust you. In addition, to do that, you should always aim to be transparent. Sometimes, being honest and upfront about your newbie status can be charming and humbling. If you’re able to prove your determination and commitment, it can often make up for your lack of years in trade. In addition, it’s a strong foot to start on.
Get Accredited
Another thing that can help you here is accreditation. Because sometimes, you need to show that you’re professionally qualified to do the job. Whether it’s accrediting your product, service, or the software that you use, customers will often be calmed. When you can show off your accredited status, you may find that customers are happier to do business with you in the first place. Then it’s down to you to keep them.
Join Groups
At the same time, you should also consider joining business associations and networking groups as they can often do the same sort of thing. When you want to be credible in the eyes of your consumers, you can look at trying to be credible by association. They may have no experience of you, but if they can see that you are associated with set people or organizations, they will be happier to buy from you.
Report On Your Operations
You may also find that providing honest and upfront reports to your customer will help them to trust you. Whether you want to do SOC reporting or even share your financial figures, your honesty will go a long way. Whether it is your customers, suppliers, or partners that you want to prove your worth to, reporting on your operations can often help.
Prove Your Worth
Finally, you need to be able to work hard to build up a good reputation for yourself. Because you’re always going to want your customers to of heard good things about you. Moreover, the proof should always be in the pudding. Work hard, do not make false claims, offer a cooling off and refund policy – do what you have to do to show that you are worth doing business with and you will find that credibility comes.