How to be Credibility Ready with Bruce Scheer and Mike Wilkinson

Bruce Scheer: Welcome to the ValuePros Show where value pros get value ready. Hi. This is Bruce Scheer. In today's episode, we're diving into an essential topic for every professional looking to make a powerful first and last impression. Why and how to be credibility ready? I'm joined today with Mike Wilkinson, author of several books on selling and pricing based on value and an absolute world class trainer. I always admire Mike's superpower, which I say is making the complex things simple, and only true masters in my mind truly have this ability, and Mike's one of them. We'll explore the key elements of presenting yourself as a trustworthy and competent value professional in our increasingly digital world. From mastering your online presence to nailing those crucial first impressions, we've got you covered.

Bruce Scheer: So let's get started and elevate your credibility game. Hey, Mike. I'm super excited about our topic today. It's why be credibility ready. And this comes as part of an overall framework that we put together called being value ready. And we've got a value ready assessment that's sitting off of our website now. If you go to valuepros.io under resources, you'll have a full assessment across the 10 dimensions of what it means to be value ready, showing up instead of, like, a typical sales rep showing up as a value professional. But, Mike, how are you doing today?

Mike Wilkinson: I'm doing fine. Thank you very much. And, Bruce, it's good to be with you again.

Bruce Scheer: Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And what an exciting topic. Mike, you and I, I know we love to typically kick it off with the big why before we get into the what and how and when. What's the why behind this whole thing? Why be credibility ready? You were telling me, Mike, that you like to challenge people around this whole notion. Could you mention that to me in our audience?

Mike Wilkinson: Yeah. I do like to challenge people. I wonder how often people even give a thought to the impression that they're going to give when they go in to see a customer or client. So I do an exercise with them very often where I say to them, just imagine for a minute that you've just come out of one of your key clients, and I go in immediately after you, and I say to that client, just describe the person you've just seen in 3 adjectives. And I say to the sales guys, what are the adjectives you would like the customer to choose to describe you? And Okay. You know, I have some amazing answers. Very occasionally, I'll have some good ones. But often, people say I'd like them to think that I was nice and I was friendly.

Mike Wilkinson: And I say, is that it? I said, how is just being nice and friendly going to differentiate you from everybody else? How about being slightly provocative, inquisitive, demanding, challenging? Those are much better adjectives to describe ideally what you would like to be seen as, I would suggest. But then the other thing is, if you don't think about how you want to or what impression you want to create, you can't plan how you're going to do it.

Bruce Scheer: I know that's exactly what we're gonna be talking about today because being credibility ready and leaving that lasting impression is so important. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And just to frame this a little bit, being credibility ready, that's one of our 10 dimensions, but there's 3 key dimensions for building trust. 1 is being credibility ready. Secondly, it's being client ready. And then thirdly, it's narrative ready. And then for the audience that's listening and watching, and you can swing back and watch our other episodes around client ready and narrative ready.

Bruce Scheer: But those are 3 key drivers or dimensions of capability competence that value professionals need to have. So on credibility ready, you couldn't be more right, Mike. And some of the big impressions that we're trying to get, we wanna just get into the game. And like you said, that first impression, people form impressions in just seconds. And even though you might speak for a long time or they might have more time in interacting with you, That initial impression happens in seconds. And that's probably what we'll talk about mostly in this episode. I know we can't talk forever and people have schedules to keep. And I thank everyone for being here to witness all this, but we'll cover some of the key big rocks that you just need to nail to show up credibility ready.

Bruce Scheer: And some of those impressions, Mike, that you talk about for building trust, we want to be trustworthy as an impression. We want to be credible as an impression. 2 key dimensions. Yeah. And then 3rd, of course, relevant as well.

Mike Wilkinson: I just think that in the nicest possible way, Bruce, in a relative sea of mediocrity out there, How are you going to stand out in a positive and constructive way?

Bruce Scheer: You've got it. And that's what we've got to do, especially in this market and the competitive dynamics on most deals. You really need to stand apart in the sales experience. Our all ten of our dimensions allow you to do that, but credibility it starts with credibility. That is job 1. So let's turn the corner and talk about how to be credibility ready. So, Mike, I'll take us through, and we'll just talk about it a little bit in terms of how do we get into this whole notion of being credibility ready. And I'll go ahead and talk about the first thing.

Bruce Scheer: And it's just more what I see day in and day out. I call these credibility ready blind spots. And you've already mentioned, Mike, that the first impression is so darn important. I would add to that that the first impression is very often the last impression, especially when that impression doesn't foster thoughts of trustworthiness and credibility and relevance. You're out. You have a few seconds to establish it. And if you don't, that's it. And very often, it is the last impression.

Bruce Scheer: You don't get too many at bats, especially when you're dealing with senior buyers, decision makers, executives. Time is precious. And and you don't get 2nd and third chances. You got one shot, and and that shot occurs in seconds is the big point.

Mike Wilkinson: Absolutely. I think if you make a poor first impression, you've got an uphill task right from the get go.

Bruce Scheer: Yep. Well yeah. Hey. Darn. I just got interrupted. I gotta run. My apologies. We'll have to reschedule, and that never happens.

Bruce Scheer: So, you know, I don't know if you remember the iPhones even used to have an app to have it call you so you could get out of uncomfortable situations. My wife and I were laughing about that recently, but very often, yeah, darn, I've gotta run. And you blew the first impression and never to meet again. So that's sad, and that's what we're trying to counter against. The other key point here, Mike, that I witnessed and I experienced myself, I will confess I've made most of the mistakes that we'll talk about today. But and the reason for that, Mike, I wasn't taught. This wasn't my grade school curriculum didn't have it. My junior high, my high school, college, no.

Bruce Scheer: Showing up credibility ready, these are things that they're thank goodness the pandemic really forced a lot of science behind this. How do we show up credibility ready? And and we'll talk about some of that. But, yeah, you're not taught this in school. Indeed not. Alright. Well, but as you said, Mike, when you do show up credibility ready, you get a chance to stand apart from the pack. And the fun part here is it's easy to do. Most sellers are don't show up credibility ready.

Bruce Scheer: You see so many mistakes. And after this episode, I hope everybody on the line is going to agree. You can't unhear and unsee some of the things we'll be talking about today. And when you get it right, oh, man, you can really stand apart from the competitive pack.

Mike Wilkinson: No. I absolutely agree. There are some fairly fundamental things that I know that we're gonna be talking about.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Mike, I want to quiz you just for fun and quiz our audience. So if you could envision with me as I speak this through, how would these images that I'm going to put into your mind, how do they relate to your digital credibility? And I wanna double down on digital credibility because we live in this modern digital world and most of your digital footprint, LinkedIn, on web meetings, etcetera. We're really communicating digitally these days, and these images talk about that a little bit, or at least I want them to jar your thinking a little bit. So I'm talking about a bonsai tree as an image, a Japanese bonsai tree, a street performer that has an audience around them, and then a mission control room with lots of different screens, etcetera. If you could envision Apollo 13 or a rocketship launch in the mission control room, lots of complexity going on. So, anyways, those are the 3 images that I'm talking about with you that you should be envisioning.

Bruce Scheer: A bonsai tree, a street performer with an audience around them, and a mission control room. What would these three images have to do with your digital credibility? Mike, any thoughts there?

Mike Wilkinson: Hey. You got me beat there, Bruce. I've choice. What is the difference between a bonsai tree and a mission control person? That's interesting.

Bruce Scheer: A street performer. Yeah. What in the heck do these images have to do with digital credibility? Well, I'll jump to the chase here. Hopefully, everybody's had a chance to ponder this in their minds a little bit. Bonsai tree, Japanese bonsai tree, street performer mission control. Here's the big reveal. So if you think about a bonsai tree, they're grown over years and they're small and intricate. There's so much detail.

Bruce Scheer: But the big thing about a bonsai tree and my brother was growing bonsai trees and really loving it. But you have to carefully curate and manage all the details so it grows the way you want it to, and it manifests into this really intricate, beautiful little plant, if you would, a little tree. And as that relates to your digital credibility, you need to pay attention to those details and curate it over time. Secondly, as the audience engagement part of the street performer, some of the best street performers I've seen, Venice Beach or Around the World, oh, gosh, over there in London, Mike, the Square there where you always have the buskers there, Some of the best ones, they bring in audience engagement. They make sure there's lots of interaction and variety, and that creates more stimulation. And we need to do that in this digital world to minimize multitasking and people checking out. We need to drive engagement as part of that credibility. And then thirdly, the mission control room, that image.

Bruce Scheer: Hey. A lot of this can get fairly complex, especially when you try using all the fancy tricks for people that are listening to this show. I encourage you to go to our YouTube channel that just at value pro space show and subscribe to our show, please. But you'll see some of the fanciful things that we're doing as we record the show to make it more visually appealing. That extra layer of tech can create complexity. But as it relates to digital credibility, you need to nail that tech and make sure it works for you for a pleasing experience versus a horrible experience, which it can be if it's not managed right. And just like a mission control room, you're watching the tech and make sure everything works. Well, hey, Mike.

Bruce Scheer: Did this map to what you were thinking about?

Mike Wilkinson: Well, it it it did in fairness, Bruce, since I already knew what we were gonna be talking about. Okay.

Bruce Scheer: Alright. Alright.

Mike Wilkinson: Is a great way of getting the message across. And there are those three key elements to it. And I think sometimes people either just show up and wing it, which is not a great idea. Managing the details is so important, making sure you've got everything right. Audience engagement more than anything else is the critical component. Yeah. I think most audiences, if you've got them engaged, they will forgive some other misdemeanors, if you'd like. That's this.

Mike Wilkinson: Yeah. Yeah. It is the killer. Yeah. Yeah. We've seen lots of problems with complexity and things going wrong in Zoom and Teams and all sorts of other things. So yeah. I think we're all familiar with those.

Bruce Scheer: Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. And sometimes painfully too familiar. Well, on that topic so I attended an event in Las Vegas this last January. It's called CES. And one of the seminal leaders in the space of AI, his name is Shelly Palmer, was giving a talk. And I literally went to that venue, and I snuck in, Mike.

Bruce Scheer: Luckily, I'm not locked up anymore, but I did sneak in, and I wanted to be front row, and I wanted to check out Shelley Palmer and his talk because his content is just absolutely king in the world of AI and all in this fast changing moving space. So I'm thinking, okay. Gosh. My opportunity to go sit at the feet of the guy who just knows this stuff inside out. So I get in there, and he starts to speak, and our ears started to hurt. And especially mine, audio is so important to me, but the audio was bouncing around in this room, and it sounded like he was speaking into a tin can. And I don't know what happened. I gotta believe there was the sound team set up and did some testing or what have you, but something was horribly wrong and just sounded so bad.

Bruce Scheer: And I turned to the people next to me and go, hey. Can you hear him? And they're, and we're all kinda struggling with the whole deal here. And I struggled for, oh, maybe 30 seconds, maybe a minute longer that I just made the decision, I'm out. So I got up and left. I wasn't gonna do 45 minutes with this guru trying to figure out what he was seeing as the sound waves were just bouncing all over the place. And after that, I did some research on that just like

Mike Wilkinson: May I interrupt? Did he notice?

Bruce Scheer: I don't know. He didn't call it out. He did the show just went rambling on, but and I went rambling right on out of there. It was so sad.

Mike Wilkinson: If we go back to what you said early days, which is that the first impression is the last impression, Think about the impression that he get you start off with a great optimistic view of what you're going to hear, and 45 seconds later, you're leaving.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. And I won't be back. No chance. Because that also his credibility, trustworthiness, etcetera, that was shot. And I I'm not gonna go out of my way to go see him again. That ain't gonna happen. I don't wanna get burned again. So but the research I did on that, Mike, was what I discovered was this quote that I just absolutely love.

Bruce Scheer: But the quote is content is key and then I would add for correctness or queen and context is the throne. You need both. It can't just all be about great content. And you talked about forgiveness, but sadly, I didn't forgive Shelley. I got up and split. That was the last impression, and, you don't get more at bat. And that's sadly how the world works, but it does work that way. So what I wanted to do, Mike, is really kinda help people nail the throne. Before we move forward, any any observations on your side?

Mike Wilkinson: Yeah. No. No. No. I just think it is so important. It's something that people don't think about enough. Just getting all the little things right and getting it all together.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. So I'll move through. And these might seem like little things to everybody, but these little things, these details matter is the big point I'd like everybody to think about. And making that first impression that's made in seconds, these little details, they really matter. So the first detail I'd like to talk about comes in the form of a story. And during the pandemic, my kids flew my coupe, and they were in their twenties, and they moved down to LA, Santa Monica. They wanted to be on the beach, and they wanted to be Hollywood stars, etcetera, so they were out. And my wife was sitting at home missing them dearly and saying, hey, hon.

Bruce Scheer: We need to go see them. And I'm, like, just going, okay. That's gonna be really expensive, flying down, renting 3, $400 hotel rooms, and trying to keep her connected to the kids. And so I got this wild idea. Hey. I'll buy a travel trailer, and we'll drag it down there and stay on the beach and enjoy ourselves. And there's lots of options for doing that down in LA. It's actually really cool.

Bruce Scheer: So, anyways, one of my favorite clients, her name's Angela, she set up a meeting for me with another executive who had just joined the organization, $10,000,000,000 company NetApp, and I'm excited. I'm, like, going, oh, great. A new executive, new buying center, this can be lovely. And my champion at the time, she put a lot of weight and she trusted me, etcetera, and wanted to make that happen. I was so grateful. So, anyways, my wife and I, we pull into this RV place where we're gonna be staying, and it's on the beach, and I'm thinking, hey, beach of LA, there'll be Internet down there. I'll be set. So we get down there, get set up.

Bruce Scheer: I get ready to get into the meeting, and the Internet is just total c r a p, just really bad. And so we start the meeting on the bad Internet on Zoom, and just sadly, it's kinda going in and out. And then I have to go off video to try to get some bandwidth to support that bad Internet. Meanwhile, Angela's texting me just going, Bruce, what's going on? And I text back, Angela, I'm so sorry. I got set up for this meeting, and lo and behold, bad Internet. I don't know why the coverage isn't good here. It should be great. My full apologies.

Bruce Scheer: And what she wrote back to me, Mike, was, Bruce, that's so unlike you. And I'm telling you, you probably heard of Harikari in Japan. If I would have had a sword, that was probably it. I would have fallen on it, and failure was not an option. And I felt so, so bad about that. So my Internet bill went from, like, $50 a month at that point in time upwards to 500 a month because I got satellite Internet. I got T Mobile as a second mobile hot spot at any point in time. And then I had Verizon and AT.

Bruce Scheer: So just I had it all. I wasn't for that whole season when we were traveling. I wasn't gonna have bad Internet again. I just couldn't do it. But I'll never forget that. But as part of these details that we're talking about, Internet's job 1. You gotta nail that.

Mike Wilkinson: Yeah. Absolutely. Did you get the gig?

Bruce Scheer: Oh, yeah. Well, yeah, I've been forgiven, but yeah. As you said, but yeah. But that was the first impression. It was for that executive, and thank goodness, there was a little bit of sympathy and empathy on their side. But you don't wanna count on that. You don't wanna bank on that for sure. Again, very often, you only get one chance.

Bruce Scheer: So the big details here, Mike, that I wanna push into a little bit, but Internet's really critical. The second one, I'd say in importance is audio. You gotta nail audio. And another quick story, I was telling another client. He was on the executive team of a company called Domo out of Utah in the business intelligence space. And I was telling him my story about how things went wrong with Angela, and I had bad Internet. And because of that, everything was wrong. And he started thinking about it.

Bruce Scheer: He goes, you know, Bruce? Gosh. Because we talked about audio a little bit. And he goes, we had a CEO meet with our ex co a few weeks back, and they were shortlisted. They were in the top three vendor list that the XCO had to meet with before we could choose one of these suppliers. And these were gonna be $1,000,000 contracts for us, so it needed the XCO's vote on which vendor to choose. And he goes, it's funny that you talk about this, Bruce, because in this instance, one of the CEOs of one of the vendors decided to take the call with us from an airport. And after the call, we just talked about, okay. He's ding.

Bruce Scheer: That company is not going forward with us. And he goes, and funny enough, I think the reason is it was probably bad audio. And I'm, like, just going, oh my god. That's it's so interesting that you say that. This gentleman's name was Chris. But it's so interesting that you say that, Chris, because very often, audio isn't really noticed. It's there's been some USC studies, a bunch of them that are just fascinating, but they've had scenarios where you have people on stage and there's good audio and then bad audio. And what they've found is when you have bad audio, very often the believability and credibility of the speaker goes way down.

Bruce Scheer: I saw one stat goes down by 19%, but it can just be a huge driver of the loss of your credibility.

Mike Wilkinson: I was gonna say the quality of the audio is what actually drove you out of the meeting you described earlier in the first place. Yeah. And you utterly.

Bruce Scheer: Can you imagine the team of that vendor, of that CEO, and all the energy they went into to be in the top three vendor category and for the CEO to take that call from an airport with bad audio, bad Internet, bad everything, probably. You know, I'm sure he's probably using a laptop and just the whole thing crashes. They're off the list. But it's one quote that I really love. I don't know if I've coined it, but I would say that audio is like air. I don't know if you've heard that phrase before, Mike. It's like air. You don't really notice air until it's really good.

Bruce Scheer: You're walking in a forest, and it smells really good. You're like, oh, my gosh. This is lovely. Or it's really bad. Oh, it's smoky. It must be wood burning smog or and audio is the same way. You don't notice it until it's either really good. Hopefully, our audience thinks this audio is good, but it's really good.

Bruce Scheer: Or it's really bad. If it's mediocre or if it's kind of poor, you don't really notice it. You do notice it subconsciously there, but you don't notice it in your conscious mind. But that subconscious is also making an assessment. And there's YouTube studies as well about bad audio and bad Internet, bad bit rate, if you would. And people jump out of videos, early. They don't watch it all the way through. And when they're asked why, very often they're saying it's, oh, it just wasn't engaging, it wasn't entertaining, it's bad content.

Bruce Scheer: But they've got data to prove that when they Bruce that audio and the bit rate quality, people stick around. So it wasn't because it's bad content and that assessment, People subconsciously are making an assessment, but consciously, they're not really aware, but you gotta nail it. So critical. One tool for people if anybody's a geek listening and watching the show, there's a tool called Adobe Podcast. If you go to podcast.adobe.com/enhance, you could take a clip of your Zoom audio and just a short clip. Say it's you speaking for 15 seconds and then you can upload it into podcast.adobe.com/enhand and it'll turn it into studio quality. The fun part is they have this little toggle switch so you can hear what you sound like naturally and then what it would sound like if you got a fancy studio microphone like I'm speaking to you with today. And that contrast, check that out.

Bruce Scheer: It might propel you to invest a little bit of money, and you can bump up your audio tremendously by getting off your laptop audio, getting into a headset. I personally don't like to wear headsets because I want people to see my whole face, but you can get that or you can get a, like, a $50 USB mic or you can get something more fanciful like I have. But I'll tell you, audio is just critical after Internet.

Mike Wilkinson: I think audio is absolutely fundamentally important, but I love the Adobe Classic app there free.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. Free. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing.

Mike Wilkinson: It's free for 15 seconds, and then you have

Bruce Scheer: to pay. No. But it's a great tool for that compare and contrast to just approve to yourself, hey. I'm gonna up my game. The next thing we could talk about, Mike, is just the camera that you use. You know, I've got a fancy, DSLR camera, but you can get a very nice webcam 4 k. I just ordered one the other day. It's kind of an AI cam that'll follow me around the room.

Bruce Scheer: It's kinda cool. I like the whiteboard for people, and it'll follow me in doing that. And it looks almost DSLR standard. It's shocking how good that is, but I'd encourage everybody get off your laptop camera and invest a little bit of money. And that camera I was just talking about, that looks fantastic. It was I think I bought it for a $179, a little bit less because I bought it used on Amazon. But, oh my gosh, really amazing quality that you get. What was that? What do you got then, Bruce? Logitech? The what again, Mike? Or

Mike Wilkinson: On Logitech, or is it something else?

Bruce Scheer: No. It's called an Obspot Tiny 2. Yeah. And it'll probably be out of date in 1 month. It's not off the press. It's pretty interesting technology. Mike, the next thing we could talk about is lighting. You wouldn't believe how often people show up and they're dark.

Bruce Scheer: Their face is dark. And automatically, subconsciously, can I trust this guy? Why is he hiding in the shadows? What's going on? So that you really need to light yourself. And people mess this up so often. I see it almost daily. But they'll have a natural light behind them, a window, and they'll be looking at their screen, and it just makes their face dark. So that natural light just messes up the camera, whatever camera they happen to have, and they show up shadowy and dark. It's horrible. So I'd encourage everybody listening and watching.

Bruce Scheer: If you have natural light in the room, go ahead and face it if you can. Try to figure out a way to do that. Or, like, I have these light blocking shades. So if I'm on a meeting or doing recording or things like that, I, you know, have these light blocking shades. I get rid of the natural light, and then I have fancy lights in front of me. Fancy, I say, but the price of it was maybe $250. So, anybody watching this video now, you'll see what it's doing for my face. It lights it up.

Bruce Scheer: I'm not shadowy, etcetera. But, that's an investment when I want to be top of the game. You don't have to be. I'd see other people just getting lamps and putting it in front, especially if the company doesn't pay for these types of things. There are things you can do in your environment. Make sure you show up and it's not all shadowy. You gotta come out of hiding, for sure. Absolutely. One thing you should

Mike Wilkinson: be doing is checking it. I mean, if you're on a Zoom call or a Teams call, you can see yourself. And what you're seeing is what they're seeing. So are you happy with it?

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Too true. Well, one of the other key components I would say is your background, and it's pretty fun. I've got a lot of studies around the importance of background and what background you should have. And, again, like I said before, you're not taught this stuff in school. Just thankfully, I'm kind of fixated on this topic.

Bruce Scheer: So, I've done a ton of research in this area and I found some wonderful studies. 1 was done with a global study with just this huge population sample size. Another study was done by doctor Carmen Simon, who I just love out of Stanford. And both of the studies kind of checked and balanced each of them and came up with a similar finding. But, Mike, a quiz for our audience to think about, which background wins in trustworthiness? How would you set up the background behind you when you're in your web meetings? So the options would be you have a plants behind you. The second option would be a bookshelf behind you. The third option would just be your home with with stuff behind you. A couch and photos and dining room table, maybe a bed.

Bruce Scheer: I've seen that a lot. I've which

Mike Wilkinson: is a little odd

Bruce Scheer: to wow. You're taking me into your bedroom and A blank background, just a wall with that's painted but nothing there or a novelty background or what a lot of people call a virtual background in the Zoom world. So out of those six options, how do you think they score, Mike, and our audience? What what what's the big takeaway? I know you've seen some of this. I don't know if you remember the study, Mike. But

Mike Wilkinson: As the man with the library bookshelf behind him Stop. I gotta I gotta knock on the head straight away the novelty background. It just is a a nightmare, and some of the others are a bit strange. But, yeah, I'm going for the bookshelf. Well, yeah,

Bruce Scheer: if you're trying to drive your trustworthiness, the data says the plant that I talked about is a the plant in the book are really close, and I do see people these days having, both. They'll have a bookshelf with a plant there, but weirdly enough, a plant creates a calmness to it, and that takes some tension down and makes you more trustworthy. It's amazing. The biggest trustworthy factor, though, is a bookshelf, especially if it's not cluttered and messed up. It's tidy and nice. That bookshelf really scores well. And then All I'd

Mike Wilkinson: say to our audience, for those of you who can actually see this, if you add Bruce's background, the my background together, we have the perfect solution.

Bruce Scheer: Oh my gosh. Yeah. Talk about incredible and trustworthy. Yeah. Big time. Then the third one, which is really interesting for trustworthiness, would be a blurred background. So the big takeaway and the novelty or virtual background scores are quite low on the continuum. It's the lowest score across multiple studies.

Bruce Scheer: So if you're still using virtual backgrounds, I know they were super popular in the pandemic. Everybody had them and you laugh about them. And so you might be on a spaceship. But in this day and age, it hurts your trustworthiness and your credibility in a big way. And these data points are almost the same across trustworthiness as of impression and then credibility as an impression with credibility. Weirdly, the blurred background is a little bit less and the blank backgrounds even higher. But the plant and the bookshelf still win the day in terms of being credible and trustworthy. So big takeaway for everybody.

Bruce Scheer: Please move to a natural background and clean it up. Don't make it cluttered and just simplify whatever you're doing. The other day, I met with a guy who had so many different things, and he had a story to tell for every single thing. But the problem is it's distracting. People start to pay attention to the background versus you. So but go with natural if you want to be the most credible and trustworthy self you can be and think about a plant and or a bookshelf in the background.

Mike Wilkinson: I should get a plant, Bruce. You must get yourself a bookshelf.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah, absolutely. And then here's another fun thing as it relates to trustworthy and credibility. How do you think a smile impacts things, Mike?

Mike Wilkinson: Well, I think smiling is so important. Yeah. I really do. And it's, again, something you give a smile away for nothing.

Bruce Scheer: It costs you nothing, Bruce. Well, but you gain so much. And the science says it takes those data points that I was showing before, and it just takes that whole scale up. So if you smile, man, your credibility and trustworthiness just go up and fairly dramatically. So it's huge, but there's different types of smiles that I've learned through my research. There's kind of a little teeny pursed lip type of smile. There's another smile that people have coined the Pan Am smile, and Pan Am used to be a big airline that went out of business. But that smile shows teeth, but you can tell it's not really a genuine heartfelt smile.

Bruce Scheer: It's a faint smile, and one of the big reasons because the eyes don't have wrinkles. But when you have it's called a Duchenne smile, named after a scientist out of France. But the Duchenne smile shows the creases in the eyes where you're truly smiling. You're joyful. And that smile is huge as it impacts people and as it relates to your credibility and trustworthiness. So note to self, it's a good thing to smile, but smile with your eyes and with your mouth, not just with your mouth is the big point.

Mike Wilkinson: Yeah. And I think making it genuine is the most important bit. A sort of wild grin is is

Bruce Scheer: not going Yeah. You don't wanna come across as being the joker. That gets a little scary. But yeah. I gotcha. Yeah. Makes sense, Mike. Mike, the other thing is how do you position yourself on the screen? So for people listening to us, if you think of your Zoom screen kind of like a box, if you cut that box in thirds from top to bottom, so think about 3 rows, a 3rd in the middle and a 3rd on the bottom, a 3rd on the top, Your eye line should be on the upper third, and for the viewing audience, they can see this, with my eyes on the upper third line.

Bruce Scheer: Between the upper third line and the top of that box, my eyes are right on that. And then if you think of a golf ball between your head and the top of the box, that's how to position yourself. So your head should be touching the golf ball and then your eyes should be right on that upper third. And when you have it set that way, then you know how close to get to the screen or how far away. Because I do see some people, their face is covering the whole box. Sometimes there is part of their head is even above the box, and they're just showing their eyes, and it looks kinda scary. And then sometimes I see really little heads and everybody's kind of away. So try to get your eyes on that upper third and your head touching the golf ball between the top of the screen and your top of your hair or head, and then use that as a way to position and get your head size right and your body in the shot.

Bruce Scheer: So that's one really important tip. Just how do you place yourself in that box? And then the other thing is you want that camera at eye level. And, so there's different ways to do that. If you're fancy like me, you can have a tripod with your camera on it right perfectly at the eye level. And I even use a teleprompter, so I can look people in the eyes. So so, like, my camera's right behind my teleprompter, but you don't have to do that. You can just get a habit of looking at the camera versus looking at the screen. Try to look directly at the camera, and then you can even take books and prop up your laptop or PC, whatever you're using, but try to prop that whatever device that has the holding the camera and prop that up so that camera's at eye level.

Bruce Scheer: Because at the end of the day, you wanna look at your prospect eye to eye, your buyer eye to eye. And it's simple, but very often, I do see people. I can imagine that CEO that took that call from the airport didn't prop up his laptop. It was probably sitting on a table, and he's looking down upon an exco. How does that look? Especially if you have nose errors and stuff. It's not

Mike Wilkinson: a good look. I see early days of the pandemic. I think I saw up more people's noses and more bedroom ceilings than I have ever seen before. Yeah. Well, you would think we've come out of the pandemic, but, Mike, I still see this stuff on a daily basis.

Bruce Scheer: On a daily basis. This isn't abnormal. It's the norm. And I think a lot of people have actually just accepted it as normal. The big points that we're making here is you wanna be abnormal, and you want the gold medal. You wanna be at the top. You wanna win your deals and and be credible, trustworthy, and relevant. You gotta nail the throne, and that's what we're saying here.

Bruce Scheer: All these details matter. Another one, Mike, is just you talked about engagement being critical using the person's name. If you do that, it's so helpful. Science proves that if you use somebody's names, they love it and they'll pay attention. So you and I have been doing that with each other this whole meeting, probably subconsciously, but we're calling each other by name and just making sure we're seen and we're heard. And that name is just, ultimate sign of respect and care, and it's lovely. So I use people's names. Well, they do say that people hearing their own names is music for their ears.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. Beautiful quote. Nice. Another one, Mike, is the attire you wear, how you show up for your meeting, how do you want to dress for your audience. And it's kinda fun, Mike. I've got a son in his twenties, and he's like, oh, hey, dad. I think I just wanna have my long hair down. And, I'm, like, going, hey, man.

Bruce Scheer: You be you. You can be authentic to yourself. How do you wanna show up? What's your personal brand? But I would just encourage him, just be conscious. What signal are you sending? And is that trustworthy? Is it credible? Is it relevant in your buyer's eyes? How do you want to appear? And since we've had that dialogue, he's cut his hair, and he also does a bun behind, and he's showing up as clean shaven and doing a great job in my opinion. But it is. How do you wanna show up? The beautiful thing about Zoom is who cares what's going on downstairs unless you are standing up and whiteboarding like me, which most don't. So, you know, you can do you on a party down below, but a professional on top as the value pros you are. So just think about that.

Bruce Scheer: How do you wanna appear? What's the signal you're sending? Alright. Well, hey. Those are some of the key things as it relates to web meetings, and it'll impact your calls and everything, how you're showing up. I want to talk about one more big topic here as a credibility point, and that would be LinkedIn, Mike. I do see a lot of people on LinkedIn kind of missing the opportunity to be credible, trustworthy, and relevant to their buyers as they show up on LinkedIn. So a few key details there, your LinkedIn profile photo, what's that look like? Is it AI generated? Oh, no. Was that trustworthy? You know? Or is it an avatar? Or is it you? And are you well lit? Is there a clean background? Just how are you showing up in that profile photo? Can you get a proper one? And because again, that is your face, that first impression. Are you worthy to talk to? And when I'm reaching out to my target buyers, I can see I've got a LinkedIn premium account.

Bruce Scheer: I can see that they check my profile. When or, Mike, when we launched our the show, I could see all these people when I made the announcement. Thousands of people are aware of it now, but I'm also seeing a ton of people running in to look at my profile. And some of them even know me, but I know that it's kind of like they're curious and it's a credibility check. And so how are we showing up there? Are we truly credible and trustworthy? But that photo is just critical. That's probably the most critical piece. And then I Absolute horror photographs out there. People treat LinkedIn like it's Facebook.

Mike Wilkinson: I mean, we've got pictures of people hang gliding or on holiday in their swimwear. It is a business networking site, and I

Bruce Scheer: think it is important to be appropriate. I completely agree. Well, again, you wanna be buyer centric in your thought about this. So your photo, would your buyer appreciate that? Your title, unless you're a CEO, co founder, board member, best selling author, what have you, what's the title? What do you want to what's the signal on that? For a lot of people, if you say you're a sales representative, many buyers, especially if you're doing your cold outreach, they might go, oh, no. This guy's a seller. I don't wanna meet. But can you shift that to a title that might be more relevant? I'm a partner to revenue leaders helping them grow revenue or whatever is the right frame. Can you frame your title in a way that's buyer centric versus you centric per se? How would that land with them? Because they do look at that.

Bruce Scheer: And then next probably would be your about section. Many sellers an expert in LinkedIn was telling me the other day that many sellers, their about section is more about their achievements because they're trying to get their next gig, and they're treating their LinkedIn profile like a resume. And which is natural and normal. And, again, you're not taught this stuff in school. But I would encourage you, if you want to sell to buyers and those buyers are coming on to LinkedIn to see if you're worthy of returning a phone call or responding to the email you left for them, They might want to do a little safety check themselves. They come in and they see your about section and it's not about them, it's about you. That you might lose a point there. You might not get that callback or response.

Bruce Scheer: They'll move on. Next, I'd say posts that you have. Are they buyer centric? Are they relevant to buyers? So your target buyers, your target audience, your featured section, if you have one, have you featured assets that they would appreciate seen and that would buy you some credibility in their eyes? Anything else, Mike, that you would add?

Mike Wilkinson: I absolutely go with all of those. I think the title particularly is important. Account manager account, the ref, whatever it is. Well, so that's pretty boring. I think the format I quite like is your name and then helping who do what.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Mike Wilkinson: I think the point you make is that it need your LinkedIn profile, there is a tendency for it to be about you when it really should be about that, especially in that about section. What do you do for people? How do you help them? What issues do you help them to resolve? Absolutely. So you think about you is fine. A bit about you is fine. You have to we're talking about credibility. So a bit about you is fine, but I think just being me all the way through it.

Bruce Scheer: Yeah. That about section, I would encourage our audiences listening and watching, definitely check out our episode on being narrative ready as one of those value ready dimensions. Because, once you have your sales narrative or your sales story that has the buyer as the hero, that's one of the key principles. You can use that content in your about section, and then it'll land really well. It'll be all about that hero, your buyer, and and the problem they face, the outcome you promise, and then the solution you deliver as in the context of their narrative, what the world's gonna look like with your solution in in their world. And then a final point, Mike, I would say in thinking about LinkedIn profiles, think mobile first. Many buyers look at sellers profiles from their mobile phone where they're processing email, what have you. They happen to have a minute.

Bruce Scheer: They're out and about. They're on LinkedIn. Gives them the opportunity to look off their phone. And how's your banner, for example, if it has words on it, how's that showing up on mobile? Is it appropriate? So definitely think mobile first as you're thinking about that profile and how it shows up, especially that your banner.

Mike Wilkinson: Yeah. Completely agree. And you can check all that out by just having a look at your profile on your mobile phone and see what it looks like.

Bruce Scheer: Yep. Absolutely. Well, Mike, kind of to bring this home, I know we could just talk about so many different things, especially you queued up. How do you engage with people as part of your credibility? We won't go there. I just wanted to get some of these fundamentals. Again, back to that point of the first impression is often the last impression, and that first impression is formulated in just a few split seconds. So the things that we've talked about will help you come across as credible, trustworthy, and relevant within those first few critical seconds, giving you the right to have a meeting and have those follow on conversations and close more deals more often.

Mike Wilkinson: Completely agree. And as you said earlier on, for me, what is important, the detail does matter.

Bruce Scheer: Absolutely. Thank you, Mike. Thanks for this discussion. I hope everybody enjoys it.

Mike Wilkinson: Cheers, guys. See you later. Bye bye. And that wraps

Bruce Scheer: up another episode of the ValuePros Show. I'm Bruce Scheer, and I hope you found today's discussion on being credibility ready valuable for your professional journey. Remember in a world where first impressions are often made digitally, paying attention to the details can make all the difference in how you are perceived. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the ValuePros Show on YouTube or on your favorite podcast player and check out our value ready assessment at valuepros.io under the resources tab. Until next time, keep focusing on those critical elements that make you stand out as a true valued professional. Thanks for watching and listening.