In the video below, Scott Keffer explains the steps of the Credibility Staircase at the Double Your Affluent Clients Bootcamp
The Credibility Stairscase
(Below is the transcript from the video.)
So I had a woman who would come to a seminar, she hired us to do her planning and her son came in and he said, “I was with the air force and I could do deep, deep searches on the Internet.” I said, “Okay.”
And he said, “I did a deep search on you and you don’t have a website.” I said, “I don’t think you need a deep search to find that out.” He said, “Why don’t you have a website?”
So let me ask you a question. When you go to people’s website, who do you think writes that stuff? He said, “Yeah, probably you.” I said, “That’d be true. And what do you think I’d say about myself?”
He thought for a minute. So I said, “What?” He said, “Here’s what I did find. One, he said, “Nobody had anything bad to say about you.” And he said, “You have a lot of articles.”
So I learned two lessons that day. Number one, you better … So when somebody meets you, here’s the only online strategy that you need to have: and that is when somebody meets you, what do they do?
They Google you. They don’t Google your company name, they don’t Google anything else. That’s the world today. Google your name; see what comes up. It was at that point in time, right?
And it was really Seth and really through that experience, by the way, we bought our kid’s names, we bought all our names and I began to manage my personal name online because that’s the only thing that matters.
So as a financial advisor you should have a personal, which is typically, if I’m building your credibility, you should have a speaker page, which then drives people for personal credibility.
But it also let me say, “Oh, I better manage that,” because he said, you know, if somebody gets mad at you, they can buy “I hate Scott Keffer,” and start posting stuff. So that was really powerful.
But the reason that the articles were there was I understood this concept: the credibility staircase. And all the marketing’s a total waste of money and time because it’s me talking about me. What do you think I’m going to say about me? Yeah, of course. All great things.
So I started looking at this. I said, what is it? It’s what other people say about you? Well, that could be an article by you. Article strategy. That could be an article about you. Harder to get, but then I started to pursue that. Then I read visible authority connection. How can you connect yourself? So what do we do with the picture?
Why’d I have you take your picture with Jack other than the fact he might want a picture with you? That’s a visible authority connection, so everybody should utilize that and their positioning. It’s you with Jack.
There is something that happens because of the visible authority connection. Sponsored presentations. When I do public seminars, it’s one thing. When I do a donor motivation program seminar, what do we get, Keith? Yeah, stamp of approval. It’s like Good Housekeeping stamp of approval. It’s also why I pursued the association strategy to get association stamps of approval.
And then I realized, oh, radio/TV, so I hired a media coach. One, how do I look good on camera, but number two, how do I get in there? And lastly, it was books. Doors open with books. Credibility staircase.