Why Credibility Beats Credentials (And the Counterintuitive Way to Establish It)

Here's what no one tells you about the business of expertise: Your prospects can't evaluate your true level of proficiency.

They're not experts themselves. That's why they need you.

So how do they decide who to hire or buy from?

Is it the person who went to the best school? Or worked for the most prestigious firm?

Nope. In this time of institutional distrust, those credentials can even work against you.

They hire the person who makes them feel understood. Someone who shares their worldview, knows their struggles, and shows them how much better their life could be once their problem is solved. 

They hire someone who feels like "one of them," even as you represent an aspirational level they wish to achieve in the context of the problem. Yes, even in business-to-business markets.

This comes down to credibility. But let’s make sure you understand exactly what that means.

What Exactly is Credibility?

Most people think credibility is just about being knowledgeable or competent. But that's only part of the story. The full equation is actually:

Expertise + Trustworthiness = Credibility

Expertise is what you know and can do. It's your technical competence, your skills, your ability to solve problems. This gets you qualified for consideration when you demonstrate your expertise with content rather than claiming it.

• The question prospects are asking: "Does this person know what they’re talking about?"

Trustworthiness is whether people think you’re biased in the demonstration of your expertise. This is about honesty, transparent communication, and clear motives. 

• The question prospects are asking: "Is this person helpful or solely self-interested?"

Trust is a next-level state that determines whether people feel safe with you. This is about rapport, shared values, and emotional safety. 

• The question prospects are asking: "Do I feel comfortable that this person will solve the problem and treat me fairly in the process?"

Never lose sight of the fact that in the early stages of connecting with a prospect, trustworthiness differs from a broader sense of trust, which hasn’t been established yet.  At this point, people have only your content and the context in which it’s presented to evaluate your credibility.

And when I say “people,” I don’t mean everyone who runs across your content will necessarily find you credible. It’s got to be your people.

Why “Tribe” is Not a Meaningless Buzzword

Over the years, certain buzzwords have commanded the attention of the digital business world with sound and fury while managing to signify very little:

Community. Authenticity. Tribe.

But each of these concepts is incredibly important if you truly understand what they mean and how they work. We’ll leave the first two for another day, and talk about “attracting your tribe” right now.

From a practical standpoint, this simply became a hip word for “audience” sometime around 2008. But underneath the superficial interchangeability is a powerful distinction that is as stark as night and day. If you manage to attract your true tribe, you can trade a passive audience for a powerful movement that fuels your expertise-based business for years.

People are tribal by nature. They're drawn to those who share their identity, values, and worldview. When you intentionally establish a shared identity with the people you specifically target, they feel connected to you — and therefore trust you — more than those who don’t.

And that’s the case even if those other experts outrank you in the credentials department. Because credentials are not what ultimately matter in the business of expertise.

This is important because messages designed to persuade are rarely received in a vacuum. The source of the message is always taken into consideration, and the source strongly influences the impression the content or copy has on the intended audience. 

This brings us right back to credibility. It’s an essential aspect of human psychology that’s been recognized as critical for persuasion for over 2,000 years. In the fourth century BC, Aristotle said:

We believe good men more fully and more readily than others; this is true generally whatever the question is, and absolutely where exact certainty is impossible and opinions divided.

This is true wisdom, but it leaves plenty to unpack. The audience's values determine a "good man" (person), and there can be wild disagreement over that in itself. For example, some people think Donald Trump is a good man, and many others would disagree.

Plus, “where exact certainty is impossible and opinions divided” is a perfect description of the internet and even the broader media sphere, especially when someone presents an idea that deviates from the status quo. To stand out, you’ll need ideas and solutions that are in no way the same tired tropes everyone else is using.

And yet, credibility is a word we tend to take for granted. As with the useful cliché of “know, like, and trust,” we accept credibility as a necessary ingredient for persuasive messages without carefully considering what it means and how it comes into play.

Credibility makes all the difference when it comes to the impression an audience has about the source of any message, whether informational, persuasive, or otherwise. Social psychology studies show that the person or entity that initiates the message influences how we think about the message itself. 

In other words, the messenger is the message.

We’ll dive into the social psychology of it all in upcoming lessons. But for now, let’s begin with some starter tips.

Begin with Connection, Not Credentials

Here are two techniques that help establish credibility with your chosen tribe. 

The first is saying what your prospects are thinking but haven't put into words. When you give a voice to “the conversation in their head,” they immediately think: 

Finally, someone who gets it!

Most experts try to impress people with what they know. Smarter practitioners connect with what prospects experience and feel, and then relay how they, too, have had similar experiences and feelings.

Poor approach: "With my twenty years of experience in manufacturing..." 

Better approach: "You know that feeling when you're implementing a new system and everyone's fighting you on it? When you know it's the right move, but getting buy-in feels impossible?"

The second technique enhances credibility through story. This is where the prospect senses that you understand them, and you begin the process of building higher levels of the trustworthiness component...