No matter what business niche you serve, what products you sell or what services your provide or even if you are a complete newbie in business there are many important clues you must be aware of if you must really rake in plentiful profits from your business.

I am here with you now with one of the vital business clues…

Hardly can one win an argument against the fact that thinking about how to market a business is equal to thinking about how to influence or persuade potential buyers. I don’t know how long ago you, as an experienced or aspiring business owner, have had an intensive reading on the psychology of marketing. I did this of recent and all what I discovered have been so fascinating.

Let’s kick in into the business clue straightaway.

Reading the title above, you have been made curious, I suppose, to know what being a professor especially will have to do with business clues. This is it. Professors have esteemed value within and even outside the academia. They are bestowed with high level of authority, particularly within their scholastic specialties. They are owed due recognition based on the attribute of authority. Among the lawyers and similar circles of experts, the same pattern holds and this quality remains ever influential.

Now, let’s look at the use of authority in business.

In business, the application of authority is also possible, though in a stealth manner, and it is observed that many business owners are not optimizing the use of this great marketing psychology trait. Yet, this is one of the best perception-based tools business owners should tap into. Why? The reason is that we highly tend to dance to the tune of authoritative entities.

Mind you, I am not advocating that businesses should become imposing in relating with their targets. This wouldn’t even work well for business advancement. If you can recollect along with me, our parents have thought us about giving respect to authorities. Our teachers, the priests or pastors, the lawyers, the police, the government, the boss or any other significant others including our peers; they all help us in realizing the need to give social or civil respect to authorities. Many of these authorities have physical symbols which, when seen, naturally make us prone to display due respect and decorum. When the authorities direct, instruct, protect, advocate for us or direct us in some ways, we are very likely to become submissive because of the value that we perceive of them.

Materials such as royal insignia, badges, regalia and even titles (president, governors, professor, mayor, engineer, millionaire) as well as possession related exclusive products make us adore their bearers. Imagine a co-spectator with whom you were cheering up football players yesterday and today, you met in uniform as a top-ranked police officer or as a medical staff in surgeon scrubs or in doctor’s coat with a stethoscope hanged on his neck. You will agree that the latter person you met will be more influential on your actions than that person of yesterday.

Your reactions to authority are found to be natural and quite tending to give immediate ‘yes’ answers to relatively all given directions. The influence involved is so powerful that it becomes a norm for interrelating with the authorities in a no-look-back manner. The authorities, therefore, care so much for this norm and try to maintain and maximize its use as far as possible. Personally and professionally, the concerned always ensure that the authoritative values placed on them are not allowed to decline. This is where the clue is for business owners to leverage.

For you the business owners, your ‘authoritative’ influence is called credibility. If this is ensured to become an attribute of the relationship with your customers or clients, the results will be repeat buying, referrals, upsells and even volume buying; a sum of which can interpret to faster and more than double or triple profits. Like the authority of a professor or a lawyer is fostered, business credibility is esteemed by customers or clients and it does serve a business for long if not left to be tarnished.

How Businesses can Ensure High-Level Credibility

Top on the list of what you must do to ensure increasingly valued credible posture in your business are:

Build Trust

Build trust for yourself. Do the things that will make your customers to be assured of your dedication, service and reliability.

Be Present

This simply put is that you must engage your customers interactively and you must not be tired wherever your customers want you engaged in terms of communication, clarifications, support and the likes.

Be Up to Date

Never be a laggard in your industry in terms of positive trends, technology and industry best practices. Always showcase these in all the ways you relate with your customers and don’t forget to put all your customer interactions on the platforms on demand.  The social media is an example of such platforms of interaction.

Be ‘Proud’

Be proud (i.e. poised) to tell the stories of your achievements of your business and about customer relationship. Be proud to have and disseminate the testimonials regarding your business as provided by your customers or clients.

Build your Brand

This is the totality of doing all you have got to do to ensure that the business standard or model you want is achieved. In fact, building your brand means building your business; not excluding your personal brand.

One more thing about building your business credibility

You have to build it yourself.

When engaging other people to help in building your business ‘authority’, you have to take the lead and get deeply involved in bench-marking and putting it to practice. This is to point it out to you that you can never be isolated in building your own business credibility.

Note it again that you cannot be authoritative on your customers. Unlike the lawyers, doctors, governors (etc.) who are publicly or officially or corporately or professionally recognized, you are to provide the proof that you are what you say you are. Note this also: building your credibility is not a one-off process as it must be monitored, maintained and tailored towards making profits unceasingly.

To your business success.