Black Girls Consult TOO!
The Black Girls Consult Too! podcast provides a business resource for women in consulting, especially women of color, to successfully navigate a hyper-masculine, highly competitive industry. It demystifies how to start and grow a thriving consulting business by simplifying the process and helping to avoid common pitfalls that can derail even the best ideas. Each episode is crafted to dive deep into consulting practice, business strategy, mindset, and more. For more information, visit www.excelatconsulting.com/podcast.
Black Girls Consult TOO!
Episode 131: How to Build Trust from Day One as a Consultant
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First impressions happen fast, sometimes before you even say a word.
Before a client ever books a call, they’ve already Googled you, checked your LinkedIn, and formed an opinion about whether they trust you. The question is, are you in control of that narrative, or is it costing you opportunities?
In a world where trust is harder to earn and easier to lose, how do you position yourself as the expert clients believe in before you even step into the room?
This episode is all about making sure your first impression works for you, not against you. If you’ve ever felt like you have to convince clients to take you seriously, it’s time to change the game.
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Hello and welcome to the Black Girls Consult 2 podcast. I'm your host, dr Angelina Davis, and I wanna welcome you to the podcast that's dedicated to helping you build your consulting business and thriving in this new era. So we have been in a discussion about trust and building a business in the trust economy. So this episode is going to dive a little bit deeper into that and move us from what trust actually means in our business to really talking about how we build that trust from day one. Because, let's be real, first impressions matter. They matter more than we would like to admit, and it would be great if people took the time to get to know us and to understand our expertise and to recognize our value before they form an opinion. But the truth is that decisions about your credibility are being made within seconds, sometimes before you even get a chance to open your mouth. Think about your own experiences. How many times have you had an interaction where it led you to formulate an opinion that you may have found out later on down the road was not accurate? But, in all honesty, that initial interaction, that judgment that you made, was a determining factor as to how you took your next steps, whether you work with the person or not, and that was based on things like how they may have responded to not you, but someone else that you're watching. It could have been what comments they made at a meeting. That may or may not have been things that you resonated with. Maybe it's whether or not you felt acknowledged or valued when you were in their presence. The bottom line is that clients do the same thing when it comes to evaluating us as consultants. Before they have ever scheduled a call, they've already formulated their initial impression of us, and so oftentimes, if you haven't given this a lot of thought, you could be losing business before the conversation even starts. So today, we're going to break down how to build trust before you even meet a client, because this is going to ensure that you are seen as an authority and that you are making sure that your name comes up every single time as a possible option when it comes to working with someone who can provide a distinct solution in your industry.
Speaker 1:Now, before we dive deeper into this episode, I wanted to take this moment just to share with you a tool that has been helping me save a lot of time in my business when it comes to market research, as I have been navigating this crazy industry, and I'm sure you're doing the same. I've had to think about ways to reposition or change and reframe my messaging so that I am hitting the target when it comes to what my clients are most concerned about right now. And if you've been doing the same thing and finding yourself becoming frustrated because you can't figure out exactly what your clients need, then I have the tool that may help you out, and it's called the Client Insights Generator. This personalized GPT helps you to identify your client's pain points in a matter of seconds, and I don't mean just very generic things. I'm talking about those deep insights that are from proven and trusted data sources, and it helps you to brainstorm some service ideas that may actually lead you to making quite a bit of money. So if you're interested, just click the link in my description and download. It's free. It's something I use all the time and I hope you enjoy.
Speaker 1:I started this episode talking about how we need to build trust from day one. Well, I really should have been saying how we need to build trust from day zero, meaning before we even have a conversation or know that our potential client or prospect exists, we need to be thinking about how we are showing up, especially in this modern time online, thinking about our digital footprint. How are they first coming in contact with our brand? Because by the time we hear from someone, we have either won or lost business before they even made that call. We just don't know to what degree, like we don't know to what degree we have lost business based upon what they may have researched, what they may have seen of us before they got to that point, especially showing up online. As a matter of fact, I always like to go back to the data. When we look at a recent study, it showed that 81% of buyers do online research before they make a purchase decision and in consulting. That means that your online presence is either working for you or is working against you, whether you realize it or not. That needs to be one of the first places. We start. First, when we think about online presence and being in this digital space, it's easy to find information on one another.
Speaker 1:One of the first places that clients are going to look is going to be your website. That's a no-brainer. So when you think about your website, you want to make sure that it's clear what you do and who you serve and why you're best at what you do, or does it leave people a little bit confused? You have to be honest with yourself when you're evaluating those things, and I hear a lot of people talking about, oh, you don't need a website. A website is not a priority, and while I will say that you can start consulting without having a website I want that to be extremely clear. Consulting without having a website I want that to be extremely clear. A website does help to build your credibility because it is one of those places that people are going to search and they're going to look for and they think about established businesses having a website or a presence online. So that is going to be helpful and something that I always recommend that my clients work toward getting.
Speaker 1:Now, when I'm working with early stage consultants and new start consultants, one of the things I like to stress is not having a very big website that you have spent months and thousands of dollars trying to create, not at the beginning, because you are often going to change your approach, your messaging, you're gonna adapt, you're gonna iterate and you don't want to have to constantly be rebuilding this site. Instead, something simple like a very streamlined mini site which will cost you less than oftentimes $1,500, definitely less than $2,000 to do is a great place to start. You can even start with a free website, like on HubSpot. The key is that it needs to just be clear, clean and professional. So website is gonna be one place they look. Another place is gonna be your LinkedIn profile or even other social sites, wherever you most frequently communicate with your clients.
Speaker 1:They're going to go to that as evidence of your business and evidence of your credibility and stability of your business. So you want that to position you as someone with authority. You want it to read almost like a portfolio. You want it to show your work, show your thought process, show the impact that you've made on your industry or the things that your clients have said. You want that to also be a touch point that works in your favor. And they're also going to look for social proof. That's a no-brainer. That's why testimonials and case studies are so important. Those are representative of the past success that you've had and so they are going to look for that in order to see have you worked with someone before? Do they have good things to say about you? They may not always have someone that they can reach and pick up the phone and call and ask about working with you. So they're going to look for these types of things.
Speaker 1:So I want you to ask yourself if someone was to Google you today. As a matter of fact, hop on your computer right now if you're not driving. Go on your computer If you are driving. Please don't do that, wait till you get settled. And I want you to look yourself up on Google. That takes just a couple of seconds. And I want you to look at everything that comes up under your name and then ask yourself does this screen trusted expert, or are there some things on there that will make somebody skeptical? Are they going to pull up some things that are going to make them question your credibility as an expert? Sometimes we're all surprised what we find when we put our name in. You have to do this often because things get published and posted that you may not have been aware of and some of it may not be accurate.
Speaker 1:It is always helpful to take the time to do a self-audit. Google yourself, check your LinkedIn, check your social sites, go over your website with fresh eyes and see if your first impression is strong. That's where you first need to start Just making sure the basics are covered. Now, once you've gone through this process and you've looked and you've checked online, you say, oh, my website's pretty good, my LinkedIn profile is clean. I think it's professionals, representative of me and who I am and what I do and my social presence I feel confident about.
Speaker 1:Then the next step is to consider the impression that you're making when you first meet your client. Are you creating a positive connection? That is our ultimate goal. We want to build relationships, and relationships come from making positive connections and having those positive interactions and being able to resonate with the people that we wanna work with, and one of the most effective ways that I have found to do this is to use storytelling. Now, most people think about storytelling in business as crafting something that's super polished, that's some like rehearsed narrative, something that you've put together and honed in the messaging on. But really, in all honesty, yes, it can be that you can have a very detailed and polished story that you want to tell, but most often is simply about showing people what drives your decision-making, especially as a consultant who is being seen as an advisor and someone who is selling expertise, which is something intangible.
Speaker 1:They want to know that you are the person that they can trust to give them the proper guidance and oftentimes, social proof and testimonials. While they're great and while they are definitely necessary, they don't do this as effectively because clients don't just want to know what you do. They want to know why you do it. They want to understand whether or not you actually care about their situation and what they're going through and whether you're in this for the right reasons. And when you look in the consulting space, some of the firms and the industries that have fallen under the most scrutiny have fallen into those situations because they were not seen as caring about their clients first and foremost. They were not seen as being honest and trustworthy and willing to represent their client's best interests. So we want to make sure that we are doing those things, and storytelling can be one of the best ways, I feel like, for you, to communicate this information.
Speaker 1:You may have heard me even tell my story before about why I do the work that I do. One of the reasons why I'm so committed to this mission and goal of increasing the number of successful women in entrepreneurial consulting, especially women of color, is because I have been in those rooms where I was the only woman, and not only the only woman, but the only woman of color, particularly a Black woman. I felt in those spaces that I had to prove myself to be taken seriously. And let me be clear before you think that, hey, that may have been in your mind or it may just been how you were feeling at that time. That's not really always the case. It was real, it has been real and for me, all I can do is speak my truth and my lived experiences. And because of that, because of these unspoken bias in assumptions and way that my ideas were sometimes dismissed until someone else repeated them, it caused me to not want that to happen to anyone else. And also, when I watched that happen to my colleagues that also were women or someone from a marginalized group, it made me feel that even more deeply. That's a lot of why I do what I do, because I truly honestly believe that the industry needs to evolve.
Speaker 1:So I'm not just giving you a made up story. It is honestly what shapes my approach to how I work, and I'm sure you can think about what has driven you into your space. Why are you starting your business? Why are you doing this? Even if it's for a personal reason, even if it's for the freedom and flexibility to be with your family. People will resonate with those things. So that is what begins to build trust being able to not just communicate what you will do and give promises and guarantees, but also for you to be vulnerable enough to share a little bit about what makes you tick, why you do what you do.
Speaker 1:And your story doesn't have to be some wild client success story. It doesn't have to be this huge major triumph. It just needs to show people what drives you. They need to know what drives you to do your work, and when they understand what drives you, they will know whether or not that is something that they can resonate with, if they agree with, and it puts the power in their hands to determine whether or not they want to move forward. Because clients can tell the difference between someone who's just looking for a check and someone who actually cares.
Speaker 1:And if you've ever wondered why sometimes less experienced consultants land these premium clients while you may struggle to get noticed, this is part of the reason why they may not have reached your level of expertise, but one thing that they have mastered is their ability to communicate their why and therefore they win a trust game because it's going to come back to who do they trust the most. So if that connection is there with someone else although they may not be as experienced as you the client doesn't necessarily know that it's that trust factor that gives them the edge. So, before your next client meeting or before you have their next call, ask yourself why are you doing the work that you do? What drives your decisions? And then, once you have complete and concrete understanding of that, then I want you to focus on communicating that in a way that your client will understand. Because when clients believe in your why, then they're gonna trust your expertise. But the trust has to be there first. They have to have a reason to care and if that trust isn't there, it's going to be hard for them to buy into the fact that you are someone that they should believe in.
Speaker 1:Because a lot of what we do in consulting is based on leadership through influence people to take action. Through our ability to influence them with the knowledge, the data, the statistics, the reports, the assessments, all those things that we're able to do with that strategy, we're influencing their behavior. We can't force them to take action. Remember that is all of it built on trust. And then the last thing I want to stress is that preparation will make or break your credibility. I have watched the lack of preparation literally discredit someone faster than any scandal could ever do it Ever Early in my career, I witnessed firsthand a senior level applicant who had to give a presentation.
Speaker 1:They were doing this as part of the application process. They had to do a presentation in that process to be interviewed. This applicant came in with super solid CV, strong credentials. On paper, their presentation was excellent. They were phenomenal and before the point that we got to the Q&A, they would have been perfect for the role. They would have been perfect for that opportunity.
Speaker 1:But why didn't they get it? Because when it came to answering questions, they froze, they fumbled, they couldn't go deeper, they gave bad answers and everything fell apart. Everything fell apart. And then, the moment they left my colleague and the other decision makers at the table, they didn't just question the presentation skills it wasn't a conversation about whether or not this person just got nervous or whether they didn't do their best on the presentation but then everything else was evaluated separately. They questioned the entirety of their expertise. They questioned everything and what made this more challenging and more difficult for me is that this happened, and I knew in my heart that more than likely the nerves got to her that day, but because of all these other different factors, including some preconceived notions and stereotypes that may have been at play, she didn't get the benefit of the doubt, and when you get down to it, a lot of it came down to lack of preparation, and so that's a reality, especially in our field, in consulting.
Speaker 1:If you're not prepared, if you can't think on your feet, if you're not anticipating challenges, if you can't have intelligent conversations about your industry, then people are gonna assume that you don't know what you're doing. Let me take this a step further, because I don't want you to think that being prepared is just about doing research and making sure you have all the answers and, honestly, even more so than that. It's about understanding your clients beyond what they put in marketing materials. So it's not just about looking on their website and trying to figure out whether or not you know enough about what they say about their business. It's about you diving a little bit deeper and making sure you have an understanding of what's happening inside the organization, beyond the surface, before you go into that meeting and before you try to pitch your services, have you asked somebody what's happening on the inside? Do you know their key pain points? Not just the ones that they say, but the ones that they don't fully acknowledge?
Speaker 1:Yet Everyone that's going to sit around that table, especially if you're working in a corporate environment, has their own agenda. Do you have an idea of what each of those individuals are thinking? And then the internal politics that may be at play? Do you know who's really making the decision? Are you talking to the right person? Who has the influence in that room? All of these things are important, and when we don't consider them, it honestly becomes a roadblock for us. I want you to start going beyond Google. It means talking to people inside the organization, reading between the lines when it comes to looking at annual reports and other reports they may put out, and simply being ready to talk about things in that room that maybe your client didn't expect you to know.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm not talking about dropping some big bomb a secret, because we want to make sure that we know we're not making a big mistake. We want to make sure we know what we're talking about, but my point is to be prepared. My goal is not for you to have a lot of anxiety about knowing everything. You don't have to know everything. As a matter of fact, one of the biggest mistakes that I see new consultants make is thinking they need to have an answer for everything that is asked. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with saying that's a great question. I love to dig into that further for you and follow up with you. Or even just flat out, I don't know. Or even just flat out, I don't know. That is not a problem.
Speaker 1:What's not okay is making up something Just to sound smart. And listen, I have had a number of my I hate to pick on my male colleagues, but, yes, a number of them will talk off the side of their hip and they will give an answer that I am looking at them and thinking to myself now you know good and well, that's not the answer. Oh, you know we don't do that, but sometimes people feel like they have to make up something just to sound smart. They have to find a way to just give an answer, and that is a one-way ticket to losing trust. Bottom line is this If you want to be seen as someone that is trusted from the very start, you have to be more prepared than the average person.
Speaker 1:If you want people to trust you, you have to show up like you already understand their world to some extent and if you don't know it, own it. It's okay to own it. Research it. Come back with a stronger answer, because trust isn't just about confidence and being all-knowing. Trust is also about being competent competent. So I'm hoping that you see and think about all of these things when establishing trust from the start. Thinking about how you're presenting yourself on online storytelling, and understanding how to dive a lot deeper in preparation before you meet with clients All of these things will help build your credibility.
Speaker 1:So my challenge to you is that this week, I want you to take one of these steps. I want you to define your why and then practice articulating it often, because the more comfortable you get with sharing why you do what you do, the more genuine it's going to come across and the more trustworthy you's going to come across and the more trustworthy you're going to sound. Another thing you can do is do a deep dive on a potential client before your next meeting. Go out of your way to try and find out something that they didn't tell you up front. I think you'll be very surprised how they're going to respond. And then, if you don't have opportunity to do one of those two things and maybe you know your why already start getting comfortable with saying I don't know. But I'll get back to you Because I'm sure you're going to have a question sometime this week that is going to stump you, and it's okay to say that you don't know.
Speaker 1:Look, if this episode hit home, I want you to know that this is exactly what I help my clients master, because it's about being positioned so that the right clients see you as the only choice. And when you do that, you don't have to chase clients. You don't have to prove yourself over and over again or lower your rates just to compete. The thing is, when you are able to build this level of trust, then you are ready to shift how you show up in your industry. So if any of this resonates with you and you want to talk further and chat, feel free to DM me on Instagram or LinkedIn at Dr Angelina Davis.
Speaker 1:But as we move forward to our next episode, the one thing that I want to start talking about is how we overcome these different preconceived notions and skepticism that exists, especially when it comes to us as women, especially women of color and consulting and other marginalized groups. How do we tackle that and still build the trust that we need in order to build a bigger and better business that truly thrives? That's going to be a great conversation, so I hope that you tune back in and, until then, make sure that you share this episode with a friend. Leave your five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you enjoyed this episode or any other, and I can't wait to talk to you again next time. Take care.
