I had a strange experience earlier this week.

A potential client dropped me an email and set up a time to talk. I followed my usual process and asked him to drop me a note with various details about his business and the key challenges he was facing.

When he called, the first thing he said was:

“It's funny, I've seen you so many times on video and heard you on webinars, it feels like I'm talking to an old friend”.

How great is that? We've never met or even spoken, yet the feeling he's getting as we start to speak is one of friendship.

Getting people to know, like and trust you has been a staple of business development for service businesses for as long as I care to remember.

The problem, of course, is that everyone does it.

In the competitive race, once the starter pistol goes, we all rush to build our credibility with potential clients and get them to like and trust us enough so that they're ready to buy. The one who inches over the finish line first wins.

But what if you began with a headstart? What if before the starter pistol fired, you were 50 yards down the track? Half way to your potential client knowing, liking and trusting you enough to hire you. So far ahead that your competitors will only have just got started by the time the client feels comfortable enough to buy from you.

That's the power of audio and visual media.

You can build credibility with the written word. But for that “know, like and trust” factor that we need if they're going to hire us for a complex and costly service – they need to see and hear us in action.

Podcasts, webinars, video on your website aren't going to get you all the way there – but they're going to give you a critical headstart vs your competitor.

If you use them, of course.

Do you?