Trust

One of my tweets, which was quite complex for 115 characters (leave 25 for the re-tweet!) was copied last week – by one of my followers. As I follow back, and was early for a meeting, I spotted the transgression – which was identical down to the last dot. This reminded me that it is a long time since I looked at Trust in the business environment.

We all spend a lot of our time working on our business image. We do this in order to:

• Generate awareness of ourselves and our businesses;
• Build trust with our target audience;
• Demonstrate that we are credible suppliers who can be trusted.

Before people will deal with us, they need to trust us. Just how much they need to trust us will depend on the nature of our business.

Things to think about:

• That trust upon which we depend has to be earned. It is not ours by right.
• It takes time to establish trust with a new contact.
• Our social media interactions are an important element in our marketing and have to demonstrate the same integrity as all our other marketing activities.

How much Trust is Sufficient?
Any new contact will have their own perception of just how much they need to trust you before they will confirm a transaction. Both the trust required and the time to achieve it will be a function of several variables:

• What is at stake;
  - Cost;
  - Non-financial impact of failure;
• Complexity;
• The contact’s own knowledge and experience.

Credibility

To be trusted to do something is to be a credible supplier of that product or service. Credibility is derived from:

1. Truth – you portray the best possible image of your business but do so honestly.
2. Behaviour – you keep your promises and you behave in the same way at all times – not showing one character in public and another in private.
3. Caring – you care more about the outcomes for your customers and the quality of your work that contributes to those outcomes than you do about other factors.
4. Skills and experience – you can prove that you have the skills and abilities that you are selling. This means promoting your strengths as they suit the opportunity – not promoting the skills you would like to have in order to win a piece of work.
5. Responsibility – you take responsibility for the outcomes of your work and you make sure that problems and issues are rectified.

Further reading:
Stephen M.R. Covey with Rebecca R. Merrill, The Speed of Trust, Simon & Schuster, ISBN-10: 0-7432-9560-9

Note: No politicians were harmed in the writing of this article