Whatever You Do, Don’t Sacrifice Trust

What is impossible to buy, can only be earned with hard work and time and, once lost, is almost impossible to regain?

Trust.

If you do business the most important asset you have is the trust of your customers. As a new business this is the most important asset you can obtain (and often the most difficult).

We recently had two vendors announce price increases to services we use. With one company, after the experience was over, the trust I had in them had increased considerably. Was I happy about the price increase? No. But I understood why they needed to do it and how, in the long run, it would actually benefit our business.

With the other business the trust has been decimated and I don’t know if it can be recovered. A product we loved to use now has a taint around it.

Once you have the trust of your customers you should treat it like a precious treasure, never to be neglected or taken for granted.

Just look at Toyota. Think of how much money they are going to have to spend over the next years in an attempt to regain consumers’ trust.

Whenever you are dealing with your customers make sure that you pass your decisions through a “trust filter.” Ask yourself, will my action:

1. Increase the trust my customer has in me
2. Decrease the trust my customer has in me
3. Not affect their trust at all

You should always strive for decisions that will increase trust. Something that will decrease trust is never worth the short term gain.

Trust plays a huge factor in new sales. Do you know what I have found to be the best thing to say to a new prospect? “Our product may not be right for you.” (Of course, I only say this when I really mean it).

Many times we have people looking at ScreenSteps Live who want to do things with it that it really isn’t designed to do. They may be trying to create a marketing site or a blog with it. They may have just misunderstood what ScreenSteps Live is. By being honest with them and recommending other services that might better fit their particular need the trust they have in us as a company automatically increases.

Guess what the next question almost always is – “So how should I use ScreenSteps Live?” I then explain what ScreenSteps Live was designed to do and how they should use it. The vast majority of these people become customers. I can promise you that if I were to try to talk them into using ScreenSteps Live when another solution would be better for their particular problem I would instantly lose them as a prospect.

Gaining and maintaining trust is not easy. There are often hard decisions that fall into gray areas, and like any business, we haven’t always been perfect. But we have tried to do our best and quickly rectify any mistakes we have made.

When dealing with customers, error on the side of building trust. It is the most valuable asset you can obtain.