10 tips on building trust with your customers

Building trust is key it’s key to building businesses. Without trust, it's difficult to grow your business. I wanted to share the top 10 tips I have learned from reading this book and how you can apply them to your business.

1. Trust is built up from credibility, reliability, intimacy and self-orientation

• Credibility: based on the words we speak. We need to show through our tone and articulation that we are worthy of trust and are credible in our area of expertise.
• Reliability: rooted in consistency, predictability and feeling of familiarity. Showing up for your customers, showing you are there and you care.
• Intimacy: refers to the safety or security that we feel when entrusting someone with something. This is important, as our customers have to feel understood and connected.
• Self-orientation: based on a person’s focus. In particular, whether the person’s focus is primarily on him or herself, or on the other person.

2. The 5 essential skills of trust

• Listening: We aren't talking about purpose-driven listening where you are trying to identify needs so you can justify the pitch/sell/recommendation/opinion you have to deliver. It's about focusing on the act of listening to itself.
• Improvise: Things don't go great all the time, no one is perfect. The book calls these 'moments of truth.' And in these moments, the skill of improvising—inventing, performing, coming up with solutions on the spot—is exactly what you need.
• Risk: There is no trust without risk. Certainly no deep trust. Yet most of us worry about doing something that feels risky—or sharing something personal—because we don’t think we have enough trust in the relationship for that risk to be tolerated. By doing the risky thing we are actually developing the trust.
• Partner: Partnering is best explained through a dancing metaphor. It's about a bit of giving and taking, some synchronization, and being in tune with one another. It's the natural way in which relationships build.
• Know yourself: To know yourself is to know your weaknesses and triggers, along with your strengths, interests, passions, and purpose. Knowing yourself is about achieving a level of self-awareness that is required for good self-management.

3. People snap decide whether to trust you or not

People can make serious judgments of trust very quickly. Trust is a mix of rational and emotional. People decide almost instantaneously whether they trust you, without much proof. Controversial, but think about it, last time you walked into a room and met someone for the first time you made the assessment in a few seconds.

4. Shift from just time based thinking

Time boundaries are everywhere: budgets, quotas, new years resolutions, metrics, ROI (return of investment). There is nothing wrong with time-based as it helps to gauge progress, review and evaluate. But all too often it steers you in the wrong direction, when you use it to measure reality you use it to control reality. Changing your relationships to time has a lot of benefits. You will rarely feel panicked, you will remain committed, but not attached to goals and measures.

5. Four reasons we can't listen

• A habit of talking - most of what passes for listening is not really listening at all.
• Everyday distractions - the human brain has limited bandwidth and finite ability to process information.
• A fear of intimacy - if you really listen to people so they truly feel at ease with you, you may be fearful they might really open up, and then what, what if your client tells you something personal you don't want to know?
• The little internal voice - the constant companion that clogs your brain with chatter.

6. Skillset and the right mindset matters

In building trust, it’s mindset and skill set that matters. The right attitude without the right skills makes for great intentions with unpredictable results. On the other, skill mastery without the right mind sets leads to superficial finesse at best, manipulation at worst

7. We buy with the heart

There is an error in the way people make decisions. Most believe that decision-making is a rational process of facts, applying logic, and coming out with some variation of the truth. We make decisions all the time that cannot be modeled in cold, clear rational terms. Decisions aren't just made irrationally, it means that people buy with their hearts, and then rationalize with their minds.

8. The biggest driver of influence is reciprocity

One of the most important drivers of influence is reciprocity. So the tendency of human beings to want to return a favor done for them. However, people will not accept what you offer if they don't feel understood by you. The way you give others the experience of being heard and understood is by listening. Listening creates reciprocity in the relationship, which leads to a willingness to try new ideas. Quality of listening matters, it’s not enough to listen, and the reciprocating party needs to feel like you are listening.

9. Don't bad mouth competitors

The book takes it one step further in saying if asked, respond “we respect competitors, we encourage you to talk to them.” Taking the high road never hurts and usually helps. Sometimes you are better off referring

10. Selling, influence and credibility

The best way to sell is to stop trying to sell. The best way to influence, is to stop trying to influence. the best way to gain credibility is to admit what you do not know.

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