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People value trust because they face it in daily life. We trust labels on food products, we trust our teachers that what they say is true, we trust our parents and spouses everything is built on trust relationships today. While each and everyone understands this fundamental truth, very few business owners actually put any effort to building this trust within their business.
Your goal as a business owner is to understand that trust is tangible and manageable. It is in messages that your writers create, its in the quality of work that your employees do, its in the level of comfort that you provide for your workers. Trust is a resource, so use it properly to receive quantifiable and long-term financial benefits.
How to measure trust?
For most business people of modern era there are three main components of trust:
Competence Will you do what you tell you will? Your goal is to be reliable and transparent with your clients and partners.
Experience Do you keep the promise? Learn from the mistakes of others and avoid your own. Be responsive to your audience, contact it via public medias, make improvements.
Values Do you believe in what you do? If you dont believe in your own company then how can anyone else trust you after all? You have to project confidence and take responsibility for what you do.
Why trust matters?
The question might sound rhetorical, but just imagine that your company lost markets trust. What did you get? An absence of sales, cuts in the office, general dissatisfaction. This all demonstrates what trust actually means. Remember, publicity doesnt care if you forgot to turn off the light in the office or didnt donate a penny to kids in Africa you will have a black mark on your reputation. After any negative event in the life of your company, getting the previous trust back will be unbelievable hard!
But we need to come closer to the point, why trust matters for you in a financial sense? First of all, customer loyalty is everything. Between 22% and 44% of customers loyalty is driven by a simple trust to your brand. According to statistics from business analytics, companies with high level of customer trust are twice as likely to experience financial benefits within a year.
Secondly, you have employees loyalty. The more your people trust you, the less work your legal department will have because no one would be interested in leaving. Remember that you cant buy trust of your workers, but you can offer benefits, such as insurance, free gym classes, and even babysitting. Make your employees care and trust you to minimize turnover and exceed your revenue.
How to build trust?
The answer to this question deserves a full book to be written. Yet well try to shorten all information to the main points.
Behave trustworthily and consistently;
Listen to and hear your stakeholders;
Be clear about companys values.
The points above sound easy, right? But the idea is to implement and maintain them inside of your business. If you dont know how, hire an expert, but do something. Dont let matters take their course control this process and improve it constantly. With proper supervision and control, your employees will relax and lose the fear of losing their jobs, your customers will remember that your services are the best and wont even look anywhere else; and your partners will know that you are the person of actions, not words. These three components can earn you a fortune, so dont miss a chance!
