Trust building for small business
Whether you’re a small business or large business it’s critical to build that customer trust!
Relationships are everything, especially in today’s marketplace. Relationships are the key to success in your business whether it be at the level of:
- Corporate
- Sales
- Customer support
Boy, let me tell you how critical it is to do relationship marketing the right way!
Mark Given is the founder of ‘Trust Based Philosophy’ and his message is right in alignment with mine.
Mark was the CEO of a multi-state retail/rental store in 47 locations for 20 years. His next venture over the next 18 yrs includes:
- International speaking and training
- Author of a series of books
- Realtor
- Volunteer
- Community leader
Spending 10’s of thousands of hours teaching his life & small business changing trust-based philosophies.
Find out in this value-packed interview what Mark Givens’ means by Trust-Based Philosophies as he teaches us how to:
- Generate
- Maintain and;
- Repair
Trust in our business relationships…
“All success begins with trust and ends when trust deteriorates” ~Mark Givens~
First off, kudos to you for taking the time to sharpen your saw and to learn new methodologies. The importance of doing business by building relationships and winning your consumers’ trust in this tangible economy is critical!
Having to build, maintain and repair relationships is simply a part of life in a small business or big business for that matter. Whether it be for business or personal reasons. Even quite possibly for both personal and business together combined.
Mark Given, gives great clarity on this very subject and I’m super excited to blog about his golden nuggets today!
Trust is and always has been important in the world. We all know that this is not a new idea or concept … right?
So why has it become so much more important here today in 2019 than ever before?
He replied “The world has changed so much with technology. It used to be that when you offend and break one customers’ trust they would tell 10 people. Now, with technology, we have instantaneous reviews, comments, and opinions.”
This means that one offended or upset customer can instantaneously sway 100’s if not 1000’s of people with one simple negative comment.
4 Phases of trust
We now have literally milliseconds to act on negative comments and attitudes.
Understanding the 4 phases of trust-building is imperative in today’s high-tech, high-touch world!
- Grand opening: Profiling, it’s your first impression on how you present yourself and people perceive you.
- Rapport building: Ask questions and listen to people by spending more time being interested rather than interesting.
- Maintenance: Having a service mindset by sincerely giving, not taking.
- Repair: How to recover because all businesses make mistakes, we are human.
The customer is always right, or are they?
Focus for a minute on the 4th phase. Repairing a business relationship that has lost trust. It takes transparency. Transparency fits right into trust-building in the repair phase and here’s how … don’t try to be something your not! Fooling people only lasts for a brief moment in time. Our true colors and character always come out.
However, what about those people or customers with the ‘the customers always right attitude’ and nothing you say or any apology is gonna repair the relationship. At this point, the decision needs to be made on whether or not you’re going to invest more time and effort, assign them to a new sales rep or just end the relationship.
When you’ve been transparent, and do everything you can to genuinely fix and repair trust in a business relationship and the customer refuses to forgive, continuing to disparage you and your business … taking the high-road is always the answer.
Remember the wrong thing is never the right thing!
Mark recommends that you always respond to a negative comment, especially when it’s going to be available to be seen all over the internet on social media.
Respond immediately when you have some clarity by:
- Recognizing and empathizing with the unhappy customer
- Apologizing that you are sorry there is nothing you have been able to do to rectify the challenge thus far
- Reiterate that you are willing to do anything REASONABLE (KEYWORD) to satisfy the wrongdoing
Happily, this will work in your favor. It’s important to respond in a positive way. Help those who are reading and researching you to know that you are transparent, can be trusted to turn a wrong into a right (even though the customer is not right.) Now, you can simply leave it at that!
Customer trust-building strategy
Warning!
Most importantly, don’t play the game of getting the last word in! Do not respond to any more negative responses from the upset customer after you have made the above statement. Carrying on with it as a conversation will just drag you down. Know that other people are smart enough to see what is going on and they will more than likely ignore the rest of the negativity.
It may seem trivial to some people, but I tell ya … this is an issue with business after business on how to handle comments and feedback that is all public. No business is exempt.
Simply:
- Recognize
- Admit
- Post
- Let it go
Then try to rectify and solve the challenge in private.
Hopefully, you were able to watch the interview above to gain all the knowledge that Mark so graciously shared with us. If not take a few minutes to watch it. Trust me, you’ll be glad you did!
Thanks for joining me on my blog today!
Until next time take care,
Kody B.
p.s. Save money and pick up Mark Given’s 4th and latest book “Trust Based Networking” for the low price of $10 + $5 shipping by emailing him at [email protected] this is his gift to you for watching the podcast interview.
