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June 30, 2007 at 08:00 PM
Has the concept of “trust” been overdone? Trust me … it has. (Sorry for using the industry’s most discredited phrase.)
Amazon lists 354,902 books with “trust” in the title, and the mother of all Internet search engines, Google, returns 259 million trust-related links.
So clearly, trust — or the lack thereof — is on a lot of people’s minds. But that’s the problem. Plenty of talk about trust, but not enough action. For this reason, I’d like to devote this column and the two that follow to the topic of achieving business breakthroughs with trust.
Here’s where I’m headed with the whole “trust factor.” Supreme trust is the integral element of business success. When advisors don’t increase trust, they run the risk of hindering their progress or, worse, of destroying their business.
But when they do, they lay the groundwork for unlimited future success and fulfillment. Now, building trust is important, but everybody is doing this, so you need to do it better.
Even more important, since you’re human, you will make mistakes and weaken client trust. So knowing how to restore trust is probably a more useful skill than knowing how to build it.
How can an advisor go about building and restoring trust with clients? By (1) communicating his character and (2) demonstrating his competence.
Communicating character includes behaving in ways that show integrity, good intentions, exemplary motives, and 100 percent honesty. Competency hinges on the quality of the advisor’s skills, capabilities, track record, education and experience.
