Grey Matters: Blog
Harnessing Trust
Thursday 21st April 2016
Trust is the most enigmatic of things, it cannot be rushed, forced or solicited. You can spend years building trust, and then destroy it in a momentary lapse.
And yet, more often than not, its one of the most powerful reasons your largest clients will continue to award new business to you. Indeed, if you've really got it, they'll often invest time to provide unique insights, helping to refine and align your offers into winning bids.
Naturally, as it offers such advantages, account managers want to build trust with their clients and harness it.
But it has always puzzled me that an account manager, quick to cite customer relationship or trust as the primary reason for winning a new contract, can then lose the next deal with the very same client on price.
Surely they're still buying on trust, it's just they trust someone else the same or more?
The rubies must surely lie in the dust here, so lets take a closer look.
First, understand that trust is exclusively in the eyes of your beholder, there is no right of appeal if you think they've got you all wrong. Also understand that in corporate account management there are a lot of beholders and most likely different ones each project.
Second, we need to understand that trust works in multiple dimensions.
- Personal Trust. How well do your clients trust the individuals in your immediate team addressing the opportunity, or aligned to deliver the products/services? Personal trust is invariably a binary thing in large accounts. You either have enough of it or you don't.
- Corporate trust. We all know brands that we prefer to work with, and those that we'd avoid like the plague. Does your corporate brand, trading history and conduct inspire confidence that you are the right type of trading partner for your client? Does your client know that when the chips are down your business will do all it can for them, working flexibly and dynamically to meet and exceed their requirements? Corporate trust is less volatile than personal trust. It generally moves slower, but there are defining moments in any B2B relationship that can significantly shift this trust. For example; how you respond to a crisis situation, how you attempt to resolve disputes, or how your client responds to sensationally good (or bad) projects.
- Capability trust. Does your client believe that you can best deliver their desired outcomes for this specific project? They may draw this from their own experiences, or from testimony of others. Capability trust may vary significantly from deal to deal.
The interaction of these three dimensions of trust is what unlocks a willingness to buy from you. It stands to reason then, that how you nurture and manage trust in each dimension is essential to create enduring, vital sales account relationships.
Third, appreciate that trust is dynamic and transient:
- Dynamic. Trust will change over time dependent on: attentiveness to your clients problems; who you're working with; the nature of the project, your track record. You are often judged to be only as good as your last performance.
- Transient. Your client might well trust you to implicity to deliver something which is your core business, but they are sceptical of your ability to deliver their requirements which are more of a stretch for you and your company.
Finally, get that trust is always contextual from an account selling perspective . Even if all competitors exceed an acceptable threshold of trust, someone always has the upper hand - you may be trusted, but not the most trusted to undertake a critical contract.
What does all this point to?
Well the good thing is, as trust is dynamic, you can definitely influence it.
Further, because it works in three dimensions you can start to segment your focus and think about how you build trust in each area.
However, the bad news is because of its dynamic and transient nature, it's much harder to pin trust down and effectively measure it objectively.
My suggestion is that you spend more time identifying what you see and feel instead of psycho-analysing your clients words.
Ask yourself these questions:
1) If my client personally trusts me to a higher degree than my competitors, what would they do, and what would it feel like?
2) If my client had strong trust in my business, as a strategic partner, how would this display itself to me?
3) If my client believes my solution could be the best fit to meet and exceed their requirements, what would they do?
Then reverse the polarity of these questions to understand what the opposite looks like.
When you then compare these model answers to what you actually observe when you are working with your client, you'll quickly form a detailed view of trust.
I have found this of enormous value when:
1) Planning activities around specific opportunities,
2) Building enduring personal trust-based relationships, and
3) Identifying corporate trust issues that need to be addressed.
If you'd like some help in building your plan for harnessing trust with your clients further, please get in touch here.
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