The real speed of trust

“When trust goes up, speed will also go up and costs will go down”, says Steven Covey.

A direct quote from the book ‘The Speed of Trust’. Steven uses this formula to explore the concept of credibility, authority and trust. It’s true, the more time you invest into creating your story, your value and your trust, your conversion (marketing, time, energy, communication) ‘costs’ go down. Naturally the converse is true too, DTRUST = DSPEED, UCOST.

Naturally, profits rise from this high trust dividend, but often as a consequence of high trust, you are able to charge more for what you do. Clients tend to pay more if you are seen as a highly trustable person or business, viewed as the “go to person” and have established your authority and expertise credentials.

Amongst the many business strategies you can implement, in my view the first three you should concentrate on is your story, value and trust.

Your Story is Powerful

What is your story and background? Everyone loves a story and your market wants to know yours. When you tell your story, some personal as well as business stories, people begin to get to know you better. They start to understand who you are as a person, your personal values, your thoughts and feelings about life and business. They can see a little about your intentions and your integrity and if told well, they can perceive how you act, behave, carry out your role and how you will treat them as clients.

When you start to develop your story, it’s good to start with the truth – not anything fabricated because a very large part about building trust is authenticity. Describe how you got started, your growth, experience and key abilities and the outcomes for your clients along the way. Adding some personal information about yourself will show how you came to be the person you are today. Include what drivers control you, your philosophies and your personal values.

When people get to know you better, it often becomes easier for them to like you and it’s not until they like you that they can begin to trust you.

Your Value

So much is written about value and about creating a client value proposition (CVP) and yet so few possess truly effective value propositions.

A CVP is more than just a smart tagline to use on your promotional material, it should be a point of difference and form the foundation for all your branding, marketing and communications.

To create powerful CVPs, there are five key components or promises you should deliver on and bring to your market. These include your:

1. Unique Selling Proposition
2. Unique Value Proposition
3. Irresistible Offer
4. Unique Safety Proposition
5. Unique Experience Proposition.

1. Unique Selling Proposition – The USP is a concise summary, telling your market, “Why me, why now and why in this manner?”

2. Unique Value Proposition – This describes the underlying value you provide to your market. It’s a presentation and representation either directly or indirectly through your ‘story’ about your price, fees, costs, expenses and justification of these – both tangible and intangible.

3. Irresistible Offer – This is all about what makes your offer powerful, outstanding, amazing, and so much more than expected. It’s what makes your offer “irresistible”.

4. Unique Safety Proposition – This takes away the risk from your market. You can do this by providing guarantees and warranties and by including other tactics and strategies such as risk reversal, risk reversal plus, testimonials and case studies.

5. Unique Experience Proposition – This outlines the experience clients receive from you before, during and after the implementation of recommendations.

Client value is the difference between the benefits a client sees from the advice, service or product you provide and how much it costs them to purchase it. So, be as clear as possible about your value.

Trust

Taking care of your story and your value will go a very long way to delivering on trust. Trust about your competence, your confidence, your ability and your integrity. Concentrate all of your efforts on communicating to your ideal target market, that you indeed possess the right competence, confidence, ability and integrity for them. Show them that you are the one for them.

Remember with today’s high level of scepticism, in a world surrounded by the evidence of misplaced trust, even before they meet with you, prospective clients are searching for clues about you and signs that point towards your trustworthiness.

They are looking to get to know you and they want to be able to like you. What is it about you that tells them they can trust you? Even if they are not conscious about what they are seeking, they are looking for signals that allow them to know, like and trust you.

Therefore you should invest in business, marketing and sales strategies and tools that are congruent and work in an integrated way to promote you as the one to trust.

Contact us for more information.

Kym Turner
Head of Coaching & Development
Capstone Financial Planning
P: 03 8622 0719
E: k.turner@capstonefp.com.au