Trust is Wealth, Wealth is Trust.

Trust and business.

This article was originally written for a trade magazine for morgage brokers

The best clients or customers are those that come from referrals. They are easier and cheaper to find and they already have positive expectations of you if the person referring is someone they trust. Your client is a positive case study for them that proves your value, your trustworthiness, before you walk in the door.

So how do you get referrals? Obviously you give good service first and foremost. The basis for this is trust. When you start your relationship with a client you collect enormous amounts of information through the interview and checking process. They are also trying to discover if you are worth the service fees. If you inspire trust in them through this process and your later actions then they will stay with you even if it costs them a bit more.

Trust is a personal relationship and comes out of small things as much as it does out of the big things. It comes from them liking you and knowing you. The more personal the connection the more guilty they will feel about changing their broker, salesperson, source of supply. They are more likely to talk about you to friends and invite you to places where you can informally meet prospects who will not be expecting a sales pitch. In these situations you have to be careful not to appear to be there just to sell because that will betray the trust. You are there to build trust first and let it build into business because they see you as an expert they can rely on.

Information is at the core of personal relationships. When you are interviewing and being interviewed for the business relationship structure the process around what you need to know and they need to know in order to build trust. Do not just find out the clients birthdays but the kids birthdays as well, for example. Set up a reminder to simply send a birthday card to each member of the family when their birthday comes around. It costs about two dollars to have the client’s impression of you go up by hundreds of dollars worth of fees and sales. Follow up with a call to update your information not long after you sent the card. Arrange six monthly updates that are close to the birthdays of each client (if they are a couple) at dinner or lunch, and pay for it.

Have regular parties that are not formal sales meetings but are for fun as thankyous for their ongoing business and invite them to bring friends. Let them introduce you and listen to what they say, and the enthusiasm they use to talk about you. If they are not as happy as you thought they were meet with them later and find out what is going on. The party is as much for you to grow the relationship with the existing clients as it is to find new ones. Pay attention to what is going on their relationships remember many of your clients are actually whole families and if something goes wrong then you are going to have problems too.

You are an advisor and consultant, your business is information, if they do not trust it they will not see why they are paying you fees and they will look for someone they can trust. If you can find them a better deal voluntarily offer it to them, even if you might lose a little money because they will be talking about you to everyone for weeks afterwards. Your name as a trustworthy person will spread. If you are trusted and someone offers them a better deal they will ask you if it is legitimate, you will get a heads up about new programs. You tell them you will research it, come back to them with a realistic appraisal. If it is better tell them so, see if you can offer them the same deal or better and gently remind them what a good relationship you have, including the trust you have developed.

If you think about it trust is the emotional wire that connects every relationship whether personal and business. It is about very simple things:

1. Promise-keeping – how what you do relates to what you say and vice versa
2. Respect – how you value people and how they value you
3. Generosity – being available both when and before people need you
4. Conflict resolution – being able to find creative ways to solve problems so that everyone involved feels their point of view has been taken into account and any compromises are equally shared.
5. Really listening – you help them get clear about what they really want and need and your actions reflect what you hear even if it means a short term loss taken for the sake of the long term relationship.

The richest people in the world know what trust is and how to build and maintain it. When they forget they become HIH, Onetell, Enron. Systems like accounting, auditing, public companies, regulations that ask for qualifications and training are all designed to build the trust that is the invisible breathe of business. If everything you do in your business is aimed at this truth then you will be in for the long haul and for the highest achievement.