Business Relationships and Trust

“Trust is integral to the idea of social influence: it is easier to influence or persuade someone who is trusting.” ~ Wikipedia

As we have often been told, trust is earned.  Merely telling someone that they can trust you, does not mean they will.  It is more likely that if you said “trust me” their antenna would go up in the form of some type of bullshit alarm.

Trust, like integrity, is not a term you can simply assign to any relationship.  It cannot be assigned by you on your behalf; it must be assigned by the person you desire to have trust in you.   Trust is earned, sensed, developed and cultivated.  Effectively building trust requires the necessary time and consistency for someone to get to that point that they do, in fact, have a sense of trust in you.

Once someone does trust you, you have an obligation to demonstrate worthiness and care of that trust.  If you are to leverage your trusting relationships to influence or persuade,  you are obligated to do so to the advantage of the person you are helping, not to your selfish interests.

In the customer development process, trust is one of the three keys to an effective customer and business relationship.  You must commit the time, the sincerity, and the interest to build trust into any relationship in order for the process to move forward efficiently and effectively.  Until your customer develops a high level of trust in you, their risk meter will prevent them from moving forward with you.  Build that trusting relationship and your customer development efforts will proceed more efficiently.