Trust is the new currency in business and communication. It’s the foundation for all that you do, and in the information-filled, internet-driven world we live in, it’s more important than ever. In a world inundated by noise, stale messaging and logos, and company-focused content, what sets a brand apart is its ability to establish a human connection and build trust with its audience.
Unfortunately, as important as trust is to a brand’s success, we encounter barriers to that trust every day – especially as relationships are formed. Let me give you an example.
The only way to overcome trust barriers is to identify trust touchpoints and act on them in the right way at the right times: Doing so consistently builds trust, earns you top-of-mind space, and can help you influence decision makers. While that’s easier said than done, it’s a technique I’ve found success with.
Identifying Trust Touchpoints
In any relationship you have with another person – whether that’s a consumer, a member of your audience, a key decision maker at a company you’d like to work with, or some combination of these – there will be opportunities for you to build trust.
Think of those opportunities as targets on the timeline of your relationship. You want to be able to identify those targets and hit them at just the right time; over time (because it takes a while to truly earn trust), that person will begin to see you as a valuable resource that she can trust. Thankfully, there are a lot of ways to hit those targets because there are a lot of ways you can build trust.
It all starts with authenticity. If your only motivation is to make money by selling your product or service, you’re probably not going to find much success with this strategy. Earning trust and influence is a long-term process that depends upon your ability to build truly meaningful, valuable relationships, and you can only do that if you’re being yourself.
From there, one of the easiest and most natural ways to gain trust is by helping others. We frequently lend help to people – employees, team members, spouses, friends, and family – when we have something of value to offer them. The same idea applies to your approach to earning trust and influence. Executed correctly, these tactics can go a long way toward building trust on an individual level. But it can still be challenging to always hit these targets on the timelines of your relationships at the right moment, and it’s more challenging still to amplify this timing to gain influence with a larger group of decision makers.
