Great businesses don’t thrive on money, products or services but on trust. Trust is the valuable invisible currency that every business needs to remain afloat. Without building and maintaining trust in business, there will be no business. Business is not just the process of buying and selling products and services. In fact, people don’t buy products and services from you, they buy trust.
Trust in business cannot be earned overnight. It takes time to earn it but once earned, the actual task lies in maintaining it. Building trust is like building a reputation. It might take a hundred years to build trust but only needs one minute to lose it. Building trust is the hardest thing but losing it is the easiest thing.
In business, trust begins with you as the owner of the business. You cannot build trust in others if you are not trustworthy. People around you need to trust you especially with smaller things like keeping time and promises. Establish yourself as a person who can be trusted.
Having worked on your trust, instill a sense of trust in your employees. Your employees need to trust you and you need to trust them. It is very difficult, for instance, for employees to trust a boss who never keeps his word or one who always doubts them. When your employees trust you and they know that you trust them, they will transmit the same to your customers.
How to build trust among employees
Your employees are part of your business. They are part of what you are investing in. Gaining their trust and them gaining yours is the best thing a business can ever have. To build trust among your employees:
- Do not promise them things you know you cannot give them. Most employers think motivation is all about money. They end up promising money rewards to their employees but never fulfill the promise. Promise what you can give or don’t promise.
- Do not take credit for everything your employees do. The business might be yours but those who matter are those who put in the effort to ensure that the business succeeds. When they succeed, do not steal credit from them. Share it.
- Do not blame your employees for every failure that your business encounters.
- Pay your employees on time. Trust is easily lost when you deliberately fail or delay to pay your employees on time.
How to build trust in your customers
Customers are the real reason why your business exists. You lose them, you lose your business. Here are some the ways you can build and maintain the trust of your customers:
- Deliver on time. Trust is lost when you fail to honor deadlines.
- Do not over promise and under deliver. It is better not to promise and deliver quality work than to over promise and deliver unsatisfactory results.
- Maintain quality of your products and services.
Featurd image via hyken.com.
