Trust in business

Trust is one of the most important things in business. You have to build trust with all your stakeholders if you are to be a successful businessman. One of the ways to do this as advised by our mentors has been to go out and talk to people. This interaction with prospective stakeholders help create a pool of people who would trust us. This is true to some extent but it is not the only thing that we can do to get people to trust us. There are other things we need to do which are probably more important.

Implicit belief

What is trust? We use the word in everyday conversation but do we really know what it means? Trust is the implicit belief we have in a person – it is based on our interactions with them and in the promises they make to us and which they honour. Trust cannot be built up overnight. It takes time – maybe years to build up. It is a very deep feeling, not a superficial thing that can just happen.

Today’s consumers are a very savvy lot. They don’t make compromises in their purchases.  They are exposed to a very wide range of products and services and they have a huge variety to choose from. If they are dissatisfied with one, they shift to a competing product.

Today’s customers

In earlier days if shopkeepers did not have the product or brand we wanted, we were sweet-talked into accepting an alternative. But today’s customers are not so easily beguiled. Today you need to manage your customers correctly, provide them with value-added extra facilities, have a good return policy if your product does not make them happy, have good after-sales service, solve their problems etc.

All this, primarily how you treat your customers, will go further in creating trust than by just sweet-talking them.