Market Savvy

John Melchinger--The Marketing Coach™

Build Trust

Rx Make business a pleasure for you and your clients—even fun. A host of puritanical stuffed shirts proffered up the saying Never mix business with pleasure. Hogwash. Business is personal and that means it must be pleasurable or it won’t work very well. Dry, boring and tedious—as in He’s all business—does not wash today. Client appreciation events such as picnics for families, field trips to stock or commodities markets, entertainment shows and other group events work very well. You can invite everyone, or divvy up your clientele into special interest groups, or even entertain only your best clients. The choice is yours. Giving out tickets to local events works too. The possibilities are limitless. Make business a pleasure for you and for them.

Rx Develop genuine relationships. There is much bad advice going around about business relationships. It goes something like this: business relationships are different than personal ones; business is work; work is serious, work is not play. Yet we most likely attract people most like us. Why would you not want to be friends with your clients? If you seek out markets and people who most resemble you, then you create an edge for yourself.

Are you a fickle person or loyal? Why would you then take on a fickle client, one who has a history of dealing with several other advisors or companies? Ask the important questions in your inquiry interview. Have you worked with a planner or advisor before? What happened? What are you looking for in your next advisor? And so on until you are completely satisfied that you can work well with this person. If not, don’t. What you could lose in frustration and time spent with an historically unloyal person will haunt you. Either a person is loyal or not; loyalty is not something you can earn. This works both ways. Heed the signs.

Rx Take time to care. Relationships take time to initiate and build. There is no quick fix, other than a personal introduction (not referral) from a client to an equally well-healed prospect with whom a respecting, trustful friendship exists. You must nurture relationships. So why is it then that letters are sent out that either tell the reader I don’t know anything about you, but I can help so let’s relate or I know everything about you (and here is ample evidence to prove it in this presumptuous ’as someone who…’ sentence) so let’s relate? Relationships are based on various degrees of trust. Trust takes time and caring to build. Take time to care.

Rx Build real trust. Trust does not just happen. Trust is a feeling that someone is dependable. To paraphrase, “Trust never sleeps.” Trust is a feeling based on your activity and behavior. You must actively build it. Your consistency tells others that you have standards and you apply them, making no exceptions, or making consistent exceptions in certain situations. Inconsistency kills relationships. As Emerson said, “Foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Integrity is consistency in meeting the promises you make. Do what you say you will do (or explain why before the deadline) and do it on time and your integrity will show in your consistency. And although confidentiality “goes without saying”, it needs serious mention. It is what financial clients most want from you.

A ToT salesman started losing cases because he began dropping names of well-to-do clients with his prospects. He did not just lose the prospects’ attention, he lost a few of the well-to-do clients whose names he dropped. He did this without permission, which he could have gotten. It took him several months to recover financially, and he may never recover in that circle. Consistency and confidentiality create trust. Use the time it takes to advantage.

© JHMCo. All rights reserved.