Cindi Lauper sang it well in her hit "True Colors."

I see your true colors
And that's why I love you
So don't be afraid to let them show
Your true colors
True colors are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

© 1986 Denise Barry Music and Billy Steinberg Music (ASCAP)
All Rights Reserved

"Trust" is the answer most practitioners give when asked, "Why do your clients, centers and prospects do business with you?" Trust is a good answer, but woefully incomplete if you do not know its nature or how to develop it.

By definition, trust is a firm belief in the honesty, reliability, credibility and integrity of someone. It implies that the person trusted has a duty of care or custody to the one who trusts. The buyer who trusts puts faith in the advisor to act in the buyer's best interests, to be what the advisor claims s/he is, and to be giving competent advice. Trusting an advisor means putting stock in that person's advice. Trust is an action demonstrating faith in another.

When a sale is made—a transaction—the buyer is saying… "I trust you and what you are saying now." When a buyer becomes a client and seeks additional advice beyond that given for the first few transactions, the client is saying "I trust you still." Some advisors have clients who trust them only. What dynamics lead to the trust in these relationships?

The more similar the people in a relationship, the more likely a trusting relationship will develop and endure. Of all the similarities that can be matched (style, language, manners, culture, income, residence, attitudes, interests, values, etcetera) the most important is values. Matching values does more to bind the professional-client relationship than any other factor.

Relationships are Two-way Connections

Good advisors (and poor ones, too) all know how to elicit facts and feelings from buyers. Financial planning, estate planning and life insurance require this. —Who do you love? How do you want to show them? What kind of education do you want to fund for your children? Do you want your family to keep your home when you are gone? What would your family be doing today if you had died last night? What would you like them to be doing? — These kinds of questions reveal how buyers think and show what their values are. How do you reveal to buyers what your values and beliefs are?

Advisors who refuse to reveal themselves personally to clients, centers and prospects miss the boat entirely. They do not give others the best opportunity to learn to trust them as people, which means they earn less trust as advisors than they can. Advisors are people. That's how most buyers see it. The buyer who seeks cold objectivity and facts gets advice from books and tedious searches on the Internet. Buyers who seeks to be understood and then be presented with suitable recommendations gets advice from a person whom s/he trusts. Trust forms first from intuition. The first –and best—intuitive perceptions come from assessing similarity of values.

Case in Point

A very successful financial planner client of mine embarked a few years ago on a journey of trust. He slowly began to accept that revealing his core values to clients and others might be good to do. It took time for Steve to embrace this idea, but continuous feedback from clients affirmed this. Here's a synopsis of what happened.

Steve has strong values. He lives them. He has an interesting personal history. He applies his values to the ways he lives and conducts business.

We worked at slowly introducing demonstrations of his personal values into his communications with clients. We worked out a personal history outline and chose a few points to make that would probably interest people. We began to weave these major, and other minor points, into Steve's letters, newsletters, and personal communications with clients. A human interest story was written that told about Steve's growing up and how he made some important life decisions. All these communications showed Steve's values and demonstrated how he lives them. Clients otherwise would not have known.

Feedback

Steve sent me this email:

The letter was a huge success. The out-pouring of support, energy and prayers from my clients has been very surprising. The support has come from people that I would never have guessed. Really emotionally draining but very nice. It was a good decision to send the letter.

I have done some further thinking in terms of the future. I have looked at where I spend my time, where my stress comes from and what changes I would like to make. Currently, I am working 39 weeks per year. I want to get that to 26 gradually over the next 5-10 years, probably adding a week per year. The extra time will be taken during the summer with my family and for charitable purposes during the balance of the year. By delegating more to my staff this transition will be easy. We need to let my clients know that they can depend on my staff to solve most of their problems. We need to make the staff "warm and fuzzy" for my clients. They are warm and fuzzy people, so the only real challenge is communicating the truth of it.

I want to "partner" with my clients to achieve more family time, by eliminating night work or at least make it so I am out only one night per week including charitable pursuits. If they must have a night appointment it may be a six-eight week wait for a meeting.

The last piece of the puzzle is to partner with my clients to help my business grow. I want to add good people to my client list and the best source will be existing clients. It will be the only source of new business. Unless a prospect is referred by a known commodity (someone I know well), I won't deal with them. The days of me chasing people are over. I don't have the time, the energy or the inclination to prospect any longer.

This will give me the free time I want and the income I want. I will figure out how to spend the time.

Steve

I replied:

I read your emails with a smile. As for the client caring and understanding. . .
Even though it is taught that it is more blessed to give than to receive, it is certainly easier to give. You have been on the giving side of things for the most part. I believe you now understand how truly caring many of your clients are; that given the chance (by learning what has been going on with you) people will show their true character. And people with good character want ways to express it.

Don't mean at all to be preachy here. It's simply that you are a good person, attract good people to you, and now have paved a two-way street by letting them in on your issues. Isn't it great that you can bring the best of yourself to your practice and let your clients bring the best of themselves into your relationship!

Happy Thanksgiving. We all have blessings to count. I count a few of my clients as blessings. You are one. Now you can count some of your clients as blessings.
I have always wanted to help my clients see how truly great it can be for them to get close to their own clients in a private practice. This is values-based relationship marketing. Nice way to live, isn't it?

John

In addition to these pieces of feedback, Steve has also told me about letters from clients that indicate their acceptance and sharing of his values, which they cannot do unless they know what those values are. One couple, previously unaware of Steve's specific interest working with inner city children, learned about it in one of the "values" letters he sent. A small part of the letter informed clients about Steve's volunteer work and mentioned this one effort and the joy Steve gets from it. The letter in no way solicited any help. Nevertheless, the couple was moved to assure a very large donation of toys to the effort in which Steve participates. Similar things have happened since Steve started incorporating demonstrations of his personal values in many of his communications with clients.

The same is true for several other of my clients who have "risked" showing their true colors. I say "risked" in quotation marks because it is risk only in your imagination. If the messages in which you communicate your personal values to your clients, centers and prospects are crafted with a few standards, and they are true and well-written, then there is no risk at all.

Communicating your values is one marketing strategy about which I can say with certainty: The media is NOT the message. Your values are the message, and there are many media by which you can convey yours to the people who should know.

You don’t have to be sick to get better.

Questions? Email jhmco@melchinger.com

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This newsletter is designed and distributed by Kirk Lowe of Freedomarketing. Content by John H. Melchinger – The Marketing Coach™