Trust - The Customers' Gold Standard

A few weeks ago I had purchased some strawberry cheese cake for my wife and her sister; I thought we'd have it later in the evening while relaxing during her visit. So I go out to the kitchen and cut just a small piece. I take it into where we are watching TV and tell my wife's sister, "Hey, I have a surprise for you. You will love it! Close your eyes and open your mouth."

What do you suppose happened?

She said, "What isssssssssssssssss it?" I repeated my request, this time with more, "Come on .....and trust me."

Same results.

Third time, she relunctantly went along with me as my wife gave her the "nod of approval," and tried the cheesecake. For sure some of you are saying, "Mark, why didn't you just tell her what you had and just ask her to taste test it?" Well where's the fun in that? However, eventually she did trust me enough to try, and the results? "Mmmmmmm! Wooooow! Sooooooo gooood!" The trust paid off my sister-in-law, and I was pleased that she liked the Cheesecake.

Part of the challange was that fact that, although we are close, my sister-in-law is not as close to me as my wife, and so naturally she was a little apprehensive about trusting me about dropping something in her mouth with her eyes closed. She probably was imagining something like watermelon with salt (she hates it), but was pleasantly surprised.

Our customers are like that. "Mr. Customer, I have just the thing for you if you can give me just a few minutes of your time." Sound familiar?

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Think About This: Would your customers trust you to select all the products and services for them without them seeing anything in advance?
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When my kids were very young, they never thought once about piling in the car for us to drive them somewhere. Many times they slept in the back without a care in the entire world trusting our driving to a place they had never known about previously. Trusting. 100% completely and totally trusting. When we arrived wherever we were going, the kids would wake up and the adventure would begin.

The funny thing is the kids just assumed everything would be okay, that we would arrive as promised and that the adventure (camping in this case) would be just as we had promised. Better. And so it was.

Our customers can be like this too. They place themselves completely in our hands and just believe that everything will be great turning out exactly (or better) than we promised. This is the ideal place to be with our customers. Loyalty.

The difference? In the first scenario our customers come to us but don't know us. So it's difficult to just "sell 'em" on whatever we think they need. It takes time to establish rapport and credibility. For those in retail, they have a matter of seconds or minutes to do that. Wow. Imagine that. For the rest of us it may take weeks, months or even a year before the customer "opens up" and risks trying our product or service.

Why do you suppose the kids worked so well in the second example? Because they know the parents, trust the parents and have complete faith in the parents based on a track record -- previous experience that convinced them, "Hey, Mom and Dad will do whatever it takes to make this happen for us. Period." And so it is.

How do your customers think about you?

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