‘People do business with people they know, like and trust’

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Occasionally its attributed to Mark Twain, or to some other giant of economic influence.

In today’s digital age, I don’t think it holds up.

I don’t think you can build trust online, and I’m going to give you an alternative.

The Oxford dictionary defines trust as the… ‘Firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something’.

And for a definition of trust, that’s good enough. But for the growth and establishment of trust on something like the internet…

How does one achieve it?

The reality of not being able to hold and interact with something, yet still expecting trust is strange.

Simply put, we act on a gut instinct.

The definition that the oxford dictionary provides can be viewed as subjective.

Ultimately everyone will see/visualise trust in different lights.   

And this is why I believe you can’t build it by purely producing content for your audience.

We need to figure out how to gain and build trust online.

How do we gain trust? 

Let’s say for example, you lead a workshop, or you’re having one to ones with clients…

That is a solid start for building trust, if you were directly providing whatever you sell to your clients.

Until that specific example happens, its known as blind faith.

Nobody does business with someone stating that they trust them completely.  

A good way of describing trust is a ‘leap of faith’.

Taking that jump and expecting the other person to catch you.

Nowadays many people simply wouldn’t do that.

They would need a safety net.

Ultimately trust is built through experience.

Whether that be through a product or the service in question.

My view of trust stemmed from one book in particular, known as ‘Extreme Trust’.

I’ve left a link to it here.

It’s the greatest business book I’ve read…That nobody else has looked into.

Don Peppers and Martha Rogers share examples of how businesses are implementing extreme trust.

Every time, it’s achieved through practical solutions. 

It honestly made a profound difference to the way that I build trust and experience with my clients.

To conclude, trust can’t be achieved without a valuable exchange in business.

What do we do instead?

I’ll tell you.

We should be building confidence.

Confidence unlike trust isn’t subjective.

It comes about when we produce content, when we meet people at networking events, (and project ourselves in a certain way).

These are all components to building confidence.

They ensure a faith in the client for our competence.

Confidence has a lower barrier of entry than trust.

Due to its direct nature, its easier for other people to discuss what we do.

A client isn’t going to talk about our work unless they have confidence in us.

They need to have fully experienced our service.

This underlines the importance of testimonials, case studies and referrals.

It provides the chance for people to explain their experience and give a description on what to expect for other customers.

To reduce this down to one sentence,

When people say trust, they really mean confidence.

Trust is built through a practical exchange of goods or services.

Confidence ultimately is transferable to other people.