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The big elephant in the room: TRUST By Stefan Grafe, Managing Director, mext Consulting May 2013

Everyone talks about trust being critical. Everyone would agree that their organisation, business and their relationships are built on trust. Many say they know how to build trust and dismiss further discussion about the topic. We can put the importance of trust to your business into clear numbers: 60-80%. Yes, trust drives 70-80% of your reputation, client satisfaction and loyalty. Trust is also the single biggest driver of new client consideration –up to 60%. You kind of knew that, didn’t you? And, luckily, you are trusted. But what if we told you that this wasn’t enough? To turn trust into a strong competitive advantage and success factor you have to consider 6 principles of trust.

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1) It’s not about being trusted, but about the level of trust Even a small, 20%, change in trust can affect your client behaviour by 400% positively or negatively. Do you know where you sit on the scale?

2) If you aren’t more trusted than your competitor, any amount of trust doesn’t mean anything. Only if you are more trusted are you more preferred. The more you are trusted over your competitor, the stronger your advantage. Do you know where you stand against your competitors?

3) It is not just about being trusted, but what your clients want to trust you for. Honesty, transparency, communication and a ‘great relationship’ don’t mean a thing if it’s not precisely what your (potential) client wants to trust for to do (more) business with you. Often we discover that clients trust and say they have a great relationship, but still don’t give the partner more work because in some aspects they don’t trust for the right qualities. What clients want to trust for can be broken down into 6 clear facets - HuTrust®. Unless you can clearly define what you need to be trusted for in each facet, you can’t consciously build and manage your trust. In fact, you may destroy as much trust as you build.

4) What the client doesn’t know, the client can’t trust for. Building trust is about building the right trust equity. The more of the right proof points you can identify and convey, the more trust equity you can build. How many proof points come to mind? How well can you convey them to maximise the impact?

5) Trust is built and destroyed in an instant. Building trust doesn’t take long. Building trust is done instantly with every right action, every right message. The same goes for destroying trust. Building more relevant trust is about knowing how to do more of the right things and fewer of the things (big and small) that push your trust down again.

6) Trust is a group effort. In professional services client trust is determined by the firm, partner and product. The varying degrees of importance are a continuous source of discussion, but the bottom line (pardon the pun) is that each of the aspect’s trust builds upon each other. Considering that trust drives 60-80% of success, relying on the firm’s and partner’s natural ability and intuition to build trust may leave you stagnating or declining.

Understanding the sources of trust and aligning them makes building trust in professional services more complex, but also much more powerful if done right. The firms and partners that best build and manage trust in the firm, partner and product will take more and more of the cake.

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The Trust Effect

Likelihood to recommend

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About mext Consulting.

mext helps clients deliver on their objectives by developing brand, product and people interactions that make customers trust more. Mext was created in 2004 with a view to challenging the conventional thinking driving the disciplines of sales and marketing in order to create a true understanding of customer motivation. mext bridges the gap between business strategy and implementation. We provide businesses with:

˃ Consulting

˃ Training

˃ Research We support businesses to gain a competitive edge in their markets and help our clients grow with vision, precision and certainty. We employ a unique mix of rigour, insight and creativity and apply our proprietary and proven tools to identify key growth levers and help clients operationalize this across brand and proposition development, client experience, innovation and training. About HuTrust.

HuTrust® reveals the 6 components of trust. ˃ Developed by a team of strategists and psychologists under supervision of Prof W. Salber ˃ Developed, validated and applied with through over 20,000 interviews and groups ˃ Scientifically correct ˃ Statistically robust ˃ Practically proven with companies from Airlines to Government to Telco to Yogurt globally

About Stefan Grafe.

Stefan’s career spans 20 years in Europe, Asia and Australia where he worked as an award winning Creative and Strategy Director for the Bates and BBDO networks, as well as a Management Consultant in the position of Head of BBDO Consulting. He studied design and fine arts and was trained in morphological psychology. His eclectic experience and wide range of perspectives furnishes him with a profound understanding of human psychology, marketing and branding. This is similarly complimented by his long-term vision and creativity to develop outstanding strategies for success. If you’d like to hear more about trust and how to improve performance by actively building trust in your firm please contact me, melissa.wraith@mextconsulting.com for an overview of our process. 165 Cremorne Street Richmond Victoria Australia 3121 P: +61 3 9428 5417 www.mextconsulting.com melissa.wraith@mextconsulting.com