Customer research: Bridging the trust gap between seller and buyer

Trust drives immediate sales effectiveness

New research conducted by mext in conjunction with Huthwaite – global leaders in sales training: “Improve your sales effectiveness and KPIs by bridging the trust gap between seller and buyer.”

Sales professionals agree that trust is the key to their sales success, and rightly so. Customers readily confirm it and the stats confirm it. A 20% increase in customer trust means a 400% improvement in buyer predisposition.

Yet many companies do not focus on their people’s capability to actively build trust. The reasons are varied and range from a lack of robust methodologies to the continued belief in wrong myth, or just plainly not knowing where to start.

With HuTrust mext and sales performance partners, Huthwaite, have shown that trust building can be learned quickly, to improve sales results immediately and renew confidence and passion of the sales teams.

Since the launch of the sales and service training application in 2012, mext and Huthwaite Australia have already trained over 1,500 sales and service professionals in the ability to actively build and manage trust with HuTrust.

Have a look at this summary presentation: “Improve your sales effectiveness and KPIs by bridging the trust gap between seller and buyer.”

Want to know more on HuTrust and how to apply this powerful trust building methodology to improve your sales and services, I, as a trust consultant and developer of HuTrust, am sharing my knowledge and how to in “More Trust. More Sales”. Available for purchase here and of Amazon as paperback, epub and pdf.

Also visit: mextconsulting.com & huthwaite.com

Using the most modern psychology we can help you better understand your consumer’s and customer’s needs and motivations and build trust with them. mext

Trust in Canadian Politicians: HuTrust study foresees Tremblay's leadership as unsustainable

HuTrust Politician Study showed very little trust in Tremblay's party, high level of distrust in Competence which made his tenure unsustainable; hence:
"Louise Harel, leader of the opposition Vision Montréal party, said the mayor had to go because he had lost Montrealers’ trust. The mayor’s protests that he had been betrayed were “pathetic,” she said."


See this article

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/montreal-mayor-grald-tremblay-resigns/article4952278/

Click here for the study on trust in politicians.

Using the most modern psychology we can help you better understand your consumer’s and customer’s needs and motivations and build trust with them. mext

New study - trust in banks: The top trust drivers & Australia vs Germany

2012 Australia Bank HuTrust Profile

This year’s study focuses on the top 4 banks with a sample of 657. We did the last one 18 months ago with over 1200 sample size. The interesting change that occurred is not in the levels of trust or even HuTrust Profiles, but in what drives trust with each of the banks. The drivers of trust have strongly shifted over the last 18 months due to economic and social changes rather than bank changes like advertising or products. We also checked the levels of trust in the banker/financial adviser versus the brand and found that the person is much less trusted than the organisation as a whole.
That is interesting considering the myth that the customer relationship lies with the banker.
Also, Psyma conducted a HuTrust Profile Pilot study in Germany last year. We have included one top level chart of German Banks as a comparison. Any questions? Want the full study? Want to know how you can use it with fin services?
Melissa.wraith@mextconsulting.com

Bank Trust Study

Using the most modern psychology we can help you better understand your consumer’s and customer’s needs and motivations and build trust with them. mext

Trust makes for great leaders. Bad trust advice makes for great failures.

Stephen Covey’s book on trust – 'The Speed of trust’ – is far better than most. However, the same can’t be said about the 13 behaviours the book says build that trust. Here they are:

1. Talk Straight
2. Demonstrate Respect
3. Create Transparency
4. Right Wrongs
5. Show Loyalty
6. Deliver Results
7. Get Better
8. Confront Reality
9. Clarify Expectation
10. Practice Accountability
11. Listen First
12. Keep Commitments
13. Extend Trust

Covey and we, at mext, believe that trust is the most powerful driver of performance. In our opinion that is, because the ability to trust is so immensely valuable to our audience – be they employees, customers, the public or corporate stakeholders.

But we differ very much in 2 key aspects:

1)     Explaining what trust actually is

Only if we understand what trust is and how it forms in our minds, how it affects us physiologically, we can seriously develop recommendations that go beyond generic statements.

2)     How to analyse and build trust
We are not saying that Covey’s behaviours don’t impact trust. But they don’t allow for meaningful analysis, nor do they support anyone in meaningfully and practically building trust.

A few examples:

1. Talk Straight

Talk what straight? Talking the wrong stuff straight is immensely damaging or falls on deaf trust ears. Talking the right stuff straight is immensely powerful to building trust.

3. Create Transparency

Be transparent with what? As practitioners we see this parroted over and over again – and leaders merrily creating distrust by being transparent with the wrong things in the wrong manner.

7. Get Better

Get better with what? Golf putting in the office?

12. Keep Commitments

If you commit that you will always deliver me the sweetest tasting apples, you can keep your commitment as much as you want. I will not trust you. In fact, I may distrust you, because I am much more interested in you paying your workers fairly and not using insecticides.

Building trust is not a random collection of behaviours. First and foremost, trust is about ‘what you can be trusted for’. Is what you can be trusted for appealing to me and how well can I trust you for these things?

To be able to build trust leaders need to be able to identify ‘what they need to be trusted for’. Many trusted leaders intuitively do this well within the context of what they have to achieve. The majority of us is not that great at it. We have to learn how to do this – even if we are already quite good at it. That’s exactly what HuTrust® helps doing. Scientifically correct and practically proven.

Only when we know what exactly we need to be trusted for, is it worth looking at how you can bring these qualities to life through the behaviours like the ones Covey describes. Only if you can consciously manage trust, you can, for lack of better words, operationalise trust building on an individual and organisational level.

Stefan Grafe is the Managing Director of mext, an internationally operating consultancy that specialises in performance improvement by building trust. He is the co-developer of HuTrust®, the only scientifically, statistically and practically proven approach to analysing and building trust and the author of ‘More trust. More sales.’, ‘More Trust. More Human Resources’ (out soon) and ‘Boost your work performance’.

HuTrust® is globally licensed to leading organisations like Sales Performance specialists, Huthwaite International, and Global market research company, Psyma.

Covey leadership article: http://www.leadershipnow.com/CoveyOnTrust.html