You can’t slogan your way into trust.
You can write “trusted” all over your website.
You can talk about how much you care about your clients.
You can tell people you’re reliable, experienced, honest, responsive, or any of the other things you think you are supposed to say about yourself.
But that’s not how you build trust in business.
People believe those things after they’ve had a chance to see them for themselves.
And sometimes they’re watching a lot longer than we realize.
People Are Paying Attention
Think about how you decide whether you trust someone in business.
Chances are that it wasn’t one big thing they did that convinced you.
It was probably a bunch of little things.
They said they’d send you something on Tuesday, and it showed up on Tuesday.
They answered your question instead of dancing around it.
They admitted when they didn’t know something.
They showed up the same way in person as they did online.
None of those things seem particularly impressive on their own.
But put enough of them together and you start thinking, I can count on this person.
That’s trust.
And it works the other way too.
How quickly does your opinion of someone change when they repeatedly don’t follow through? Or when the person you meet doesn’t seem like the person you’ve been following online?
Those little things add up too.
Consistency Has More Power Than You Realize
We’re always looking for the thing that’s going to make a difference in our business.
- The better marketing strategy.
- The new tool.
- The perfect message.
- The thing that’s finally going to get people to notice us.
Meanwhile, we can overlook something much simpler.
Keep showing up. Do what you said you were going to do. Be someone people know they can count on.
That doesn’t mean you have to be perfect. Nobody is. Things happen. Plans change. We drop balls occasionally.
Consistency isn’t perfection.
It’s what people can reasonably expect from you most of the time.
How Do You Build Trust in Business?
A lot of what builds trust isn’t very exciting. In fact, most of it is pretty basic.
- Follow through when you say you’ll do something.
- Be honest when you don’t know the answer.
- Tell someone when you aren’t the right fit for what they need.
- Own your mistakes and fix them.
- Pay attention to the small promises, not just the big ones.
I’ve always believed the small things tell you a lot about how someone will handle the big things.
Your clients and potential clients are noticing those things too.
And you don’t need to make a big production out of any of it. You don’t need to tell people how trustworthy you are.
Show them.
Trust Starts Before Someone Becomes a Client
This is where I think a lot of business owners miss an opportunity.
We tend to think about building trust once someone gets on a discovery call or becomes a client.
It starts much earlier than that.
Someone could be reading your posts for months without ever liking one. They may be on your email list and never reply. You might meet them at a networking event and have no idea they’ve been following you online.
By the time they finally reach out, they’ve already formed an opinion about you.
Does what you say today match what you said three months ago?
Do you seem like the same person everywhere they encounter you?
Are you constantly changing direction, or can they tell what you stand for and how you help?
This is one of the reasons I talk so much about knowing who you are and what makes you different. When you’re clear about that, you don’t have to keep reinventing yourself to get people’s attention.
You can simply keep showing up as yourself.
And over time, people begin to know what they can expect from you.
AI Can’t Do This Part for You
I use AI every day. I teach people how to use it, and I think it can be an incredible tool in your business.
But it can’t make someone trust you.
It can help you write the email, plan your content, organize your ideas, and even remind you about the things you need to follow up on.
But you still have to follow up.
You still have to mean what you say. You still have to make the decisions about how you’re going to treat people and what kind of business you’re going to run.
This is also where I think we need to be careful with AI. If everything you put out sounds like a generic version of what everyone else is saying, are people really getting to know you?
AI can support your consistency.
It can’t replace you.
One Small Question for This Week
You don’t need to launch a campaign about trust.
In fact, please don’t. 😄
Instead, take a look at your business and ask yourself:
What can people consistently count on me for?
And don’t just think about your clients.
Think about the people on your email list.
The people who follow you.
The people you meet networking.
The people who have been quietly watching from the sidelines and haven’t introduced themselves yet.
What are you showing them?
Because trust isn’t something you announce.
It’s something people decide you’ve earned.
Join in the conversation over in our Stand Out & Succeed Facebook group!
