In Trust We Trust

Trust is defined by your attitude and the way you begin to first interact with your customer.

Trust is a personal and fragile value. It requires honesty and understanding. In turn, it helps make people comfortable with their decisions. Earned trust leads to sales, repeat business, loyalty and referrals.

But violations of trust breed anger, betrayal, hurt and skepticism, especially in business relationships. When a customer’s trust is lost, sales decline and negative word-of-mouth increases.

All customer relationships – and ultimately sales – are built on trust. Before customers purchase, they must trust three things: the product, the dealership and the salesperson.

APB calls this the Trust Triad.

Mistrust can be caused by perceptions, misperceptions or real experiences, and influenced by a range of factors including negatives regarding appearance, attitude, knowledge, manners, mannerisms, presentation and promises. 

How can you earn customers’ trust? It requires thoughtful, planned, and sincere interaction with customers by every employee, regardless of your job. It starts and ends with you. Period.

First impressions matter. Look and present yourself professionally, even on casual days. Your image reflects on the dealership and the product you’re selling. Greeting a customer with a positive attitude sets the tone for the entire interaction. If you bring optimism and professionalism to every customer exchange, why wouldn’t every customer feel comfortable working with you? Why wouldn’t they trust you? Think about the last time you made a large purchase. What attitude did the salespeople convey? Did you trust them based on your first impression? Why? Identify how they built your trust and emulate them.

First impressions must be supported with exceptional service. Remember, a salesperson’s job is to help customers find the vehicle that meets their unique needs, wants, and desires. By listening, you focus more on this need and less on selling. You treat your customer the way you’d want to be treated.

Exceptional treatment must be delivered consistently. This requires clear communication, active listening, and an honest understanding of customers’ unique reasons for buying.

Exceptional treatment must be given to every customer, whether they buy now, today, next week or next year. Customers shouldn’t have to transact business to receive exceptional service.

Delivering consistently requires a clearly defined process, a positive attitude, as well as continuous measurement, improvement and education.

A process ensures that you ask specific questions, collect information that will help guide the process, find the right vehicle and deliver a proper selection, exactly same way every time. This consistency exceeds customer expectations and strengthens customer trust in you.

Measuring performance is essential in determining how well the process is followed, its effectiveness and how it can be improved. This leads to learning every day from good and bad experiences.

It’s vital and it must occur daily. How much education is needed is a matter of individual choice. Do you want to be adequate or exceptional? To be exceptional you must take the initiative to learn daily. 

The word “why” is fundamental to learning. As children, we used it incessantly. As adults, we don’t use it enough.

Question everything and everyone so you can learn from successes and mistakes. Like children, learn by watching others. Look for people who’ve mastered the challenges you struggle with. Ask questions, pick their brains, bounce ideas around and identify techniques you can use.

Building the Trust Triad is never-ending but achievable. It demands your commitment to a professional image, consistency, exceptional service and ongoing learning. The rewards from building this level of customer trust are very profitable.

Richard F. Libin is the author of the book, “Who Stopped the Sale?” (www.whostoppedthesale.com) and is president of Automotive Profit Builders, a firm that works with dealerships to attain higher customer satisfaction and profits through personnel development. He can be reached at [email protected] or 508-626-9200 or www.apb.cc.