Establishing, maintaining and retaining trust with your customers is so important. Trust between your business and its customers has a much longer and lasting impact than let’s say, a price cut or a cool advertisement. Certainly the more significant of a purchase to a buyer, the more conscious people are to seek a trustworthy seller or provider.
According to a book, entitled No B.S. Trust-Based Marketing, there are many different sources of trust:
- Authority — doctor, lawyer, accountant, police officer, fireman
- Affinity — shared background, experience, philosophy, fraternity
- Credibility — factual basis for trust
- Longevity — years in business, in the community
- Celebrity — being known or being known for something
- Familiarity — reassuring omnipresence
- Frequency — the more often heard and seen, the more easily trusted
- Second-party transferral — earned, engineered, borrowed, rented, purchased endorsement
- Place — geographic or target market; being for a certain customer
- Demonstration — seeing is believing
Within Jackson Hole, Wyoming trust between a customer and business has a great deal to do with longevity, credibility and demonstration. Professionals from all over the country and the world come here, not to just ski but to do business as well. One of the main sources of trust is the “pass along” – intrusting in someone because somebody you trust trusts in them. It’s a pass-along trust. It’s worthwhile to gain the trust of influential groups in your community to ensure that trust is passed along.
Jackson has a great sense of community and folks pick their friends like they pick who they do business with. And with a town as small as this one, usually the people you do business with happen to also be your friends or friends of friends — it doesn’t get better than that!
Original article: Why Should Your Customers Trust You?