Last Updated on July 20, 2020 by John Prendergast
Why do your clients trust you? How can you can tell?
Clients make a leap of faith in giving you their money.
The chances are that your clients trust you. They told you intimate details about their lives that they share with very few people and they gave you their money, after all.
But what do you REALLY know about how they came to trust you? How have their feelings changed over time and how much do they actually trust you right now? What things have you done that helped them in that process and what have you done that unwittingly hurt?
Most importantly – can you systematically build trust with potential clients quickly, while simultaneously managing your trust relationship with existing clients? We’re going to talk about it all in our series on trust. This is the first installment.
Warning
To get any value out of these posts you must actually be trustworthy. You need to be a bona fide member of #BLNation actually worthy of trust. This is not about sales or illusion or how to get people to “believe” you are trustworthy. These posts will be about how people actually process their interactions with and about you and come to the correct conclusion that you’re a person who they can rely on, worthy of comparison to a mighty oak tree.
Components of Client Trust with Financial Advisors
While there are many views on this topic, we’ve include 4 components of client trust for financial advisors.
- Credibility – Can clients believe what you say based on your knowledge, technical competence and know-how?
- Reliability – Can clients depend on your actions, your conduct and your character?
- Intimacy – Can you relate to clients in a way that makes them feel safe sharing intimate information?
- Self-orientation – Deep down, are you interested first and foremost in the client needs or your own?
Score well in these areas and clients will trust you deeply. Miss the mark, and you might find yourself struggling to build your business.
So what we’re saying is, “build more trust to get more clients.” Duh!
Of course the problem is that no one tells you HOW to do it. We think everyone in Blueleaf Nation ought to be able to demonstrate their superior client service by knowing exactly how to build and manage trust relationships. In this series we’re going to tell how how to assess your own trustworthiness, how to understand your very own trust style and give you specific ways to build trust that fits you.
