Step by step process for building trust
The Trust Creation Process is a five-step model you can follow at your advice meetings:
- Engage the client in an open discussion about issues that are key to them
- Listen to what is important and earn the right to offer them solutions
- Frame the true root issue, by using statements and hypotheses to articulate a point of view
- Envision an alternate reality, including outcomes and benefits making clear what’s at stake
- Commit to actionable next steps
Becoming a trusted adviser
Our actions are driven by our beliefs, and our beliefs are driven by our values or principles. If your values don’t drive you to behave in a trustworthy manner all the time, you’ll be found out quickly.
The way you use the Trust Creation Process model is an outcome of the principles you hold. To become trusted is to act consistently from those principles.
The four principles governing trustworthy behaviour are:
- A focus others (i.e. the client)
- A collaborative approach to relationships
- A medium to long term relationship perspective
- Being transparent
Applying these principles to all our actions will develop the fullest possible sort of trusting relationship.
What does this mean?
The order in which these sentences occur in a conversation has as much impact as the sentences themselves. You could do a wonderful job on framing the issue, but if you do this before you listen to your client, the process breaks down.
This becomes clearer when we translate the trust creation process into a sales context:- Engage: I hear X may be an issue for you—is that right?
- Listen: That’s interesting; tell me more; what’s behind that?
- Re /Frame: It sounds like what you may have here is a case of Q.
- Envision: How will things look three years from now if we fix this?
- Commit: What if we were to do Z?
The most powerful step in this process by far is the ‘listening’ step.
The two most common errors in practice are inadequate listening and jumping to the final action or step too quickly.
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