Creating trust is the key to sales.

How can you give confidence to your customer that she can trust you?

How can you develop a relationship of trust with a stranger?

How can you get someone to take a chance on you?

There are lots of factors in developing trust:

• Working for a reputable brand (ie: IBM)
• Personal reference from someone the customer respects
• Client case studies mean your customer won’t get fired for choosing your product (she can point at other companies)

The most powerful tool for creating trust is track record. Do you have a history of delivering the goods? Do you have a history for honesty? Do you have a history for competence?

Or do you have a history for talking but never doing?

How do you create a track record? Start small. Make a promise. Overdeliver. Make a bigger promise. Overdeliver. Rinse, repeat.

A track record takes a long time. Sometimes you’ll have failures, but the customer will look at your entire history and then make a call.

Mistakes can be good. A smart customer wants to work with someone who has already made mistakes, so she doesn’t have to worry you’ll make mistakes on her job!

Other than track record, the way you develop relationships of trust is to be yourself.

The way to be yourself is to know yourself.

People do business with people. If the customer can see who you are, she can make a decision whether to trust you.

Would you trust yourself? If not, you better change yourself.