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Thursday, September 6, 2007
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   Thursday, September 6, 2007

How to Cultivate The Trust Factor in Business
In today's highly competitive economy, it is difficult to maintain a significant market advantage based on your professional skills alone. Developing trusting relationships with your clients is vital to your business success as well. No matter what business you are in, the most powerful value-added contribution you can make to any business relationship is the trust factor.
The trust factor is even more critical in today's business climate with the level of trust in Corporate America continuing to be at an all-time low, and suspicion of "all things corporate" remaining on the rise. To make matters worse, large corporations and small businesses alike continue to use antiquated techniques, such as gizmos and gadgets, to try to win over new clients. When instead, they should be trying to address the heart of the matter by utilizing trust-building techniques that will most effectively resonate with consumers and new prospects.
Clients and prospects are in search of trust in their business relationships, but building trust and credibility does not happen overnight. To cultivate trust, it takes the risk of being open with clients and prospects. This enables them to perceive you as a real person—one with strengths and weaknesses that come into play as the relationship develops. When trust is reciprocal, you will find that your confidence in others is rewarded by their support and reinforcement of what you also stand for as a business entity.
What is Trust
What is trust? Trust can be defined as a firm belief in the honesty of another and the absence of suspicion regarding his motives or practices. The concept of trust in business dealings is simple: Build on an individual's confidence in you and eliminate fear as an operating principle.
Letting Go of Fear
Let go of fear, which restricts your ability to relate to others. Letting go frees you of behavioral constraints that can immobilize your emotional and professional development. Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of being hurt, fear of the unknown—all these are roadblocks to developing and growing a trusting relationship with clients. Let go of your fear of losing an account or not having the right answers. Leave all your fears at the client or prospect's doorstep.
Other critical steps in cultivating trust are knowing who you are and knowing your potential value to your clients. The relationship that forms because of this can have a tremendous impact on your sales. People don't just buy from anyone. They buy from people they can trust. The rapport and credibility you can establish with the trust factor go a long way toward building a client's confidence in your ability to meet his business needs.
Trust has both an active and a passive component in a business relationship. The active feeling of trust is confidence in the leadership, veracity, and reliability of the other party, based on a track record of performance.
The passive feeling of trust is the absence of worry or suspicion. This absence is sometimes unrecognized and frequently taken for granted in our most productive relationships.
Building Trust With Care
So how do you build trust with clients? First, you need to care about them. Obviously your clients care about your knowledge, expertise, and accomplishments. However, they care even more about the level of concern you have for them. Successful trust building hinges on four actions: engaging, listening, framing, and committing. The trust factor can be realized once we understand these components of trust and incorporate them in our daily lives.
Engaging clients and prospects occurs when you show genuine concern and interest in their business and its problems. Maintain good eye contact and body posture. Good eye contact signifies openness and honesty. And your body language and other forms of nonverbal communication speak volumes about your attitude toward them. By the same token, you want to be cognizant of your client's or prospect's eye contact and body language.
Listening with understanding and empathy is possible if you think client focus first.
Let the client tell his story. Put yourself in his shoes when you listen to his business concerns, purpose, vision, and desires. Show approval or understanding by nodding your head and smiling during the conversation. Separate the process of taking in information from the process of judging it. Just suspend your judgment and focus on the client.

Framing what the client or prospect has said is the third action in trust building. Make sure you have formed an accurate understanding of his problems and concerns. Confirm what you think you heard by asking open-ended questions such as "What do you mean by that?" or "Help me to understood the major production problems you are experiencing." After you have clarified the problems, start to frame them in order of importance. By identifying the areas in which you can help the client, you offer him clarity in his own mind and continue to build his trust.
Committing is the final action for developing the trust factor. Communicate enthusiastically your plan of action for solving the client's problems. Help the client see what it will take to achieve the end result. Presumably, what you have said up to this point has been important, but what you do now—how you commit—is even more important. Remember the old adage "Action speaks louder than words." Show you want this client's business long term. Complete assignments and projects on budget and on time. Then follow up with clients periodically to see how your partnership is faring.
In the final analysis, trust stems from keeping our word. If we say we will be there for our clients, then we should honor that commitment by being there. Trust results from putting the client's best interest before our own, from being dependable, from being open and forthcoming with relevant information. It is impossible to overestimate the power of the trust factor in our professional lives. Truly, trust is the basis of all enduring, long-term business relationships.

Robert Moment is an innovative business strategist and author of "It Only Takes a Moment to Score". Robert's next book " Invisible Profits : The Power of Exceptional Customer Service will be published in Fall 2006. Visit his website http://www.howtostartyoursmallbusiness.com and download the FREE Special Report "17 Profitable Ways to Turn Your Ideas into Wea


7 Phenomenal Small Business Follow-up Techniques
In business, it's sometimes not what you do that matters – it's how you follow it up. Getting clients is one thing: keeping them, however, is another, and turning new customers into repeat business requires phenomenal follow-up.
1. Keep your promises
You may have heard the phrase "under-promise, over deliver" in business circles. What it basically boils down to is "never make a promise you can't keep". If you tell a client you'll do something for them, no excuses are acceptable. A customer will never forget a broken promise: by over-delivering on your promises to them, though (i.e. by giving the client just a little bit more than they were expecting) you'll make sure that they not only remember you, but come back for more.
2. Develop consistent and reliable routines
Your customers need to know they can rely on you, and if your business is managed in a disorganised and slap-dash manner you'll find building trust difficult. Put in place systems and routines which ensure that your business runs like clockwork – and that your clients know about it. That means implementing systems to help you effectively deal with everything from answering mail to managing stock and deliveries. Clients come back to businesses they trust, and they trust businesses that are consistent and reliable.

3. Offer customer innovation ideas
If your clients view you simply as a retailer or service provider, you may do well: if they also view you as an expert in your industry, however, you'll do much better. Provide your clients with expertise as well as service: allow them to view you as an essential resource and they will reward you with more business.
How you do this is entirely up to you. Publish informative articles on your website, offer an email newsletter or just give clients your expert advice for free: your clients won't be the only ones who'll benefit.

4. Communicate effectively
Communicating effectively is a huge part of successful business follow-up – and can be the difference between success and failure.
Effective communication means following-up telephone calls and emails; answering your customer's queries as quickly as you can and always responding to their questions and complaints.
5. Quick Turnaround
In this day and age, customers don't want to have to wait for anything. Don't keep them waiting: respond quickly and be accessible at all times. Remember, your business transaction isn't complete until you've done the follow-up, and that means providing a quick turnaround.
6. Make friendly visits or calls to your customer's business
Most customers appreciate the personal touch. By following-up their sale by popping in to say hello, you both remind them of your business, and reinforce your interest in them and your ability to help.
7. Always say thank you
It sounds simple, but then the best business follow-up techniques often are. In a time when manners are too often forgotten, a simple "thank you" goes a long way.

Summary:
Truly successful businesses recognize the importance of using phenomenal follow up techniques in order to retain clients. In this article we walk you through seven of the best methods to make sure that your follow-up techniques are geared towards keeping your customers happy, and making sure they come back for more.
Robert Moment is an innovative business strategist and author of , "It Only Takes A Moment to Score" and upcoming book "Invisible Profits: The Power of Exceptional Customer Service" published in Fall 2006. Visit http://www.howtostartyoursmallbusiness.com and download the FREE Special Report "17 Profitable Ways to Turn Your Ideas into Wealth".


7 Steps to Successfully Responding to Product Knockoffs
It's every small business owners nightmare: you find and market the perfect product or service only to wake up one morning and find that someone else is producing cheap knock offs of the same thing.
So how do you deal with it? By following our seven steps…
1. Offer a better product
It sounds simple, but offering a better product is both the easiest and most effective way to respond to product knock offs. There is always a market for products which improve on the ones that have come before them: make sure you're consistently looking for ways to improve your product, and you'll remain one step ahead of the knock off sellers.
2. Create a marketing edge
A great deal of good business comes down to great marketing. This is another area in which it's easy to gain an advantage over product knock offs. The people who sell knock offs aren't interested in building a brand, creating a buzz or researching their market. In fact, they want to spend as little time and money as they possibly can on selling more units of their product knock off. By investing in your marketing, you can gain an important edge.
3. Make quality a priority
You'll never be able to stop knock offs completely. What you must remember, however, is that knock offs have one big disadvantage over your product: their quality.
Most knock offs are cheap, mass-produced copies of quality goods. That's why they're sold for so little. By offering a product which is truly high quality, you'll appeal to those buyers who aspire to owning the real thing, and make it much more difficult for anyone to copy you.
4. Getting a patent does not prevent competition
A patent will help you deal with knock offs to a certain extent. What it won't do is eliminate the competition. You'll never completely eliminate the competition. All you can do is rise above them by making sure your product, service and marketing is the best it can possibly be.
5. Target smaller or niche markets where you can have the edge
While you may want to conquer the world with your business, it's often far more effective to conquer a small part of it by targeting a niche which you can excel in. By concentrating on a niche market you can get to know your clients and their needs inside out, and make sure your product or service is tailor made to fit that niche. Leave the rest of the world to the knock off sellers.
6. Adapt to market changes and trends
In business, you have to adapt or die. By allowing your business to trudge along, doing the same thing in the same way you leave yourself wide open to competitors who are willing to be innovative and to move with the times.
7. Provide exceptional customer service
Businesses which produce knock off products often aren't interested in customer service. People like to do business with other people they can trust: that may not apply to sellers of knock-off products, but it should apply to you. If it does, you have nothing to fear from product knock offs.

Summary
While it's impossible to completely eliminate product knock offs completely, it is possible to respond to them in such a way that your own sales don't suffer. This article provides seven steps to help you make sure that your products and service are able to stand up to the competition.
Robert Moment, business strategist and author of , "It Only Takes a Moment to Score" and upcoming book "Invisible Profits: The Power of Exceptional Customer Service" published in Fall 2006. Visit www.howtostartyoursmallbusiness.com and download the FREE Special Report "17 Profitable Ways to Turn Your Ideas into Wealth".