TRUST: the ultimate secret to repeat sales

We hear a lot about the impor­tance of build­ing trust in order to nur­ture repeat sales and ulti­mately cre­ate a word of mouth fol­low­ing. Typ­i­cally the con­cept of build­ing trust has been highly asso­ci­ated with free­lance ser­vices which tend be highly skill based, such as writ­ing, con­sult­ing, design/creative, web development/coding, mar­ket­ing, and film/video.

Under­stand­ing how trust works in these set­tings is not dif­fi­cult, because many of these ser­vices are expen­sive a poten­tial client needs to have other cri­te­ria to help in mak­ing a  selec­tion. That fall back cri­te­ria is trust, the abil­ity of the poten­tial client to deter­mine if you mean what you say, you can meet dead­lines, your work process reflects a stan­dard of qual­ity, etc. So a designer or copy­writer just start­ing out has some idea of what she needs to do to instill trust in poten­tial clients, at the very least she has a gen­eral check­list to start with.

The catch

As a result, we have pretty good idea what trust looks like within the con­text of free­lance ser­vices. The catch, is most if not all of those fac­tors that deter­mine trust lev­els for a par­tic­u­lar free­lance busi­ness don’t apply to artists who sell largely in a retail envi­ron­ment be it on line,at gal­leries or art fairs or any com­bi­na­tion. Free­lancers efforts to build trust are focused on their rep­u­ta­tion and per­ceived abil­ity to pro­duce some­thing in the future, on time, on bud­get and meet or exceed the project requirements.

Retail­ers on the other hand already have prod­ucts so trust is built around an entirely dif­fer­ent part of their busi­ness. Trust build­ing for retail tend to be in areas that involve direct cus­tomer con­tact, from the way sales peo­ple inter­act with cus­tomers to how the busi­ness treats cus­tomers after they pur­chase. Depend­ing on the busi­ness model the retail busi­ness’s focus can be any­where on the spec­trum of cus­tomer they mar­ket to, but the bot­tom line in most instances is sat­is­fac­tion of one form or another.

For exam­ple, a dis­count retailer’s def­i­n­i­tion of cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion may be based on the best and low­est price. On the other hand, another type of retailer may offer great cus­tomer ser­vice from before the sale to after. In both cases the busi­ness goal is pro­vide the right kind of sat­is­fac­tion that will posi­tion them high­est in their buyer’s minds. The result, of being in such a high posi­tion is the buyer increas­ingly relates the solu­tion to their prob­lem with a par­tic­u­lar retailer lead­ing to almost auto­matic repeat sales.

Finally, the fac­tors that help build a trust induc­ing sys­tem are rel­a­tively the same  they  dif­fer in scale and appli­ca­tion depend­ing on each retailer’s busi­ness model and buyer profiles.

Hav­ing the abil­ity to win the top posi­tion in a buyer’s mind depends on sev­eral key fac­tors all built on trust and reflect­ing how closely the val­ues of the retailer and  the buyer match. So, mar­kets that could care less about get­ting know who they are buy­ing from wouldn’t respond well to busi­nesses hav­ing per­sonal engage­ment as a pri­mary fac­tor in their trust build­ing efforts.

What about Artists?

So where do artists fall in all of this? It is obvi­ous for the most part that artists wish­ing to build a sus­tain­able busi­ness from mak­ing their art should be focused on build­ing trust that puts them top­most in their buy­ers mind. The model that works best for that is devel­op­ing per­sonal con­nec­tions that will lead to both repeat sales and a word of mouth  fol­low­ing. Trust build­ing at this level is all about per­sonal con­tact, eye to eye con­nec­tion that only you can provide.

Remem­ber:
Regard­less of your busi­ness model, cus­tomers or clients aren’t look­ing for the best as in top of the heap,they are look­ing for the best solu­tion to their prob­lem and trust is the pri­mary dri­ving force in both their choice and where they posi­tion you in their mind.

Work­ing stu­dio artists who sell in a retail envi­ron­ment and want to reduce the ran­dom­ness of their sales, will have the best oppor­tu­nity to suc­cess­fully build trust­ing con­nec­tions because of their  fre­quent con­tact with buy­ers both directly face to face and indi­rectly through on-line venues. Per­sonal con­tact of this inti­mate scale offers the best oppor­tu­nity to shift a buyer’s focus from price to your own per­sonal brand, which is you and every­thing your art and ser­vice stand for. Every piece of your work is imbued with you, your val­ues, your vision and all the other fac­tors that make you who you are.

Your effort at estab­lish­ing a trusted con­nec­tion with your buy­ers will go a long way in build­ing your per­sonal brand and your posi­tion in your buyer’s mind because both rep­re­sent a holis­tic view of who you are as an artist and busi­ness per­son. Hav­ing a cred­i­ble per­sonal brand will give you the flex­i­bil­ity to move and adapt to mar­ket changes  with the least effect on your buy­ers, because their loy­alty is to you regard­less of what you are making.

For exam­ple, it is impor­tant to get con­tact infor­ma­tion from your buy­ers, so you can build and nur­ture your posi­tion in their minds by giv­ing them the oppor­tu­nity to asso­ciate your solu­tions with their prob­lems.  Gain­ing that trust should be one of your top pri­or­i­ties and it should be done in a way that best fits your own val­ues and your buy­ers. To do this well you’ll have to develop ways of read­ing buy­ers, their fit with you and their will­ing­ness to even­tu­ally fol­low you. Suc­cess here often depends highly on per­cep­tion, if they feel com­fort­able, their trust will increase, if not they’ll likely move on or resist giv­ing you con­tact information.

So, what are the fac­tors that can help you build con­nec­tions based on trust and your per­sonal brand? They include:

• Sin­cere engagement
• Show­ing inter­est in them and their problem
• Show­ing them how your work solves their problem
• Help­ing them nar­row their problem
• Help­ing them visu­al­ize how your work can fit into their lives
• Per­sonal fol­low up after they make a purchase
• Know­ing and being able to dis­cuss all the prob­lems your work solves

Trust build­ing also has a side bonus... It helps nar­row the field of poten­tial buy­ers to those for whom trust is impor­tant and your par­tic­u­lar style of engag­ing trust is of value to them.

I’ll talk more about trust next week.

Remem­ber:
This process takes time,  just as any effort to build trust on a non-transactional level does. Or as the trite anal­ogy goes…you wouldn’t sug­gest mar­riage in first moments of the first date, so take your time and enjoy the process while remain­ing true to yourself.