How To Build Trust In Your Marketplace

Episode #742

Are you struggling to build trust and loyalty in your business?

Do you find it challenging to establish genuine connections with your customers?

In this episode of the Powerful Man Show, Tim, Doug, and Arthur delve into the key elements that contribute to building trust in the marketplace. They emphasize the importance of authenticity, exceeding expectations, and clearly articulating what you stand for and against.

Drawing from personal experiences and anecdotes, they highlight the significance of making meaningful deposits in the relational bank accounts of your customers. They discuss the impact of taking responsibility for mistakes, validating customer experiences, and offering exceptional service consistently. Tim, Doug, and Arthur stress the value of building a brand that aligns with your values and beliefs, emphasizing the importance of creating a deeper purpose or meaning within your product or service.

In this episode, you’ll learn the vital components of fostering trust and loyalty within your business, from the importance of authenticity to the power of exceeding expectations

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Transcription

Doug Holt  00:25

Hey, guys. Welcome back to another episode of the Powerful Man Show. Today we are going to talk about how to build trust in your marketplace. So said another way, how are you going to build trust and authority in your business realm so the people that you actually serve? So, Arthur, Tim, today, what we want to really dive into is how is it that a business owner or a business entity is able to build trust from their customers quickly and effectively in a marketplace?

Tim Matthews  00:57

I think one of the first things is making sure that your customer feels seen and heard, right? At the end of the day, it’s a relationship just like any other. I think a big part of that is making sure you are making enough deposits in that bank account. I’m smiling because it’s so many similarities to just a relationship in general. Right?

Doug Holt  01:17

Yeah.

Tim Matthews  01:18

Making sure you’re making enough deposits into that relational bank account in a way whereby you are adding value, I think, through from a business context that can take various forms, one of them can often be around sharing insights. Right? We have a philosophy where we like to give away our best stuff for free. That’s why we’ve got over maybe 800 podcasts by this point going back several years. We give away a lot of cheat sheets.

If somebody went back and just applied the podcasts, they would have no need to join the programs. I believe that fully. So I think that’s a big piece of it. And in doing so, the way in which you communicate with your customer, you got to make sure you get on their level. Right? Communicate it in a language that they are speaking. Ideally, the conversation that’s inside their head with the symptoms and such that they would talk about and make sure it’s about them and not about you.

Arthur Magoulianiti  02:09

Yeah, love that. I also think it’s also about meeting their requirements, their desires, what their expectations, and doing that consistently because then they know what to expect. You go to a coffee shop, your favorite coffee shop down the road. You go there because you know you’re consistently going to get the same kind of service, the same kind of product, and that breeds loyalty, satisfaction, and you’re going to go there again. You want to create raving fans because they know that you have got the best interest at heart. You’re going to deliver the product that they need, and you’re going to do that consistently. That builds trust.

Doug Holt  02:47

Yeah, all those are right. And when I think of trust in business or trust in general, to me it comes down to doing the right thing, even when it’s hard. Right? Just doing the right thing. So we often talk about internally in The Powerful Man movement, some issue comes up, whatever it may be, we always talk about what’s the right thing to do here, not what’s the best thing for the business. What’s this? What’s just the right thing as humans to do? And also, you’ll see this all the time in my background in marketing, people say, well, I’m B2C. Well, I’m C2C, right? Or I’m B2C, or B2B. Excuse me. And then the thing that everybody talks about now is it’s H2H, human to human. And that’s so true.

And when the way I want to be treated as a customer, as a consumer, is I just want to be treated fairly, I don’t mind paying a premium for something. I don’t mind if the quality is there and the value is there. I don’t mind spending the money as long as I’m treated fairly. And even if something goes wrong. Right? And it happens all the time, we screw up. Everybody does. I bought a new truck. Whatever it happens, things go wrong with that. But as long as you feel like you’re being treated fairly and they’re doing the right thing by you and by themselves. Right? There’s obviously a line there. I feel like that builds trust and loyalty right away.

Tim Matthews  04:09

Yeah. It reminds me of an experience I had recently with a company that I was doing some blood tests with. And in my opinion, they messed up. I wasn’t bothered that they’d messed up. I get it. Things happen. What really bothered me was that they weren’t taking responsibility for it and they weren’t even validating my experience. Instead, they were being quite argumentative with me. I just thought, this isn’t how you build a relationship with anyone, never mind a customer. Right?

Irrespective, let’s say, Amelia comes to me and she is upset with something, I’m going to validate her experience. Regardless whether I agree with a point, I’m going to validate the experience. And if there’s something that I get to clean up from my side of the street, I’m going to do it. And again, I think it’s so easy for businesses to take a transactional nature to their experience with the customer rather than a relational one. If it’s transaction, it’s never going to work. It’s got to be relational and apply just the same principles you would do with any other relationship in order to build that trust, which goes to your point of human to human.

Doug Holt  05:20

Yeah, it reminds me that same situation. So I was talking to Dr. Conover, who I did a podcast with a little while back, and I got a call, and he was looking over my test RESULTS  because I had some test work done with another doctor, which was a functional medicine doctor, but he said, hey, look, I want to see those too, and I’ll give you my insight, just a different level. And I thought, wow, that’s pretty cool.

And in doing so, he said, hey, look, there’s some problems here. Like, there’s some red flags. I’ve shared these with you guys, and I’m happy to talk about them publicly, but basically you’ve been working too hard for too long, right? I’m the typical entrepreneur business guy burning the candle at both ends. And he said, look, I want you to take four supplements, right? And he listed the four supplements. He’s like, two of these, you can actually get cheaper than I can get them for on Amazon. I’ll send you the links, and the other two, we make, we make them in house, and I can get them for you at a better price. And I’ll have them at your door by tomorrow morning. I’ll overnight them to you because I want you to be able to have access to this right away. He is just like, I just don’t take health lightly, basically at his cost. And I was like, how cool is this? Not the cost part. And that was cool, too.

But the one that really struck with me is the one that I think hit you is, hey, you can get just the same supplement cheaper than I can sell it to you. For me, he’s like, I’ll sell you our brand, but you can get it cheaper on Amazon, and I’ll send you the link so you can get them. I thought that was cool. Like, all right, you got one more.

Tim Matthews  06:48

Trust for sure.

Doug Holt  06:49

Builds trust. Yeah, he could have made a couple bucks off me and sold me something else, and I would have bought it. And no harm, no foul, right? He gave me the recommendation. You realize when you buy from a provider, usually pay premium, and he’s got to pay rent. He’s got to pay the bills, too. I get it. And the fact that he wanted to make sure that he was putting my health at the front line of the conversation, which makes me trust him more and makes me want to dive in deeper in business with him over the time.

Arthur Magoulianiti  07:18

Yeah. You have this term called fiduciary responsibility, and I think that’s what we’re talking about. It’s like helping the other person get the best deal, regardless of whether you get the deal or not, what’s in the best interest of the other person. And I think that develops trust because, you know, the other guy hasn’t got his best interests at heart.

Tim Matthews  07:37

I think something else as well, doing the right thing. 100% agree. I think that’s a big one meeting where they’re at taking responsibility. All these things we’re talking about. I think as well, one of the key things that builds trust is being able to have some social proof out there, which is kind of a little bit of a gray area because some people may believe, it may not. But having other people champion what you do. Right?

For example, Dr. Conover, I think we first heard of him from the animal, right? So the animals out there championing this doctor. Right? We have a lot of people who obviously, we have a lot of social proof out there, but if someone’s thinking about our movement and whether to join the programs, I imagine it’s going to be a lot more impactful for them to hear it from a friend than just see the same thing from that same person as a video online. Right? So I think finding some kind of way to create an experience for the customer that makes them become a raving fan and want to talk about it is huge because there’s no better source of business. Right? Than a referral.

Doug Holt  08:48

Well, yeah. And social proof is huge. I mean, think about, we’re all going out to dinner tonight. One of the things that we do when you look for a dinner spot or when we’re in Bam for Jasper recently for an event is you look at the reviews. How many reviews, what are the reviews? And I don’t know about you guys. I usually read the first couple of them only just to see how genuine they are. And being in marketing myself, I know that some of those reviews can be, all of them can be fake going through, but you want to see some legitimacy in there. I want to see some three star reviews every once in a while.

Tim Matthews  09:14

I want to go to the one stars. I want to see what people are really complaining about, because if maybe what they’re complaining about, I don’t care about. Right? It’s not a big deal to me. So I want to see the real dark side of it, and obviously go to the five star as well. But it’s key having those reviews.

Doug Holt  09:31

And since we’re talking about trust, building trust, when I had my agency back in the day, what we would always tell the business owner is respond to every review, right? Because that’s another thing I want to look at. So if there is a one star, two star, three star, four star review where someone’s complaining about something and you see the management or the owner responding to it, like, hey, sorry this happened. How can we make it right? Then I’m like, okay, these people are responsive. They care about what their customers are saying.

Tim Matthews  09:59

Goes back to that point of taking responsibility. It. If it’s a one star, and they reply to it, hey, at least they’ve been responsive. And they actually want to make it right. Everyone makes mistake, but the fact they want to make it right. Yeah. Makes a big difference.

Doug Holt  10:11

Well, even if you have the Karens of the world, right, that are just coming up, playing about anything and everything, and I showed up to the dentist, and they’re five minutes late. This place is horrible. One star, whatever.

Tim Matthews  10:21

Yeah, exactly.

Doug Holt  10:22

And the dental office comes back and says, hey, look, we apologize. We can’t exactly have our dental times. What do you get the idea I’m making this up? But they have an apology, even if they’re not saying she’s right, but they’re going, hey, I’m sorry you had back to relationships. I’m sorry you had a bad experience. They don’t have to take ownership of that. I respect. They’re taking the time.

Another thing, when we talk about building trust in an industry, one of them is authenticity. What you see is what you get. And none of us like to feel like we’ve been hoodwinked or the wool pulled over our eyes. And it’s something that we get commented all the time. It shocks guys. So if you’re listening to this or watching this on YouTube, which is my recommendation for you guys, is watch this on your smart TVs at home, is when you meet Tim, Arthur, myself, you’re going to maybe be surprised. We act this way. We joke. We have fun.

People usually get shocked that, wait a minute, you guys are just real guys that have had real problems, that found solutions to them and made methodologies and programs to help people. And having that authenticity go through your brand or whatever else it is, I think is critical.

Tim Matthews  11:27

Yeah. Do you know what we get the most feedback when with people in person. Right? So they see how we are. That’s one thing. But I think more importantly, they feel who we are, right? And you can’t fake that. When we’re there in connection, having fun, they feel the genuine love and care that we have for those guys that may show up in the way that we tell them the truth might not be the thing they want to hear, but it’s the thing they need to hear. The question they need to be asked. You always say how I’m the kind of guy that will tell you look fat in those jeans.

So I think as a brand, if you’re a business owner listening to this, I wonder how you can create more opportunities where you can be face to face with your customers. Maybe you got brick and mortar. It’s easy. Maybe you’re online and you get to find a way to create some kind of an event, whether they’re because if you genuinely do care, then that’s going to best come across in person because that’s when we always get the feedback right. When we’re at the events with the guys, the guys will see it and feel it from us. But then also how we stick around with the guys. We don’t just drift off into the background when our teaching sessions are done.

We said that on a podcast when we were recording yesterday about we hang out with the guys, we stay on the bus with the guys, we talk with them, we have a laugh with them. We’re just one of them at the end of the day. But, yeah, I think that face to face connection where they can feel how genuine you are and authentic and how much you care, is key.

Arthur Magoulianiti  12:56

Yeah. So, yeah, caring is key as well as having for us, we hear on a mission. And so believing in your product, I think, is also key. Because if you don’t really believe in your product. Right? And even if you do care, there’s a mismatch there. You’re not congruent as far as I’m concerned. And so having something that you believe, a high quality product that you believe in and then caring as well is a double whammy that’s going to get you RESULTS, I think.

Doug Holt  13:24

I agree. And so I’ll keep adding on to the trust factor of how you do it as a business. One is you have to clearly articulate what you stand for, and most companies do this, but what most companies miss is you have to also clearly articulate what you stand against. And that’s where I think a lot of companies get it wrong. And so, like anything, if you’re standing for something, you also typically are standing against it. But a lot of companies are too scared in this, today’s society to really dictate because they don’t want to lose business. And I understand that, right? I really do.

But if we’re talking about building trust, trust is being personable, right? It’s being authentic. It’s all the things that we’ve talked about doing the right thing. And oftentimes that has to be standing against stuff, right? Something that people that come into the powerful man always say is, you know what, there’s a couple of hundred guys in this group, or 2000, over 2000 in that one other group we shave, and not one jerk. Not one. There’s got to be one, right?

And I always make fun of myself. I always say, like, there’s always a jerk in the group and I don’t see one, so it must be me. But I think that’s funny. But the point is there’s just no ass holes And the reason there isn’t is because we’re authentically us. And the guys get the chance to be authentically them.

And I think of other brands that do this really well. They’re out there in the marketplace and what they do is they represent who they are and what they stand for and what they stand against, just as we do. We stand against the kind of machismo, beat your chest. I’m so tough. We have UFC fighter guys, we have all kinds of special forces. These are badass dudes, but when you meet them in person, they’re the kind of guy be like, yeah, can you watch my three year old? Because they’re big teddy bears and they’re just real men.

Tim Matthews  15:09

Help the old lady across the street.

Doug Holt  15:10

Yeah, they’re real dudes. So when building a brand, you want to take that all into context. There’s whole formulas for doing this from a marketing strategy. One of the books, if someone’s looking at doing this for their business, would be story brand. I think that’s a really good book for people – [Crosstalk].

Yeah, really good book to start with. You build your canvas based on the story and the hero’s journey. There’s several other books I would recommend to people on this mission, but it really comes down to doing the right thing. The Golden Rule, right? Treat others as you would want to be treated yourself. And I think if more businesses and business people can stand by that rather than just always trying to get a profit, they’re naturally going to build trust and build trust quickly.

Tim Matthews  15:53

Yeah, I think a key thing to that as well is there’s got to be some meaning to what you do, right? You’ve got to find meaning within the product that you deliver, however that comes about, wherever it comes from. Because I think what I’ve seen anyway, is when guys kind of fall into a business just to make money and they hustle and they grind and they deliver a good product and they’re believing it, but they don’t tie it into how it actually creates something meaningful for them. Be it through it could be through the core values or whatever, I’m not too sure.

But the point is, if it just maintains been about the money for them, it’s going to be harder to do all these things. It’s going to be harder to believe in it as much, it’s going to be harder to focus on the social proof of it as much. It’s just going to be a bit, in my experience anyway, with the guys that I’ve spoken within our movement. And I can think of two prime examples. One was a guy that owned care homes, and he took over the business, and he took over the business when it was in a bad place, and it was just about the business and about the money and getting it to a certain position, and he didn’t enjoy it, right?

And therefore he wanted to get out of it as quickly as he could as well. And he didn’t choose at that point, at that stage to anchor it into any real meaning of how that product created something meaningful in the world. I think partly as well, because he wasn’t necessarily seeing his life in that way or himself in that way. He lacked a little bit of meaning in his own life too. Then I think of other guys who find a way to sell a particular product that solves a certain problem, but they also find a deeper meaning and reason for how it serves a bigger purpose or meaning in society.

And in doing so, it’s much easier to get behind the latter product and really stand by it and communicate with confidence and do the right thing and all those things than it is the former product. One’s more transactional, one’s more relational.

Arthur Magoulianiti  18:03

Yeah, love that. I think one other element, and I think that’s something we do really well, is bringing the whole team along, the whole team heading in the same direction. We got clear values, we got clear direction, we’ve got a clear target, and everyone is pretty much on board. And I think that helps everyone move in the right direction. We’re not pulling against each other, which then leads to providing great service for the internal clients as well as external clients. And so that once again makes it a consistent service and congruent service.

Doug Holt  18:37

Yeah, I’m going to agree with that too. I love the fact that we bring that along and that’s something that our company culture really helps with. There’s a lot of companies have done a really good job with that and you kind of trust the company more because you see that they’re doing it internally as well as externally.

Tim Matthews  18:51

You fill a care, right?

Doug Holt  18:53

Yeah. You get that they do it to more of a core measure. I’m going to give two more and then we can kind of wrap this conversation up. But the two ones that I want to leave that sound pretty obvious to me and probably to the people listening but few people do it is do what you say and say what you do. Right?

So make sure you actually do the thing you say you’re going to do. You can’t build trust if you can’t follow through. Right? Maybe I’ll do three here. The one is I was thinking about a guy, Keith, and what he does when I was thinking about the manufacturing side of things. But you have to have quality in your product. Alludes to what you were talking about earlier. You have to really have quality. Which comes to, in my opinion, do what you say, right?

If you say it does something, make sure it’s good and the good quality. And the last one, I’ll leave it off, is exceeding expectations. When you set expectations, you need to exceed them. At least meet them, right. Meeting them to me is the bare standard of the shitty business. Exceeding them every time. That’s how you build trust. When my expectations get exceeded, I get excited. And that’s how you really build trust within a company.

Tim Matthews  19:57

That’s a great point. Yeah, it’s always great to deal with a company who exceeds your expectations. Well we checked into the Fairmont, right, in Jasper and I get that it’s automated – [Crosstalk] you know we liked it, right, our boy Lucas. But it’s just a tiny little touch. Doesn’t take much effort but it makes a big difference because you just feel more taken care of.

Doug Holt  20:26

Yeah, to give the people context. They’re wondering why we’re talking about Lucas. We got automated text messages from the hotel. Like hey, how was your check in? Do you need anything else? You know we always sign off Lucas, which is great. So you know Lucas is back there on the keyboard just typing away. It’s not automated, you know, but it was. It was a really nice touch and all the touches at the Fairmont were great.

Tim Matthews  20:47

You didn’t expect the text though either, right? Because most hotels don’t do that. So that’s the way in which that exceeded the expectation. They just give a nice impression.

Doug Holt  20:57

Well, even the bellboy, when we came back from our motorcycle tours, like, let me see those smiles. I want to see the bugs and the teeth. And he remembered what we were doing. Yeah, it added an element.

Tim Matthews  21:08

Yeah, it was great.

Doug Holt  21:11

Yeah. So wrapping this up, gentlemen, I would love to know what we’ve missed. And I know we haven’t been able to touch on all of the items here, but, guys, leave a comment where you’ve seen this video. Let us know what elements we’ve missed on building trust and how you’ve built trust in your businesses. And let’s use this as a conglomerate ability of a mind trust, if you will, to gather our knowledge together.

So put comments below, wherever you have this video, I’d love to see how you think you can build trust with the business. Which ones we’ve missed and which ones were your favorites. And as always, we’re in your corner, and we’ll see you next time on The Powerful Man Show.

All right, guys, that’s a wrap for this episode. But as I always say in the moment of insight, take massive action. You see, there are two types of men that listen to a podcast like this, those that go on from one podcast or show to another just hoping things are going to change and realizing that they’re going to be in the same place month after month, year after year.

You see, I was this guy so I completely get it. You may just not be ready. But there’s also a second man, a second man that listens to a show just like this. And this is a guy who takes massive action so they can shorten the learning curve, compress time, and get RESULTS to be the WOLF. See, WOLF is an acronym for Wise, Open, Loving, and Fierce.

Now ask yourself, which one am I? And just be honest with yourself there. And there’s no judgment on my end. But if you’re ready to move from deactivated DEER mode, which is Defend, Excuse, Explain, and React to activated WOLF, Wise, Open, Loving and Fierce, then go over to thepowerfulman.com/grow. And go there now. In fact, I’ll make it super easy for you. I will even put the link right in the description here so you can just click it and go over there now to learn more. Guys, in the moment of insight, take massive action. Go from deactivated to activated, because like I said, life is too short for average and I’ll see you on the next episode!