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Show Trust, Drive Sales. Rebecca LeClaire Explains.

By on August 26, 2013
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“Trust is a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another.”

–Not So Different After All: A Crossdiscipline View Of  Trust, Rousseau, Sitkin, Buit, and Camerer, 1998

 

There is a lot out there about how to gain the trust of your customers or how to create a trustworthy ecommerce website. We spend countless hours and dollars trying to figure out how to get customers to reach that state of “vulnerability” where they will buy what we have to offer, but do we ever think about whether we display trust in our target audience or consumer? Does your customer put a monetary value on the feeling of being trusted?

“A possible explanation for the substantial amount of “irrational” behavior observed in markets (and elsewhere) is that humans are a highly social species and to an extent value what other humans think of them. This behavior can be termed trustworthiness – cooperating when someone places trust in us… positive social signals cause oxytocin to be released by the brain, producing an unconscious attachment to a stranger.”

–The Neuroeconomics of Trust by Paul J. Zak.

I started to ponder this idea recently when I had a very casual moving sale. I didn’t want to haggle with anyone or make change; I just wanted to recycle some nice things as I tried to condense 8 years and 7 people into boxes. I set a table out in the front of my yard with a box that had a money hole on top of it and a sign that said “Everything at least $0.25. Name your price and put it in the box.” The first day I made $14.50 and I sold only 3 items. This continued every day for a week, where I made much more than $0.25 per item sold. I lived in an average neighborhood with what I suppose has the average number of honest people as the rest of the population. As I put my marketing hat on and tried to attach some meaning to this phenomenon, my husband suggested that maybe people gave more than they were expected to because of the first foot of forward of trust in strangers made by me; perhaps it made them not want to take advantage of me in return.

“… people, when rightly and fully trusted, will return the trust,” –President Abraham Lincoln

I looked back at my recent purchasing experiences and I recalled a day where the concept of the producer exhibiting trust in the consumer made a big impact on my purchasing decisions. One day, when I must have had an incredible amount of energy and lost my mind, I took my 5 children by myself to a tourist town in West Michigan along the Big Lake. I was visiting the many curiosity shops, and as it goes with these kinds of towns, inevitably there is a candy store. All of my offspring were sucking on old fashioned sugar sticks as I shop hopped. I was looking for a couple of things in particular, but only one I knew I was going to buy for sure… a dress for my upcoming vacation (if I could find the right one at the right price)… and I definitely was going to have a fun t-shirt printed at the t-shirt place I had visited months before. When I entered the dress boutique, whose average merchandise price was $100.00, I made sure the owner heard me chide my children NOT TO TOUCH ANYTHING. He was very friendly, and started asking me about all of my kids and pointing out what I may like best. It seemed the thought that one of those sticky sugar sticks would get stuck to one of his silk dresses never crossed his mind, either that or he had a sign that said “you gunk it up, you buy it” that I didn’t see. I thanked him for his help and said I might come back today. Next, I made my way to the t-shirt establishment whose average merchandise price was $12.99, 5 little ducklings still sucking on their sugar sticks but almost done. I took two steps into the store, managed to get out my DON’T TOUCH ANYTHING and the shop keeper ran at me and said “out, out, no food in the store.” He lost a guaranteed sale that day. I had no reservations, however, to traipse my brood back to the dress boutique and buy a dress at full price. Had all 5 of my children each got their candy smothered on a t-shirt, I still would not have spent as much on damages and the actual t-shirt I wanted as I did on the dress. But, the ornery store keeper didn’t have enough trust in me as the consumer to do the right thing and it resulted in him losing a customer for life.

“Because trustworthy people also tend to be more trusting, they are more likely themselves to seek out opportunities for reaping cooperative gains.”

–A Cognitive Theory Of Trust, by Claire A. Hill and Erin Ann O’Hara, Washington University Law Review

So what am I suggesting? Throw caution to the wind, let your customer pay whatever they want and invite disaster to your physical inventory? (If you have read my previous articles on offering things for FREE you know that I am not.)

Consider the Priceline.com model… Have you ever done this? I recently needed to book a rental car for a vacation. I wasted way too much time looking up the same sized vehicle on every car rental company website that operated out of San Francisco. I perceived that I wasn’t finding any better deal than anywhere else. I finally surrendered myself to Priceline.com figuring that at least if I could name my price I would have a chance at a slightly better discount. Following through on my mantra it never hurts to ask I named the price I was hoping to find in my previous search. I got a polite pop-up message that amounted to, “If wishes were horses we would be booking you on The Pony Express, lady – how about you try this slightly familiar price?” I could have booked my mid-sized sedan somewhere else at that point, but I appreciated the chance to try, the two dollars I saved and their honesty – so I pulled the trigger, reserved my car and blew the two dollars on upgrades.

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” –Ernest Hemingway.

To study further on this psychological and neuroeconomical effect read the works of Paul J. Zak, Ph.D. Specifically, in his paper “The Neuroeconomics of Trust”, he surmised due to levels of oxytocin in the brain, humans who do not know each other generally can create temporary attachments. “It literally feels good when someone trusts you, and that good feeling causes most of us to be trustworthy… evidence strongly suggests that nature has designed us to be conditional cooperators… This positive feedback is how oxytocin facilitates bonding of mother to child, spouses to each other, and my experiments have shown, causes strangers who are shown tangible evidence of trust placed in them to temporarily attach to each other.”

 

How can you deliberately display trust in your physical and online clientele?

How would this improve your long term customer retention and engagement?

Are you doing something that you may not be aware of that shows distrust in the consumer?

 

Consider a survey asking hard questions about your service, showing you value the opinions of the end user.

Make people feel welcome whether in person or online, learn what makes a welcoming website and facebook page versus a marketing statement.

If you give quotes for your work, remember that just because you have to say no doesn’t mean it has to be the end of a conversation; without being taken advantage of, be willing to negotiate so that everyone wins. Sometimes giving a little has large returns.

With first encounters, smile warmly – in person and online (smile while you type, it really does influence the tone that you project in the written word)

Reflect on how trust influences your purchasing decisions and try to ethically and genuinely emulate that. What is your trust language?

 

Need to brainstorm some more? Contact me, I would love to help!

 

RebeccaLeClaireheadshot0413Rebecca LeClaire draws from an education in Psychology and experience in Accounting and as an Internet Specialist. Her broad perspective of the inner workings of business and understanding how people perceive messages has helped her to build a successful international design and online marketing company. She helps start-ups and public figures create recognizable brands online, with the web presence of larger corporate competition. Rebecca can coach you to your success too! Find out more HERE.

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