Improve My Business

Earlier this week I posted about the importance of trust in business relationships and I wanted to take a minute to look at a current case study about trust. I want to talk about the Toyota recall and the surrounding accusations, questions, concerns and general hype. A quick survey of the news and blog outlets on the internet earlier this week revealed a ton of comments, articles and posts questioning Toyota’s actions in the matter of its recall. Cleary Toyota is experiencing a trust issue right now, but how did they get here?

The first thing to note is that of course, like anything else on the internet, some of these posts can’t be considered un-biased or completely factually accurate. Putting that aside though, there are definitely some serious concerns about how Toyota has handled this recall. If you doubt that Toyota has done anything wrong then consider this, based on the comments of people like Ray LaHood, the US Transportation Secretary, it is no longer a question of whether or not Toyota will be fined for the way they handled the problem, now it is just a question of when and how much.

So step one in the loss of trust is that Toyota made a bad product that has serious and life threatening problems. This is certainly not a good way to build trust with consumers, but this Toyota recall isn’t the first time cars have been recalled for serious problems. Since 1999 Ford has recalled 14 million vehicles due to a faulty cruise control that was prone to catching fire, and best of all, the car didn’t even have to be running for it to happen. However, if you search online for comments about the Ford recall you won’t find the same kind of response that you see to the Toyota recall. So what is it about this Toyota recall that has created such a crisis of trust?

Where Toyota really went wrong is that they tried to hide the facts, they ignored our number one rule for building trust in relationships and didn’t listen to their own better judgment. Anyone can understand that if you found out about a problem with your product as big as the one Toyota is having now with the acceleration issue you would need to handle the situation carefully, but I think unanimously everyone would agree that the right thing to do would be to tell the customers about the problem. Which Toyota eventually did, but it took a lot of pushing and numerous complaints for Toyota to issue the recall. This does not look good for Toyota, it makes it look like they were trying to hid the fact that car had a problem and hope that no one noticed. This may not have been what was actually going on, but what matters in building trust are appearances.

Beyond the delayed response to the issue, further problems have arisen because Toyota hasn’t been very upfront with consumers sense issuing the recall. There is still confusion about what is really causing the problem and what Toyota is doing to fix it, there are actually at least two different issues that Toyota has issued recalls for, and some people believe there may yet be a third cause of the problem. Toyota executives are not building trust even though they need to be doing everything they can to salvage what little trust people still have in them. Toyota was once revered as the pinnacle of quality, and in just a few short weeks there are questions about the company’s ability to continue in this country.

To me this serves as a perfect example of what will happen if you don’t listen to your sense of right and wrong and try to hide things. Eventually, it will come out, and it will make you look worse than if you just admitted the problem in the first place. Maintaining and building trust must be our first concern in business relationships. Hopefully we can all learn from Toyota’s mistakes and realize that putting trust first, sometimes means doing difficult things. Like admitting that you made a bad product.

Technorati Tags: Business, Business Relationships, quality, Trust

January has already sped past us launching us straight into February, I hope you have gotten a great start to 2010. Being that it is February and this is a month were a lot of us spend a little extra time thinking about our personal relationships around Valentine’s day, I have decided to call this Relationship Month  and devote several posts this month to talking about relationships in business. Relationships are the heart of everything we do as people; celebrating, mourning, living, working, it is all about relationships, so I think it is only right that we devote so time here to talk about how to make sure you are forming the right kind of relationships in your business.

The first thing I want to talk about is trust. Any relationship councilor will tell you that trust is one of the cornerstones of a healthy relationship. If you can’t trust someone you can’t have a valuable relationship with them. You will be too busy trying to figure out if they are telling the truth or not to really appreciate them as a person and you won’t feel comfortable sharing your thoughts with them. This is doubly true when we start thinking about business relationships and money comes into the picture.

For better or worse most of us value our money above almost everything else these days, and thus we are very protective of our money. We would never give our money to someone we don’t trust and we can’t expect our customers to give us money unless they trust us. To be successful in business you need to have a network of trust with your suppliers, partners and clients. So how do we build trust with our clients, and find suppliers and partners we can trust? The answer believe it or not, is pretty simple. Trust yourself.

Most people have a pretty good sense of what is right and wrong, and who is telling the truth and who isn’t telling the whole story. The problem is we don’t trust ourselves enough to listen. Trust yourself to follow your instincts, if something seems like it will create ill-will or somehow cause someone to doubt the trust they place in you, don’t do it. If a supplier approaches you and you don’t feel one hundred percent comfortable, chances are it’s your mind trying to tell you that this supplier isn’t trust worthy, listen to it and ask the questions you need to ask to find out what is making you uncomfortable. Trusting ourselves and listening to our instincts will go a long way towards finding trustworthy people to associate with and making decisions that will build trust with our customers.

The second very important thing we can do is to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes. A great place to do this is marketing. In marketing you try to highlight the best benefits your product can provide and explain to potential customers why they should bring their business to you. However, the key factor in converting prospects into customers is trust. If prospects trust you, they are more likely to do business with you, and if they don’t trust you, chances are they will never do business with you. So when you put out a marketing piece, don’t just think, “Does this inform people about my product?” but, “Will this make people trust me/my company/my product?”

To do this, you need to put yourself in the prospective customer’s shoes when you look at your marketing. Ask yourself if there are any questions that you want to have answered after seeing the marketing materials, or if anything seemed out of place or disingenuous to you. Chances are that if something seems off to you, it will seem off to your prospects as well and immediately put doubt in them. Always be aware of how you are affecting the trust other people have in you and your business when you act, if you don’t you may find it very hard to find new clients before long, because no one will trust you.

Technorati Tags: Business, Business Relationships, Marketting, Trust