Why Audience Trust Is The Ultimate Business Accelerator

Is there a partner, supplier, or person you routinely do business with, and perhaps who has collaborated with you across multiple businesses?

I’d wager one reason you keep going back is that you developed a level of trust with that person or brand. You had expectations, they met or exceeded those expectations, and a relationship was born. That’s not unusual because trust is the ultimate business accelerator, fueling growth and leading to higher engagement, sales, and customer retention.

In business and life, people spend their time or money with those they trust. A great way to win that trust is through thought leadership, where you share your expertise to help people improve their lives. Charles H. Green, founder of Trusted Advisor Associates, once developed an assessment to determine an individual’s “Trust Quotient.”

For Green, trust comprises four attributes: credibility, reliability, intimacy, and self-orientation. The first three attributes increase your trustworthiness. The fourth attribute, self-orientation, can lower your trustworthiness if people sense that you are too focused on yourself.

Trust Directly Impacts Revenue

But is all this talk about thought leadership simply a way for people to boost their ego without having any impact on the business? Do people pay attention to your thought leadership efforts?

Research says that they do.

For example, a joint study by LinkedIn and Edelman about B2B companies demonstrates the connection between thought leadership and ROI. In that study, more than 75% of decision-makers and C-suite executives say a piece of thought leadership led them to research a product or service they had not considered. Of those, 23% said they began working with or buying from that organization.

The Trust-to-Sales Pipeline

Through thought leadership, you create trust even before the person decides to do business with you. They first encounter you not as someone with something to sell but as an educator who provides them with insights and the wisdom of your experience. In other words, something of value.

That puts you ahead of your competitors, and when the audience is ready to do business, they gravitate toward you because that preference and trust have already been established.

Sure, plenty will encounter you as a thought leader — attend your speeches, read your book, listen to you on a podcast — and never do business with you. Still, thought leadership allows you to widen your audience, giving your message and brand greater reach as it accelerates your business.

But how do you establish yourself as a thought leader who commands the audience’s attention?

Earned Media and Online Presence

Thought leadership that inspires trust and acts as a business accelerator can come in many forms, including public speaking, podcasts, writing a book, or being an expert source for news articles or trade publications. Not everyone will necessarily use all of these venues. You’ll need to figure out what works for you and how to reach your target audience best.

But each of these platforms can increase your credibility. An example is earned media, when you gain exposure through media coverage instead of paying for a commercial or an advertisement. When a journalist quotes you in a newspaper or magazine article or on a TV newscast, that serves as an implied endorsement since the journalist essentially says that you are someone whose views on the subject hold value for their readers.

Similarly, if an event organizer invites you to speak, that sends the message that they consider you someone worth listening to.

Essentially, the trust audiences have in these venues or media outlets transfers to you. Consumers are good at distinguishing between a paid message — a commercial time or advertising space you bought — and a trusted third-party endorsement. This is why earned media is one of the highest-value opportunities for brand building and achieving that trust that serves as a business accelerator.

The Cost of a Trust Deficit

Of course, just as you can build trust, you also can lose it. One big mistake businesses make when it comes to trust is failing to listen to those clients they have won over. Trust erodes when clients provide feedback, and the business ignores what they say. Sometimes you build trust by listening as much as or more than you speak. Instead of always focusing on what you want, you look for ways to give someone else what they want. You intend to forge a long-term business relationship rather than approach the interaction as transactional and short-term. Ultimately, trust in a relationship comes from valuing the partnership more than your interests.

This doesn’t mean that every customer suggestion or criticism is worthwhile. But to maintain the trust you worked so hard to gain, it’s essential to focus on the voice of the customer — perhaps especially when that voice is telling you something you don’t want to hear.

Sometimes you can keep someone’s trust simply by acknowledging that you have heard what they had to say and understand their viewpoint — even if you don’t make the change they sought.

Cultivating Authority and Trust

Paying attention to the needs of others is also a way to achieve the intimacy that Green included in his four attributes of trust. Simultaneously, you will lower the self-orientation that hurts your trustworthiness.

Green says intimacy is perhaps the most powerful of the trust components, so it’s a good one to focus on. Other strategies you can use to achieve higher intimacy include practicing empathy, giving your full attention to the person you are interacting with, and sharing your thoughts, feelings, and experiences openly and honestly.

Meanwhile, Green says strategies that can lower your self-orientation include always being curious and getting in the habit of asking questions; leading with calm, taking a moment before meetings to breathe deeply and clear your mind; and practicing thinking out loud, even saying to the other person, “I’m just thinking out loud here,” as you do so.

Here’s a final note to keep in mind as you create your thought leadership campaign: Few, if any, people land significant keynote speaking engagements or network newscast interviews right off the bat.

You may need to hone your skills and establish yourself with smaller speaking engagements and local media. Even though the size of the audience is not as great, those have value. They allow you to smooth out weaknesses in your message and delivery, and they allow you to build your online presence and credibility so that when people search your name, they don’t come up empty.

Of course, even as you become more adept at thought leadership skills and you gain more opportunities to share your knowledge, you will still want to work to improve. The most successful thought leaders routinely rehearse and refine their messages.

In this way, your authority grows bit by bit, and so does the audience’s trust in you.