TRUST HACKING 1

“The Key to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made!”

Woody Allen

All you need to be a successful financial advisor is for enough people to trust you. Let me say that again, if people trust you enough they will take your advice. If people trust you enough they will do what you say. It’s all about trust. And trust has a formula (like all good formulae it easily breaks down into 3 parts).

Trust = competency + transparency + benevolence

This means your prospect must believe 3 things about you:

• Competency: That you have (or have access to) the knowledge and ability to do the job that meets their minimum expectations.
• Benevolence: That you have their best interests at heart.
• Transparency: That you are honest.

If you are ever in a situation where someone isn’t listening to what you have to say step back and assess the trust equation. Try and imagine how the subject(s) perceives you.

• Do they think of you as competent in the area you’re discussing?
• Are you perceived as an expert or someone new?
• Do they think of you as intelligent or not so intelligent? Does the subject self identify as a critical thinker and if so do they consider you to be one?
• Do they have reason to believe you act in your clients’ best interests? Stories, testimonials, collateral material can all be used here. The ideal story is one where you have shown a client a much lower cost way to achieve a goal thus saving them money.
• Do they think you are honest and/or truthful? What about your past interactions and their general world view could be colouring their perception of your honesty?

The first step to effective trust hacking is determining how to gain the minimum amount of credibility required in each of these areas with a particular prospect.

Imagine a simple, 3 point checklist you could use for every meeting or interaction you have during the day. Well, you don’t need to imagine it, here it is.

• Commonality
• Compliment
• Concerns

How does this work? Simple. Make sure you identify at least one area of commonality with the person you are speaking with. Make sure you pay them at least one compliment. And at the end ask them, ‘Do you have any other concerns for this meeting or have we addressed all of them?’

If you just do these 3 simple things at every meeting you go to, you will find people responding to you more positively and happily. Simply by forcing yourself to consciously think about or enquire about one commonality and one compliment you will find that with a matter of days you are easily and naturally thinking of and mentioning multiple commonalities and compliments with the people you meet. Your brain trains itself quickly and this simple habit will lead to you being a much more effective communicator.