There’s a formula for getting brand trust right. You’re probably not using it

How are you investing your brand dollars in creating trust? Amazing advertisements? Maverick marketing? Customer facing technology? Breakthrough products? All of these? How much is devoted to your team members?

Is that you whistling past the graveyard?

It’s time to rethink your team members trust, in your product-company-culture-leaders. The most important element of customer trust is the trust of your employee. Establish transparency, honesty, integrity, and benevolence with those who represent you, and customer trust will follow. Capture the trust of your employees and in return reduce costs, increase sales velocity, and hear the cheer of raving fans you call customers.

Regardless if your team members are behind the scenes or engaging in direct face-to-face customer interactions, they are the people that directly impact the trust people hold in your brand.  Your employees, the ones that trust you, come to work every day with a commitment to make a difference. Consider the different trust conditions.  High or low trust employees, High or low trust customers.  Which condition results in business success?

• High trust employees + high trust customers = Guaranteed business success

• High trust employees + low trust customers = Unsustainable business

• Low trust employees + high trust customers = Unlikely and eventual low trust customers

• Low trust employees + low trust customers = Business closing condition

The answer to this question seems so evident, yet, many organizations fail to consider how the origin of customer trust is employee trust.

Every day your employees come to work with expectations about the company, the products, and the people that will make up their day.  High trust employees are confident that the company will stand behind their products, that their leaders will act with integrity, and that their colleagues will strive to do what is right.  In contrast, low trust employees are uncertain about the strength of the company, believe that there is a false narrative regarding the benefit and reliability of the company products, and often have no respect or trust in leadership.

When employees have trust in their company, there is an empirical bottom line advantage.  In a meta-analysis of 58 different studies, researchers have identified that organizations with a trust-based culture produce not only higher financial outcomes, but they also generate engaged employees, delighted customers, and loyal customers.   In our work with companies, we have identified that employee trust has a direct impact on business success.  In a series of work, we have found that when sales professionals trust the company, product and leaders they represent, they outperform the average sales professional by 32%.

While the mountain of evidence is clear, and the simple logic of understanding employee trust is an engine to business success, most organizations do not invest in employee trust building.  Wait, what? Yes, you should be investing in your employees to build trust. Most leaders never consider employees the audience in which they should be investing resources to capture customer trust.  However, that is, in fact, the missing part of the brand trust formula.  Simply stated, invest in trust building with your employees and customer trust will quickly follow.