Trust is the invisible unit of measurement we use to choose our friendship, relationship, and purchase decisions.
It's the beginning and end of almost everything.
We begin a relationship when we trust someone to be good, and we end the same when the trust is broken.
Whether it is sales or friendship or love or respect or whatever exists out there, trust is the foundation.
Trust is a weird currency.
It grows slowly, very slowly.
Every act of positive impressions adds 1 to the trust level.
If someone answers our question, we add 1 to their trust score. When they help us in some manner, we add another 1 to their account and so on.
But a single act of negative impression can impact the trust immensely.
When someone makes an irrelevant or hurtful comment reduces 10 from their trust score.
When they do something we don't appreciate, another 10 is reduced. When they post an abusive or insensitive rant, another 10 goes poof.
When they ask for the sale before the right time, another 10 goes out.
And so on.
That's why it takes years to build trust and one small mistake to lose all.
The worst thing is, once lost, it is very hard to regain trust.
If people don't trust you, they won't feel like you have their best interest in mind or that you will deliver on your promises.
They won't trust you to solve their problems.
To put it simply, if people don't trust you, they won't want to buy from you.
That's why trust is the one metric we marketers need to be conscious of.
If you need to grow your brand, you need to build trust among your new fans so that they go out, talk about you, and get you more fans.
If you need to land a job, you need to gain your interviewer's trust so that he takes the risk of hiring you. Because if you mess up later, he will lose his reputation.
If you need to land a client, you need to gain your prospect's trust so that he entrusts you with the task.
If you need to sell a book, you need to gain the trust of your audience that you are the right person in the topic of choice to listen to or learn from.
If you need to sell a course, you need to gain the trust of your audience that you can help them learn whatever you are teaching and get results from it.
If you need to date a girl, you need to gain her trust that you are an excellent person to go out with.
Trust is the critical element of converting a prospect into a customer.
So, as a marketer or a businessman, why do you need to gain trust? Why do you need to focus on it?
Let's assume your audience took the bait and decided to share their details with you and become your lead.
Their trust score will be something like 0 or 1.
You cannot persuade them to buy whatever you are planning to sell them.
Because measure the cost of purchase using a formula like
Cost of the purchase = how much they trust you (x) the benefit of the product.
And if the price is less than the cost of price derived from the above formula, they purchase.
It doesn't matter how beneficial the product is or how low the price is, if the trust value is zero, you aren't getting the sale.
If your product is low priced, a small amount of trust with a decent list of benefits is good enough to close the sale.
Assume it's a 99 product, it is a minimal cost to your lead or audience. Even if you aren't an established expert in your niche, you can sell it to them as long as it offers at least one significant benefit to the audience.
If you are selling a 499 product, you need to be an established expert, and your product offers a decent list of benefits to make the sale possible.
But if you are selling a 4999 product, you need to be perceived and respected as a mentor or an expert with proven results, and the product should offer a transformation for sale to happen.
As the product price increases, you need more trust and more benefits to make the sale happen.
But as discussed, regardless of the price, for sale to happen, you need trust.
So, how can you grow trust?
The best way to gain trust is by educating and nurturing your leads.
Like I mentioned earlier, when the lead joins your list, the trust score stands at 0 or 1.
As you tell them about you,
why you decided to create the product or the service,
how it helped people to become better or get better results
and so on, the trust score gradually grows.
As you talk about the problem, your audience is facing,
how the problem is stopping your audience,
how their life will change when they overcome the problem,
how you were facing the problem and
how you struggled with the problem, and so on, the trust score moves upward.
As you introduce how you come across the solution,
how you tested it,
how you made sure it works for others too,
the results people got from applying the solution,
how they got faster results, more time, and so on the trust score improves.
That's what a lead nurturing sequence can do.
So what is a lead nurturing sequence?
It is a carefully designed series or sequence of content delivered to the audience at a specific interval.
It could be a mix of emails, blog posts, ebooks, case studies, videos, testimonials, etc. delivered through email or retargeting ads.
Emails work best because they are guaranteed to reach your audience's inbox while everything else isn't.
The nurturing sequence content has only one goal - to educate the customer and move him from one stage of the customer journey to another so that you can ask for the sale at the right time.
But how will you know when is the right time to ask for the sale? How can you measure how much trust have you gained?
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