to maintain and build client trust with your agency

Referrals are the foundation of many agencies. However, trust can quickly be eroded. This leads to problems with maintaining growth and creating a self-sustaining, healthy business.

Although most agencies say that trust is essential, we encounter many things that can inherently cause a lack trust, even when they seem to be beneficial for the business.

We’ll also hear about other agencies.

• Clients are locked into long-term contracts without any out clauses.
• Clients are not given access to their own advertising accounts.
• They take on work in which they lack expertise or develop dashboards that exclude critical elements such as spend or cost per lead/order.

They may give your agency a sense of security in the short-term, but they won’t build a relationship based on trust.

This article explains why building a strong culture and agency requires maintaining client trust.

How to build trust

There is a equation of trust which includes three key components that lead to trustworthiness.

• 
  Credibility
  
  Are you able to provide or execute relevant information?

• 
  Reliability
  
  Do you follow through on your promises?
  • 
    “If I hear him say I’ll get this report on Friday, then I know I will receive it that day.”
    
• 
  Intimacy
  
  Do your clients trust you?
  • 
    They are always professional and maintain confidence in sensitive situations. They always maintain professionalism and confidence even in the most sensitive situations .”
    

These items together represent trust. Each of these items can be used to destroy or reduce trust.

If you are very knowledgeable about a topic but don’t deliver your projects on time, then clients (and co-workers!) may not trust you. You may be perceived as untrustworthy by your clients (and colleagues!)

Self-Orientation is also an important factor.

Credibility, reliability and intimacy are the first three things we discussed to build trust.

Trust can be destroyed if you are perceived to be self-serving and motivated by your own interest.

People who believe you’re motivated by self-interest will not trust you.

“I don’t believe him. It seems that he only does this to gain recognition and not to care or help me.”

Why should agencies build trust?

Let’s look at the practical and business reasons why agencies should focus on building trust.

Client retention

Your new business will be accretive rather than just offseting churn when your clients remain with you.

You can stay the same if you have a good track record of acquiring new clients but struggle to grow.

You will be able to meet with former clients

If your clients are happy with the service you provide and decide to switch to another company, it is likely that they will want to work with you again.

Referrals of new prospects

In the early years of your business, word-of-mouth may be more important than proactive business development. Referrals are more likely to come from building trust.

Services and growth expanded

Trust is a key factor in determining whether clients will purchase additional services or increase their spending on accounts. Rapid growth can be achieved by increasing the share of wallet in an account.

Create marketing material and reference it

Some prospects may ask for references, testimonials or case studies. Your clients who are happy with you will be glad to share their experiences with prospects.

Happier employees

You want your employees to feel that they can trust you, so do everything possible to make them feel like it.

You’ll likely have a lower rate of voluntary turnover if your team is happy with their work. They are more likely to stay involved with clients.

Building trust is a process

As a measure of trust, I have previously written Net Promoter Score (NPS) and Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS). These are objective, measurable measures of how you’re doing with clients and employees.

As an additional measure of success, monitor client turnover and the percentage of clients who use multiple services.

The sales process is the beginning of building trust, but it continues with management

Kickoff meetings provide your team with the opportunity to establish a solid foundation of trust.

• Start by sending a welcoming email.
• Create a kickoff questionaire that shows you are interested in learning about their company and team. Do not limit yourself to what they do for marketing.
• Start by introducing yourself and your team and building credibility.
• Continue to show your reliability by keeping the dates you have set.

Trust building with clients: Best practices

• Provide a consistent and reliable service Cover the entire strategy and execution and be responsive to all requests. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to drop everything. But you must acknowledge the receipt of requests.
• Be reliable and do what you promise.
• Communicate in a transparent and proactive manner: Set the scene for great discussions by using agendas.
• Deliver measurable results: Provide transparent reporting, and discuss the highlights of each week and areas for improvement. Tracking should be as accurate as you can.
• Be clear about your expectations and timeframe. Follow up with a summary of the meeting.
• Admit your mistakes and challenges:Mistakes are bound to happen, whether they’re small like a typo or big like an overspend. Explain what you’ll do to avoid it happening again and, if necessary, give a credit for the inconvenience.
• Ask for feedback, and provide it. Feedback loops should be open and honest, positive and empathetic.

It takes time to build trust and you don’t have to be perfect. Transparency is required when you’re not perfect.

How to survive challenges or breaches of trust

Early detection of issues with credibility and reliability

Imagine how you would feel if this message was delivered on a Thursday morning instead of a Friday:

• I know that I promised to deliver this report on Friday. We need two extra days because it’s taking longer to gather the data.

You’ll be more likely to get a positive response if you send it a few days or even weeks in advance. Send it Friday morning? It’ll be assumed that it was an excuse, or you procrastinated.

Develop a plan to fix mistakes

If you have a trusting relationship with your partner, then you can probably get away with an occasional mistake as long as this doesn’t occur more than once.

• We found a mistake in a formula that was used in the previous report. A second person will check reports in the future when formula changes are made.

Offer credits if necessary

Credits should only be used in extreme or highly unusual situations. If someone on your team has overspent their budget, nothing says, “I own it”, like a credit.

The same principles that are discussed in this article can be used to build trust among employees.

You may find the book Five Dysfunctions Of A Team interesting if you are a manager or an agency.

Trust is the foundation of every successful team, whether it’s between a client agency or an internal team.

The first Search Engine Land post that appeared was How do you build and maintain trust with your clients.