Do your customers trust you - and, if so, what for?
Wal-Mart is known for low prices.
A very young boy was heard to say that when he grew up, he was going to build a company bigger than Wal-Mart by offering even lower prices — everything would be free! It would appear that much older sages haven’t developed any better strategies.
Despite Wal-Mart’s phenomenal achievements, there’s a darker side to their success. A plethora of articles cite the small businesses put out of business by Wal-Mart’s arrival to their towns, discuss how Wal-Mart’s gain is their suppliers’ losses, and point out how Wal-Mart discourages artistic freedom by not selling certain recording artists, books, and magazines (since they’re such a key retailer of these products, not carrying them makes a huge difference). Other articles complain about Wal-Mart’s architecture, low wages, and various types of discrimination.
Meanwhile, insurance agencies and many other businesses work hard at building and advertising great products and great service. Yet, even when they succeed, they don’t attain Wal-Mart’s success. Wal-Mart simply says, “Trust us to always have the lowest price” and it works!
The key is that Wal-Mart does not just sell price. They have built trust that they will always have the lowest price. They learned a painful and expensive lesson during Christmas 2004 for temporarily violating this trust, when customers found other stores offering better prices and abandoned Wal-Mart in droves the first shopping weekend of the season. Wal-Mart, though, is still known and trusted for one thing.
Agencies often advertise, “Auto, Home, Health, Life, Business, SR-21’s … “Exactly what are these agencies best at? If you asked your customers, what one thing would you be best known or trusted for? I’m not advocating selling price, or even trying to have the best price. I am recommending that you define the one thing that your agency does best and can be trusted for — and then find a way to make this tangible to your customers and prospects. I think that people have an inherent distrust of people and businesses that advertise, “I can do everything better.” Sometimes I believe that agencies send muddled messages by trying to do everything for everyone.
Trust is the key to sales in our industry. What exactly should your customers trust you for? What do they trust you for today?