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Unbound is a weekly podcast, created to help you achieve more as a leader. Join Chris DuBois as he shares his growth journey and interviews others on their path to becoming unbound. Delivered weekly on Thursdays.
0:00
Ready for actionable tips to build trust in your organization? Well, today's episode is for you. Are you a leader trying to get more from your business in life? Me too. So join me as I document the conversations, stories and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to unbound with me, Chris DuBois. Natalie Doyle Oldfield helps companies to develop relationships rooted in trust, leading them to measurable success in both sales and career advancement. She has a background in it marketing and years of experience as an entrepreneur being recognized as one of Canada's most inspiring women, business leaders and entrepreneurs. Natalie has been named one of the world's top thought leaders and trust by trust across America, she has compiled her knowledge as the author of The Power of trust our top companies build, manage and protect it. And I am excited to jump into this conversation. Natalie, welcome to unfound.
0:58
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Chris. Yeah.
1:02
So I would love to start with your origin story.
1:07
Okay, well, I don't know how far you want to go back and the origin, I'll just share a little bit of the background. Before I started my company success through trust 10 years ago, now, I had spent 25 years in the IT industry working in a variety of different roles. So I worked in marketing as a product manager at one point in communications, and in sales roles at the very end of my career when I was Chief Marketing Officer for a software company and we did business all around the world. And I actually lived and worked pretty close to where you are, I lived in work for many years in Connecticut, loved it there love the Northeast. And so after working for all these years in it always in a marketing type role, whether it was sales, or communications or product management. Lead activation is what one of my colleagues used to call us. I was asked for for several times by my manager to take over the role of sales. Now at the time, I was Vice President of Marketing for a software company and I really didn't want to do this Gris, I just really was very uncomfortable with it for a variety of reasons. Everything was going great. And the reality is, I was terrified. Like what if I'm not successful, because we're everyone listening? That's in sales, you know, it's about every month, every quarter every order, and you know, it's it's very accountable. However, I always loved and still do love meeting with customers. So I was always very involved with the customer conversations. So much so that my manager said, who was the CEO? Come on, like, you'll love this, and you'll be great at it. So finally I said yes, and became chief marketing officer responsible not only for marketing, but for sales. And then very quickly, the whole market changed. It was a long time ago, it was 2008. And people stopped buying software and services related to it in the hospitality sector because we had a market crash. So I had to figure out really quickly how to be successful in this brand new job and this brand new role. So I looked around to figure out okay, well, how do people sell and because I've never done that, and I always had just focused on relationships and trying to figure out what customer priority was. And so in doing that, I asked around and talk to the people that I thought got results. And what I learned pretty quickly, they all came back to me and said, you know, just keep focusing on relationships, and focusing on the customer. Fast forward about three or four months, we did do that. And luckily, the sales went up. And everyone on our team just focused on the customer, Chris, that's really what we did. We just figured out how can we support them? How can we do everything we can to help them out? And like I said, about three months later, our sales started to go up. And about 12 months after that, I decided to go back to school and I did a graduate degree in communications and I went in to answer the question, how is it that customers in a business to business environment decide to buy. And I wasn't in very long. And I learned that it actually all comes down to one thing, it all comes down to trust, we all decide to buy, based on trust, it's actually the foundation for every buying decision. And there's been a lot of academic research, some, you know, people have won awards and prizes. Because of this, it's it all comes down to emotions, and trust, I got so excited about this, that talk my team created while doing my research, steps to follow to learn how to build trust, did lots of academic research, graduated eventually from that, and started teaching it full time to everyone I knew. And it was phenomenal, because people were getting results. And I continued my research after graduation and created and built, it developed this framework called the eight principles of trust, and this model for people to follow to build, manage and protect relationships of trust with their customers. And I love doing it. And like I said, people are getting results. So then I actually tested it out, I also created a measurement tool, because my whole career, I have, you know, have always had my practical hat on and believe that you know, what we can manage, we must be able to measure what we can measure we can manage. So I actually built a measurement tool to it's called the client trust index, and it measures a customer's trust in an organization. And we've tested this out over many years. And what we have found is that when people apply the eight principles of trust, they do have increased business. So you can measure trust, you can manage it, you can protect it by applying these principles. So eventually, I you know, I just decided I gotta teach as many people as I can, how to do this. So, you know, my website, has some language on it around that I'm on a mission help business owners and leaders grow. I'm all about helping them build relationships of trust. And that's how I believe that we can all grow. And so I started doing workshops, and teaching people this and then a couple of years in, some of my clients would say, can you? Can you just write this all down? Are you ever gonna write a book about this someday, so that we have some follow up things. So the other part of my origin story is, as you mentioned, I have written a book, it's called The Power of trust how top companies build, manage, and protect it. And you can find it on amazon.com. And that is really, you know, in a very quick way, in a couple of minutes, the origins, how it got started, and there's a lot more in there, I'm happy to share whatever else I can, but, you know, that's the quick version. I love, love working and connecting with business owners and leaders. And that's really how it started, I saw that there's a need. And it was really getting results for people. And the other thing is, I saw that everybody doesn't know how to do it, Chris. Some people have a lot of interpersonal skills. However, there are a lot of folks that go to school or go to university or in a very technical role, and they'd maybe don't go to university or college. And they're in customer facing positions. And they're required to interact with a customer, yet, they don't really know how to do it, and or they're not confident in doing it. And trust is a skill that you can learn and you can develop. So that's that's also a big part of my origin, if you will, that I love showing people how to do this and giving them the tools and the systems and the step by step methodology so that everyone can feel confident and everyone in a On a team can build relationships of trust with their customers, whether the customer is outside the company, or another department inside the company, depending on what their role is.
10:17
Awesome, I'm sure we're gonna dive in deeper to some of these areas. But to start, so you said something, I think very important for for business owners to understand, especially within b2b. Two reasons people buy our emotions of interest. Yes. So what is it about trust, that get someone to actually decide, hey, this is a company I want to do business with?
10:43
Well, So emotions are part of trust. Okay. So, yes, there are basically three components that make up the decision to trust. And out of those three components come the eight principles of trust. So those three components are, how we communicate, how we behave, and how we serve. So emotion is part of all those decisions. And actually, we decide to trust, Chris, based on how people do in all those areas, and when it's face to face, and we're looking at facial expressions, it actually happens in about 33 milliseconds. And the fact is, first we decide to trust, then we decide to buy. So it it truly is, as I mentioned, foundational. And it's really the one thing we should focus on first, because if I don't trust, then I'm not going to look at someone's products or services, or try to understand their capabilities.
11:55
Right. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. And so what I find fascinating is that you've taken something that I feel like a lot of people use Lean on trust as purely emotional, and like something that is you can't necessarily quantify, but you've taken the scientific approach to it. Or like, Well, no, we can actually break it down as almost a soft skill, right into multiple other skills. 100%. Yes, yeah. Right. And so I guess now, how do you when you're looking at building trust, let's get into some of these principles, and talk about things that we can be doing to help people trust us more.
12:33
Okay. Sure. So I do believe it is an essential skill. And many of my clients and many of my colleagues say it's a soft skill. Yes. I would also say it's a core skill. And when you know how to build trust, all these great things happen. And so to get into it, just as an example, I'll share with you a story of one of my clients that I worked with recently who had a transformation, and he was applying principle number one. So principle number one, Chris, is listen carefully with empathy and compassion, question involve the other person in a conversation or the decision that affects them. So that's a mouthful, shorten is listened carefully with empathy. So that is step number one. And as you know, I mean, we all have, we all can think of someone that we kind of instantly trust or can connect with, right, we had our, our pre interview, we had a great chat, it was very quick for us to connect. Right? For lots of folks, it's not that easy. So one fellow that I want to tell you a story about is Andrew, and this is a true story he was part of I have a trusted advisor certification program. It's 45 days. And really we start with, with foundational, how do people decide to trust and then they finish and they're what I would call a trusted adviser, the one that a client would go to. So Andrew, really, he was very experienced. He's a professional engineer with a master's in business administration. So you know, with this PNG MBA, he was in a senior role in his company, in fact, he was responsible for business development. And so he actually connected with me initially over LinkedIn last fall like it was last fall slash winter, November, December, and said, You know, I'm really interested in this program, and I said, Well, okay, great. Tell me about why. So what I always do ahead of time is figure out if this is the right program for them. And really, I want to understand what are their objectives, what kind of results are they looking for? So I talked to them. And then I also talked to their leader, their manager. So in this case, it was his CEO, because he was already on the leadership team. So we want to make sure we're aligned. And as they go through the program, I help them achieve the results they want to achieve. So he said, Well, I'm doing business development, the market we're feeling is is softening. We don't have the forecast that we thought we were going to have. And I want to be proactive and deepen relationships with some of our current clients, we want to make sure I retain these clients. But I also feel like there's more business in these current clients. And for whatever reason, they're not telling me about it. But I, I know, there's more business there. And, you know, there's, there's lots of examples of organizations that they know, there's untapped potential revenue with their existing customers. So he joined the program was wonderful. And by module two, which I call Session Two, we're talking about empathy and listening carefully. We were doing an exercise and the he, he kind of had an epiphany, so meaning, you know, the light bulb went off. And we're in a group setting, there's, you know, 12, to 15 people. And he's like, you know, what, I just realized, I'm not looking at the emotional side of the customer. So I bring the example up of him, because you mentioned emotion, Chris, so it's a big part of empathizing with the customer with the client. And so through these exercises, he really learned to empathize with customers. And I mean, the, the, you know, the ripple effect was colleagues to and he had a team of people that he manages, so it was phenomenal. But on the customer side, it was really great, because he tweaked a few ways that he approaches the customer. And within, I would say, 60 days or so maybe a little less, because we were still in the program. So I guess less, maybe six weeks, he got a referral, he was starting to get referrals. So we got one referral that came in from a current customer. And as we all know, a referral is what I would call a signal that you are a trusted advisor that your client thinks you're doing a great job, they love the service, they love what you offer, and they believe in you. And, you know, they trust you. So that would be an example of one of the principles. And it's also an example of how we make it practical and how you can measure it, right? He, he got a referral. And in that company, they do measure referrals. So he finished the program in the end of March. And since then, you know, he has gotten he has received more business from inside his ears account. That was a big objective for him was to retain and grow as existing accounts.
18:33
I think what's the most insightful? Like getting that referral through that kind of sem through the program? Right? Yeah, the when you when you get a referral, someone basically trust you enough that they're willing to put their reputation on the line. That's right to share with someone else. That's right. And so, right. So like, I mean, that is a very easy way to see that, hey, I am building trust, yes. Someone else's is willing to do that. And so that, so that's also a lot of trust building, I guess, with that, too, comes down to the reputation that you're able to, to build, right? Because you're constantly trying to, I mean, build this trust with everybody so that you are someone who everyone knows can be trusted. Yeah. One of the challenges of this, maybe this is a pessimistic view. I don't like being a pessimistic person. I feel like trust is fleeting. And a lot of companies today, where it's just really hard for people to prioritize it for some reason. But how do we know you have a system for building trust? How do we stop have people use it for good rather than to manipulate people? Right? Because if you know some of the scientific tricks to get around this, like bad actors, maybe trying to Yeah, so do that. And so now,
19:55
great question, Chris. So no one has asked me this or framed it like this. Um, but it's a great question. So. So there's two parts to that. So the first part I'll respond to is how do you get around people that might want to, you know, not be authentic? Well, right, the framework in the system that I build is, is based on applying principles. So we need to all apply the principles of trust in ways that are authentic to us. The opposite of authenticity is fake, right. And so, we humans know that when someone's not being sincere, and they're not being authentic, they're not trustworthy. And so you can't, in my opinion, you can't, you can't fake it, you have to earn it, and it's fragile. And if we sense that someone is not trustworthy, then all of everything that's happened is dispelled, right, and we start, and we start doubting, everything they've said in the past, and everything they're gonna say in the future. So I would say that, you know, one of the ways is, when you apply the principles, you know, that's how you are authentic, because you apply them in a way that's sincere to you and how you behave. Right. And the other point you made, which I think is very significant is that you mentioned, you know, companies or people not putting a priority on it. Well, at the end of the day, there's so there's a very significant business case for trust. 80% of people worldwide buy from people and companies they trust. This is not a regional thing, this is not a cultural thing. This is not a generational thing we buy from people we trust. So it makes good business sense. We stay with continue to buy from and do more business with people we trust. And, and we all know it, it costs a lot more money to get a brand new customer than it does to keep our customers. We all know that. Right? There's a famous, you know, study that was published about 20 years ago now. And they update it regularly. That a 5% retention rate in customers can be 75 to 95%. In profits, it's it's very significant to keep our customers. And so in terms of companies not putting a priority on it. To me, it's, it's actually the most important thing to focus on your customers. And for every company. No matter if you have the best product in the world, or the best service in the world, or the best mousetrap the best, in the strongest best features are the most professional advice. No one's going to buy your advice or pay for your services unless they trust you. And for every organization, the critical trust risk point where the rubber hits the road is the people. So you know, I love working with companies that place a priority on customer relationships, and the customer experience, because it's those that prioritize that are going to have the competitive advantage.
24:11
One, just pulling that statistic that you just shared with, like if getting that 5% And just reducing turnover can increase profits by 90%. Even if it was 75%, right? 50% If you make if it's such a lift, why would you not invest those profits now into training for trust to continue improving your turnover? Like it just seems like a perfect way to boost your business, your bottom line without a ton of effort? Like
24:44
yeah, let me and the other thing in today's environment. So many companies that I work with, I'm sure your clients to share the fact that it's really challenging to find top talent, and it's really challenging To keep top talent, so to your point about investing when you invest in your people, and teach them new skills, they want to stay with you. And when you invest in now, I'm very biased. However, I have seen the results when you invest in your current employees. And when they all know how to build relationships of trust with customers, and maintain and protect relationships, they then are helping you grow the company. In other words, they're all growing the revenue, it's not just leaving it, because I really don't think we should be just leaving it to the sales team. Right? Everybody has a part to play in the customer's decision to work with your company, and everyone has a part to play and building relationship of trust everyone,
25:56
right. And one of the additional benefits to being able to build trust and where to get more customers is that by having the skills of trust, those are used inside your organization as well, right, where now your your leadership is going to be more trusted by by their team. And so like that people generally don't leave companies, they leave bad managers. And so
26:18
what it's so true, I saw statistic a few years ago, and every once in a while, if I'm doing a presentation to a large company meeting, or you know, at a conference, when there's people from different companies, I, I ask people to raise their hand, if they have someone at work that they trust. And it's, it's awesome, everybody raises your hand, it's great. And then I say, Keep your hands raised if you trust your boss. And that's what happened. So this statistic, which I find crazy is that 50% of employees do not trust their boss. Well, so to your point, we we should be focusing on it. And, you know, the great news is the world's most successful companies are focused on it. And they they do know that, you know, it's practical, you can make it practical, and you can learn how to build trust. And, you know, it's it's phenomenal that when you think about what a wonderful business case it is,
27:35
right? No, that's awesome. Now, if I me coming in with like, my CEO hat on, yeah, so awesome. Trust is great. But how do I actually measure? If we're building trust, if we're actually doing the right things, in order to see it, you fortunately, have created a way to actually measure performance, I guess I'm trust, I would love to hear more about it.
28:01
Well, there's a couple of things you could do. There's one thing that's very simple and quick, and takes probably three minutes. If you, you, or some of your listeners, go to my website, which is success through trust.com. You can download a team trust assessment, it's complimentary, there's a series of questions that that you can look at to see if the, you know, this Two Minute assessment to see if people on your team are building trust or not. It really identifies strengths and weaknesses. And if some, you know, if, if a CEO as you said, or a leader wants to do that, I would encourage you to download that and you could schedule a 30 minute call. And I will be happy to go through that with you more involved with so that doesn't give you a quantifiable score. However, it you know, ask questions around current clients, it asked questions around people have the skill set to build relationships, and and ask questions about your priorities. For those that really want to dig deeper. I do work with companies to measure their customers experience and now and like I said, I have a diagnostic and that's a bigger project. It's a three month three to four month and we actually get a quantifiable score of someone's trust equity. The majority of people that I work with, we do this assessment and sometimes I measure a company's trust of their car. customers, you know, if they could have 10,000 customers, they could have 100 customers that we would do it. It's a survey. However, that, like I said, is a longer project, the assessment will give you a pretty good indicator of how you're doing.
30:22
Awesome. Was it? Two things that we can do to take action right now? Are there? Are there any other things someone listening to this episode could leave with that you would say this is what you need to be doing just to start building trust within your organizations, for your customers for your teams? What could they be doing today?
30:41
To start, what I would suggest, is start noticing, are we are we trustworthy? Are we focused on and deliberately working on building relationships of trust, Chris? So as I mentioned, in every company, the critical trust risk point comes down to the people. So one way to start would be think about the folks in your organization that are in customer facing roles, do they have the skills? Do they breed confidence? Do they now? Do they know how to communicate effectively with customers? Or are they in customer meetings? And they're turning the customer off? Are they you know, are they confident? Is everybody confident to reach out and have a conversation that's appropriate with a client. If you have people on your team, that don't have a what, as you mentioned, the soft skills, most likely, they don't have these trust building skills. And so the trust building skills are, you can learn them. And it is a step by step process. And you know, it starts with listening, it starts with really being focused on the customer. And there are all these other steps and tools that you can take. But I would say just start by thinking about your team. Those that are customer focused, are they building relationships of trust with your customers?
32:33
Awesome, great advice, I will strongly recommend everyone pick up a copy of the power of trust how top companies build, manage, and protect it, get into those principles, learn how to apply them. And I feel like it is almost impossible to not see benefits by just putting this to play. Thank you. Thank you very much, Natalie, for joining us for that conversation. I got three more questions for you, though. So what, uh, what book besides your own? Because I've already recommended that to everybody. Do you think everyone should read?
33:09
You know what, there's so many good books out there. This is a really tough question for me, because I actually really love books. So I love historical fiction, because I think we actually learn a lot of lessons from history. So I'm a huge fan of Ken Follett, any of his books. And I also love business books. And I recently read a book that was written a while ago called The friend factor. And it is by Mark Sanborn. And it was a great book, and it focused on the customer experience. And there's so many reasons why I love this book. And I think the main reason is that one of his key messages is that every single person can make a difference every single day, and that we can all choose every day to be extraordinary, be phenomenal, be wonderful at our job, and he has a story in his book about post man delivery person who does that every day. And so I think that's a great book. Yeah, there's lots of great books out there. That's a really good one now.
34:34
What is next for you professionally?
34:38
Oh, that's a good question. Um, I love what I do, Chris. I love working with leaders. I love working with technical talent. So folks that are you know, scientists or engineers or in the IT space people who haven't learned the sauce fields, maybe there are, you know, field services reps or project managers, tech talent, who are already amazing at their jobs, they are so valuable to their company, yet, they just have never had an opportunity to learn these soft skills or core skills to become trusted advisors. So I think what's next for me is to continue to work with these folks in my trusted advisor program. I run them every quarter. So the next one starts in September. And what's next is just to do more and more of that, and to do that with companies all over because as I said, I'm really on a mission, if you will, to help companies grow and I love doing that. So that's still what's next for me. I even though I success, your trust is 10 years old. I feel like I'm just getting started.
36:06
Yeah, awesome. Where can people find you?
36:10
Well, you can go to my website, which is success through trust.com. Find me on LinkedIn, and it's under my name, Natalie Doyle Oldfield. And if you do go to success through trust.com, I do encourage you to download the teen trust assessment. If nothing else, you get a different view, I'm sure of your team. And I'd love to hear from you. So LinkedIn or my website, I have a contact page as well.
36:40
Awesome. Natalie, thank you for joining me.
36:44
Thanks very much, Chris. It was great to be here and great questions.
36:51
If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. And for more information on how to build effective and efficient teams through your leadership, visit leading four.com And as always deserve it
Transcribed by https://otter.ai