Establishing Trust with Business Relationships
Posted on March 25, 2008 - Filed Under Business |
As a consumer, my priority in entering a store is usually to purchase something. Small-talk with the seller is kept to a minimum. I could careless how many minutes their cellphone calling plan has. Nor do I want to know how many Twinkies they can eat in 2 minutes.
Sitting in with my Mentor on business meetings, at least 50% of the time was spent just shooting the breeze. This “breaking of bread” process confused me because we just didn’t talk business and then get out. Cutting the small talk would cut the meeting time in half.
It finally dawned on me during my first business transaction the importance of this small talk.
Scenario: The name of my online business site matches the domain name for the site. What a coincidence! Unfortunately, the domain name was already taken. As luck would have it, the current owner was willing to sell the .com, .net and .org for the domain name.
When first calling the seller, that little voice in my head told me to just chat with him. During that first 15 minute conversation, “talking” took about 10 minutes and “business” took five minutes.
The ten minutes of chat creates a rapore. “Can I trust this person? Do I like this person? Do I know this person?”
My Mentor is fond of saying “You can’t build trust into a contract. You either trust someone or you don’t.” Now that comment is fully understood.
If a potential business partner turns out to be a racist, neo-nazi pig who bites the heads off small dogs and steals books from libraries then it doesn’t matter what kind of contract exists between him and you. If his business model includes screwing people over, he’ll screw you over.
Per our agreement, I would send the first portion of the payment. Upon receipt, the domain first name would be released to me. Hitting that “Send” button in PayPal made all kinds of doubt surface. He could take the money and run. If he lived in another state, how would Small Claims court work for getting the cash back? But those first few conversations help put my mind at ease. The first payment was sent.
Within two hours of receiving the money, he released the first domain name to me. Very nice.
Now that the trust was established the rest of the transaction went smoothly, without the anxiety.
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