Trust: Key Ingredient for Recurrent Business

Find out Trust’s most important principles to have in mind before making long-lasting business relationships with a future partner. 

It is not competence, nor intelligence. It is not about speed nor about social skills. 

In order to establish long-lasting business relationships, individuals need to TRUST you.
In every business interaction, there is an implicit mutual evaluation of Trust. 

Can I trust this person?

Once trust is established you can then evaluate if your partner has the right competencies, the right business, and product fit for your company. 

Evaluating the terms & conditions, testing your future partner’s product and services will come at a later stage. After some initial trial transactions, you can start a long-lasting business relationship.

But how do we assess that a person can be trusted?

Before that, contextually, parties need to be on the same page:

• First, trust is reciprocal. Therefore, there needs to be a mutual collaborative approach in order to build trust.
• Secondly, both parties need to have a medium-term perspective. I cannot build trust if I need a one-off transactional deal.
• Finally, parties need to be transparent with each other to understand what their business needs are.

The 3 elements of Trust

Once the context is set, assessing if I can Trust you pivots over 3 elements: Credibility, Reliability, and Integrity:

1. Credibility

Corporate image, reviews from independent third parties, help create objective credibility.

2. Reliability

What you, your company or product promise is what you deliver. Business consistency and predictability is at the core of this element.

3. Integrity

The purpose of your company, your corporate values, and the level of transparency are some of the factors that will help business people create trustworthy relationships.

According to PWC, 22nd Annual Global CEO Survey, 65% of CEOs globally are concerned about Trust in Business. This number has escalated from 34% in 2013. These figures show that there is an implosion of business trust and now more than ever we need settings that facilitate trust-building.

At Opportunity Network, we strongly believe that we can help companies in their trust-building process. The fact that all of our CEO members have been vetted by our Trusted Partners, Financial Institutions, and reputable organizations, has created an environment of trust among CEOs. 

This environment has strengthened the member’s credibility and shorten the time it takes for CEOs to assess if they can trust their counterpart, so they can focus right away on T&C and competence assessment.