Zig Ziglar once shared from the stage, “If people like you, they’ll listen to you. But if they trust you, they’ll do business with you.” To run more successful businesses, we need to restore trust among our employees and customers after decades of erosion.
In the 1970s and 1980s corporate outsourcing, declining labor union power and oil shocks slashed American wages while simultaneously corporate executives began earning huge benefit packages. In the 1990-2000s corporate malfeasance and corruption created enduring negative press around companies like Enron, WorldCom and Boeing. Then the whole dot.com bust, real estate crash of 2008, and the pandemic crisis took consumer trust on the ultimate nosedive.
In a recent poll, the Gallup organization reported that consumer confidence in big business sunk from only 30% to just above 16%. As Canadian business leader Natalie Doyle Oldfield sagely wrote in “Trusted: The Proven Path to Customer Loyalty and Business Growth,” “No longer is it good enough for companies to have the best product or service. To grow and succeed, companies must have the trust of their customers and stakeholders.”
So, how does a company begin to build or regain trust? The power of story is your answer.
As author Seth Godin wisely states, “Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.” Consumers want to connect with companies that share their common values and resonate with their culture. People happily pay more for chicken sandwiches at Chick-fil-A because they resonate with their faith culture. Consumers feel the same way about shopping at Hobby Lobby and other people-centric companies.