Speaking and Communicating Podcast

All the experts, the people that were really successful, they just kept saying focus on the relationship, which is how I got so interested in answering the question, how do people buy and why are some companies successful and others not?

It truly is about trust.

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating Podcast.

I am your host, Roberta Angela.

If you are looking to improve your communication skills both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning in to.

Communication and soft skills are crucial for your career growth and leadership development.

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Now let's get communicating.

Now let's get communicating with Natalie Oldfield from Fairlifex in Canada.

She is a trust expert and we haven't had that many on the show.

She is an author who is going to tell us not only about her current book, but an upcoming one.

And she's a speaker.

Natalie has been researching trust for so many years.

She has 25 years in the IT industry.

And she understands so much about communication and soft skills that we focus on on this show.

And before I go any further, please help me welcome her to the show.

Hi, Natalie.

Hi, dear.

Thanks for having me.

Thank you for being here.

Welcome to the show.

Please introduce yourself to our listeners.

Well, I am Natalie Doyle Oldfield, and I am the owner and founder of a company called Success Through Trust.

We work with leaders and business owners to help them become the most trusted in their industries, to help them grow their revenue and gain customer loyalty.

We do this primarily, Roberta, by focusing on the people, the people that are in customer and client facing roles to help them build their skills to become most trusted.

And we also have a whole program that is called Trust Equity Accelerator.

That is where we do consulting with a company.

We actually go in and see how they're doing.

We quantify trust and we give them a quantifiable score so they can benchmark trust and then survey their customers and find out where the gaps are, where the opportunities are, so that we can help them improve.

Really, the backstory to all this is, I got into all this, is what people always ask me.

And this is probably the best way for me to share a little bit about who I am, Roberta, is that my whole career, you had mentioned in the intro that I spent about 25 years in the IT industry, which I did in a variety of different roles.

I've always been fascinated by a few simple questions, questions like, what makes people tick?

And how do customers decide to buy?

And then, you know, why is it that some companies are so successful and others not so much?

I get so interested answering these questions and really, you know, what's the single factor that makes a company successful or not?

I actually went back to do graduate research and a graduate program while chief marketing officer for a software company.

When I started my research, which all focused on, you know, all these successful companies, what I found is that the single factor that makes one company successful and another not is whether or not they're trusted, whether they have the trust of their customers, their key employees, all the stakeholders that are important to them, you know, people in their community, I got so interested in that that I actually created a proprietary framework and a model for companies and business leaders to use to become the most trusted and to become trustworthy.

And the model was created in academia doing my graduate research.

And then I tested it out over a seven year period outside of university.

I graduated by this point.

It only took me two years to do my graduate research, but I kept doing the work and tested it with a variety of different companies and organizations, a really large sample size, just under 90,000 people actually, in a variety of different industries and countries around the world.

Found that again, the singular factor or the force multiplier, if you will, is trust.

And so this framework and all this work started with knowing that there's something that's making some people really successful and others not so much.

It's about relationships with your customers, with your employees, and with your stakeholders.

But really what it comes down to is this whole trust factor, Roberta, and being the most trusted in your industry.

So that's a little bit about me.

That's what I focus on now is helping companies and leaders become the most trusted.

And usually 99% of the time when we survey customers and I look in to do a diagnostic to see what's happening in an organization, it always lands with the most critical success factor for every company is the people.

And that's how they are communicating, how they're behaving, and how they're serving clients.

I do a lot with professional development, leadership development of people, with diagnosing to see if a company does have some trust gaps or not.

Correct me if I'm wrong Natalie, but it sounds like a parallel, because we talk about you may be the most brilliant, but you will not have the opportunities you could if your brilliance is hiding in your hard drive and you don't speak up, because then there's also not that trust element, because nobody knows how brilliant you are.

And also being a company, you can produce the best product in your industry, but if you don't have that trust factor, it doesn't mean you're going to make the most sales out of everyone else after your competition.

100%.

All of those things you would say, I would agree with, 100%.

We buy from people we trust, people we like, people we're comfortable with.

And that's really what the research showed, is that I knew this intuitively, but I really wanted to make sure that there was scientific data behind it.

So my entire framework and all of my work is evidence based.

And to your point, you can have the best product in the world, or have a product that has the most patents or functions the best.

But unless you have the trust of your customers, you will not be as successful.

It's a learned skill.

You can actually learn how to build, protect and manage a relationship of trust.

Just like learning how to be a better communicator is a learned skill.

Yes.

Yes, it is.

Right?

So it is a learned skill.

And communication is a big part of it.

In fact, it's a very large part of it.

We should going to get into much deeper.

And then you said trust can be measured.

Usually, I think things that are intangible like trust, can they really be measured?

It's either you have it or you don't.

Or you're in a relationship with someone and they do something that betrays your trust and you never can get the trust again.

You know what I mean?

It's either there or not.

We don't think of it as something you can actually measure.

How is that?

You can measure it.

Trust is very tangible.

In fact, it is a critical asset, one that you can measure.

I call it trust equity.

So I coined this term trust equity a long time ago.

And when I started my research and trust equity is the amount of trust a company has.

So I measure a customer's trust in an organization using this diagnostic tool that I mentioned that I created called the Client Trust Index.

And that is a survey.

And it asks a series of questions to your customers.

And in about nine minutes or so, through a series of statements, you get a trust equity score.

It's a measurement of the trust the customers have in the company.

It is tangible and some of my clients actually include it on the financial statements.

They say, you know, it's a value of goodwill, if you will.

And many of my clients have used this trust equity score in their company syllabus, in all of their materials to let people know how trustworthy they are.

So it is very tangible and you can measure it.

It's a measure of trust equity.

Think about the trust someone has in you and having that measurement of a trust equity score.

Every company would want to have a high trust equity score.

So I give companies their score and it's on a continuum of 0 to 100, and then they fall on this continuum.

So it can be measured.

And now let's talk about when you help these organizations.

So you have the leadership, you have the employees who interact with the customer.

If you find that the whole thing just needs work, it needs a complete overhaul.

Who do you start with first?

Do you start with the leadership so that they treat the employees better because they're in touch with customers, or you start with the employees in touch with customers, so that you fix that part first because the customers are always the ones to focus on.

If everybody needs help with this?

Well, in a case like that, I would say we start with the top, with the leadership team.

And I'm actually working with a company like that right now, Roberta.

I'm not sure I would describe them the same way.

However, I work with lots of companies that say, okay, we want to be the most trusted in our industry.

What do we do?

You know, in a perfect situation, this is how it would go.

So this client that I'm talking about right now that I'm thinking about in my mind, it's similar to what you said, a little different.

It is a manufacturing company and they have multiple locations across North America.

We started with a presentation to the leadership team, whereby I shared with them how to build trust.

We picked off the whole program in their annual strategic planning event.

So we did a workshop around trust and then from there, we actually went out and measured their customer's trust in them so that they could get a trust equity score.

From there, we do a segmentation analysis of the data and found that, okay, we pulled out some insights where they're doing well, where they're not doing well, so that we could really focus the leadership and development and the training and the coaching on where they needed to improve.

So it starts at the top, always starts at the top, because when you're trying to have a culture of trust and a culture of client focus with any organization, it always starts at the top.

And when it becomes a value like it is for this manufacturing company, they want to be North America's most trusted company in their industry.

That is their vision.

They value customer experience and they value teamwork.

These are part of their values in this company.

So we start at the top with the leadership team, then we did a diagnostic.

And now what we're doing is we're doing workshops inside the company to do coaching and development with customer facing folks.

So people who are in operations, people who are plant managers with project managers, they sell their products to other wholesalers.

So to people who are in account management, customer service, anyone who is in what I would call customer facing role, people in shipping and receiving, and we're working through over a year long process to do training and leadership development with all of their customer facing people.

And this is really how in a situation like you described, you know, when they needed an overhaul, I'm not sure my client needed an overhaul, but...

That's an extreme example, yeah.

Look at that.

I call that program that I'm talking with you about the Trust Equity Accelerator because they saw some things happening in their business, Roberta, that made them realize we need to do something.

So people on Google Trust, I want to figure out how to overhaul trust.

What they Google or what they contact me for are different business events happening, like sales going down, so revenue going down, customer retention numbers are soft or they're decreasing, or they're saying renewals are not happening in a timely fashion.

They're happening, but it's the negotiations are long or that it's not happening in a timely fashion.

In the case of this company that I'm thinking about, it could be that they're not getting as much engagement from their customers.

So when they call their customers to say, we're going to be at a conference or a trade show, customers are not responding.

They're not wanting to meet with them.

So these are all what I see as indicators or signals, if you will, of low customer trust.

Sometimes I work with companies that they don't need a big, as you would say, overhaul.

They just want to really do, you know, more targeted development and leadership training with some of the folks.

As we talk before we get started on the show, like you, I've worked with a lot of folks who contact me that are in what I would call more technical areas.

I'm thinking about a company that, when you were telling me about what you were doing in South Africa, I was thinking, okay, well, I've worked with an engineering firm that really focuses on the transportation industry.

Like, you're past, and this one firm, they're in the Midwest in the United States.

They do business in a very wide swath, a very large region.

They have a whole transportation group that they really wanted everybody in that group to have communication and soft skills to build the business.

So in that case of that company, several folks said, I was contacted because a few customers were complaining.

And one of the managing partners of this firm noticed that the business development goals for that region were not being achieved.

So that's another signal, if you will, of low customer trust.

In this case, they call their customers clients.

And so that was a signal that something was happening.

And then they started to get a couple of complaints.

Not many, not many, but just a couple of complaints.

And so the managing partner of this region who is responsible for business development contacted me and said, we really need soft skills training.

So I said, okay, why is that?

And they said, well, we noticed that we're not getting new business like we used to, and we have lots of leads coming in.

However, those leads are not turning into business.

So that's another indicator.

So I met with and talked to her about her team a little bit, all on Zoom, like you and I are doing right now.

What we decided to do is I realized that a lot of folks on the team were technically brilliant.

They were amazing and they ran very efficient projects.

However, like your hard drive example, they were not confident building relationships with clients.

And they weren't confident talking about other services their firm does.

They placed a number of folks from their offices in a leadership and development training program that I call Trust Mastery, learning how to build trust.

And what we found was with a lot of the folks that went in the program, they didn't have the confidence to build relationships with clients.

In large part, because they didn't have practice and also they didn't have well developed the ability to empathize and empathy skills.

And that's part of the Trust Mastery program is we learn how to become more empathetic and we learn how to listen really carefully with empathy and compassion to understand the client's perspective so that they can then communicate in a different way to these clients.

So there's a variety of different ways that I work with companies that come back to, a lot of them saying I want communication and soft skills training.

But really, they don't want to keep losing leads or they want to be more comfortable being in front of a client.

Like a lot of people are nervous to put people on their teams in front of a client without them in the room because they're afraid what they're going to say.

You know, in sales trainings, they always say, you've got this whole thing you're going to sell, this client, right?

The first thing to do is to listen to them and what they say or articulate their problem is because you could have a whole practice of what you're going to sell them.

But if Natalie sits in front of me and say, then I can go in the direction of where she's taking this conversation.

And like you said, they don't know how to sell the other offerings of the company because they just have only their view of this is what I do and this is what I'm going to tell you about.

Right.

There's no relationship, there's no trust, there's no relationship building.

If the lead comes, they don't convert.

But the thing is, I may not buy today, but if our first conversation was that good and I trust you, I can come back one day.

Of course.

And I would add that people buy from people they trust, people they know, people they like, and people they trust.

The flip side of that is people don't want to be sold to.

So if someone is practicing their pitch and they say, okay, well, these are all the things we're going to say, no matter what Roberta says, I'm going to say this, this, and this.

Well, that's not a true connection.

You know, one of the reasons that I got into and started really researching trust all these years ago is because I was asked to take over a sales role for a company.

I was like, oh my gosh, I don't know how to do that.

Like how I've never been in charge of sales my whole career.

I was in customer facing roles, but really in the role of product management or marketing or communications, I didn't know how to do sales.

So I started asking people, like, how do you do this?

And all the experts, the people that were really successful, they just kept saying focus on the relationship, which is how I got so interested in answering the question, how do people buy and why are some companies successful and others not?

It truly is about trust.

And like you said, you might have a conversation today and someone may trust you and not be ready to buy from you or interested in buying what you have at this point, but they come back to you when they are interested.

If in fact you have made a connection and you do trust, we all have lots of examples, those that are trusted of when this happens.

And you have eight principles of trust.

Would you like to take us through those quickly?

Yeah, well, how about I take you through some of them?

I have a new book coming out October 29th.

We're launching.

I have a few advanced copies here.

You can see in this book, it's a collection of real life stories, and I do take people through the eight principles of trust.

So I'll share a few of them.

So the first one is to listen carefully with empathy and compassion, question and involve the other person in the discussion and or decision that affects them.

This is very critical, as you know, to communicating, is to really truly understand and to appreciate the other person's perspective.

Principle number two is to communicate with clear concrete language, clear concrete and conversational language.

Nothing builds trust, as we know, like being clear and clarity really inspires trust.

So that's a big principle area that I bet you and I could actually talk about all day long.

That's what my master's is in, actually, is communication.

The third principle is be honest and transparent.

Again, nothing builds trust like the truth.

A lot of times when I'm doing a workshop for a company, whether it's a leadership team or a customer-facing team, I ask the question, what's the number one thing people do to destroy trust?

Then people will say all these things.

Then there's always someone in the room that says, well, if someone doesn't tell the truth, it always comes up.

Those are the first three.

They're really, in fact, the first three steps to building trust.

Listen, communicate clearly, and be honest.

Here's the part about honesty before we wrap up, Natalie.

If I work for a company, whether it's a company policy or whether it's the script I've been trained to just regurgitate, let's say a customer comes and they want a refund and they're bringing back something.

Yes.

If the situation requires me to be honest, the company probably might be in trouble or we might lose whatever the loss is, the cost is of me being honest with the customer.

So I have to say, the company policy is you cannot return this, because I don't want to be in trouble and lose money for my boss.

I don't want to be fired.

Especially with the customer facing employees, do you find that sometimes they have those sticky situations?

Absolutely.

Yes.

One of the principles, Roberta, is to act in the best interests of the customers, the employees, and the stakeholders.

When the person is empowered, so when a customer service representative, in the example you gave, is empowered to take the return or to do the right thing for the customer, then they're not feeling like they're going to be fired or feeling like they're going to get in trouble.

And the customer also, when the person is empowered, feels good about the company.

Sometimes we may not like the outcome, but if the person, the employee is empowered, to act in the best interests of the customer, then you can never go wrong.

Because at the end of the day, we trust people who are acting in our best interests, people who have integrity, who want to do the right thing for us.

Integrity, a big one, especially in business now.

There's just so many factors that play into that.

And so when you know a business has integrity with their customers, that's a really, really big factor into pouring into the trust factor.

It's huge.

It's one of the principles.

It's about doing the right thing and nothing shows your integrity and your ethics more than doing the right thing.

Ethics and trust go hand in hand.

Right.

Any last words of wisdom, Natalie?

Anything I didn't ask you, you were hoping to share with us today?

Well, just that it all comes down to the people, Roberta.

It's how the people communicate, how they behave and how they serve.

These are essentially what I call the trust triangle.

These are the components of trust.

For every organization, every business, it doesn't matter what industry you're in, it does all come down to the people.

They're either building trust for you and your organization or destroying trust in every single moment, in every single interaction with customers.

So it is a skill.

We can learn it.

You can learn to become a trusted advisor and you can master the skill of building relationships of trust.

You certainly can.

Words of wisdom from Natalie Oldfield, who is a trust expert, author and speaker.

Natalie, your book comes out on, you said, October 29th?

Yes, it's called, Trusted, The Proven Path to Customer Loyalty and Business Growth.

Use the principles to grow your business.

And it's available on Amazon, whatever country you're in, amazon.com or.ca or UK, wherever it is you are in the world.

You can also find me on my website, which is successthroughtrust.com.

You can also find me on LinkedIn.

I post a lot of articles there.

And lastly, on my website, if anyone's interested in seeing how ready their company is to be trusted and how trustworthy they are with customers, I have an assessment there you can download, complimentary called the Customer Readiness Checklist.

If you want to check that out, that's on my website.

successthroughtrust.com.

The book is Trusted by Natalie Doyle Oldfield on Amazon and the website.

Please take the free complimentary quiz and see how trust ready you are.

Natalie, this has been such a pleasure.

Thank you so much for being on our show today.

Thank you.

My absolute pleasure.

Thank you for joining us on the Speaking and Communicating Podcast once again.

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