The Art of Selling 'Custom' Kitchen Cabinets on the Web! Part 6: Building a Culture of Trust
Many of the posts that I write for HIP_ONE are geared toward helping home improvement professionals to empower their businesses by getting the online edge to sell custom kitchen cabinets. In my previous post, I focused on positioning your brand for Online Leadership. We discovered that the most important attribute of any aspiring brand leader is that they build their brand on truth. We hear about it in many forms, “truth in advertising”, “keeping your brand promises or under promise and over deliver”, “transparency”, etc.
All of these forms heavily rely on the all-valuable byproduct of building on truth which is a having a foundation of trust.
Trust confirms that the customer and the brand are worth focusing on.
For a home improvement professional such as an architect, builder, designer, remodeler, or contractor, or anyone selling custom cabinets on the web, we could focus on the interesting flow on effects of a breakdown of trust, somewhat of a domino effect in the negative direction; but instead, let’s focus on the bottom line benefits of having a culture of trust. This focus begins with the realization that the strength of trust on the outside is directly related to trust levels on the inside of your company.
Goal --> Brand on the inside is as strong as the brand on the outside.
- Firms with high trust levels are 5X more efficient in producing results.
- Corporations on Fortune’s Most Admired Companies list increased stock appreciation 50% over their peers after instituting trust development employee measures.
- The share performance of companies with high employee trust levels outperforms companies with low trust levels by 186%. Advertising Age, citing Watson Wyatt Study.
Why is trust so important? Trust is the glue that holds the culture together. Trust isn’t something that happens or doesn’t happen. It is the result of consistent and deliberate intentions and actions that begin with the understanding that:
1. Leadership must be by example: Everyone in the company needs good role models.
2. Trust is the highest form of human motivation, especially when it comes to business.
3. There are proven models for deliberately and consciously creating a climate of trust.
With all of these values understood and fully mobilized, a home improvement firm can progress. The cultural progression directly contributes to exceeding revenue goals. This graph demonstrates the balance between the culture and sales. 
This graph may look complicated, so as you look to deliberately build a culture of trust for your organization, remember to keep it simple as with the parable of The fox and the hedgehog: As the parable goes, the fox knows many things, while the hedgehog knows one big thing. Despite the cunning of the fox, the hedgehog always wins.
Why? The hedgehog has simplified the complex world around him into a single, organizing idea that unifies and guides his life. For a company, the key attributes of the hedgehog are:
Clarity: Everyone gets it.
Coherence: It’s all connected.
Control: Someone’s driving it.
In conclusion, the difference you make regarding building a culture of trust is limited only be the indifference you show toward it. Secondly,regardless of the scope and breadth of the trust-building program, the commitment and energy behind the program will be the true success factors.
Question for all of us is, do we deliver on our promises: functionally and emotionally?
Thanks for reading.
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Crossroads Custom Cabinetry redefines the U.S. cabinet industry by making premium quality, custom cabinetry widely available at greatly reduced prices. Webinetry.com is a completely new portal for the way today's American consumer can research, preview, budget, and finalize their cabinet purchasing decisions. With our professional network, home improvement professionals enjoy a flow of free qualified sales leads, member pricing and innovative sales support tools that are designed to achieve an optimal selection process with the homeowner.