Trust as what is really being sold

Translated from the original Spanish article.

Trust seems like a fuzzy concept, hard to pin down. And yet it is essentially what is being sold in professional services. And there is a way to formalize it.

Take the example of a financial advisor. This is a good example of “credence goods,” that is, trust as what is really being sold.

The quality of the service can’t be evaluated before, or often even after, consuming it, among other reasons because the buyer lacks the expertise. If you sell your company once in your life, how do you know whether your advisor did an excellent job or just an adequate one? The information asymmetry is structural. You can’t try on an M&A advisor the way you’d try on a pair of pants in your size, after all. When you can’t judge quality, all that’s left is to trust. So buying a professional service is, at its core, an act of trust.

Especially in services where the perceived risk is high and the aim is to avoid mistakes.

I also said that trust can be pinned down and formalized, and that lets us work on it within a practical framework.

This is how Maister, Green and Galford described it in “The Trusted Advisor”:

Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation.

I like it, because in my view it holds up.

Three things add up: credibility (you know what you’re talking about), reliability (the perception that you will deliver) and intimacy (“openness,” “closeness,” “rapport,” or the sense of safety with which someone opens up to reach out and share something with you).

One divides, as the fundamental element: self-orientation. The more it seems you’re acting out of self-interest, the more trust gets diluted.

Therein lies a key: whoever seems not to need the sale inspires more trust than whoever chases it.

This doesn’t mean pretending not to be interested, but rather showing that you care more about the problem you solve, the other person’s interest and your own integrity than about your quota.

“My tactic is to be frank / and to know that you are frank / and that we don’t sell each other simulacra / so that between the two of us / there is no curtain or abyss.” —Mario Benedetti.

Fortunately, there are more beautiful ways to describe trust.