Do you trust the people you do business with?

Do you trust they will do a good job? Do you trust they will protect your confidential and proprietary information?

Lately, we have been thinking about the trust we place in each other in business relationships. During more than twenty years of providing bookkeeping, financial administration, personal assistance and other administrative services, we continue to be amazed by the amount of trust our clients have placed in us.

Sharing financial information with a complete stranger takes a “leap of faith”. Providing access to your personal and business “secrets” takes courage. Sharing very personal information, unrelated to the business relationship, is more common than you would think.

At Black Tulip we take the trust placed in us, as one of our greatest accomplishments. Our business was built up entirely through personal referrals, because we understand that one “screw up” could destroy everything. All of our staff have signed confidentiality agreements and understand the severe consequences of betraying our trust. We have set up various layers of “access” to the more sensitive information and monitor, test, and review these policies on an on-going basis. We regularly take all the necessary precautions to ensure we continue to meet the level of trust granted us.

We believe in the end, trust always comes down to the person-to-person relationship. Even though so much of our communication today is electronic and remote, face to face meetings are still a great way to judge if you can trust someone. Through body language, eye contact, handshakes, intuition, years of observing and analyzing people, your gut will tell you who you can rely on to be discrete and professional. We realize there are “bad” people out there who know how to take advantage and manipulate, but when we have any concerns, we rely on a team consensus to address those concerns.

To run a business, there must be mutual trust: your clients need to trust you, and vice versa. A lack of trust can create barriers to business, and by building trust, you can offer more services to your clients.  So let’s hear it for our intuition, our animal instincts and our “gut”. Today’s world could benefit from some more person-to-person trust.Man Catching, Woman Falling