Create Your Own Trust Catalysts

By Matt Gruhn

As outlined in ANCHORING: The 9 Leadership Disciplines That Redefine Dealership Success, Trust Catalysts are the actions, systems, and disciplines that communicate reliability, relevance, and care. They may be invisible to the customer, but their effects are immediate and powerful.

The book introduces several common Trust Catalysts, including clarity, speed, transparency, consistency, warmth, relevance, and proof. These are foundational because they appear repeatedly in high-performing dealerships and in the experiences customers consistently describe as trustworthy.

But those are not the only Trust Catalysts.

Every dealership has opportunities to build trust in ways that reflect its unique culture, values, market, and brand promise. The goal is not to copy another dealership’s architecture. The goal is to intentionally design your own.

A family-owned dealership may discover that personal accessibility to ownership is one of its strongest Trust Catalysts. A premium luxury dealer may find that meticulous attention to detail builds confidence. A service-focused operation may identify proactive communication as a defining element of trust.

The question is simple: What are we doing, intentionally and repeatedly, that makes customers feel like they’re in capable, caring hands?

The exercise below can help your leadership team answer that question.

Start the Conversation

Use these prompts to explore where trust is being built, where it is being lost, and what experiences matter most to your customers.

1. When a customer finds us online for the first time, what signals are we sending — intentionally or accidentally?

2. Where in our process does trust get built, and where does it break?

3. What are the moments when our team goes above and beyond? Why do those moments stand out?

4. What’s a recent example where we lost a sale before the customer ever visited? What could we have done differently?

5. If we could guarantee that every prospect left our website, showroom, service department, or delivery experience saying, “I trust these people,” what would have to be true?

Build Your Architecture

Capture your team’s answers and look for recurring themes. Those themes often reveal the Trust Catalysts already operating within your business. Some will be strengths worth protecting. Others may represent opportunities to improve.

Once you’ve identified them, assign ownership:

• Who is responsible for this Trust Catalyst?

• How will it be measured?

• What behaviors reinforce it?

• What would excellence look like?

• How will we know if we’re improving?

Trust does not happen by accident. The dealerships that consistently earn confidence, loyalty, and advocacy are the ones that intentionally design for trust. They identify the experiences that matter most, build systems that reinforce them, and hold themselves accountable for delivering them consistently.

That is Trust Architecture in action.

For more on building your dealership's Trust Architecture, get your copy of ANCHORING: The 9 Leadership Disciplines That Redefine Dealership Success today.