How to Earn Customers' Trust Your approach to winning new business says a lot about your operation.

As we produced this issue of Entrepreneur, an annoying thing happened: I arrived at work to find my office door closed and locked. Blame the overnight cleaning crew? I don't know — but I never lock my door and don't even have a key, so this was a problem. My colleagues valiantly tried to break in, but it turns out that editors make for bad burglars. Ultimately, I had to find a different way to unlock the door…and in the process, I learned an important lesson about unlocking customers' trust, too.

But first, picture it: There's me, standing around like a doofus, locked out of my own office. At a loss for what to do, I went to Yelp, found a bunch of locksmiths, and emailed them to explain the problem and ask for quotes. Four replied quickly.

The first one simply wrote: "Price estimate: $29." Then, 18 minutes later, they followed up with this promise: "I will give best price."