I have a favorite question I ask salespeople: “How important is trust as it relates to your ability to get results as a salesperson?”
My favorite reply to date? “I don’t know. How important is oxygen as it relates to your ability to stay alive as a human being?”
That response sums up the perspective of every last salesperson who’s ever been asked the question.
Trust is the cornerstone to the only two things in sales that matter: differentiation and information. Customers’ decisions to share information with salespeople depend almost exclusively on the extent to which they trust that it’s in their best interest to do so — not on the effectiveness of the question we ask them.
Similarly, customers believe our differentiation to the extent that they trust our differentiation far more than to the extent that they understand it.
So rather than getting fixated on what killer questions we’re going to ask or how to deliver a tight and compelling value proposition, salespeople should be fixated on cultivating trust throughout every second of the customer interaction. Because what we do and say from the second after we walk through the customer’s office door or the second the customer hears our voice on the phone will determine whether trust in us rises or falls, quite literally, second-by-second.
In other words, we must learn how to create “real-time trust,” the customer’s second-by-second judgment of what will lead to a better outcome. You could even say that, as salespeople, our only job is to do what’s necessary to create — or at least avoid sabotaging — real-time trust. Because when you create real-time trust, differentiation and information sort of just come along for the ride.
Easier said than done. Because unless we’re ready to rethink some of our inherited practices and language, we will almost certainly — though quite unwittingly — send real-time trust heading south…sometimes precipitously.
How to create or sabotage real-time trust
How can salespeople create — or sabotage — real-time trust? I’ve summarized most of the ways in Table 1. Let me briefly elaborate on each of the 10 shown:
- Seek to understand, don’t try to demonstrate your smarts. You gain way more real-time trust that way.
- Don’t operate transactionally with questions like, “What’s the timing of the decision?” Operate non-transactionally by asking questions like, “What business issues are driving the timing of the project?”
- Virtually all salespeople are rapport-driven, almost to the point of using friendship as a sales strategy. Kick that habit. I don’t care if your customer has a whale mounted on the wall, don’t ask about it.
- Don’t overcommit resources. It’s expensive, and in an insidious way it sabotages trust. Instead, make a habit of using phrases like, “Let’s step back so that we can come up with an approach that makes sense to both of us.”
- Lose the subservience. Don’t say, “Thanks for your time,” “I know you’re busy,” I’ll get right to the point.” That kind of talk costs you respect, and people don’t trust what they don’t respect.
- Instead of just trying to gain scope and specs information, try stepping back and asking questions like, “I’m curious, what are the ultimate implications to your business to making—or missing—the deadline?”
- Cut out any words or phrases that the customer might have heard from more than three salespeople in the last month: “Needs,” “What do you look for in a supplier?” “Key decision-makers” and the like. Nothing kills real-time trust more than sales words.
- Stop using literal, linear statements such as, “I’d like to get some information about your company.” Those send real-time trust plummeting in a millisecond…especially the word, information. Get comfortable with more figurative, non-linear language like, “I’d like to step back and go into homework mode”
- Don’t come across like you’re interrogating customers. That’s one of the quickest ways to kill real-time trust, but it’s the habitual crutch of salespeople who don’t have an engagement approach.
- Just be yourself. Doing otherwise kills real-time trust. But other than that, there is absolutely no “real-time trust-creating” style.
So the next time you walk into the customer’s office, imagine his or her “trust meter” moving up or down, second-by-second, based on what you say and do.
Why? Because it is!
Jerry Stapleton is the founder of Waukesha-based Stapleton Resources LLC (www.stapletonresources.com). He is also the author of the book, “From Vendor to Business Resource.”
