Building Trust
Trust is a requirement for every sale.
Some kinds of sales require a small amount of trust such as selling clothing in a retail
setting.
Other sales require much more trust such as when you buy financial services, a house or
a new car.
In B2C sales the higher the sticker price, the greater the trust required.
In B2B sales less trust is needed for commodity sales than for value added products and/or
services.
Being trustworthy is not something you can play fake-it-till-you-make-it.
Being trustworthy is about how you see yourself, your personal integrity, your commitment level
and your sense of self-esteem and your ability to work in the best interest of others.
It’s also about how others see you.
Here is a fact that applies equally to B2B and B2C selling, the less we try to make the
sale and the more we make trust the sale, the more successful you will be in sales.
The most powerful component of trust is your low level of self-orientation, and if you’re
curious, self-orientation approaches zero.
At that point, you’re orientation is the client both personally and professionally.
Trust-based selling is a practice, not a process.
It’s about relationships and not transactions; and it’s about serving clients, not serving
the seller.
Being trusted is all about values, mindset, attitudes, and behavior.
Being trustworthy means you keep doing the right thing for the client, in the end, that
will be in your best interests too.
Trust can be measured by four key factors.
These include credibility, reliability, intimacy and self-orientation.
Credibility is all about what we say, our skills and credentials.
Reliability is all about the actions we take and our predictability.
Intimacy is tied to how comfortable people are confiding in us, and our empathy.
And self-orientation is about our ability to work in the best interest of another.
Based on a national survey of over 12,000 people on the subject of trust here are some
findings worth noting.
1.
Expertise Does not Equal Trust: Your expertise in something doesn’t guarantee people will
trust you.
So emphasizing your expertise isn’t a way to build trust.
2.
Women Think They’re More Trustworthy 3.
We trust older people 4.
Balance is Good: People are considered more trustworthy when they rank all four trust
components very close together.
5.
We All Think We’re Experts: Even though expertise is the least effective strategy
for gaining someone’s trust, it’s the one that people use the most often.
6.
Trust can be taught, by focusing on your strengths in each of the four trust components.
Often we intend more than one thing when we use the word trust.
We use it to describe what we think of what people say.
We also use it to describe behaviors.
We use it to describe whether or not we feel comfortable sharing certain information with
someone else.
And we use the same word to indicate whether or not we feel other people have our interests
at heart, vs. their own interests.