The four keys to sales trust

Liz Wendling //January 6, 2012//

The four keys to sales trust

Liz Wendling //January 6, 2012//

Trust is the single most important prerequisite for creating buyer/seller relationships that produce big results with less time and effort. Do your potential customers trust what you say? Do they trust you as a salesperson and a business professional? No trust means no sale. Not putting your customer’s interests ahead of your own is a recipe for disaster.

Customers overwhelmingly buy from people they trust. These customer relationships are longer lasting, more effective and efficient than relationships not built on trust. Building trust takes time and is the only way to develop trust is to sell in a trustworthy manner.

So, do you have a specific, well-thought out plan designed to overcome this obstacle and build greater levels of trust with your customers?

In the past, customers had negative perceptions of salespeople, and selling itself has been associated with manipulation and trickery. That stereotype of an untrustworthy lying salesperson still comes back to haunt salespeople today. Salespeople today can play a critical role in the dismantling of that stereotype.

You may be the most honest, trustworthy and customer focused salesperson on the planet, but if your customers don’t perceive you to be trustworthy because of sloppy sales skills and negative selling behaviors, it doesn’t matter.

Do you follow the four principles of selling to build trust?

1. Begin and end by seeing the customer’s perspective and walk in their shoes
2. See things in the long-term, the relationship is the customer
3. Behave in a collaborative manner and openly conduct honest conversations with them
4. Be transparent in all things, including costs, profits, etc.

Knowing, understanding and possessing the traits that customers like are the best way to gain the trust and close the sale. Being honest, knowledgeable, punctual, solution based and customer focused just to name a few.

I see sales people destroy client trust in the sales process and rarely recover. It doesn’t have to be that way!

To gain the trustworthy of customer, you must always check your behavior. It’s in the way you relate to others that determines the amount of trust you get from your customers.

Jeffrey Gitomer is famous for saying, “People buy with their heart, then justify it with their brains.”

It’s critical that salespeople focus on trust-building activities with your customers.You must create an action plan and constantly focus on executing the plan in order to build trust. Once you’re able to increase your trust factor with buyers, you will also see an increase in your sales.

Sell the right way, and you start the relationship with trust. Sell the wrong way, and your competitors will thank you for it. To be a professional salesperson, conduct yourself as a true professional. Your buyers will like it when you do – and you’ll be more successful.

The most effective way to build that trust is to put customers first; always. You must do this by design, not by default.
{pagebreak:Page 1}