Building Trust

Have you ever thought about why some people trust you while others won't? It's a very interesting question for a salesman to ask himself. Some people trust you because you have a natural rapport. You get along with them easily, & a mutual relationship develops that you can build a sale & a customer relationship on.

Natural rapport doesn't occur with every, or even most prospects for us in selling. Many prospect's perceive us sales guys as different from them though. As untrustworthy, as sleazy, as liars, & cheats out for nothing but the buckaroos in their back pocket.

As a result of such prejudging & bias on the part of our prospects, many will not tell us why they might want to purchase what it is that we have. Instead they simply tell you they want to look at, or evaluate what you have. Then they may or may not make a decision. It's their prerogative of course to do nothing if they "don't feel like it".

The rookie salesman handles a prospect who wants to immediately evaluate his stuff as a great lead. He believes that he's got a hot one, and all he has to do is close it. The senior salesman knows he has a low chance of closing such a prospect unless he the salesman can understand the prospect's problem and vision of solution and then reengineer the prospect's solution vision to match what he the salesman sells.

The trust needed to find out your prospect's problem & current solution vision can be built two ways. One way is subconsciously. Every time a person encounters someone new, their subconscious searches the memory to see what similar people & behavior to this has been encountered before. A gut level, unconscious reaction is formed, & person decides, mostly without even being aware, whether or not they like this new person. Fortunately this subconscious process is one that you can take conscious control over. You can learn how to match & adapt yourself so that you are more subconsciously trustworthy to your prospects.

The second way that you can build trust is to ask important questions. When you probe & ask questions that uncover the nature of the prospect's problem & the consequences of it to him, you are getting him to think. And when you get him to think in this way, he also begins to think of you as someone who is helpful, & not someone who is a liar, a cheat, or someone simply trying to reach into his back pocket.

Some people will naturally trust you then. And most are probably pre-disposed to not trust you, but you can change this by taking conscious control of the unconscious process of rapport & learning how to ask important questions of your prospects.

Happy selling, my fellow salesman! And sell with pride!!