Tactic 2 of 10: The Secrets to Building & Maintaining Trust

Build trust fast with a short list of behaviours that make customers feel safe saying “yes.” Simple actions you can apply (or coach) on every call.

This is part of a limited series of sales tactics from my forthcoming book ‘How To Sell’ to help you sharpen your conversations, close with confidence and hit targets faster. You’ll get two tactics each week until the book launches on Nov 25th, when I’ll drop my pre-launch subscribers a best-price alert so they can grab a great launch-day deal.

Today’s tactic comes from Chapter 2: Is there enough trust?

Secrets to building and maintaining trust

Trust takes effort to build and maintain but it’s easy to break and, once broken, it’s often incredibly difficult to repair. But with the right mindset many of the actions required to build and maintain trust should come naturally, especially after you’ve read this book.

You’ve already started to learn about the first three secrets to building and maintaining trust in the previous chapter. Here’s a recap.

• Be transparent. Be open about why the sale you’re proposing is good for you too;
• Be honest. Don’t bend the truth or tell lies, and don’t withhold relevant information; and
• Don’t manipulate. Use your knowledge and skills to influence customers, and have the courage to persuade them through active debate where necessary, but never attempt to trick them into a sale.

In the next chapter you’re going to learn about the fourth secret. Here’s a brief outline.

• Add value. People have a tendency to evaluate interactions and relationships based on the value they provide, and we’re naturally more trusting of people who focus on our own needs and wants as well as theirs.

The next two secrets to building and maintaining trust are aspects we’ll explore in more detail in Part 2, when we’ll look at how to:

• Be credible – by having a deep understanding of what you’re selling.
• Demonstrate commitment – by actively looking after customers through every step of their buying journey.

Then, in Part 3, you’re going to learn the New 7-Step Sale, the steps of which are designed to build and maintain trust as you guide customers through a natural-feeling sales conversation. The trust-building secrets embedded into those seven steps are as follows.

• Be authentic. You’ll learn more about the importance and practicality of being genuine and authentic as part of Step 2 of the sales process: Engage your customer.
• Build a connection. This trust driver is embedded throughout the seven-step sales process, but you’ll focus on it specifically as part of Step 3: Understand your customer; and Step 4: Propose and present.
• Be clear. People tend to distrust information that’s ambiguous or difficult to understand. So in Step 4 – Propose and present – I’ll show you how to craft and deliver sales messages that are clear and succinct.
• Be similar. People like to buy from people like them. So in Step 4 I’ll also show you how you can be similar to your customers while remaining authentic to your true self as you propose and present your recommendations.
• Show care and compassion. Although it may come as a surprise, this is an important part of Step 5 of the sales process: Handle and overcome objections.
• Be consistent. Give all of your customers a consistently great buying experience throughout their entire interaction with you and your organization. This includes staying consistent with your beliefs and opinions as you handle objections, or move to compromise through negotiation if your attempt to overcome their objection fails.
• Be reliable and accountable. You’ll look at how to do this as part of Step 7 of the sales process: Follow-up.

Got a question? Drop it in the comments or in a DM and I’ll be happy to help.

Managers: Comment COACH and I’ll send you a one-pager on how to coach this with individual reps or in your next team huddle, plus the pitfalls you need to avoid.

Next up: How to help customers decide (not just say yes).

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