Trust me

We’ve all had dealings with the slick salesman you just know only wants to get his hands on your hard-earned dosh. You wouldn’t trust him as far as you could underarm bowl him. And if you don’t trust him, how can you be sure that what he’s trying to sell you is as good as he claims? The short answer is; you can’t. But it’s not just slick salesmen who have problems getting and keeping customers’ trust. In fact most of us have encountered this particular obstacle at one time or another, so how do we overcome it?

Building Trust

Don’t rush into your sales pitch as soon as you meet your prospect.

Show them that you’re just like them.  People like dealing with people they perceive to be just like themselves. You do this by identifying their personality style and modifying your style to more closely match theirs. Do this discreetly so that you don’t offend them.

Build rapport by giving them your time and attention. They’ll feel you care about them because you’ve taken the time out of your busy day to listen to them.

Have a friendly chat with them. It should not be about your product or service, but about them and their day/life. Eventually you can move the topic of your chat towards their needs.

Ask broad questions and gradually taper down to specific questions.

Raise their awareness of their circumstances and highlight what they have told you by repeating it back to them…”So you said you’ve been having trouble getting a good reception. Why do you think that is?”  “You mentioned that your load capacity has not been up to scratch. What do you mean?”

Allow them time to come to their own conclusions, so they don’t feel ‘hustled’.

Know your stuff. Study up about your products or services. As a customer, I always know when a salesperson is faking it or clearly doesn’t know what they’re talking about and I immediately distrust them.  Remember, your customers perceive you as the ‘expert’ when it comes to the product or service they’re planning to purchase, so you need to be well-equipped to provide them with the information they need and if you don’t know the answer to their question, you better be sure you know where to find out.

Keeping Trust

I recently had dealings with two companies who were interested in developing strategic alliances with me. The way each of these companies dealt with me was remarkable. 

One of them called when they said they would. They emailed detailed agendas so that I knew where I stood every step of the way. They provided information in a timely manner and kept me updated whenever circumstances warranted it. In other words they were quintessentially professional.

The other company consistently failed to return phone calls, promised a proposal by a certain date and failed to deliver, set up a meeting and failed to arrive on time and failed to provide accurate information to me. You guessed it, they were quintessential failures. 

I would have to be completely mad to do business with them, even if they appeared to offer me a better deal. Why? Because it’s not always about the bottom line. I would be certain of constant frustration and petty annoyances in all my dealings with the failures because they’ve already taught me that this is how they do business.

Make small promises and keep them. “I’ll check up on that delivery date and ring you tomorrow morning.” If you don’t keep your word, you’re perceived by the customer as untrustworthy and once this thought enters their mind, you have to work twice as hard to regain their trust. It’s far easier just to do what you said you were going to do, when you said you were going to do it.

Trust is the single most important factor in making a sale. When it comes to a choice between buying from a salesperson perceived as trustworthy and one who isn’t, of course customers will buy from the trustworthy one.  Not only that, they’ll keep going back to them.

Fear of Selling

People fear what they don’t understand and there’s a lot to understand about selling. Let's start with how you view the profession of sales. Do you even think of it as a profession at all? The term ‘profession’ implies a set of rules and boundaries concerning conduct. Does this apply to the salespeople you know? When you think of salespeople, do you automatically think of disinterested shop assistants and pushy reps? What about the oily car salesman, the money-hungry realtor, the relentless multi-level marketer? Yes? Then it’s no surprise that you have a fear of selling, because why on earth would a switched-on new age person like you want to be like these people?

If everything you stand for is in direct opposition to what these types of people represent, how can you reconcile selling anything to anyone? Surely if you do the same things as these people do, day after day, you’ll wind up just like them, people you detest? Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world. What you think becomes your reality, so if you’re thinking along these lines, you have a pretty strong motivation to avoid selling, don’t you think?

Overcome Fear with Knowledge

A healthy dose of fear could be a good thing if it prompts you to consider the reasons for it and then take action. The reason for your fear in this instance is that you don’t know enough about sales to avoid the pitfalls of becoming a product peddler, a quote-giver, an order taker; those types of salespeople we all dislike. But these are not your only choices.   
Add “Problem Solver” and “Friend in the Business” into the mix and suddenly the outlook brightens. These are people who believe that your needs are paramount; who know how to determine exactly what those needs are, even if you’re a little hazy on the details and who, on principle, wouldn’t sell you something that didn’t fit your needs. They love what they do and it shows. They’re salespeople you go out of your way to buy from, because they’ve made such a positive impact on you in the past. There would be no shame at all in emulating them, so how do you overcome your fear enough to get to be like them? Start by learning what they learn. 

You Don't Know What You Don't Know 

Recognise that “You don’t know what you don’t know” and find some means of finding out just what it is about sales that you don’t know. Here are just a few of them;
Discover your optimal learning style and acquire training which appeals to that style, for example, if you do your best learning from reading, do your homework, find out who has the best books on the topic and read them.

Find a mentor, someone you admire for their skilfulness in sales and ask them for their help.
Practise, practise, practise.
Adjust your attitude.
View the positive qualities of professional salespeople as worthy of emulation.

As a small business person, to be cost effective and competitive you often need to wear many different hats; the roles of “boss”, “marketing manager”, “bookkeeper”, “production manager”, to mention a few. When you start out in your own business, you may not necessarily know all there is to know about bookkeeping for example, but you talk to people, ask around, study and practice and eventually you gain proficiency. With one notable exception, the same can be said for sales. 

There are many different skills involved in selling and you need to become proficient in all of them in order to successfully sell your product or service. And that one exception?
Selling is pivotal. If you don’t get good at bookkeeping or management or marketing, things could get a bit messy, but it’s not fatal. If you don’t get good at selling, you have no business. It doesn’t get much simpler than that. So you have a vested interest in learning as much about sales as you can. 

“Natural” Salespeople

On the other end of the spectrum are those people who eschew any need to learn more about sales because they’re “natural” salespeople. I’m certain such people exist, just as there are natural scientists, natural musicians and natural linguists, but someone still had to teach them what a Bunsen burner was, how to hold a guitar, how to accurately translate Chekhov. Sure, they have natural or innate talent, but all the talent in the world is meaningless unless you have the skills to go with it. The wonderful thing about sales skills is that with time, application and practice, anyone can learn them.

Positive Thinking... What does it really mean?

Think positive! We’ve all come across this statement at one time or another, often when we’re down in the dumps and least attuned to the message. It was a popular catch phrase amongst sales managers in the 80’s who tried to motivate their sales teams with its upbeat message. The whole “positive thinking” thing is a bit passé now though, isn’t it?

Now it’s all about choice and personal empowerment. We choose how we feel and whatever we’ve chosen is OK, even if it’s negative. Who cares if my negative attitude infects everyone around me? It’s me that’s important here. And well you might think so, but the reality is somewhat different. Every one of us has the ability to impact upon people in our vicinity without even trying and every one of us has ongoing choices about what type of impact we’ll make.

Our choices have inevitable and predictable effects on us and the people around us. If we choose to indulge ourselves and wallow in our own misery, it’s inevitable that people who cross our path will detect our negativity and be affected by it. How they’re affected is determined by their own choices, but rest assured they will be affected. They could choose to sympathise with you for having such a bad day/week/year/life. They could choose to reject you because they don’t want to buy into your pity party. They could choose to ignore you or they could choose to join you.

Let’s consider for a moment the results of their actions upon you, after all, it’s you we’re really talking about here. If they sympathise with you, you have someone feeling sorry for you and that makes you an object to be pitied. If they reject you, you have someone dismissing you, which means that you’re not sufficiently valuable to be accepted by them. If they ignore you, then you’re not important enough to warrant paying any attention to and if they join you, you can be certain that they will be unloading just as much negative garbage on you as you do on them, after all, that’s why misery loves company.

Taking it one step further, because you have people pitying you, rejecting you, ignoring you and dumping their negativity on you, can you guess how you’re going to feel? If you were only a little bit down in the first place, you’ll certainly be deeper in the hole now and that’s only going to make things worse.  Now imagine that all of these people are your customers.  Do you think they’re going to want to buy something from you?

Consider things from the other side. What would happen if when you awoke in the morning, you chose to be upbeat, happy, positive and enthusiastic? People in your orbit would certainly pick up on your attitude, because we all have built-in tuners that let us know how people around us are feeling.

Your positivity will affect others in various ways. There will be people who smile at you because you’ve smiled at them. A lot of people will do this and when they smile back at you, you’ll feel even better. Try it for yourself if you don’t believe me. There will be people who are caught up in their own unhappiness to such an extent that they barely notice you. You might get a little half-hearted smile from them, but that’s about it. There will be people who will ignore you and others who will feel compelled to join you.

Having people smiling at you all day long is sure to raise your spirits even further. Coaxing that half-hearted smile from that grouchy person was sheer victory for you. It more than made up for all those busy people wrapped up in their own little worlds who ignored you today. And the people who chose to join you in your positivity made you feel more empowered and more certain that being positive was the right choice for you to make this morning. All of this will make it even easier to make the same positive choice tomorrow morning.