Sales guru Jill Konrath recently had Charles Green, author of Trust-based Selling, write a guest blog post
about some great ways to quickly gain trust in the process of selling professional services. Charles shows the
relationship of four factors that play into building trustworthiness, and talks about ways to build them up. Here’s
his formula and an excerpt from his post:
The Trust Equation
Trustworthiness = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation
8. Always context transactions within relationships
Don't approach sales, or negotiations, or even meetings, as if they were stand-alone events. Link them to future sales, other negotiations, future meetings. Doing so demonstrates collaboration and a commitment to client focus—all of which helps raise credibility and lower self-orientation.
It’s so refreshing to see people approach sales with the client in focus. Sales has gotten such a bad rap over the years; it’s about time people recognize that sales is all about relationship building, not cajoling.
To address some of the things he mentioned:
In order to provide a meaningful context within relationships, it is almost necessary for a sales organization to utilize certain technology solutions that facilitate this practice. Transactions, without a doubt, are excellent data points to demonstrate customer-centricism. However, effective customer retention marketing strategies incorporate all types of other data points, or “customer knowledge,” to maximize the level of personalization—or in your words, raise credibility and lower self-orientation.
The guys at Aberdeen released several great research reports about customer feedback, and how leading companies are really leveraging robust customer knowledge repositories (databases) to create a deeper and more meaningful context than was ever possible before.
When you have a good base of knowledge about your clients, you can build credibility and intimacy, and lower self-orientation by showing them that you’re taking the time to actually draw insights from the data (history) you have. Our survey system, for example, not only collects transactional information, but also allows quick and easy cross-tabulation and time-based trend analyses. Having such information goes beyond the typical acknowledgment of their last purchase or inquiry.
True credibility is established when the client knows you’re putting in the effort. Intimacy is fostered by the personal touch, while self-orientation is done so properly by ensuring a professional focus on the client’s business needs, rather than your own sales goals. Sure, we’ll still be looking out for our own quotas, but having good reconnaissance about clients' needs is your best ally in something my colleague in sales likes to call "benign manipulation."
Hey, it is sales after all.
The Trust Equation
Trustworthiness = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation
8. Always context transactions within relationships
Don't approach sales, or negotiations, or even meetings, as if they were stand-alone events. Link them to future sales, other negotiations, future meetings. Doing so demonstrates collaboration and a commitment to client focus—all of which helps raise credibility and lower self-orientation.
It’s so refreshing to see people approach sales with the client in focus. Sales has gotten such a bad rap over the years; it’s about time people recognize that sales is all about relationship building, not cajoling.
To address some of the things he mentioned:
In order to provide a meaningful context within relationships, it is almost necessary for a sales organization to utilize certain technology solutions that facilitate this practice. Transactions, without a doubt, are excellent data points to demonstrate customer-centricism. However, effective customer retention marketing strategies incorporate all types of other data points, or “customer knowledge,” to maximize the level of personalization—or in your words, raise credibility and lower self-orientation.
The guys at Aberdeen released several great research reports about customer feedback, and how leading companies are really leveraging robust customer knowledge repositories (databases) to create a deeper and more meaningful context than was ever possible before.
When you have a good base of knowledge about your clients, you can build credibility and intimacy, and lower self-orientation by showing them that you’re taking the time to actually draw insights from the data (history) you have. Our survey system, for example, not only collects transactional information, but also allows quick and easy cross-tabulation and time-based trend analyses. Having such information goes beyond the typical acknowledgment of their last purchase or inquiry.
True credibility is established when the client knows you’re putting in the effort. Intimacy is fostered by the personal touch, while self-orientation is done so properly by ensuring a professional focus on the client’s business needs, rather than your own sales goals. Sure, we’ll still be looking out for our own quotas, but having good reconnaissance about clients' needs is your best ally in something my colleague in sales likes to call "benign manipulation."
Hey, it is sales after all.
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