It is often said that customers buy from people they like. While we don’t usually buy from people we don’t like, there’s another dimension to this old saying.

Customers buy from people they trust

To further illustrate this point, let’s look at how typical leads react when new salespeople make first contact with them (also known as cold calling):

1. They find an excuse to hang up the phone as soon as possible
2. They are very busy during sales appointments.
3. They keep their mouths shut as much as possible when salespeople ask questions.
4. They will not refer vendors to a higher authority even when such a need is clear.
5. They often use delaying tactics like “If necessary, we’ll call you” to appease salespeople, etc.

These are just a few examples of customer behaviors when they distrust the seller. As such, in order to get customers interested and excited about what you have to offer, you must first earn their trust.

A question of lust

The reasons why customers do not trust sellers are very simple: they feel that all the sellers care about is getting their money. Unfortunately, this “lust for customer money” is quite true with many vendors, AND customers can smell them from miles away.

When customers make purchases, what they really want for the money they spend is proven value. That is, the products or services they buy can bring better productivity, reduce waste, or simply improve their quality of life.

So the first step to building trust is this: You must be perceived as being on the customers’ side and proactively help solve customer problems.

Here is a simple example. When most salespeople approach their potential customers, they’ll say something like, “Hi, my name is xyz and I’m from abc company. How are you today? I’d like to show you a demo of our latest productivity-enhancing device.” . Since I’ll be near your neighborhood on Tuesday afternoon, can I come see you around 2pm or 4pm?”

The problem with this form of approach lies in how these potential customers respond. They’ll just say “I’m not interested” or they’ll say yes and then have their secretaries tell you “the boss has an urgent meeting, leave your materials at the front desk and we’ll call you when we need to.”

The reason for such responses from customers is that they don’t trust what you said. They’ve probably seen too many “productivity-enhancing gadgets” and heard too many “I’m in your neighborhood” stories and are probably too busy to meet another gadget peddler. Also, they don’t trust you enough to tell you about their “productivity” challenges, if that’s what your product will solve.

To overcome such trust issues on initial contact, both salespeople and their managers will need to work together to build trust and allay customers’ fears that they will be ripped off or that they will be wasting their time.

From the seller’s perspective, you’ll need to provide the customer with what Miller Heiman calls a valid business reason in your opening call, for example, “Hello, my name is xyz. I understand that many companies in your industry face serious challenges due to the sharp increases in raw material costs. I would like to explore with you if we can help you improve your productivity and therefore reduce your costs.”

From the perspective of sales managers, trust will need to be built beyond the initial cold call. Customers are likely to gain confidence if they had seen testimonials and case studies of previous successes BEFORE the initial phone calls from salespeople.

Build credibility, NOT profit

Traditionally, many companies simply focus on “Features, Advantages and Benefits”, none of which will work IF the customer doesn’t trust you enough. Therefore, sellers would have to build credibility during the course of the sales process, namely:

*Listens
* Do your homework and ask smart questions
* Provide security to your customers

Many salespeople tend to put too much emphasis on their company and the products they offer, thus forgetting to listen to the needs, wants and concerns of their customers.

To make sure customers spend more time talking, salespeople would have to ask smart questions. Customers generally expect sellers to have done some basic research on customer websites. Sales staff can improve this by reviewing the clients’ annual reports (if they are publicly traded companies) or the source of news reports on these clients. If a potential customer is a competitor of a current customer, you can get more information from the current customer. Web 2.0 social networking sites are also a great source of information.

While some sales managers may argue that spending too much time on the internet will eat up selling time and is therefore detrimental to sales. However, going to a client and not knowing the right questions will make the client feel like you are unprofessional and incompetent, which is worse. Sales managers will need to strike the right balance by allocating enough time for research and selling.

Ultimately, customers will often have petty concerns about buying from you. Instead of avoiding those concerns for fear that addressing them will hurt your sale, the opposite is likely to happen. If customers have any unanswered questions or concerns about your products and services, they will be:

* Less likely to buy
* Buy less
* Drive a tough negotiation on your price

So as you approach the final stages of your sale, look for symptoms that show the customer is nervous or restless. Then try to address any such concerns and provide appropriate assurances.

The politics of truth

Perhaps the biggest destroyer of trust is “over-promising and under-delivering.” The causes of this destruction are two:

* Sellers make promises to customers about things they can’t (or aren’t sure they can) deliver
* Companies that deliver lower-than-expected product quality levels to their customers

For the former, sales managers would have to make sure salespeople don’t over-promise their customers just to get the sale or hit their sales target. Doing so will severely damage the trust between buyer and seller, and make it really difficult for future sales efforts to be successful.

For the latter, nothing demotivates salespeople more than having to answer customer questions for which they have no answer. No amount of sales effort will be successful if the company does not invest enough in quality to ensure that customers get what they pay for. When companies deliver shoddy quality, there will not only be a decrease in sales, but there will also be an immediate increase in sales staff turnover. It’s not a question of “if”, it’s just a question of time. After all, who wants to sell for a company they can’t even trust?