5 rules of trust and credibility.
With any new customer, we have a journey we take. For the sake of this post, this new customer doesn’t know you personally. So you have a bit of an uphill battle on this path. The best customers know, like and trusts you. Its a spot you earn, and you have a few things in your control here, but just a few.
With every sale, the path may have some wandering, some forks and some road blocks. In the end, there is only two final paths: Success or Failure, Signed contract or a hard no.
At every interaction there is a chance. A chance to learn, a chance to communicate value, and a chance to make a trust deposit. But where do you have control in this? In any sport, game, video game, etc, there is an objective. You have to know the rules, and the objective in order score, win, whatever. A new prospect in your sales funnel has some rules too.
Rule 1. Always control the expectations.
It’s easy to go with the flow and run your process. But the customer doesn’t know your process, and there is risk that they fall out of the sale on accident. They assume something and you lose. So at every chance you have, set the expectation.
“I’ll review my notes and get back to you with my top 4 questions in 2 days, by 4pm. Will that work?”
See I set clarity and the expectation. The customer now knows whats next, what it will look like and by when.
Rule 2. Ask for permission.
Anytime I can, I ask for permission. Permission to share my screen, permission to summarize the last meeting, permission to send that proposal.
“Do you mind if I recap our last call before we kick off this one?”
“I think I have what I need to write a proposal, what do you think?”
“I have an hour set aside for this call, is that still okay for you?”
All of these are permission, permission for the customer to say no, to correct you, to lead you to whats important for them, today & now.
Rule 3. Clarify everything.
Any chance you can re-frame, and clarify the need, the situation, the solution, is all a chance to not only get clear for you but also keep things moving forward.
“So if I’m hearing you right, the current problem isnt just that the team in accounting has to deal with extra work, its also creating issues in reporting and tracking of your sales teams efforts?”
Im chaining together problems, and how they are realized in the company beyond a surface problem.
Rule 4. Ask for their ideals.
In a perfect world, a customer would know what they want. But the issue is they don’t always know they need your product. Often times they only want the outcome anyway. Do these Nike running shoes make them faster? no, do they make the wearer feel faster, and look cool? Yes. They bought a feeling, an aspiration, a story just as much as they bought a quality running shoe. Does this mean the product itself doesn’t matter? Of course not. Quality, expectations, value, and return on that investment still matters.
“If this is successful, what does the feel like to you?”
“When we are done with this project, and its great, how does that look and show up in other aspects of your company or life”
Rule 5. Deliver deliver deliver.
I can not stress this enough, do what you said you would. Anytime I have glowing feedback, its because I or my team 100% delivered. Every time, and I mean EVERY TIME, someone is cranky, it is 1000% because we failed to deliver. We made a promise we didn’t keep, we blew past a deadline, we failed to follow up.
This always breaks trust. Break trust enough times and you are done. The cranky client call or email is the boiling point of missed deliveries, and it’s usually not the first, it’s the 5th.
