Next week’s Business901 podcast is with Charles Green, author of a series of books that have long been a favorite of mine. I own all of them and even have one in both print and audio. These books seem to be timeless and never more on point than the present.
Charles Book’s:
- Trust-Based Selling: Using Customer Focus and Collaboration to Build Long-Term Relationships
- The Trusted Advisor
- The Trusted Advisor Fieldbook: A Comprehensive Toolkit for Leading with Trust
An excerpt from next weeks podcast when we were talking about the Trust Equation:
Trustworthiness = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-Orientation
I asked Charles a question on how a salesman could improve his trustworthiness.
Charles: Sales people differ. There are different kinds, not surprisingly, but it turns out that regardless of who you are, probably the best way to improve is to work on the intimacy part. For example, I worked a lot with the people in the profession – with lawyers, accountants, consultants, systems engineers, actuaries. Those people score very high on credibility and reliability, with good reason. They’re smart, they’re left-brain, they’re top of their class – first-born, high-achievers, all that stuff. Furthermore, they believe that because they’re the top of the heap in these high-intellect industries, that somehow that must be what’s making them successful. The truth is, it’s only up to a point.
When it comes to selling, if you’re a professional services person and you’re trying to sell a hundred thousand dollar assignment, or a million dollar, or ten thousand, or whatever, it’s very tempting to think the clients are buying you because you’re smart and an expert in the area, and after all, that’s what they’ll tell you. But, the truth is, the way clients look at that is, “Are you good enough? Do you have technical qualifications that are good enough?” I mean, nobody is going to laugh at me, they’re not going to throw me out, but really, “Do I trust this person?” and when they say ‘trust’, they mean ‘intimacy’ – they mean, “Is this person not going to con me?” “Do I think they have my best interest at heart?” “Do they actually hear what I’m saying?”.
To the extent that you are an expert, you know more things than they do about the subject, they really are putting themselves in your hands. So, it’s quite critical – if you’re a wealth advisor, for example, or a divorce attorney, you’re going to have to turn over all kinds of information, and you’re not the pro. You want to know that those people are on your side, and that falls into the intimacy part of the equation.
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