Everyone knows we live in a post-trust era.  The days when people trusted others until they gave them a reason not to are gone.  These days, trust has to be earned.

But trust is what advances the sales opportunity.  So how does today’s sales rep build the trust needed to succeed with customers?

Value = Trust:  the 21^st century sales equation

Today’s customers demand value at every step of the relationship.  No value = no trust.  No trust = no sale.  The 21^st century sales rep, who demonstrates value from the beginning of the relationship, builds trust. 

What your reps do after the first meeting with a customer has the power to advance the sales opportunity or cause the customer to slam on the brakes.  What they do here can either build trust or break it.

A rep’s behavior following sales meetings will either:

We’ve all heard the Golden Rule of Business: “He who has the gold makes the rules.”  That’s especially true in sales!  Your customers have the gold you’re after, so you must play by their rules.

To do so, you must also apply the Platinum Rule: “Do unto others as they would have you do to them, not as you would have them do unto you.”  There are lots of rules for successful selling, but they all boil down to this one rule.

The Platinum Rule of Sales

 Translated into the world of sales, The Rule means:

In his book, Achieve Sales Excellence, author Howard Stevens set forth “The Seven Rules of the Customer.”  These seven rules emerged from comments recorded in over 80,000 interviews his company conducted as part of a fourteen-year study of 7,500 sales reps from 2,500 companies.   One of the things study participants - all of whom were business customers - were asked to share was  what qualities they believed a world-class sales organization must possess.

The participants were asked to list and weight the main criteria they use when making a buying decision and selecting a vendor.  Overwhelmingly, customers reported the same four factors and assigned similar levels of importance to them related to how much of the buying decision rests on each:

In my last post, I talked about why conventional sales strategies that were considered “tried and true” two decades ago are no longer working in today’s environment; they’re more about the seller than the buyer.  Unfortunately, many sales reps still cling to the old ways, despite the fact they are losing business to sales reps with inferior products.  What they don’t understand is that the sales reps who are beating them have an approach to selling that customers love: Customer Aligned Selling. 

 Customer Aligned Sales reps begin every sales call with the goal of creating value during every interaction with the prospect or customer.  They understand that the new sales formula is “value = trust.” They know that if their focus is on adding value, the prospect will trust them. That trust leads to true and loyal relationships, which lead to repeat business.

During a sales call or demo, it is easy to be very product-focused.  After all, the product is what you’re there to talk about, right? 

During a sales call or demo, it is easy to be very product-focused.  After all, the product is what you’re there to talk about, right?