Get Real ….. Get Trusted.

The lists of pre-requisites to creating Trust within  business relationships, and the many theories on retaining or regaining Trust, add up to an overwhelmingly complex topic. 

Trust is, or should be, much simpler than that.

In every interaction within a business relationship, both parties are seeking one simple understanding –

What is the REALITY of this specific situation?

Strip away all the pretence and posturing that typically sellers and buyers bring to their negotiations, and expose REALITY.

• Does the buyer have a genuine need for, and capacity to buy, a solution similar to that offered by the seller?
• Does the seller’s proposed solution genuinely satisfy the buyer’s wants and needs?
• Are the financial arrangements currently proposed by the seller as attractive as might be eventually offered?

Once both parties legitimately present the reality of their situation, mutual Trust is established, and a decision to proceed, or not to proceed, will be made by both parties – based on REALITY.

No winner.  No loser.

But who needs to lead the way in this “I’ll show you my reality if you show me yours”?

That responsibility rests with the seller – but if the seller genuinely values the business relationship  more than the next transaction, there is no risk in going first.

Go on — give REALITY a try!

Employee Trust – a Two-Way Street!

The foundation of all accumulated knowledge on the topic of Trust in Business Relationships is the need for an acceptable level of mutual Trust between the business and all external and internal stakeholders – customers, prospects, shareholders, distributors, suppliers, and very importantly, employees.

The need for mutual Trust cannot be overstated.

To create a Culture of Trust with employees, it is necessary for employers to treat employees the way they want employees to treat their prospects and customers.  Employees who are not trusted by their employer will never be able to create a trusting environment with the employer’s prospects and customers.

The latest Edelman Trust Barometer contained several disturbing statistics on the level of Trust involving Australian business.

Despite the traditional distrust Australians have of our governments (53% of Australian consumers said they trusted government to do the right thing), a significantly lower percentage (39% according to Edelman ) said they trusted business to do what is right.

Most disturbingly, Australian consumers’ distrust of business includes the business they work for.

Whenever I raise the topic of employee trust with business proprietors, or senior management of corporates, the response invariably is limited to the extent employees are trusted, and the issue of employees trusting their employer, even after prompting, has rarely been considered, let alone measured and reported. When confronted by the question, it is not unusual for the employer to be annoyed by the need to even acknowledge or address the issue.

Once the GFC induced slowdown in demand for employee numbers passes, and the impending retirement surge of baby boomers hits, employers will need to recommit to those suspended Employer of Choice initiatives. First-mover advantage awaits the insightful employer.

The most advantaged employers will be those who also embrace the new KPI as an “Employer of Trust”.

Establishing Trust in a Contact Centre environment.

With the ever increasing usage of electronic funds transfer, and the resultant disappearance of paper cheques, the world’s long-standing number 1 lie – The cheque is in the mail –  has lost relevance.

And the new contender for this dubious honour is -- Your call is important to us – typically pre-recorded after the words -- Please continue to hold.

After the second or third rotation of what is far from the reassurance intended, the incoming caller is left with no alternative but to assume their time is of zero importance to the contact centre of their product or service supplier , or prospective supplier.

Performance management of contact centre personnel is a great example of the truism :-

   Not everything that can be measured matters, and not everything that matters can be measured.

Contact centre management have a confusing array of statistical analysis of their performance – time to answer, time on call, time between calls, caller tolerance, call abandonment rate.  In fact call abandonment rate is often regarded as the primary KPI for contact centre performance.   Service level objectives are all about efficiency –  “X per cent of all calls answered in Y seconds”.

Where is the consideration of effectiveness?  And most importantly, where is the analysis of % achievement of the caller’s objectives?

Perhaps Rutherford D Rogers could foresee the future of contact centres when he said many years ago “we’re drowning in information and starving for knowledge.”

Before there is any chance of meeting an objective of establishing, maintaining or enhancing the trust of the incoming caller, this objective must be nominated as an objective.  Only then can statistics on the effectiveness of new business written, or existing business retained by contact centre operatives assume their correct prominence in performance assessment.

With all businesses other than monopolies, but particularly with banks, financial services providers and insurance companies, the incoming caller must first feel an acceptable level of Trust in the person they are speaking to ( and the perception of a high level of seller orientation  is the quickest killer of trust ) , before there is any interest in what the contact centre representative has to say, or the solution they propose.

That’s the way it is with all consumers – “I don’t care about what you have to say until I know that I trust you!”

How to be the Trusted Adviser your prospect is seeking.

In the previous post, I committed to writing a method to guarantee you never fail on another cold call – where the seller initiates contact by telephone, email or face-to-face visit.

This post addresses the topic of those initial contacts where the prospective client makes the first move. 

The classic incorrect assumption by salespeople receiving an enquiry from a prospect is that the prospect is “half-sold already, and therefore I should quickly get into my sales pitch.”

Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

This reaction confirms the prospect’s pre-conceived ideas about the level of self-orientation of all sellers – and any hope of establishing the first stage of a Trust-based relationship is destroyed.

Regardless of who initiates this first contact between seller and prospective client, the salesperson should employ a mini version of the steps of the Trust Building Sales Process:-

     T – Talk to me.

     R – Really listen.

     U – Unanimous on Issues.

     S – Share the future

     T – Take action.

For more explanation , see the August 30 post entitled Trust Paced Selling, http://business-trust-relationships.blogspot.com/2010/08/trust-paced-selling.html

To encourage the prospect to “Talk to me”, the salesperson needs to ask the minimum number of questions to encourage the prospect to talk openly about their issue / problem / challenge / opportunity that prompted the contact.

Something along these lines should achieve the desired result, but importantly, provided it does not sound like a “script”:-

“Thank you for making contact (name). I hope we may be able to provide an appropriate solution for you.

Please tell me about the challenge you have that prompted you to pick up the phone.”

And be prepared with follow up questions , asked conversationally and with genuine interest in the prospect’s unique circumstances, to encourage the flow of information you require before being able to formulate and offer your solution :-

“And what are the most significant consequences of that issue?”

“What level of impact does this situation have on your bottom line?”

“What other benefits do you envisage from a timely fix to this problem?”

But steer clear of those insulting and manipulative “closing” questions such as :-

“If I could guarantee a minimum million dollar improvement to your bottom line, would that be of interest?”

And remember – You do have the right to remain silent!   

Don’t feel you must immediately jump into every “awkward silence” with another question, or worse still, by attempting to present your solution – before you have “really listened” to the prospect talk through the issue that prompted them to make contact.

So, regardless of who made the first move and initiated contact, the seller’s objective is the same – to guide the first steps towards a business relationship based on mutual Trust, and establishing your role as the Trusted Adviser in that relationship.

How to never fail on another Cold Call -- Guaranteed!

During a recent presentation to a Client’s sales team I was asked how to apply the principles of Trust-Paced Selling to their least-liked and least-successful client acquisition activity – cold calling.

I gave the team a guaranteed method to ensure they never made another unsuccessful “cold call” – whether by telephone, email or face-to-face visit.

Here’s the method – Never, ever make another “cold call”. Remove the activity, totally and permanently, from your vocabulary, and your client acquisition process.

The definition of “cold” (relating to other than temperature) includes :-
“lacking in passion, emotion, enthusiasm”, “not affectionate, cordial or friendly”, “unresponsive”, “depressing, dispiriting” and “ineffective”.

What business owner or sales manager would want their sales team to attempt an initial contact with a new prospect that conformed with any part of that definition of “cold”?

So, does that mean I’m proposing you never again initiate contact with a prospect within your target market?

That depends on your marketing effectiveness.

Peter Drucker declared “The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous”. So until your marketing activities provide the quality and quantity of incoming enquiries from prospects within your target market to achieve all your business growth objectives, contacts will need to be initiated by your sales team – but no “cold” contacts please!

Ultimate sales success is an ongoing business relationship based on mutual Trust, where the seller authentically places higher value on the relationship than the next transaction. A relationship based on a genuine “fit” between the buyer’s needs and the seller’s solution.

The single most powerful variable affecting trustworthiness in new business relationships is the perceived level of self-orientation of the seller.

The traditional cold call script or pitch is a perfect example of seller-orientation – emphasising the seller’s expertise, without the necessary pre-call investigation to “invert the focus” and pinpoint a specific need of the prospect, which your proposed solution addresses.

It is often said that “selling is a numbers game”, in other words – “Don’t worry about the quality of the conversations you initiate – just make a high quantity of calls, and a few will proceed to a sale”. Cold calling is a numbers game, and the numbers don’t add up.

Every initial contact should be a mini version of the steps of the Trust Building Sales Process:-
T – Talk to me.
R – Really listen.
U – Unanimous on Issues.
S – Share the future
T – Take action.
For more explanation , see the August 30 post entitled Trust Paced Selling, http://business-trust-relationships.blogspot.com/2010/08/trust-paced-selling.html

So the bottom line is this. Until you identify an issue, problem or challenge specifically relating to the prospect you are intending to phone, email or visit – and you are able to propose and deliver a viable solution --DON’T phone, email or visit!

Does that mean your sales team will make a lot less initial contacts? Certainly.

Does it mean they will initiate two-way conversations leading to a lot more commercially satisfying business relationships based on mutual Trust and authentic customer orientation? Even more certainly.

In the next post the principles of Trust-Paced Selling will be applied to the handling of incoming enquiries.

Annual Trust Barometer -- The lessons for Australian Business.

Every year the world’s largest PR firm, Edelman, conducts a significant study of trust and credibility. The 2009 Edelman Trust Barometer is the firm’s 10th, and for the first time includes Australia.


The interviewees for the 2009 survey are college educated with household income in the top quartile and report significant media consumption and engagement in business news.

Three of the most noteworthy findings are:-
1.  % who trust companies less.
When asked whether they trusted companies more or less than the same time last year, the Global response was 62% trusted less, and alarmingly Australia was in 4th place among the 20 countries surveyed at 74%.

While the Global high percentage who trust companies less is not unexpected considering the GFC, it is alarming that in a country which avoided the high profile corporate collapses, Australian consumers have lost their trust in local business to the extent they have.

2.  % who trust business to do what is right.
The US response to the question of what % of consumers trust business to do what is right, was the lowest ever recorded at 38%. Lower even than 2002 following Enron and the dot-com bust.

The 2009 figure for Australia is marginally higher at 39%, well below the Global  average of 49%.

Of most concern is the comparison with the response to this question by Australia’s trade partners – in China 71%, Brazil 69%, Indonesia 68%, India 65%  trust business in their own country to do what is right.

Australian businesses are asking their offshore customers in these growing export markets to trust them to do what is right, but 61% of the consumers who must be considered to best understand Australian businesses have declared they do not trust them.

3. How much do you trust government to do what is right?
The Global response to this question increased marginally from 43% to 44% who declared they trust their governments to do what is right.

The Australian figure was among the higher scores at 53%.  For Australian business leaders, they need to confront the fact that Australian consumers have significantly more trust in government at 53% than they do in business at 39%. In 13 of the 20 markets surveyed, business is more trusted than government.

When you consider our politicians consistently rank towards the bottom of every trustworthiness poll, Australian business has a serious issue to address with their stakeholders, which includes the general public.

Most trusted industries.
Figures for the most trusted industries are not separately published for the 20 countries surveyed, but globally Technology and Health Care are the most trusted at around 70%, with Banks, Media and Insurance the least trusted industries at less than 50%.

Most trusted sources.
Again only Global figures are available from the survey, but the results do pose some interesting questions for Australian business on two fronts.  Firstly as credible sources of information about a company, Conversations with friends and peers, and Conversations with company employees rank highly, and above TV and newspaper coverage, search engines and web portals. Well down the list of credible sources come CEO speech, corporate communications and business blogs. Corporate or product advertising is the least credible source.

The second issue to emerge from the question on credibility of sources is that consumers report they need to hear the same message from a number of sources, nominated as 3 to 5, before credibility is assured.


The Business Case for Trust.
Edelman reported “This year’s Trust Barometer leaves no doubt that there are tangible consequences for businesses that gain – or lack – the trust of their stakeholders. Trust influences consumer spending, corporate reputation, and a company’s ability to navigate the regulatory environment.”

Over the 12 month survey, 91% of respondents said they had bought a product or service from a company they trusted, while 77%  had refused to buy a product or service from a distrusted company.


The Road to Rebuilding Trust.
Here is the Edelman summation:-
“ If businesses are to regain trust, they will need to adopt a strategy of Public Engagement, by means of a shift in policy and communications. The essence of Public Engagement is the commitment of companies to say – and do as they say.

Organisations must be forthright and honest in their actions and communications. In a time of utter distrust, business leaders must make the case for actions and then demonstrate their progress against those goals. When problems arise within companies, stakeholders need to see senior executives take a visible lead in acknowledging errors, correcting mistakes, and working with employees to avoid similar problems going forward. This adherence to transparency is at the core of each of the four pillars of Public Engagement:-
-Private Sector Diplomacy
-Mutual Social Responsibility
- Shared Sacrifice
-Continuous Conversation.

Against the prevailing background of distrust of Australian business, the rewards will be significant, measurable and instant for those organizations who place the issue of TRUST high on their 2010 agenda.

Trust-paced Selling.

Trust-Paced Selling is not intended to replace the activities or steps nominated within the organisation’s current Sales Process.


Trust-Paced Selling is meant to pervade and penetrate the existing Sales Process , and the rationale behind it, and to act as a set of “guiding principles” and a measuring stick for all future evaluation and proposed amendments to the Sales Process. Trust-Paced Selling is not a sales tactic.  Unless there is authentic commitment to the principles of Trust-Paced Selling at all levels of the organisation, unless it can co-exist culturally, your target market will perceive it as an attempt to deceive, and Trust will be the first casualty.

The Principles of Trust-Paced Selling.

1.Customer Orientation.
The first principle of Trust-Paced Selling is to value the customer relationship above the next transaction.

This principle may involve the ultimate test of the salesperson’s commitment to Trust-Paced Selling.  For the sake of the long term customer relationship, the salesperson may recommend a competitive supplier for the next transaction if that represents a better outcome for the customer.

2. Invert the Focus.
In truth, most salespeople focus on the interests of (1) themselves (2) their employer (3) the customer.

Trust-Paced Selling requires the salesperson to not only focus first on the customer, but always for the customer’s sake, not their’s or their employer’s.  Most selling presentations start with the emphasis on the seller’s expertise – displaying, proving, claiming leadership. Trust-Paced Selling requires the initial emphasis to display genuine interest in the buyer.

The single most powerful variable affecting trustworthiness is the perceived level of self-orientation of the seller.  Many world class companies prove the paradox that by being willing to put their customers’ interests ahead of their own, they achieve a better bottom line than if they had their own interests as their primary focus.

3. The 3C’s Selling Style.
--Collaborative. Trust-Paced Selling cannot co-exist with the combative, winners & losers, battle for control evident within many sales processes.  Control of the process must be evenly distributed between buyer and seller – in perception and reality.

--Consistent. For Trust to flourish, every aspect of the salesperson’s approach must be consistent for every interaction.  If more than one salesperson is involved, consistency in approach between the salespeople, including sales management if introduced, is equally important.

--Congruent. Congruency needs to be evident between every marketing initiative and every selling activity.

4. Extend the Time Perspective.
In assessing the value of a customer relationship, extend the time perspective beyond the short term, into the medium and long term.  Patience is not only a virtue, it is a business essential. Short term expediency should never outrank the lifetime value of a customer relationship.

5.Transparency in all dealings.
Contrary to the thinking behind manipulative selling processes, Trust-Paced Selling requires Transparency in all aspects at all times. If the customer asks a question on price, or raises an objection relating to a known product deficiency, the topic should be openly addressed at the time the customer dictates.

When is Trust most important?

In some buying circumstances Trust in the seller is relatively less important. These circumstances generally involve low cost, easily assessed , tangible products, with little likelihood of repeat business.  Conversely, in other circumstances , Trust takes on absolute “deal breaker” importance. This is particularly true when selling intangible, complex products and services – for example in financial services where the products are advice, opinion and experience.

Similarly in any selling environment involving mature age consumers, Trust is an upfront non-negotiable.  When selling to mature age consumers, product centred approaches are less effective. As we age we are more attracted to meaningful experiences than gaining material goods.

The best illustration of this point is Retirement Accommodation , which in most circumstances is not a real estate “bricks and mortar” decision – it is a lifestyle experience decision centred on intangibles such as a sense of community, belonging, security, insurance for the future.

What lifestyle does the prospective resident want to experience, and who do they trust to deliver that experience?


Trust Building Sales Process.

As stated earlier, the Trust-Paced Selling principles are intended to interact with the steps of an existing sales process.

If there is no real compliance with a prescribed sales process, or as a means of reviewing the effectiveness of your process as currently nominated, here are the steps of our Trust Building Sales Process, and a brief explanation of the intent behind each:-
T – Talk to me.
R – Really listen.
U – Unanimous on Issues.
S – Share the future
T – Take action.

1. Talk to me.
Encourage the prospect to talk about what is important to them, their values and aspirations, and specifically their objectives for this current interaction.  Resist the temptation to display your selling expertise or the competitive advantage of the organization you represent.

You have the right to remain silent. Exercise it.

2. Really listen.
While gathering information in this step is vital to the Trust building effectiveness of the Process, information gathering is secondary to the emphasis “really listening” places on the buyer. This continues the buyer orientation to be maintained throughout each step.

Good listening technique, and your genuine intent, earns you the right to be right – later.

3. Unanimous on Issues.
Before considering any attempt to propose solutions, it is imperative there is unanimous agreement on an understanding of the issues to be tackled. This agreement must be genuinely inclusive of all parties on the buyer’s side.

4. Share the future.
This step is designed to jointly envision how the buyer’s situation will look once all the issues are solved, and to create shared ownership of the outcome.  Vital in this step is envisioning the value to the buyer, understanding implications and complexities, and introducing acceptance of the actions required.

5. Take action.
Provided the first 4 steps of this Process have been handled effectively, the logical conclusion is a commitment to progress with the actions required to achieve the value for the buyer and to create the future situation envisaged.

Actions speak louder than words.
While much of this post has concentrated on listening and talking to maximise the pace of establishing mutual trust, as we have witnessed recently in several high profile examples, it is the behaviour of an individual or organization that determines their ability to build or destroy Trust.

“ You can’t talk your way out of a situation you behaved yourself into.”


The role of Trust in selling activities highlights the distinction between the character and competence components of Trust.  Research has consistently confirmed most sales are emotionally driven and emotionally decided ( relying on an assessment of the seller's character component), and are then justified logically ( relying on the competence component ).


This thinking is also expressed in the maxim “ Buyers don’t care how much you know ( competence ), until they know how much you care ( character ).