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THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK - What is the secret to building trust with potential buyers?
In his book, “The Speed of Trust”, Steven M.R. Covey describes brand as the “trust monetized”.
John Mehrmann, President of Executive Blueprints, Inc., believes that the “secret ingredient to successful sales is trust.”
Trust is so important that the global communications firm, Edelman, has a Trust Institute centered on understanding why people hold the views they do and where their trusts lie.
Trust is a critical ingredient, perhaps THE CRITICAL INGREDIENT, for successful B2B relationships. But how do solution providers go about building trust and what is their secret? The answer, they begin by helping!
Here’s a simple illustration. Let’s say I’m a car salesman. While on a walk one day, I encounter someone whose car has stalled on a main road during rush hour. They’re blocking a lane, traffic is backing-up and people are becoming angry. The problem may be that they’re out of gas, or their car may need some repair work. But I see an opportunity to solve his problem with a new car! I could give him my business card and tell him to give me a call. But helping him with the problem he HAS will make a bigger impact. So, together we push his car to a safe location off the road and I engage him in a conversation about why the car might have stalled. I then give him my card, which he gladly accepts because I helped him.
Let’s apply the same thinking to a complex B2B relationship. As a director of marketing and sales for a technology company, I recently promoted an article on how to develop a quality management system (QMS) for a pharmaceutical production line. The article attracted a lot of readers and I have all their names and contact information. I could easily distribute them to the business development team with a note to follow-up and each of them would call the “lead” and attempt to sell them our technology platform that monitors critical quality attributes during production. This happens every day and alienates more prospects than it attracts. Or I could seek to build trust by helping those who read the article and send them a case study on how someone developed a QMS that predicts failures before they occur.
Helping increases the speed at which trust is built, it accelerates the buyer’s journey, and it’s one of the six principles of the Follow Your Buyer methodology for B2B marketing and sales.
Help your prospects with the problem they have, not the problem you want them to have in order to make a sale.
I hope you have a great week!
--Perry
Visit us at follow your buyer for more.
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Perry Rearick
Chief Editor | Follow Your Buyer
prearick@followyourbuyer.com
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