Before you can deliver a remarkable client experience for the purpose of building growth in your organization, you must win the opportunity of partnership with your prospect.  In order to do that, you must build trust.  In order to do that again, you must hold trust.

entreQuest considers trust the culminating force of three factors:  reliability, sincerity, and competence.  The full definition of “The Trust Model” is available in an article published a few years ago by entreQuest at this link:  http://www.entrequest.com/wp-content/pdf/entrequest_trustmodel_06.04.pdf?phpMyAdmin=d2c4aa6766ft5760658.
 
Sometimes the best model you can have for how to act professionally are those who have exemplified excellence to you personally.  Who comes to mind when you think of trust?  Your mom?  Your dad?  Your oldest friend?  A teacher?  A coach?  A former co-worker?  A psychiatrist?  Who is that person that you could rely on, that you knew acted sincere, and that had the competence to help you succeed?

In her own way, Oprah Winfrey could be considered America’s trust model.  For years, her frequency allowed us to rely on her every afternoon for a learning experience about issues that we considered important and relevant.  Her humanness allowed us to find her sincere as she shared our same struggles and did not hide her real emotions which also enabled her to speak in our voice.  Her long list of achievements allowed us to believe in her competence and we profited from our investment in her abilities to comfort our anxiety, ease our pain, celebrate our victories, and love ourselves.

Our trust in Oprah turned her loyal viewing audience into her book club, her magazine subscription circulation, her movie fan base, her charity donors, and the core of her very own network now, among countless other O outlets.  Interestingly though, the women and men that make up her clients probably don’t think of themselves as paying consumers to the multiple revenue streams of Oprah’s empire.  They see only the benefits of trusting Oprah – so much so that for the most part, society never chides her for her net worth of billions as might be common with other wealthy individuals who lead worldwide moneymakers in the private sector.  Instead it would appear that participation and purchases in Oprah’s brands are not viewed as transactions from a conglomerate but rather they are considered gifts to their own inner spirits.
 
How will you be the Oprah to your world?  How will you be the trust model to your clients?  You already have the ingredients in you – reliability, sincerity, and competence – so now it’s time to use your personal traits for professional growth.  And you can do it.  You can be as trustworthy as the individual you trust the most and yes, you can even wind up as profitable as Oprah.
 
Trust in yourself too and you will do it.

Misti Aaronson is the Vice President of Operations at entreQuest who leads both internal initiatives for the company and external engagements with clients to ensure that every experience delivered by eQ is nothing short of remarkable. 

“Sorry Jim, we really liked your proposal but the price was too high.”

“Sorry Ann, you guys were in the running but your competitor had this other feature that management really liked.”

Sound familiar?

Anyone who’s been in the sales arena has felt their bubble burst with statements similar to these.

It would be easy to take them at face value.

Don’t.

The cold hard truth is that people are human and it is human nature to generally avoid conflict. 

So when it comes to telling a provider bad news, buyers default to non-emotional, highly rational reasons.

Why?

Because it’s less personal, less confrontational, and less hurtful.

It’s easier to tell you that you lost because of something tangible and objective, like prices or features, than because you weren’t trustworthy.

According to trust expert and author Charles H. Green, trustworthiness (that being how others perceive our level of trust) is comprised of four components: credibility, reliability, intimacy, and self-orientation.

Now in the scenarios described above, any four of these components or combination thereof could be at issue.  But if we explore the area of trust we missed in their minds in terms of reliability, what it comes down to is that we simply weren’t dependable or predictable.

Think about the last deal you lost and consider the following questions.

1. Did you come to the table with your homework done?  (Or did you show up with little or no knowledge of what they do or who they serve?)
2. Did you have a point of view to engage the client?  (Or did you show up with no ideas about the areas they might need help in?)
3. Did you make and keep promises?  (Or did you just talk about what services your company provides?)
4. Did you check and double-check your work before presenting it to the client?  (Or did you scramble to get it in before a deadline?)
5. Is it possible that price or features weren’t the real reason you lost the deal?

Amongst the four components of trustworthiness, most people rate themselves highest on reliability.  They do this in part because it’s the easiest one to measure and the easiest one to do. 

Yet, let me suggest that many of us need to peel back another layer in reviewing our reliability to become more trustworthy and to win over more clients.

Mark Slatin is a VP of Sales at entreQuest who is outsourced to a wide variety of companies to coach their teams, improve their client experiences, and raise their revenues.

“People hate being sold to…”

Some of you may have heard this quote before and can complete the sentence.  Let’s come back to that.

Can you think of the last time someone tried to sell you something.  Maybe it was a time share.  Maybe it was a lawn service.  Maybe it was Aflac or Amway.

What was the feeling you got?  Pretty icky right.

People don’t just dislike being sold to, they hate it.

Buyers have what I call an “invisible wall of distrust” that was built from the mortar of false promises and with the bricks of cunning sleasters.

As sales professionals, we need to live on the other side of the spectrum.  So consider using a very simple four step process that we can rely on to incorporate principles of trust into our prospecting calls.

1.  Introduction Statement – Identifies yourself right off the bat.

2.  Connection Statement – Presents yourself not as a stranger by taking 3 minutes to see who they are and how you might be able to connect.

3.  Value Statement – Delivers the “What’s In It For Me” factor to them, which is not the “what” or the “how” of what we do but the “why,” giving it to them straight without any jargon or non-descript words.

4.  Ask – Shares your success story and leads to setting a mutually convenient time to meet.

We’ve said before that we only have 15 seconds to get to the point or we lose the prospect.  If we are clear, direct, and demonstrate the value of our offering, we will get to the next step more often.

So to finish the quote from Jeffrey Gitomer: “People hate to be sold to… but they love to buy!”
 
Let’s use this four step model to help facilitate the buying process.

Mark Slatin is a VP of Sales at entreQuest who is outsourced to a wide variety of companies to coach their teams, improve their client experiences, and raise their revenues.

As we work to improve our relationships with our prospects and clients, we should be striving to solidify our level of trust.  And an important component of building trust is reliability.  Reliability, in the realm of trustworthiness, is synonymous with predictability or dependability. 

It’s always better when we make and keep promises to others as the result of proactive measures WE’VE taken.  We’re in trouble when we get held accountable by the client or prospect.  If it gets that far, we’re in the danger zone.

Here are some ways that come to mind for incorporating reliability into our lives:

1.  Have systems to track tasks and activities (i.e., set up a task in your CRM program).

2.  Get clarity about who is doing what by when (i.e., define roles, responsibilities, and deadlines for each project).

3.  Set up regular “check-in” meetings to measure progress with a manager, a co-worker, or the entire team at a group meeting (remember we tend to get better results when we’re committed to others – think personal trainer).

4.  Utilize technology to set up reminders (i.e., make appointments with yourself to prepare and plan – don’t leave it to chance).

5.  Have an accountability partner (again, as with #3, outside support drives better results).

6.  Reverse engineer the process to avoid last minute scrambling by beginning with the end in mind and giving yourself plenty of time and margin of error (remember it always takes longer than we thought and we never do our best work when we’re scrambling).

7.  Alert the other party as soon as you discover the promised deadline will not be met and ask for more time (remember people don’t like surprises – be honest, you may get a break).

There are some virtues that you can tweak while on the job.  For instance, you don’t have to be completely honest if you’re having the worst day of your life and one of your clients starts out a conversation with “how you’re doing?”  You also deserve to take a break from diehard diligence at approrpriate times during the work week.  But trustworthiness is different.  We cannot waver in our integrity and we must invest ourselves fully into keeping it in tact.

As the old adage goes: “Trust is like a vase.  Once it’s broken, though you can fix it, the vase will never be the same again.”  To be the best professional relationship builders we can be, let’s institute the necessary practices into our lives to remain reliable.

Mark Slatin is a VP of Sales at entreQuest who is outsourced to a wide variety of companies to coach their teams, improve their client experiences, and raise their revenues.

For me this is easy because it’s the day my wife (obviously girlfriend then) and I went on our first date (and yes I am going to turn this into a blog).

But when you get to thinking about how time flies, what you have accomplished in the last 5 years and what you could accomplish it gets a little scary.

I am sure most people reading this email have one of these moments usually marked by a birthday or anniversary of some sort.

By big aha for this reminds me of my favorite quote:

“Change is inevitable but progress in not.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now if you are reading this post you are obviously a high-performer and very intelligent (think about who the compliment was for there), but what can you learn to make serious progress.  Here are a few things to think about… and remember, if the shoe fits, wear it for you and your company:

1). The customer, not the vendor, is in control. If your company is still denying this, you haven’t adapted to the new reality.

2). In an experienced-based economy, it’s no longer just about products and services. The customer experience has become paramount.

3). Sometimes it’s the most basic things that we’ve lost sight of when sales begin to slip. For example, the simple practice of listening, or keeping your word, or handling a problem. We refer to this as the Golden Rule on steroids.

4). Sales used to be a one-way street, but now your sales pitch must become a conversation – a two-way dialogue and a reciprocal relationship.

5). You’ve got to find a way to create a partnership of value and change the dynamic from “closing” the client to “enrolling” or “re-engaging” the client.  The emotional intelligence of relationships is the key to making this shift.

6). Statistics show that the least committed people in an organization are typically its salespeople.  That’s a problem.  If they’re not committed, what are they communicating? Salespeople reflect their relationship with the company in every interaction. By changing your relationship with your own people, you can change everything else.

7). Slow sales aren’t about the economy, the competition, the market, or even the Internet.  It’s all a question of shifting the mindset of your key people and your sales team.

8). The carrot and stick, parent-child model of sales accountability is outmoded and it doesn’t really work.  What works is a relationship of mutual respect between two adults who come to terms on a professional agreement of intrinsic value to both.

9). Pipeline and opportunity management are no longer about volume; they’re about quality. The question isn’t how many contacts, but how deeply did you connect/engage, how clear are you on the prospect’s agenda rather than your own, did you understand their mission, vision, needs and agenda?

10). Sometimes stunted growth isn’t a sales problem at all. It may be that the company and/or the leadership hasn’t created a clear value proposition that everyone understands, wants and is willing to pay for.  We can help with that, too.

As my good friend Henry Ford says… “You can’t build a reputation on what you are going to do”

Here is to the next exciting 5 years!

Be Your BEST,

Joe

When you can recognize the difference, you can turn one-off relationships into long-term clients and trusted advisors…

What people think they want vs what they need, right?

How could we possibly presume to know what our clients need, even above what they think they need and what they say they need?

We know because we ask – and we listen – DUH!

There are means needs and there are ends needs. Means needs surface in companies as problems that need to be solved. These problems can be either tactical or strategic, but if you’re focused on solving means needs, you’ll find yourself “closing deals” rather than “enrolling clients.”

If you go into your prospect’s office and accept what he or she has represented to be “the problem,” and you close the deal by solving the problem, then the door closes behind you when you leave. You’re going to have to open it again to get the next deal done, and that’s if someone else doesn’t get there before you to ask, “What’s next?” See, in this situation, with this mindset, your solution was a means to an end (or a step toward an outcome) of which you may not have even been aware.

Again, means needs are about solving tactical and strategic problems. Ends needs are about helping organizations achieve their missions and reach their goals. Now which would you rather your solution be associated with? The ends need, of course. And so would the client.

People are much more emotionally connected to their ends need (mission and goals) than their means need (the immediate problem) – and much more connected to you when you are helping them reach their ends need and achieve their outcomes. Demonstrate to them that you understand their outcome and provide a solution that helps them reach it, and you’re a partner. Close them on the first problem they were willing to reveal and you’re a vendor.

The first need that a prospect reveals is almost always a means need and hardly ever the only need for three reasons:

1. The prospect doesn’t know what the ends need is.

2. The prospect is not ready to reveal the ends need b/c you have not built enough trust.

3. You have not asked the right questions.

Your mission is to find out what the prospect really needs versus what he or she thinks and says the need is. Your mission is to discover the need and help the prospect achieve the mission. Your goal is to help the prospect achieve his or her goals.

Are you ready to Revolutionize Your Sales?

Joe

People do business with people they trust.  This time-honored adage applies to the Web as well.  After all, we are all human.  We love to be in groups, cliques, tribes (just ask our friend Seth Godin, Tribes).

Social media is our way of staying connected.  And when it comes to making purchasing decisions, social media is one way to gather information.  Who do our friends recommend?  I see it on Facebook almost every day:  “Does someone have a roofer they can recommend?”  “I need a plumber – willing to pay for quality.”  “I need a CRM Partner that actually cares!  Please ReTweet!”

In the current economy – and especially these days – what is more important than trust?  In the last two years, people have seen their home values and 401(k)s cut drastically.  While financial portfolios are starting to improve again, there is not one person working today who has not been affected by greed and mistrust.  Trust is any company’s most valuable asset.

Social media provides an excellent platform for companies to establish themselves as trustworthy.

So the question is… who do YOU trust?