My Thoughts on Trust in Sales

For any sales funnel, there are a few stages and a few key tasks i.e.  find or attract prospects, overcome their objections, convince them, convert them and then validate their decision to buy from you. But above all you have to make them feel good about their decision to buy from you, to eventually become your promoters and give you new leads of a better kind (referral).

This can be a daunting task and a lot of sales guys falter in maintaining this cycle of sales but more on the service and validation of customers on a different day.  In this article, I want to address a different beast altogether.

The point to keep in mind here is that in the business world the decision to buy has one very important quotient to it i.e people want to look smarter and better than their peers. They don’t want their peers to question their decision and want to look good in front of them. In short the decision to buy from you is a way to build or destroy their reputation and they want to be assured that they are doing the right thing.

If the purchase decision Is made by a person on behalf of someone else paying for it than the process takes a different shape. This kind of buyer has a different set of risks when compared to a person who has his money/business or reputation on line. Many a time, prospect freeze at the decision making stage because they are afraid to take the risk with their reputation. Good sales team works to first to build tactics to overcome objections.

For a few weeks, at synclarity we have accelerated or direct sales activities reaching out to people we have no first or second degree of contact.. this is more of a test of a tried and tested way to sell product .. but I have a theory that this works if you manage to find people who are in the last phase of their buying cycle .. looking for a vendor who can solve their problem.. and as direct salesman you just hope

That you get 2-3 such leads when you get in front of a 100 people.. direct Sales has always been an aggressive and bold approach. In a world where we keep

Talking about permission to market I am surprised that this approach is still a go to strategy for most businesses.. However, as expected our result seem not any different.. we get in front of a few people who were looking for someone and we showed up.. a lot of times this get you inside the door but not necessarily help you convert,

I have a theory about humans, we don’t trust strangers but are always willing to make a connection to overcome this problem.. you are not a stranger if you are my family, my neighbor, a person with common religion, nationality, neighborhood, school, college or even if we both like the same food or speak the same language. we as humans like to form a connection and if we can’t or rather I should say till we can’t we will not to business.. good sales guys make sure that the first thing they will do is to find a common ground it could be a long distance aunt or the team.. it could be World Cup or a tea cup they will connect.. cause once the bond is made you are no longer a stranger.

Let me give you another example, think of your favorite actor and then ask yourself. Do you trust him/her? Most people I ask this question say yes.. why is it that we are willing to trust celebrities with their endorsements when we don’t know anything about them. We don’t know them .. what we have seen are characters they have enacted which could be nowhere close to what these people might be in real life yet we have this opinion about them.. I remember stories of how people used to hate the veteran actors like  Mr. Pran or Mr. Ranjeeth and abuse them because of the opinion they had based on his characters yet he was one of the finest human being in the film industry.in short we find our reasons to form an opinion about people and these assumptions can bias our decision making.. I could go on about this but I am Sure you get the point, getting a business depends on the other persons opinion about us.. this is why in direct sales we get 2 sales out of 100 cause the remaining 98 don’t trust you or like you enough.. on the other hand, conversion rates for leads coming from referrals is a lot higher. This is why bigger brands spend so much on building a identity &  reputation for their product.. sometimes they do that by leaning in the brand / reputation of others ( for eg celebrities)

This is a perfect example of what I define as trust elasticity. A new product makes an advertisement with a celebrity. You trust the celebrity enough to give the product a shot ..another element towards building a reputation is how the buyer give value to your product in my head..

Let me explain what I mean. Compare the price of cup of tea outside your office building and a 5 star hotel.. which one do you think is more expensive? Of course we know the answer but if you are like most Indians you would rate the roadside tea above the premium restaurant. Yet, if the tea vendor on the street charges you the 5 star price you wouldn’t appreciate that cause in your mind the value of the tea is very low.. Even though you agree that the product is tastier the price is not defined by that itself. There are other factor that plays equally significant for eg brand perception. Unlike a Products actual value, the perceived value of a brand is defined by the consumers. Regardless of what your advertising message is, what people think and say about your brand/ product , that is your brand’s identity & fair price.  

This is the key reason where Commercial companies spend tons of money on social listening to learn about the brand perception in its target audience. Companies have Pivoted their business lines  because of this.

Knowing what your audience thinks about your product line will hlep you better understand what aspects are contributing to their perception and help you make adjustments or take initiatives that can help reshape and increase your brand perception.

One of the easiest way to measure or improve your brand perception is through social Media.

This works cause the trust is based on how we join the dots yet so few businesses are willing to invest in building trust.

Will tackle the question about how you build trust in another post.