Sales EQ

28Do I Trust and Believe You?

When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.

—Stephen R. Covey

Despite the perception that salespeople will say or do anything to get the deal, I rarely meet salespeople who harbor ill intentions. Most sales professionals

• Do the right thing,
• Keep their promises,
• Tell the truth, and
• Believe in what they are selling.

The trap average salespeople fall into is the false belief that good intentions are enough. Stakeholders are not judging your trustworthiness based on your intentions. Instead they judge you based on their own intentions.

Stakeholders are scrutinizing you. They are looking for congruency in your words, nonverbal communication, and actions. Listening, demonstrating confidence, keeping promises, showing up to meetings on time, being prepared, meeting deadlines, following up, following through, keeping sales material pristine, managing your message, and so on connect words, intent, and actions.

In our hypercompetitive global market place, dominated by disruptive change, buying a new product or service or switching vendors carries real risk for stakeholders. Today, organizations have very little patience for failure and the penalty for making mistakes is severe.

When stakeholders rely on you to deliver on promises, they put themselves in a vulnerable position. Buying from you can mean putting their reputation or career on the line. Likewise, in high-end business-to-consumer (B2C) sales, customers may be ...