Building trust when selling is essential, it might sound obvious but nobody will buy your solution if they don’t first trust you. This article might help salespeople to build that trust.

Selling is all about building trust and credibility, interestingly the more you can get prospects and customers to talk the better for you as this will build trust. After all whilst they are talking you can’t put your foot in it!

In selling most potential customers will not like being ‘sold to’ just ask yourself is this true, do I like being sold to? And the answer is likely to be no I don’t. Yet so many sellers go straight in with their well rehearsed sales pitch. It is not the way to behave, few if any care for what you are saying, few will listen let alone respond in a positive way. That is assuming they get the chance to.

No, back to my main point, building trust and credibility must come first, before you can sell anything successfully. So how can we progress? The answer is asking the right type of questions in the first place.

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“Selling is asking then listening, not telling”

JH

People only want information on what they are interested in or care about. Therefore the best approach is to ask questions that broach what concerns them most about the issues on their plate at the moment.

Easier said than done, I can hear you saying… Yes but possible when you have developed a set of the right type of questions and are ready to ask one or two of them. These are developing and probing questions, designed to get the prospect to open up and talk about themselves and their situation.

The cleaver bit is to first ask a question linked to and testing for any needs they might have in the areas your solutions cover. Once they are talking all you do is listen and occasionally ask a probing question relative to what they are talking about. Your credibility will only increase when they are doing the talking and you are doing the listening.

My one day sales training course TURN Questioning Skills covers four types of questions: -

  • T = Test for needs questioning.
  • U = Uncover the issue behind the need questions.
  • R = Result of not doing anything about it questions.
  • N = Necessary gains questioning.

Within a few hours delegates learn how to build and use these powerful questions linked to the solutions they are selling but focused on the prospect or customer and aligned only to their interests and desires. With a raft of these questions embedded into their sales repertoire, they can pull out the right one for the occasion relevant to and matching the customer’s deliberations.

For example: -

“What issues in the business are of concern to you at the moment?”

“What is the chance of that going wrong and causing problems?”

“How often do you have problems with that?”

Once the questions match the customer will respond and will respect you more as nothing you have said will give them cause to think otherwise, this consultancy sales style is the only one that succeeds when selling expensive items or services.

Once the set of four questions are used the dialogue will lead to a solution fit and at times using this method the customer will even prompt you when they are ready and ask your advice and what you think about it.

The problems and issues that matter in their situation (which I call PIMS after that nice drink!) are the hot buttons that you remember and press to progress your solution sale. I hope this helps do contact me if you want to discuss it further.

“The only place that commitment comes before trust is in the dictionary”