Whenever somebody says “trust me” don’t you instinctively put up your guard? I do. If you have to tell me to trust you, then you aren’t doing your job. I need to feel I can trust you—and so do your prospects. They need to feel you have their best interests at heart and that you can truly help them.
Often the first feelings of trust—or mistrust—come when potential buyers read your marketing copy. If you don’t know your buyers and you aren’t relevant, they aren’t going to give you the time of day let alone trust you. That means you must research your buyers, uncover their concerns with buying from you, and help them weigh the tradeoffs of buying from you, writes Kristin Zhivago in her article Secrets to Writing Marketing Copy that Customers Can’t Ignore.
“Once the copywriter knows what the tradeoffs are, he can and should address them as a friend would, not as a ‘formal’ copywriter,” she says.
Write copy that allows people to think positively about your firm, allows them to picture real, experienced people who take a smart approach to their business, Zhivago says. (Read examples in Zhivago’s article.)
Trust-based Networking
You can also establish trust through networking. Rather than just finding out how others can be helpful to you, “search for others to whom you can be helpful, write Charles H. Green and Andrea Howe in their article Trust-based Networking Critical for Business Success. Focus on others, and the rest will take care of itself, they say.
“This approach has two characteristics: it is inherently longer-term, and it forces focus on the other’s needs,” Green and Howe write. “The reason the trust-based approach is so attractive is the fundamental shift in business, from vertical control to horizontal influence. Coercion can work when you have control; when you don’t, you’d better try influence.”
Trust-based networking works online and in person. And the greatest thing you can do is introduce two people to each other, Green and Howe say. Other ways to practice trust-based networking include collaborating with others, recognizing others’ contributions publicly, talking about your partner more and about you less, and dropping the sales pitch.
How Well Do You Listen?
When a prospect talks with you, do you really listen to what they say? Or are you thinking about what you can buy if they agree to the deal?
Many service professionals and salespeople get dollar signs in their eyes and tune out when a prospect approaches them and says they’re ready to buy. They get excited about the money and “run roughshod” over people, says Dan Waldschmidt in his podcast interview A Key Component to Winning More Sales.
“We blame it on passion,” he says. “‘I’m just passionate,” we say. What we really are is a little bit inconsiderate. We’re a little hurtful. So, what we have to do is start listening—listening to what’s being said. Most of what gets said is never spoken. It’s either inferred or implied. It’s never actually said with our lips. It’s said with body language and eye sight. You really have to listen to what the soul of the person is saying.”
Trust Between Sales and Marketing
Companies would like to think they have one team responsible for generating revenue—sales and marketing teams working together. The reality for most, however, is different. Sales and marketing “exist separately, communication between the two teams is usually informal and irregular, and their data is siloed in ways that make it impossible to share,” says Dan Goldman in his article How an Inbound Marketing System Can Help Increase Revenue.
Add to that the fact that the two often don’t agree on what a qualified lead or buyer is, and the problem grows. Salespeople don’t trust the leads given them, they discard them, and sales suffer.
To improve this, Goldman suggests integrating sales and marketing teams via inbound marketing and marketing automation. With the right mindset, shared goals, and appropriate tools they can join forces to pull buyers to them and make sure each team has the same information about marketing campaigns and potential buyers.
With such a system companies can also better determine the ROI of marketing campaigns and stop spending money on those that don’t work.
“Integrating sales and marketing teams can be made to work and work well, but you have to make it an official goal and know what you want to achieve,” Goldman says. “And it has to be a top-down and bottom-up approach to get the right focus of effort and buy-in.”
Photo by Omar Naeem
