Build Relationships - and Sales - with “Maybe Trust”
By Dan Molloy
It’s human nature to question. We all have a tendency to be skeptical when faced with new situations, people and products. And, typically, we develop trust only after a period of assessment and acceptance.
One of the reasons for this: humans have a strong survival instinct. When we encounter a new situation our first response is to ask ourselves, “Is this safe for my body, my family, and my values?”
When weighing whether to trust or not, we may also consider other questions. For instance, when dealing with vendors or co-workers we may ask:
“Do this person’s words match their actions?” “Does the person have a hidden agenda?” “Is this person honest and trustworthy?”
The question for people in business, especially those in sales and customer service, is “how do I build business relationships rooted in mutual trust with prospects and customers?” After all, many of these people are skeptical. They may have felt deceived in past business dealings, and may still be in a non-trusting “survival mode.”
Here is one of the keys: long-term relationships built on complete trust begin with the very first conversation you have with a prospect or customer. By creating an atmosphere of openness and honesty from the start, by showing that you are genuinely interested in the other person’s needs and wants, by letting your prospect know that you will pursue authentic dialogue and “truth over harmony,” you stand a better chance of earning “maybe trust,” a stage that precedes deeply rooted trust. It’s within this mood of “maybe trust” that people are more willing to take a risk on you, or the product or service you’re selling.
By creating a mood of “maybe trust” in the first few seconds of a face-to-face conversation or on the telephone, you stand a much better chance of converting contacts with anonymous prospects into long-term, mutually beneficial customer relationships.
Dan Molloy is President and Founder of Molloy Business Development Group, LLC. He and his staff teach clients how to use the Language Of Commitment™ to design conversations that produce “maybe trust” both on the phone and face-to-face.
