The Quisenblog

If you think about it, as marketers we spend a lot of effort to have customers and potential customers see us as credible. We’re always talking up things like expertise, experience, reliability and reputation. But is credibility all we have to sell?

One could argue the most important thing we sell as marketers is trust.

Credibility these days is little more than table stakes. Most businesses these days are credible. But how many earn your trust?

All things being equal, the buyer will always choose trust over credibility every time. How does one go about building trust? According to Charles Green’s book “Trust-Based Selling,” the key to building loyal customers for life is to demonstrate that you value the relationship over the transaction. The acid test for “selling from trust,” according to Green, is when you would be willing to recommend a key competitor to a significant customer; to risk losing a sale or part of a sale because it is in the best interests of the customer.

Green goes on to identify four values that a trust-based seller must adhere to:

1. True customer focus, which means treating customers as ends, not as means. Valuing the relationship over the transaction.
2. A collaborative style and willingness to involve the buyer in the sales process. To turn more control of the process over to your customer.
3. A long-term perspective, which involves focusing on a lifetime of transactions, as opposed to pulling out all the stops to close a sale now.
4. A habit of transparency, the best guarantor that the marketer’s motives will be understood. Too many marketers confine themselves by only telling customers what they think they want to hear. Being transparent means being willing to let the customer “peek behind the curtain” into your business.

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