Do they Trust You?
Sales is all about Trust
Well, OK, it’s about a bit more than that too. But really that’s pretty much what it comes down to.
Your new potential client needs to trust you on a number of levels if you are going to be able to lead them to a resounding “Yes please!” decision to work with you.
Firstly, they need to feel safe entering into a conversation with you in the first place. They need to trust that you are not going to make them feel uncomfortable by trying to push them in to something they are not ready for.
Because if a lot of your clients mental and emotional energy is going in to keeping up a wall of resistance to ‘defend’ themselves against you and your sales approach they are not going to be fully open to be taken on a journey towards making the decision that is truly best for them – whether that’s to work with you or not.
Secondly, they need to be able to trust that you really are the expert you say you are and that you can deliver on what you promise. Can they trust that the time, money and quite likely emotional energy invested in working with you won’t be wasted? Or even make things worse?
This sort of trust rarely develops in just one meeting, or just one visit to your website
It’s this “Know, Like and Trust factor” that is behind the generally accepted fact in internet marketing that a new client needs between 7-10 ‘contacts’ with you before they buy from you. Of course this can be quicker in the real world when you are meeting people face to face. But trust still takes time to develop.
But you need clients now. So how can you develop trust more quickly?
Here are some ideas for accelerating the growth of trust a potential client has in you:
Referrals
Develop a formal referral programme to encourage previous clients to refer people to you. It is SO much more powerful when someone else says “Go and see Jenny, she’s amazing, she’s changed my life” than if you are trying to convince someone who has never met you before to take a leap of faith.
Joint Ventures
Joint ventures are pretty much referral schemes but on steroids. It’s where another business owner who serves the same sort of clients as you introduces you to their audience or community. This is incredibly powerful because firstly, those people already “know like and trust” the JV partner. So when they say “Check out Mary’s new programme, her stuff is amazing” the client is much more likely to believe it. I can attribute the very rapid early growth of my own business to Joint Ventures – my clients said things like “Because so and so recommended you I didn’t hesitate to buy your course – I knew it must be good”. And not only that, but you are being introduced to hundreds, or even tens of thousands of new potential clients in one go – all of whom will already trust you. Wow!
So once these new clients come to you with trust already in place…
How do you overcome their natural resistance and suspicion that you are going to try and sell them something they are not ready for?
That comes down to following one of my cardinal rules for non-pushy sales:
Always set the conversation up as a two-way decision process
Whether you are selling one-one, or one to many it’s important that you allow the client to feel that they are free to make their own decision, whether that’s a “Yes!” or a “No”. You do this by telling them that your service and approach is not right for everyone, and that your job is to help them to decide if this is right for them or not – and that if either one of you feel that it’s not the right fit you agree to say so.
Your potential client can then relax, resistance down, fully open to absorbing the information and coming to their own conclusion. And all you have to do is present your solution and offer in such a compelling way that they are left in no doubt that you really could be the answer they’ve been looking for.
