Trust Archive - Page 2 of 6 - The Art of Communicating

Sales

Have you ever been tricked into buying something you didn’t even want?

Perhaps the salesperson just found the right words to trick you into the decision and in that moment it felt like you had no other choice?

That’s no wonder because skilled salespeople are great persuaders.

And sometimes that’s a good thing because it turned out that although we didn’t know it prior to the purchase, the thing we bought was exactly what we needed.

But just as often (if not more often) the opposite is true: We really didn’t need that thing. In fact, it was of inferior quality. Despite the huge discount we got it was a poor value for the money.

Which makes us more cautious the next time we encounter a salesperson. And so we enter the vicious circle: Skilled salespeople will try to persuade harder. Which makes us more cautious. Which makes them persuade harder. And so on …

Great salespeople don’t persuade harder. They resonate stronger. They don’t bait us with discounts and other psycho tricks. Instead they listen carefully, they tell true stories, and they trust us with making the decision.

The beginning of the story

Congratulations! You made the deal happen!

Is it the end of the story? Or the beginning?

Some businesses are only ever interested in getting deals. Customers are mostly a problem that needs to be dealt with in order to get to their money. These businesses are often willing to use up trust just to get the deal. They make bold promises but don’t care as much to keep them.

For them, the deal is the end of the story.

Others look at it differently. They care about what they do and would love to spend their whole day doing the work. For some of them, sales and marketing feels like a problem that needs to be dealt with in order to get to work with customers. One of their biggest assets is that they build trust through the work they do. They make bold promises and work extra hard to keep them.

For them, the deal is the beginning of the story.

What is it for you? How does your answer influence the way you look at sales and marketing?

Better than the truth

If your customers knew everything you know, would they still buy?

Well, of course they are never going to know everything, so the real question here is this:

Is the story you are crafting about your offering a truthful representation of what you do (and how you do it)?

Selfish marketers don’t really care. They will happily bend the truth, tweak a few things here and there, and leave anything out that would make the story sound less favorable. Selfish marketers look for ways to tell their story that makes it sound better than the truth.

An early client of mine, some 15 years back, was obsessed with giving their “effectiveness charts” more bang – the problem being that the underlying data had no bang at all. But rather than to optimize the product, they invested heavily in graphic design to make it look like it had bang.

Selfish marketers can’t trust the customer with the decision to buy because they don’t trust in their product, either.

The best brands are different. They start by building great products – products which are actually effective and which really do serve (real) people’s needs and desires in a delightful way.

And so these brands dare to tell true stories about their product and the experiences that their customers have.

The best part is this: For the customer, it will still sound better than the truth – their current truth. And if it’s a truly great product, it will even exceed these expectation. These products delight because the marketer was telling the truth.

Do you trust your product in delivering that experience? Do you dare to tell a true story about it?

How to create a great partnership

A great partnership is one where both sides rightfully think they got the better deal.

However, the way to get there is not by searching for the better deal but by being the better deal.

If you give more than you take, the partner will probably do the same. (If they consistently don’t, it might be time to re-calibrate the relationship.)

For people who try it the other way around, i.e. by first wanting the better deal before they are ready to contribute their part of the equation, I find it hard to believe that they’re going to be a valid solution of the equation.

You don’t look for the perfect match. You create it.

Needs more info

Some salespeople love to make decisions on behalf of their customer. Their favorite one: the purchase. These salespeople have already decided that their customer wants the deal, long before the conversation has actually started.

And it’s fascinating to see them succeed by sheer will.

For this breed of salespeople a “no” is just another word for “needs more info”. They are trained in objection handling and equipped with honey traps to make an offer the customer “can’t resist”. They just won’t stop pushing until they get the deal.

And it works. They make another deal. Often enough.

The deal might even be in the customer’s best interest.

Or it might not.

That’s not what drives these salespeople, the closure of the deal does.

And yet, the sad part is something else: This kind of behavior is the consequence of some deep insecurity. This salesforce doesn’t really believe in their offering. They don’t trust their offer to be strong enough that they can trust the customer with the decision to buy.

Last week, I’ve worked with a company that has no salesforce at all. They trust in their offering to be so good that the customer doesn’t need to be persuaded. If a customer has the problem that this company solves, they will choose that company to solve it. Not because someone pushes them to but because they want to.

The ingredients for this kind of offer are:

a deep understanding of the problem that the customer really has.
rigorous work to build an offering that actually solves it.
telling true stories with irresistible clarity about the work you’ve done.

If these are really the problems and your solution really solves them, then you can skip persuading and start resonating.

Giving a talk

When you’re giving a talk, are you truly giving it?

Or are you taking more than you give? Such as your audience’s time? Are you hoping to get more out of it than you put in?

And how much are you actually giving? A good effort? All of you? The bare minimum, as in “My assistant’s going to assemble a bunch of slides”?

When you spend your time evaluating whether you get as much out of a situation as you put in, that time can’t go into making the maximum possible impact.

The irony, or course, is that the bigger the impact, the more likely it is that you will get something of value back.

Changing your mind

You often hear me saying how trust is created when you consistently say what you mean and mean what you say.

But, as with most simple statements, there’s an asterisk attached.

If what you mean changes frequently, people are going to be confused and they’ll have a hard time playing catch up with what you currently mean.

Musk’s Twitter is a great live example that allows us to witness how this unfolds. Although there’s no reason to doubt that Musk says what he means and means what he says, the almost daily change in direction damages trust because the audience can never quite be sure what’s meant today.

It’s good to change your mind when new data becomes available and when that data proves that your initial take was wrong.

But sometimes, it pays if you practice a little patience before launching big changes to a service that’s used worldwide so that you (and your audience) can have a little more trust in the longevity of what you “mean”.

When what you mean is the result of some rigorous work you’ve done, stating it clearly will allow others to trust in what you say.

Adapt or Attract

Two ways to resonate strongly with your audience.

Adapt your messaging to the audience.

Or.

Attract your audience with your messaging.

Which one do you choose? Why?

The truth about cars

There was a time when cars didn’t have seat belts.

There was even a time when car makers hesitated to equip their cars with seat belts although they could. They feared bad publicity. After all, it would mean admitting that the cars were unsafe. Which could scare customers and keep them from buying.

So, they decided to not tell the whole story but rather hide the fact that cars do, as a matter of fact, crash sometimes … and hope that no-one notices it.

Today, we have way safer cars because people who cared surfaced the whole story. Obviously, the best way to deal with the truth was not to hide the problem but to face it, deal with it, and improve the product.

A good question to ask is this: If your customers knew what you know, would they buy?

Many companies don’t trust that their customers really would. And so, they bend the truth and maybe hide parts of it.

But some companies use this question as a motivation to improve the product. Not only will these companies end up with superior products, marketing will also be way easier.

All they need to do is tell a true story. Ultimately, it leads to customers who can – and do – trust you.

When customers refuse to understand us

You see something bad, you see how to make it good, but the others don’t see it. What do you do?

Let’s say you’ve found a better way to schedule meetings. Or you’ve found a more sustainable way to produce something and save at least 10% of the energy. But customers don’t buy it.

It’s a common problem for people who care deeply for their cause. It can be hugely frustrating when the customers refuse to see it although you’ve explained it to them very clearly. They still refuse to change anything. They keep doing what they always do.

The worst part is when this observation becomes kind of a comfort zone, a place to hide at.

I’ve seen it happen more than once. After all, it’s not your fault. It’s their fault. Despite your clear explanation, the customers still refuse to see or acknowledge it. You would change the world, if only the others opened their eyes.

The bitter truth is that they don’t have to. It’s not their job. Which means that it’s not their fault.

So, let’s move out of the comfort zone and ask more meaningful questions:

What’s wrong with them that they refuse to see it?
What do they really want? Is there a way to bridge the gap?
What are they really seeing when we explain it to them?
Is there a way to use language that’s even closer to their everyday?
Can we make them see – even better: feel – what the future looks like with our product?

What will you open our eyes for?

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