Professional Sales Training Can Build Trust

Professional sales training can absolutely build trust. So if you're not thinking about that as you're evaluating sales training programs, you're making a big mistake. Today's busy corporate decision maker wants to work with trusted advisors who can help them achieve their objectives and guide them to the appropriate solution.

They're also quick to sniff out self-serving salespeople who are focused on making the sale rather than making a difference.

According to Charles H. Green, author of Trust-Based Selling: Using Customer Focus and Collaboration to Build Long-Term Relationships, trust creation begins early on in the sales process.

"If you wait till after the sale to create trust, you've already used it up," Green says in the book.

He also says that training your salespeople on objection handling and closing skills makes it difficult for your prospects to trust them.

When you're evaluating professional sales training programs, here are some things you can look for to ensure that your sellers will create trust in their customer interactions:

If your reps need to get better at cold calling, make sure they're trained on how to:

• Properly research companies prior to initiating contact.
• Craft customized, highly relevant messaging for each call.
• Share customer stories that demonstrate your company's value.

If your reps need to get better at demand creation, make sure they're trained on how to:

• Ask good questions related to the customer's needs, issues and concern.
• Advance to the logical next step, versus closing for the order.
• Admit they're stumped when they don't know the answer.
• Explore the value of making a change and its potential Return on Investment (ROI)
• Differentiating from their competitors instead of knocking them.

When your professional sales training focuses on these skills, your salespeople will naturally build trust. It's a byproduct of the process, instead of something that's done separately. And, if your prospects trust your sellers, they'll want to do more work with them.

Watch out for sales training programs that tout the "tricks of the trade" or other slippery gimmicks. Look out for sales trainers who take pride in their ability to sell ice to an Eskimo. Avoid training that involves any form of manipulation or has a "win at all costs" mentality.

Green also suggests that you expand on what's taught in your sales training program by creating role-playing scenarios that just beg your salespeople to behave in untrusting ways. Then role play it a second time, showing how to handle the situation in a trust-creating manner.

Finally, I'd like to add my two cents about your own behavior as a sales leader. If you don't watch it, you can easily undo the trust-building skills your salespeople learned in the professional sales training.

• If you focus on closing sales, not developing customer relationships, you'll teach your team that the end justifies the means.
• If you blather uncontrollably during sales calls about your great product or service, you'll teach your salespeople to "pitch" instead of being customer-focused.
• If you're willing to hedge the truth in order to get the business, you'll teach them that you weren't serious about building trust after all.

 “In sales, as in life, if you always do the right thing for the customer, the vast majority of them will buy from you,” Green says. “That may sound like a Beatle's song, and it may be. But it’s also a business model—maybe the best there is.”

Today's busy corporate decision maker wants to work with trusted advisors who can help them achieve their objectives and guide them to the appropriate solution.