This lockdown and quarantine have certainly been a confusion, and I think I speak for everyone when I say we’ll all need help coming out of it, and finding our way into a somewhat normal business landscape once again.
With this month’s blogs and newsletter, we’re certainly giving you some great approaches. With this particular blog, let’s look at a factor that could mean a great deal when reaching back out to your prospects and customers: why should your customers trust you?
Your Value Proposition
That question will, of course, have a multifaceted answer. The first thing you should do, if you’ve never done so, is to look over what makes your company the best. What sets you apart from your competitors? What gives your product or service the edge over others like them? What is your value proposition?
In answering these questions, also take a look at any services or products that are totally unique to your company. Are there things that only your company offers, or does? Or, was your company the very first to do something?
For example, let’s say your company develops a CRM (customer relationship management software, which salespeople use to track sales). Your customers coming out of the lockdown will have to be able to track sales and their potential with extreme accuracy. If your CRM will help them do that and does it better than others, they’re going to trust you more than they would one of your competitors.
The Trust Factor
Another aspect in answering “why should your customer trust you?” is, of course, the trust factor itself. Have you made it possible for your prospect or customer to trust you?
Trust must be established early in the sales process. As we’ve discussed in many other places, historically in companies 20 percent of the salespeople make 80 percent of the sales—something called the 80/20 rule. A prime reason for the remaining 80 percent of the salespeople not doing so well is that they fail to establish enough trust with the prospect for the prospect to tell them what they’re really thinking.
If the prospect doesn’t tell you what they’re really thinking, you’ll never be able to bring them the rest of the way through the sales process.
Because of previous bad sales experiences and lack of trust, people tend to resist salespeople. As part of this resistance, they’re not telling you everything they’re thinking until you start to develop trust. They then start to develop hope that they can trust you.
At that point it’s fragile, so you need to continue developing that trust, causing the prospect to develop more and more hope, up to the point they realize it’s real and they can truly trust you.
In Coming Out of This
The more value you can bring to your company, products and services, the more you’ll shine as we come out of this confusion and into this new environment. Such value provides further incentive for prospects and customers to buy from you. And beneath it all, you must consistently develop trust with your prospects and customers.
