People buy from people they trust

There is a well-known phrase in selling, “People buy from people they know and trust”.  A great quote and certainly true.  Customers prefer to do business with salespeople and businesses they know and trust. 

The struggle that most of us face in selling is, “How do I build trust?”.  If you are a new salesperson and don’t have established relationships, this can be difficult. 

The most common ways to bolster trust with a customer are actions, such as:

• Do what you say you will do. 
• Be honest, sincere, and authentic
• Care
• Promptly deal with customer service issues. 

I certainly agree with these.  Actions will speak louder than words when building trust. 

However, words can certainly help.  As you sit down to do your pre-call plan for a sales call, review the words you often use.  Are they trust building or are they neutral to detrimental to trust?  Below is a list of trust-building words.  The most important part of using these words is that they have to be 100% true.  Never use these words if you can’t back them up.

Special note on DISC profile.  While these words help when selling to anyone, they are especially impactful when selling to someone in the “S” profile. 

If not familiar, see some previous articles on DISC:   Using DISC in Sales            Podcast Version

Incorporate these terms into your selling vocabulary to build trust with customers:

• Proven
• Results
• Lifetime
• Research
• Try before…. free demo…. trial run
• Certified…Guaranteed…
• Verified
• Best-selling…most requested…. most popular…. The preferred choice of….
• Safer option
• Recognized
• Established

I don’t have many quotes, but one that I used a lot in my sales career with internal teams is, “We can’t talk our way out of our actions.”  If we made a mistake, produced a bad product, or made a billing error, then we need to own it and fix it.  However, we can build trust with a customer as we try to build the relationship.

One last word of caution on these.  Many of these terms are used in fast-talking radio or TV advertisements.  They can be almost synonymous with the untrustworthy sales approach or seen as empty promises.  To overcome that, I suggest these be part of your face-to-face sales approaches as a way to build trust.  Otherwise, you run the risk of sounding cliché and salesy.

Good luck in your efforts to build trust with everyone you meet in your sales career!