How Do You Scale Trust?

You hear it throughout corporate boardrooms everywhere as 2020 kicks off. How do we scale our business? How do we scale our revenue? How do we scale our distribution? How do we scale production? All noble goals for sure. But here’s one that’s a foundation for all of the above: Trust. How do you scale trust?

Trust is the holy grail with business. Trust turns customers into partners. Trust gets organizations to move initiatives forward and overcome obstacles.  Sales teams that earn the trust of customers become “MVAs” (Most Valuable Assets) to your customers instead of just “sellers of stuff”.

But how do you scale trust? You need it on the inside as well as the outside.

The most obvious place is externally to customers. I like to tell sales teams during our training sessions, that every single one of your customers can complete this sentence:

“The best sales rep that calls on me is…”

To be that name at the end of a sentence requires a number of skills, but I am certain that the common denominator of those is trust.  In his book “Trust Based Selling” author Charles Green states:

“People demonstrably prefer to buy what they must buy anyway from those they trust. And they trust sellers who put the buyer’s interests first. Hence the paradox: to get the sale, stop making that your objective.”

I sales coach using the acronym DRIVE to establish trust:

Dependable: Deliver what you say you can deliver. Then, deliver a little bit more.

Responsive: This is one of those “requires zero talent” assets. Get back to them promptly on any questions or concerns. Can’t over emphasize importance and impact of being responsive.

Intelligent: Be the smartest one about their business who calls on them. Understand their challenges, goals and viewpoints. With the abundance of social media channels and digital information today, this kind of insight is more available than ever.

Value-based: Do what you do because it’s the right approach. Hold your team accountable for all aspects of the relationship. Values and trust are virtually inseparable.

Energy: Another “requires zero talent” asset. A sense of energy, purpose and optimism in every engagement with your customer, creates an environment of “can do” and anticipation for how their company can benefit from your relationship.

Trust on the inside of the organization is equally critical. Employees become team mates, and work-groups turn into “tiger teams”. When leaders can develop a culture of trust, great things can happen. Take a quick watch and listen here to former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell on leadership.  

Finally, like a plant or tree, trust is a living, breathing organism that needs attention everyday to flourish. It requires monitoring, attention, feeding among your existing employees, and complete and deep communication to onboarding new team members. “How” you do things is important but, “why” you do them is critical to get trust established in your team. And when they trust their leaders, and vice versa, you are scaling the most important asset in the organization.

The Ganon Group offers communication coaching for executives and employees across all departments: C-Suite Leadership, Sales, Customer Experience, Technical / Product Development, to improve their communication and presentation techniques. We believe everyone can “up” their game when it comes to communicating initiatives and ideas within the organization, outside to new prospects, to existing clients, or to outside media and trade organizations. www.theganongroup.com