The Importance of Trust in Your Customer Value Proposition
In today’s tough selling environment, B2B sales people need to develop trusted relationships with senior executives much faster to open and close high-margin sales.
To accelerate trusted relationships with senior executives, however, sales people need to take a strategic, consultative approach to selling which aligns their solution with the needs and desires of their prospects.
This challenging paradigm renders the accelerated achievement of being recognised as a ‘trusted advisor’ a critical aspect of the B2B sales process.
Sales professionals can no longer solely rely on the features, advantages or benefits of their solutions to make a quick sale. In today’s climate buyers are making purchasing decisions based on emotion AND hard-nosed business logic in equal amounts. This elevates the value of trust in selling relationships.
To establish your status as a trusted advisor, the following conditions must be met:
1. Prospects must be immediately comfortable with you and exactly what it is that you do.
2. You must demonstrate that you understand their world and have a solution that will solve their most pressing needs and desires.
3. What you offer must be exactly aligned to the prospect’s most pressing needs and desires.
4. Prospects must believe that you and your company will deliver the benefits and be there if (and when) things go wrong.
This may seem overwhelming, particularly given the fact that every customer is unique. This means that a different strategy is required for each and every client. But gaining trust can be made less challenging if you do some research on each one of your prospects. If you get to know as much as you can about each buying organisation, the above requirements for gaining trust will be achieved with far greater ease.
To get to know your client you should be asking yourself: What are their pressures? What problems do these pressures cause? What are their most pressing needs and desires? Who are the senior decision makers? How can what we offer make a difference? Where is the proof? What can I promise? How can I really demonstrate that I mean what I say and can be trusted?
By finding the answers to such questions you will put yourself in a much better position to gain commitments from your customers. Prospects will be more likely to see you as someone who stands out from the rest of the sales people they come across and someone who can create value for the buying organisation. By the way, they’ll like you more too!
But remember, trust also comes from respecting the client, the stage they are at in the sales process, and the personal workloads and pressures they are faced with. By selecting the right communication tactics, offering to help them with their pressures and using the right selling skills at the right moment you will demonstrate empathy, commitment and potential value to your clients.
That’s what being a trusted advisor is all about. The most compelling value proposition for a prospective client is you and the commitments you make (and keep).
Written by: Steve Eungblut, Managing Director of Sterling Chase
Contact Sterling Chase for more information or for a free consultation.
