“We really need to spend a lot more time thinking about the tactics and even the mindset around trust and how we build that.” – Todd Caponi in today’s Tip 810
Can trust be taught to salespeople?
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Transcript
Scott Ingram: You’re listening to the Daily Sales Tips podcast and I’m your host, Scott Ingram. Today’s tip comes from Todd Caponi. Todd is the author of the 3x award-winning & best-selling book, The Transparency Sale, and a top-rated keynote speaker & trainer as Principal of Sales Melon LLC. Here he is:
Todd Caponi: Hey everybody! This weekend, as I was sitting around watching my kids play on their Nintendo Switch and I was catching up on some old newsletters, it kind of went into a dream world. Where I was thinking about sales as like a video game and a video game where the hero is following this treacherous path, collecting coins along the way. And if he falls off the treacherous path, that competitor either ends up in the land of the status quo or the land of competition. And thinking about it a little bit further, realize this, that those coins that you’re collecting along the path that you need to build up to be able to get to the finish line are really made up of two things. Certainty. So the customer is developing certainty. It’s their role in life is to be able to predict what their experience is going to be like. And when I talk about certainty, it’s certainty in, Hey, if I make this decision or the thing’s going to work, like I think they’re going to work and am I going to get the recognition and validation for doing this? And is the juice going to be worth the squeeze? Am I going to get from a personal and professional perspective? All of the things that I expect and is it worth the resources, the time, the dollars that I put out to get it.
So those coins are the certainty coins, but there’s also another kind of coin that you can collect. The trust coins and those trust coins have an accelerant to them that the more of those coins you build up, the faster you get to the gold line because they speed things up. I mean, think about it. If you truly trust the person that you’re buying from, you probably believe them a little bit faster and you can make that connection. And when you truly trust them, you don’t need to have as much certainty because that certainty is built from the trust and vice versa, if you don’t quite trust the person you’re dealing with, you got to go out and collect a lot more certainty coins. You got to go out and do a lot more homework. And that’s why our sales cycles are so long. I mean, if you fall into the bucket of the status quo, because you haven’t collected any trust coins, guess what? You’re not only going to lose, but you’re going to lose slowly. And yeah, you can still win without building up a considerable amount of trust. But in the end, that’s going to take a long time too.
So as I read these newsletters, you know, and I would scroll through my LinkedIn timeline, you know, we spent so much time on just getting into the game. Like, where’s the power button? How does this thing work? How do I hook it into my TV? Which is completely valid. Like, Hey, there’s no game if you can’t get in that’s prospecting. But I think we really need to spend a lot more time thinking about the tactics and even the mindset around trust and how we build that. And obviously, transparency is a really, really good way to do that. There’s a reason why we read the negative reviews first, when we’re online, looking at a product that we haven’t bought before, we don’t just read the five stars and go, Oh, it’s great. We go to the negatives first because we are trying to build up certainty. We are trying to predict what our experience is going to be like.
And again, once we’ve built trust, we don’t need to spend as much time looking for those certainty coins because those trust coins are worth more and they have an accelerant which speeds you to the goal line. So hope you liked that cheesy little analogy there, but think about it. Think about spending more time, investigating the ways that you can build trust in a sales process because, in the end, you’ll win faster. You’ll win more often. And if you’re going to lose, you’ll lose faster too, which allows you to spend more time on the opportunities that you should be winning. Let me know what you think. I’d love to hear your opinions on this one and thanks again.
Scott Ingram: I’ll tell you what I think. I think you need to click over to DailySales.Tips/810 to see the video version of Todd’s tip where he shows off some pretty solid video game art skill. Of course, we’ll have links where you can connect with Todd and get your hands on his Transparency Sale book as well.
Once you’ve done that. Be sure to come back tomorrow for another great sales tip. Thanks for listening!