building trust | Developing Your B2B Sales Skills

First Time Buyer in Complex Sale – Build Trust First

by Voss Graham

Several of my clients – and myself – have been involved in the complex sell with both good and bad results. One of the key variables regarding the “bad results” category is the number of first time buyers in this group. After doing some personal research on this topic, I discovered an interesting antidote for improving your success with first time buyers.

The key is to build massive amounts of trust before attempting to move forward in the sales process. The reason is the first time buyer has no experience to relate with during the process. They have to figure it out on their own. A daunting task for the uninformed and possibly risk averse corporate type.

Building Rapport is the Starting Point for Building Trust

by Voss Graham

Rapport Building is one of the MOST IMPORTANT things you do as a B2B Sales person. Without the ability to gain rapport, you miss out on the things that really matter in the sales process. Think I’m kidding here? More sales have been lost because the sales person working an account had no credibility with the decision makers. Why? Because they had lousy people skills and did not think that rapport building was important!

One of the major reasons that rapport building is critical to your sales success is rapport building is the starting point for building trust. And, without Trust, there is no sales, no business, and no renewal business.

Buying decisions are made over 80% of the time based upon this concept of trust. Let me put it another way, if a customer or prospect does not have any trust in you – they will not buy from you. It really is that simple.

Are you good at building trust? I find a number of sales people have become quite arrogant and believe that it is all about the product and service. This leads to competitors enjoying the success of winning sales – at your expense if you are one of the arrogant ones!

There are many things you can do to gain rapport. Here is a short list of rapport building steps…

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