Developing Trust in the Age of Covid-19

Posted by David Wallace on October 28, 2020

Mountain Climbing TrustIn response to my email last week, Selling in a Pandemic, one reader asked,

“How can a sales professional can build trust with potential buyers without personal contact?

“For me, I am thinking about more Zoom type meetings.”

Zoom and other video-based tools are certainly important in building trust. The face-to-face interaction allows for communications that relies on more than simply written or spoken words. However, to get to the point where a prospect will grant you the time to have a video call, the seller must lever other tools to build trust. These include education, referrals and follow-up.

  • Education is delivered through a range of media — web sites, webinars, emails, YouTube videos, social media, advertising, etc. Prospects and customers do a lot of research to understand their issues and problems. Many use the research to form possible solutions. All this occurs before they reach out to potential solution providers. Those that the prospects and customers reach out to are the companies they’ve come to trust based on their research.
  • Referrals also come as a result of research. But in this instance, they have spoken with other people that they trust. It may be a friend, colleague, supplier/vendor, customer or even a friendly competitor. Referral sources may have worked with the seller previously or know someone who has. This is not too different from what we have seen in the past, except once a seller has been referred to a prospect, the prospect is likely to conduct additional research to educate himself on the seller’s products or services.
  • Finally, follow-up is key to building trust. If a seller has made it to the point where a prospect makes contact, but the seller does not follow up on call backs, promises or other commitments, then the trust is immediately eroded, perhaps irrevocably.

Wallace Management Group helps companies drive sales success. We can help you put the plans and tools in place to educate your customers and enable them to reach you when they are ready to buy.