“Our clients forget too quickly that they can’t do it
alone,” I said as Gail and Rick pulled up chairs.
“Do what?” asked Rick.
“Get to Trust,” I responded. “Just like It takes two to
Tango or Salsa or whatever dance the stars are doing it takes two to get to
Trust.”
Gail coaxed, “And this is important because….”
I’ve said it before, “Who you know is important and what you
know makes a difference but the single most important thing to be successful in
business is who trusts you.”
“So what you’re saying is that to sell anything you have to
get to trust, and if you don’t, you won’t,” said Rick.
“Right, “I replied. I’m a little frustrated by a business to
business client that is bouncing all over the place, full of piling up lists of
features and benefits and unwilling to let me talk to some prospects to
understand their wants and needs and desires or let me get a handle on their
objections.”
“Is he afraid they might not like his product or service?”
asked Gail.
Rick suggested, “He could be so in love with this thing he’s
developed that he can’t see the forest for the trees. I’ve seen that happen so
many times in high tech that I expect it now.”
“So,” I said, “How do you get around a lack of Trust between one of your companies and their customers?”
“Some times you have to do it the hard way,” Gail said.
“I’ve warned clients that the path they are following will not, in my opinion,
work and that they should change but if they are hard over on doing it I will
give them the best copy I can based on that direction. Sometimes it gets them
to change but very infrequently.”
“I tried that,” Rick agreed. But I try to make it the last
resort because it can get very expensive in Direct Marketing. One thing I’ve
found is that I can push them pretty hard in list selection. Because of the
expansion of selects we can go deeper into prospects habits and media usage and
a host of other factors. What I find is that they really don’t know their
prospects all that well so we push them into doing some simple testing that
reveals where the best product fit is.
“Brilliant,” Gail burst out, “That is sort of what I did
once. I got them to have the prospect respond by phone and had the client and I
actually take some of the calls. Talk about change an opinion in a heartbeat!”
“So what you’re saying is the first step is to get the
client into a conversation with the prospect or customer so they are talking
with the customer rather than at them.
They agreed, saying
it was only the first step but perhaps the most important.
What would you suggest?
Trust-based Marketing is essential in today’s world. See how
it can be applied for you at www.JerryFletdher.com
Jerry’s international keynote about the Trust Goldmine and
other speech topics can be found at www.NetworkingNinja.com