Episode #306: Trust In Sales Is Everything

I had been busy, so setting this appointment had been difficult. Eventually, we found the day and time to meet. I asked for the address and the text note mentioned the building and I knew it well, so all good to go. Except when I arrived there, the entry registration desk people said there was no company of that name in the building. I checked my text note and sure enough, it specified this building. I did a quick search of the company name and found the right building, but now I was late. I texted the person I was meeting to explain why I would be a bit late. The person I was meeting called me, apologised and ten minutes later we finally got to meet.

Now getting your own office building address wrong when meeting the client is quite strange and as the subject of this conversation was going to be investing my money, the trust factor has just taken a big blow. Being a flexible Aussie, these types of small things don’t bother me particularly. I have messed up meeting appointments too myself. Getting a call at lunch asking where you are for the lunch with them, is always unnerving. It doesn't happen very often, but you feel really bad when it does happen. I have been guilty of forgetting a meeting too, so I am not one who can run around saying I am perfect. Nevertheless, I was curious about how they were going to recover from this debacle and try to rebuild the trust.

We had met once on Zoom and he had wanted to meet me in his office face to face. I get that because as a salesperson I prefer that too. Having made a big deal out of meeting in his office, I was a bit surprised to find that this was one of those executive floors, run by a company who specialises in providing high end space to companies who don’t have their own offices. The trust goes down again. Is this company solid enough? If they are solid enough why don’t they have their own office space? How big is this company? In this case, he needed to explain why they were in that executive floor and not in their own premises but there was no thought to mention it. He could have said their company policy is that they prefer to give value back to the customers through the lower fees they charge, rather than making a building landlord rich, by spending money on expensive lodgings. That explanation would make a lot of sense, because I know I am making my landlord rich leasing the entire fifth floor in my building. I would be able to identify with that logic, but again another trust building opportunity missed.

The rest of the rebuild attempt was perfunctory at best I would say. Apologising is a good start, but we have to do better than that. Forgetting your own building is inexplicable, but you have to explain it anyway. There is no point in trying to move on in this situation, because unless that trust is restored, there won’t be any business flowing from this meeting ever. He needed to use storytelling to flesh out that his mind had been preoccupied with an important meeting, where he was closing a huge deal in the first building I went to and somehow that preoccupation was so strong, at the time of his text reply to me, that without realising it, he had just mentioned the building by mistake. This will only get you there partially though and you need to do more.

At the very end of the meeting, he handed over his corporate brochure and information on the firm, without explaining any of it to me and just suggesting I read it for myself. He should have segued from his initial apology straight into extolling the virtues of the firm in order to re-establish credibility for his company. He was in a hole and he had to get himself out of it. Spending time at the start with the firm’s USPs – the unique selling proposition of the company was the better move. But he didn’t do that though, so an opportunity lost right there. He needed to walk me through the highlights of that corporate brochure and rebuild the trust. If the trust isn’t re-kindled, I am even going to bother reading the corporate brochure or will I just bin it, when I get back to my office?

During the meeting he made a point of differentiating the fee structure from a well known competitor, making the point that certain charges they were applying were unfair to the buyer. The only problem with that construct is that he used to work for that competitor for many years and so what about all of the clients he took care of, who were getting unfair treatment? In this case, he needed to make the point that it was company policy, he never agreed with it and that is why he left that employ, because he didn’t feel the way the customers were being treated was correct. That is understandable and acceptable. However just dissing the rival, to make the point you are more trustworthy than them, isn’t enough, because the fact remains that he still worked there and the implication is that he was happily gulling customers at that time, so why should he be trusted now? In this case he really needed to draw a line between the activities of the previous employer and where he works now and explain the different philosophy which applies in this firm.

We all screw up from time to time, but we have to have a mindset established and some protocols designated to rebuild the trust. We cannot give the same canned presentation we have given a thousand times before in these cases. We need to think on our feet and concentrate on doing everything we can think of to rebuild the trust and get out of the hole we have dug for ourselves. If we don’t succeed, then we have missed the chance to do the deal. We will have missed it forever, because this client will have mentally removed us from the list of possible companies to do business with. “Forever” is a long time, so we have to really work hard on the recovery.