Why Trust Can't Be Pitched
Welcome to The Sales Natural blog. This is the first post, so before anything else: here's what you can expect to find here — practical ideas on engaging and influencing buyers by growing trust, clarifying what they actually value, and guiding them to make decisions that will give them that.
When you empower buyers to make sound decisions about what they need, they naturally see you as being part of their solution,
Trust is grown, not built
Most sellers and sales training treat trust as something you build. But trust doesn't work like that. You can't build it. It’s not a building project. It’s not a thing you can ‘do’, but the result or outcome of what you do. So, it’s more like a plant that grows as you nurture it; provided you don’t do anything that will kill it!
The process is best illustrated by The Trust Equation, by the authors of The Trusted Advisor David Maister, Charles H, Green & David M, Galford.
Above the line are three things that grow trust:
- Credibility — your words, telling the truth;
- Reliability — your actions, keeping promises; and
- Intimacy — your emotions, being open and transparent. Below the line is one thing that destroys it: Self-Interest — caring about yourself ahead of the other person.
The real challenge isn't growing trust
Here's the part that surprises most sellers: growing trust isn't actually the hard bit. Most right-minded people, sellers included, already do the things above the line, most of the time. That's just how decent people behave, in business and everywhere else.
The hard part is not losing it. Trust doesn't erode the way it grows, gradually and evenly. It can vanish in a single moment of visible self-interest, and that moment outweighs everything that came before it. That's a big part of why sellers rank among the least trusted professions, right alongside politicians and telemarketers — not because they lack credibility, reliability, or openness, but because self-interest is baked into the traditional sales conversation.
Talking about your product, your company, yourself. All self-interest, even when well-intentioned. The moment a Buyer senses your self-interest is running the conversation, trust stalls, no matter how good the product is.
The real challenge then isn't finding a technique for growing trust faster. It's simply not stepping on the one thing that destroys it.
What that looks like in practice
Good practice here isn't complicated, even if it runs against most sales training. It means guiding rather than pushing: -Making buyers the centre of your attention. You are there for them, not your sale.
Understanding them and their personal Perceptions of Value (POV); what really matters to them.
Appreciating their desired end state; the outcomes that will satisfy their POV.
Empowering/guiding them to create a solution that achieves the outcome.
None of that is a trick for extracting trust faster. It's simply what staying above the line looks like once self-interest stops running the show. Put the Buyer's decision ahead of your own close, and trust looks after itself.
Where this goes next
Future posts will go deeper into the ideas behind this: Buyer Value Drivers, Perceptions of Value, how to run a Value Discovery conversation, and what separates a Sponsor from an Advocate. If there's something specific you'd like covered, get in touch — we'd genuinely like to know.