Winning Trust

Customer Servces

Winning Trust
by Hank  Trisler



When dealing with hostile, submissive customers, much of our past sales training serves us poorly. As an example, we’ve been told that we must be enthusiastic, friendly, have a big smile and a warm handshake. In the real world, that will blow you out of the water with more than half your customers and put you at a disadvantage with many of the rest of them.

We like people who are like us and most people are not often very enthusiastic. It’s not really their fault; they just haven’t learned how to deal with the world they live in. Most people are doing jobs they don’t like, for people they don’t respect, for wages they consider inadequate and they hate it, but they are not strong enough to do anything about it. They grouse, mumble and complain through five days, so they can drink beer while gazing at team sports on television for the other two. Their lives are being wasted and they feel completely unable to do anything about it. There is precious little for them to be enthusiastic about and they misunderstand and distrust those who are enthusiastic.

Hostile/submissive people are usually introverts. You know about introverts; inner directed, prefer things to people, rather be alone that with others. They usually have closed body language and poor eye contact. These are defense behaviors to keep you from getting to them and they act that way because it works. An extroverted programmer looks at your shoes when he’s talking to you.

Introverts hate extroverts. Extroverts talk too much and too loudly. They move quickly and try to hold eye contact with you. In extreme cases, extroverts have been known to actually touch an introvert. Introverts fear and loathe extroverts.

Extroverts don’t give a damn. They’re too busy thinking about what they’re going to say next to worry about the impression they’re making on the introverts.

Here’s a solid tip on human relations: Treat everyone you meet like he is an introvert until he proves he is an extrovert. You will never offend an extrovert by treating him as if he was an introvert, but you will always offend an introvert by treating him as if he was an extrovert.

Some truly excellent sales people figure out what their prospects expect them to do and then don’t do any of those things. No loud talk, no sudden moves, no bright lights, no sharp things to poke them. They create the feeling—non-verbally—that they are like the customer and therefore need not be feared or resisted.

A customer with a low level of trust will often say something like, “Okay, come on in and give me your pitch.”

Here’s a concept: People treat us the way we have trained them to treat us. If you don’t like the treatment, don’t blame the people; change the training.

When a customer tells you to “give her your pitch,” she’s telling you about how she’s been trained by other salespeople she’s met. Her view of the sales process is: “You’re the salesperson. You talk. I’m the customer. I listen. When you’re through talking and I’m through listening (and I’ll bet I’m through a lot sooner than you are), I’ll say ‘I want to think it over’ and you’ll go away.” She thinks this because that’s the way it’s always gone in the past and it is the perfect defense against pushy peddlers.

We need to retrain this customer, to change her concept of how the sale works. A phrase like this—if it’s true—might be helpful: “I don’t have a pitch. I don’t see myself as a ‘pitcher,’ but rather as a professional who is here to help you make the best possible decision about… In order to do that, I’m going to have to ask you some very important questions. You don’t mind if I take some notes, do you?” (While pulling a notepad out of your folder, or whatever you use.)

In all the huge number of years I’ve been selling, I’ve never had a person ask me not to take notes. They want me to take notes. No one listens to them, but I’m not only going to listen, I’m going to take notes to prove I’m listening.

Now I’m not a salesperson there to do something to them, I’m an assistant buyer there to do something with them. And we did all this non-verbally, which is 55% of our ability to communicate.

We all have a “comfort bubble” that surrounds us and protects us from intrusion by others, particularly extroverts. That bubble extends about three feet in front of us. We’re not really happy about people who get inside that bubble, unless we’ve invited them in. Our bubble runs about six feet out in back. We get very uncomfortable when people stand close up behind us.  Our bubble is almost non-existent on the sides, however. We can stand in a crowded elevator and bump butts with total strangers and do it with relative comfort.

In many sales circumstances, we are seated across from the buyer, our bodies separated by a desk. We must look at each other, as there’s nothing else to look at. Face to face is an inherently confrontational posture. An introverted customer will usually try to avoid eye contact, but it’s difficult across a desk.

We don’t want the customer to be uncomfortable because we’re forcing eye contact on her; so one answer is to find a reason to move to the same side of the desk, or table, as the customer. Now, as opposed to salesperson working on a customer, face to face, we have two people working together on a common problem, side by side.

The fewer things we do to look like the buyer’s image of a salesperson and the more things we do to look and feel like a trusted advisor, the easier our sales life will be.


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Hank Trisler. All right reserved. For information contact Frog Pond at 800.704.FROG(3764) or email susie@frogpond.com.