Building Trust through Empathy: A Practical Guide
Trust is the single most important purchasing factor in any sale. Trust is the buyer’s confidence that the seller will do right by them, and becomes more important as the level of vulnerability (risk, significance of the decision) and dependence (technical, knowledge, time) rises. As I am sure you can imagine, the importance of trust is highest in a strategic sale. Buyers will never work with a seller that they don’t trust, and will most likely choose to work with the supplier that they trust the most.
The irony with trust is that most buyers don’t trust sellers. Look at mainstream media and its portrayal of salespeople; they’re dishonest, immoral, manipulative, and will do whatever it takes to meet quota. When I told my college roommate that I took a job in sales his first question was, “How do you know a salesman is lying? Their lips are moving!” Now I’m sure you’re saying “That’s not me”, but studies have overwhelmingly reported that people think others trust them at significantly higher levels than they actually do.
Given the fact that trust is important yet buyers don’t trust sellers, it blows my mind that I have never seen a sales training that focuses around trust! It is a HUGE opportunity to win business. Although there are many ways to build trust (honesty, integrity, etc.), cultivating empathy for your customers and prospects will build trust in a way that will differentiate you from your competitors. Empathy is a fundamental building block of strong relationships and will allow you to build the foundation for a trusting relationship, encourage your customers to surface information that they normally wouldn’t, give you insight into what makes your customers tick, and form a connection with your customer that cannot be broken.
Empathy is the ability to place ourselves in another’s situation, experiencing their emotions and perspective. If you’re worried that you aren’t good at empathizing, don’t. We actually have specific neurons in our brains, called mirror neurons, that help us with empathy. So we all have the tools to empathize, we just need to start working them out.
So here are a couple tips to cultivating empathy within yourself; a fair warning that these things need to be practiced every day, as often as you can. Yes, they are soft and touchy-feely. But after all, you’re selling to people, and people buy with emotion.
- Be cognizant of Your Own Emotion: It doesn’t matter how emotionally hardened you are, we all have emotions. Emotions are a survival mechanism embedded deep into our psyche, we’ve just been trained to quickly repress them because it isn’t professional. As emotions pop up that you want to immediately repress, hold them there and observe. You don’t have to act, just observe. After all, the more familiar we are with our own emotions the greater the chance that we will be able to read others’.
- Practice Curiosity: Ask open ended questions, and listen to the answer for the sake of the answer (most people listen to the answer only to formulate a response). That should lead you to ask more questions, and the answers usually result in a pretty interesting story! Open ended questions start with “why”, “how” “tell me more about…”, “you mentioned…”.
- Ask yourself “How would that make me feel?”: Put yourself in your customer’s shoes as they’re talking, and try to figure out how you would feel if you were in the same situation. This will give you insight into their experience, perspective, and emotion.
- Mirror: Repeat back what your customer said to you and try to guess their reaction: emotionally, physically, mentally, etc. If you’re right, you’re on track. If you’re wrong, the customer will correct you and know that you are truly curious about them.
- Pull Out!: Experiencing someone else’s emotion can be intense. Learn to pull out of your empathetic state after you have gotten a taste so you can think about the situation rationally.
- Identify their Master Character: Every society has a number of character types that are consistently in movies, TV shows, novels, and stories. Whether it’s the underdog that pulls through, or the powerful bad guy that gets what they deserve, these master characters are based on common personality types in society. Chances are your customer resembles a master character. If you can identify your customer’s master character, you can infer and anticipate how they will behave.
Empathy isn’t the only aspect of trust, but it is the foundation to building it. Practicing empathy will also allow you to know your customer better than your competition. Would you be open to a trusting relationship with a person who treated you with the above empathy?
I agree with your observation that trust is the single most important purchasing factor in any sale.
My sales/sales management experience is predominantly in computer hardware, software and services. I recently wrote a short article describing my approach to selling. The article was first published on Ezinearticles.com as “Achieving Trusted Advisor Status” http://ezinearticles.com/?id=2317152 WRAL Local Tech Wire reprinted my article, “A Sales Executive’s Story” http://bit.ly/NIWge
The article describes my approach to establishing trust with client executives and other personnel. It has worked well for me.
Eric: thanks for initiating this discussion. What’s curious about empathy that it’s emblematic of killer sales skills, yet most sales recruiters and sales executives don’t know how to uncover the characteristic in candidates. Your article helps to shed light on how to identify and develop the right behaviors.
I don’t fully agree that buyers naturally distrust sellers. In general, I believe that people have a natural predisposition to trust others (if we didn’t, humankind would have become extinct millions of years ago), and buyer/seller distrust is no more prevalent than trust between trading partners.
Mahan Khalsa said it best in his book “Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play:” “The decision to trust doesn’t start inside (your prospect)—it starts inside of you. Intent is a choice, and your choice will have consequences. You will communicate your intent whether you want to or not . . . Based on your intent, people will decide to trust you or not.”
Based on what Khalsa writes, salespeople shouldn’t moan about being stereotyped. Trust building is one of the few things that resides almost fully within a salesperson’s control. An article I wrote on this topic in 2008, “To an Octopus, ‘50′ Means Nothing: Why Empathy Matters,” describes a top-producing saleswoman and how she used empathy to clobber her competitors. I learned an extraordinary amount from her, and it’s worth examining what she does and how she thinks, some of which are mentioned in your article:
http://www.customerthink.com/article/octopus_50_means_nothing_empathy_matters
Shared experience is No. 1
Common ground is No. 2
Ability to set mutual expectations is No. 3
Meeting expectations is No. 4 – By the time you get to number 4, you’re at the referral stage.
My last comment was meant for process oriented sales people.
Empathy becomes second seat when you have a true emotional seller who can either “paint the picture”, or “put the prospect in the picture”.
I agree with the previous comments. One technique that I use when building trust with my clients, is what I characterize as “reverse empathy”. I want my prospects to UNDERSTAND that I know how they feel. The best way that I can do this is to truly “confide” in my clients.
Now I don’t share my deepest darkest secrets, or anything that would bring my personal character into question; however, I do make it a point to say something like, “…now, I can tell you this because I feel comfortable sharing with you already… I experienced the exact same thing you are going through last year when I…” I think you get the picture.
I am telling you this because it is by far the most effective method I have found to help form better relationships and stronger bonds between clients and prospects (I discovered it when I was at the lowest of lows in my personal sales career-almost went broke!).
Just make sure that you are GENUINE with your clients and prospects!
http://www.myfinancialexperts.com
Agree. One must first build the context, and Rapport, before entering any form of sale! Story telling, genuine interest, Emotional Intelligence.
Must be sincere, genuine, etc. The key word that’s often overlooked on this topic is ‘build.’ And anything worth its salt that is built takes time. Trust will follow…
Making an empathic connection to the customer is indeed key to a long term enduring relationship. The only sales training that I’ve seen that does more than touch on it is done by John Asher’s group. http://www.asherstrategies.com . I have engaged him both formally for my sales teams’ training and informally as a coach…
Building trust in a business relationship starts right from the second you engage with the prospect, which is why I think it’s vital for any sales person to do their own lead generation.
1. The biggest trust builder is the ability to listen
2. Formulating the right questions that gets the prospect thinking of solutions; regardless of them buying your offering.
3. Bringing up the the things that could potentially prevent the sale going ahead
4. Concentrating 100% on their needs, problems and situation instead of putting your own agenda first
5. Treating the buyer like you would like to be treated yourself
6. Being totally and completely honest with the prospect.
When you are showing respect, trust and honesty, from this very instant you engage, then the prospect can instantly tell the difference.
Eric, very good. I have been using this phrase for the last several years. We always teach our prospecting team to demonstrate empathy and sympathy to build trust. You are right on with this approach. We need prospects to share either pain or a compelling reason first before we offer our value proposition and definitely before we have the right to pursue an appointment.
Interesting!. I made the switch from my clinical psychology practice to business development about 13 years ago. When considering a new field of service I soon realized that my skill set was all about helping others solve problems and to create change in their lives. I figured that helping clients succeed by solving problems and creating change would require the same processes and skills be they personal or business oriented issues and opportunities. Sales and business development seemed the natural fit!!
In order to develop trust in any relationship we need to have a handle on our own emotions and realize that thinking (decisions) and emotions are inextricably linked. Your advice to dip into the client’s reality while remaining cognizant of one’s own feelings is sound. I would add that staying in touch with your own agenda and as Mahan Khalsa of Franklin Covey Group would say, “checking your ego at the door” are also very important in building trust.
There has to be reciprocity in relationships but the fastest way to kill trust is to put your interests ahead of the clients’ while pretending not to and thereby come across as manipulative and untrustworthy.
The Founder of Knowledge Advantage- Dave Allman wrote a short story 7-8 years ago called The Dimensions of Success which shows HOW TO put empathy into practice.
http://www.knowledge-advantage.com for a free download.
Short read as I said but takes you through a very real sales cycle contrasting two selling styles that most of us are all too familiar with!
I read this book “Empathy Selling” and was so impressed I bought the UK rights to it.
Please have a look at my web site http://www.EmpathySelling.com any feed back would be appreciated.
This is such a key area in sales. I agree that building trust is critical and that it has a number of components. If a buyer is to trust a seller then they need to feel that the seller is competent (has a core level of knowledge that can help inspire trust), integrity (they need to be honest and ethical) and they need to demonstrate benevolence (linked to the idea of reciprocity and involves showing the prospect you are thinking about them through, for example, sending them some information that you think might be relevant to them that may have nothing directly to do with your product or service).
Important to consider also is that just because a salesperson has a level of rapport with the prospect that does not pre-suppose that trust also exists. Rapport & trust are different. The challenge that a lot of salespeople fail to grasp is that for someone to trust us as a salesperson we need to demonstrate or prove that we are trustworthy. This hits at Erics original point that ‘buyers naturally distrust sellers’. The point is that we judge ourselves by our motivations and others by their behaviours. This means that, although I might know that I am trustworthy as a seller, I should not assume that you as a buyer think I am trustworthy – especially if we have only just met! I need to proactively look for ways to evidence my trustworthiness. For me, the three components of integrity, competence and benevolence all help demonstrate trustworthiness.
Good discussion!
Tom Bird
http://www.brilliant-selling.com
I couldn’t agree with you more. Too often sales people are so intent on the sale they forget the steps needed to get there. Building a relationship with a prospective client is so much easier if you have a connection in which emapathy has drawn you together. You can develop trust and understanding.
Then the sale can be made and an ongoing relationship based on trust can carry you through the future.
That is GOOD stuff! Thanks for passing it along.
–David
RetailWire Blog: http://www.retailwire.com/braintrust/blog.cfm/cpg4life
Hi Eric, great discussion!
You say (in red letters) that you have never found sales training that focuses on trust-building. You might like to check out a friend of mine, Ken Buist, here in the UK, who has been working in this field for many years, and has trained thousands of sales people internationally. He has built an online Sales Character Index tool to help sales people profile themselves and he teaches programs related to Trust and Trustworthiness. Back in 2002 he wrote a book “Trust Me – Becoming a Trustworthy Adviser” (note UK spelling).
His website is http://www.thetrustedadviser.com