We’re deeply rooted in a recession right now… and not one of dollars and cents.
A trust recession.
Nowhere is that more dangerous than in leadership, and in sales.
No One Believes You Anymore
We keep blaming the market, blaming the CRM, or blaming the procurement process for bottlenecking our sales pipeline… but this is the hole we’ve dug for ourselves.
We’ve automated outreach to the point inboxes are bursting at the seams, and in turn, we’ve accomplished what… templating our buyer’s trust?
I call it a recession because we’ve devalued trust in such a way that it has stripped every last ounce of authenticity from a process which requires earning belief.
What did we expect would happen?
Buyers are now (expertly, might I add) trained to be cynical. To top it off, certain regions and orgs we sell into didn’t need any help in that category!
This is a waterfall effect stemming from employees who are incentivized to be disengaged via misguided metrics that became the mission.
The resulting business output is that the customer experience suffers.. on layers. Then businesses wonder why close rates are down… why team morale is tanking… why nobody is drinking the Corporate Kool-aid anymore.
The FUD Fuel Crisis
Sales teams are still running plays built on FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) like it’s 2015 and buyers don’t have AI at the ready to fact check any claim, boast or price competitiveness.
The irony is that we’re feeding FUD into a market that already feels FUD Every. Single. Day.
In many orgs, the sales playbook is so overbaked it has become stale; rife with the smell of desperate attempts to breathe some life back into it over the years.
I’ll let you in on a little-known secret – your buyers can tell.
When trust is already scarce, you don’t sell (sustainably, anyways) through fear. You need to rebuild belief one interaction at a time and earn the opportunity to sell.
I see it all the time now – these instances throughout my day where brands want loyalty, but treat customers like conversion data. This degree of eroded trust runs so deep it means buying is now more emotional for buyers… and can we blame them?
People are tired of being let down! Tired of bold claims laden with asterisks, and tired of “value-based sellers” flinching every time they’re asked to explain one of those convenient little stars.
The natural response then is for buyers to put their guard up (or their camera off) and call BS. The challenge is that this has resulted in solution salespeople being perceived as crafty widget peddlers who are merely bait-and-switching.
The Great Rebuild
If trust is truly the currency of every meaningful relationship, then how do we seize this opportunity to rebuild our markets brick-by-brick?
1. Start With the Mirror
Trust starts internally with you and your team(s) before it scales externally. Do your people trust you? Do they trust each other?
Not talking about in Slack polls or eNPS surveys (eye roll). I’m talking about genuine psychological safety. Do they genuinely go to bat for one another?
If that level of psychological safety doesn’t exist, nothing else productive will survive in that culture’s environment either.
2. Make It Make Sense
Your sales process can’t look like a Rube Goldberg chain-reaction machine and still have you expect trust (or revenue) to flow freely.
Want Trust?
- Simplify your process from the view of your ground-floor operators.
- Eliminate the fine print and algorithms required to get paid.
- Remove artificial friction such as layers of approvals for a nominal discount.
In short, stop making it hard for people to say “yes” and nearly impossible for them to say “no.”
Trustworthy systems don’t entrap your teammates. They instead enable and empower them so they can do their job in a manner that helps your customers do theirs. What a concept!
3. Say Something That Matters
Most companies have a mission statement, but have you ever noticed it feels like so few actually have a real mission that’s front-of-mind?
Moving with purpose isn’t simply about saying you care, and please stop “just checking in” or “circling back here”. It’s about proving you mean it through actions taken; consistently, and with integrity.
In a trust recession, what are your actions saying about you before and after you’re in the room?
As your name shows up in an inbox, voicemail, LinkedIn message today will it trigger interest or instinct?
You don’t need to answer out loud (your pipeline already has).
If that stings, good. That means you’re with me in this rise against the FUD-Finders and fear mongers.
Welcome to the revolution that proves sales doesn’t have to be a dirty word.