If you want trust, you must answer three questions every time you meet with others. Too often people focus on how others will answer these three questions and not how we need to be answering them. The three questions are:
Do I like You?
Do I trust You?
How can you help Me?
Those three questions that everyone asks at every interaction are crucial for us to put our best foot forward. Otherwise, we will not grow trust levels with others and possibly erode trust with others.
The first question has a lot that goes into it, but the main thing is that if people do not like us then they will not trust us. There is a radar in our fight or flight system that has likeability as a key indicator. Ever have that feeling that something was wrong with someone you just met and you needed to leave. That is the radar trying to keep you alive.
Likeability is crucial. The colors we wear, the way we make others feel, our pace of speech, and even the scents we wear can affect the likeability factor. See we don’t know other people’s pasts, experiences, and triggers. That means that we can subconsciously step onto land mines that we did not know where there. A land mine is an explosive that is buried under the surface that when stepped on creates a large explosion usually killing the person that stepped on the land mine.
This does not mean that we just avoid contact with others. What we need to do is make sure we are consciously approaching those that we come in contact with awareness and humility. We can’t avoid contact with others, but we can however focus on understanding and help them.
The more we put the focus on learning about others and minimizing ways to trigger others the better we can build relationships with them.
When I first meet with others, I tend to wear colors like light blue, whites in my shirts. I don’t wear power ties, dark colors, or a ton of cologne. I also focus on learning about them by asking a great deal of questions. Not so I can sell them something, but to learn and help if possible. I want to help people and by investing in helping others, I have also benefited in my careers and personal life as a by-product.
The first step in taking the focus off ourselves and onto others is start by learning about them. The best way to do that is build a profile about them. That means we are focused solely learning about them (not to leverage them, but to help them). I use a profile sheet when I prep for meeting with individuals and do research on them prior to the meeting if possible. I have also asked if I could take notes and 9 times out of 10 the people are receptive and actually get more engaged by me attempting to learn about them.
I have attached a link to the profile sheet I use to learn about others a. If you’d like a copy just click here and you can have it. No, I am not trying to track your email through this. It is free to you. There are some questions you might have on this sheet so if you haven’t read any of my blog posts about the client profile sheet you can look back at those, or reach out. I would be glad to help you.
For today, focus on not stepping on land mines and learning about others and you will start building trust with others.
Have a great week.
Sincerely,
Kevin Sidebottom
“Businesses wonder why the majority of their sales teams struggle at winning profitable business. I teach your sales team to walk with the customer through the five buying decisions, and in the correct order to generate more sales with high margins!”
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lWIVasmkFsoYL4h0AqIZgH6LC3qaw_gI/view?usp=sharing – client profile sheet
https://www.amazon.com/Sales-Process-Uncovered-Success-Influence/dp/0578421518 - Book
https://kevinsidebottom.kartra.com/page/5AF12 - Sales Process Uncovered Online Training
https://kevinsidebottom.kartra.com/page/68N10 - Trustworthy Online Training