How to Build Trust With Buyers in the New World of Work

“The firm belief in the reliability, truth, ability, or strength of someone or something.”

Those words above are what you’ll find in the dictionary when you look up the word “trust,” which has been a hallmark of strong buyer-seller relationships through the history of sales.

In our new reality of remote work, we as sellers are looking for ways to shorten the distance between ourselves and customers through digital channels. We are also looking to build relationships and to find new ways to increase the speed in which we earn the trust of buyers. This process of developing trust often starts even before the first call.

LinkedIn’s new State of Sales report identified several areas that can help salespeople gain buyers’ trust:

To understand a buyer’s business needs, to provide genuinely personalized communication, and to share relevant content, we must do our research to gain a deep understanding of the potential customer — before writing the initial email or dialing the phone for that first call. Here are five pathways to building trust even before your initial outreach:

1. Be an engaged thought leader on social media. We can create value by consistently sharing commercial and other unique insights through thought leadership on LinkedIn and other social media platforms. In a world with limited in-person connections, people are looking to their industry peers to stay informed more than ever.
2. Do your research and go deep. Here’s what I mean by going deep. Go deeper than understanding the industry. And don’t just read a 10-K. Put in the work to understand your buyer’s pressures, objectives, and challenges at the company level — and even at the division and department level. This kind of research may take a bit more time, but it will help you connect directly to what matters most.
3. Leverage warm introductions. Before reaching out cold or with that automated email, leverage your own and company networks to find a warm path in. A referral in from someone your buyer already trusts is always a more efficient path. When making this kind of warm outreach, be sure to state your objective/intent up front in your outreach — don’t tag it on to the end of a fluffy email.
4. Personalize your approach and move beyond pure automation. What I mean by pure automation is sending email blasts that don’t demonstrate an understanding of a buyer and her business. Never has it been more true that your buyers don’t want to be on the receiving end of mass email with just the name and company changed. Take the time to be hyper relevant to your buyer, skip the pleasantries and state your intentions up front.
5. Take your sales hat off and deliver value. Not every buyer is the right one for your solution. If you are finding it hard to clearly map value of your solution to your buyer’s challenges, be candid about this not being the right time. This kind of openness can win the trust of your buyers, and they may be more inclined to return to you as a trusted advisor when they are ready to purchase.  

Another simple definition of trust that I’ve adopted here at LinkedIn is “consistency over time.” The five pathways listed above can help you as a sales professional begin to build trust with your prospects. These are not one-time activities; they are steps to take with every buyer over and over again.  

For more advice on how to build trust in this era of virtual selling, read LinkedIn’s new State of Sales 2020 report today.